In the Pines

So familiar today in Australia, lining many of its beaches, and throughout the world, it’s hard to believe that all these trees are descendants of saplings and seeds taken from Norfolk Island since colonial times.

In fact, they are one of the reasons Norfolk was chosen as a place for settlement.  When Captain Cook arrived in 1774, he was struck by the abundance of tall, straight pines. These would be ideal, he reported, for masts and spars and a great resource for a naval power like Britain.

From 1788 the valuable timbers of the Island were harvested by a small colony established here. Cook was wrong, however, and the wood was deemed unsuitable for ships.  This was a godsend as, if the lumber had proved useful, all Norfolk would have been stripped of its magnificent trees.

While rambling in the dense woods the haunting refrain from an old ballad runs through my head:

Breezes sing, and sigh, between the spiny fronds of the conifers and there’s a sense of wonder as you look at the forest.  In amongst the vegetation are tiny, bright green seedlings, tall thin saplings and venerable, huge-girthed monsters, covered in moss and ferns, towering to the distant blue sky.  Some specimens can reach 65 metres, or be 11metres wide, and many are ancient.  These were mature trees when Cook and his men first stepped ashore - no Norfolk pines anywhere else in the world could be this old, or have reached this size.

 When young they are Christmas-tree shaped, and popular as potted house plants in North America; especially during the festive season.  As they grow bigger, they become less symmetrical; each has its own unique form.  Hung with ‘old man’s beard’ – a lichen similar to Spanish moss - these stately giants become landmarks of the Island.  Akin to something from Tolkien’s Middle Earth the pines speak of an earlier time.  They are wildly beautiful, and have stood as slender sentinels, on these rocky and forbidding shores, for ages past.