When we lived in Clayfield I was pregnant. In the final months of my pregnacy I would daily walk down Alexandra Street as far as Oriel Park and then back to our little apartment. When Dylan Oriel Park became our 'local'. It's a beautiful big open green park with a fantastic fenced in playground. We had Dylan's 100 days celebration and his naming day/1st birthday there. Lots of very happy memories have this park at their centre.
It made me wonder what had happened to it? There have been cases in recent years of most notably on the Sunshine Coast, of residents poisoning trees to gain access to waterviews. Some trees that have been poisoned are hundreds of years old. The water views increase the value of a home - but at what cost?
Yesterday we were running early for the airport to pick Dave up, so we stopped in at Oriel Park for a play. I was dismayed to discover one of the trees dying. Actually it's not dying ... it's all but dead and awaiting removal
It made me wonder what had happened to it? There have been cases in recent years of most notably on the Sunshine Coast, of residents poisoning trees to gain access to waterviews. Some trees that have been poisoned are hundreds of years old. The water views increase the value of a home - but at what cost?I'm hoping someone did not poison this tree - that it is just its time, the cycle of life. It left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth as we were leaving, to know that next time we go there the tree will probably be gone, dulled the bouyed up mood that I'd had all day about having Dave home for the first time in two weeks.
What memorable landmarks (natural or manmade) have you lost through natural processes or progress?
3 comments:
Oh boy. I hear you on this one. My most memorable place that's now gone was the downtown area of a city here in Arizona that I basically grew up in. It is a college town, and it used to have beautiful ambiance. You'd walk down the street and smell incense, antiques, and cookies baking. It was beautiful. Then a mayor got voted in who wanted to turn it into a tourist destination, and the college raised it's tuition, bringing in a different class of student... and it's gone downhill from there. It's like any downtown area in middle America now- one big concrete strip mall. There was an expanse of lawn I remember playing on as a kid, they'd truck in snow from the mountains in the summer for us to play in. They built restaurants and office buildings there years ago. You used to walk downtown on a Saturday night and hear Bohemians playing guitars, there'd be tree-lined streets with sparkly lights in them, artsy college students studying in coffee shops. Now it's packed, loud bars with fakey people and chemical-scented name-brand clothing stores. Blech.
Sorry for the rant. Good topic. Sad topic.
That's so sad. It does look like a big old tree, but even so - it seems to have been in its prime - "too young to die". It's still standing up straight, it had a full complement of leaves, the wood looks (from a distance) healthy.
I've never seen the wholesale poisoning of a tree, but I have seen atrocious acts committed by tree surgeons - most of them are very good, but some are simply council gardeners told to cut a tree a particular way, and they get rid of all the young wood.
Cleve West has a rant about one of his neighbours and her opinion of some lovely old cedars here. She sounds like she'd get on well with the people who kill a tree for the sake of a sea view.
One of my favorite landmarks burned down when I was still a kid. It was an old gold mill in the mountains, run down anyway, but beautiful in it's own respect. I had done some pieces of art using a wood burning technique capturing an image of it before it burned.
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