Making better people
I’ve been making a mental map of the trees on the ride from my house in Brunswick East to the Fair Food warehouse in Preston.
Paying daily respects to the neighbourhood trees helps get me out of my overthinking head.
The route begins with a massive River Red Gum at the end of our street. It drops leaves and twigs into my neighbour Rosemary’s yard. I think it’s magnificent, Rosemary wants to cut it down.
Down the hill over Moreland Rd Bridge I look down on more Red Gums as well as Mannas and Black Wattles getting ready to blow into blossom along the creek.
On the other side of the road Northcote golf course is shielded by Sheoaks, up the hill along Harold St is lined by Paperbarks and Cape Lilacs.
Crossing St George’s Rd I acknowledge tall scraggy Canary Date Palms while over High St are the out-of-place pineapple-shaped date palms of Penders Park.
The massive dark Ironbark in the middle of the Newcastle St roundabout couldn’t be more different from the rows of Olives planted on both sides of the nature strip.
While over Victoria St there are Queensland Boxtrees on both sides of Collins with the side below the power lines brutally butchered.
Halfway down is a dramatic English Ash, its bare winter form a Kate-Bush-like murmuration of fine branches and twigs reaching out over the road.
Over Station St, thoughtfully planted out front of a seafood wholesaler are two of the healthiest Lemon trees you’ve ever seen, while up on the other side of the road, owned by a family of very sociable magpies, stands a single enormous Sheoak.
Zipping across Bell St, behind the Big Box homemaker stores, planted up against the concrete slab wall of an enormous homewares distribution centre are half a dozen well-cared for Nectarines, Peaches, Plums and Figs.
And finally to Fair Food warehouse where I greet a very healthy adolescent Bunya Pine that has no business being down on the Darebin Creek amongst the Eucs.
It’s easy to think of cities and forests as being separate things, yet here we live in Greater Melbourne’s urban forest among more than 30 million trees.
Trees are so ingrained, so a part of us that we can’t help planting them even after spending so much effort clearing them away.
We know now that our fate is tied with theirs – a few years ago Melbourne’s 31 city councils voted to double the city’s tree canopy by 2040 to help reduce the heat island effect we’ve created with our roads and buildings.
Trees feed us, house us, warm us, we make music, mythology and childhood memories with them.
Trees even keep us well – a study of 46,000 people in Sydney, Newcastle & Wollongong found living in a neighbourhood with just 30% tree canopy meant your odds of psychological distress and poor health were reduced by almost a third.
Riding home after a hard day at work and all I need is a Queensland Boxtree full of singing starlings to pull me out of my busy brain and back into the world.
Have a great National Tree Day
Chris
