The story of a tree: This Cook Island Pine has stood next to St Michael's Anglican Cathedral @GongCathedral for over 100 years! This photo is from October 2006 from our west lawn (courtesy Brian Reid). You can see Wollongong Court House clock tower in the background.

Yesterday, the workers started taking down our beloved 100+ years old Cook Island Pine @GongCathedral.

It was struck by a massive lightning bolt in February 2019. Our youth minister, Andy, standing on the other side of the site, hit the ground, thinking a bomb had gone off. Pieces of bark shrapnel were found the other side of the Cathedral 50m away.

Here are the exit wounds the next day...
(photos courtesy Colin Moodie)

Such a massive blast threatened the tree's life. It leaked massive amounts of sap trying to heal the wounds, and shed all its cones, scattering seeds, triggering a survival mechanism for future generations.

We engaged an expert arborist to monitor its condition. At one point he had an elevated work platform to take pathology samples from different heights, to gauge what was happening with injury and disease.

But it just kept getting worse, foliage browning off, on an increasing number of branches.

Yet nothing could fully hide the tree's magnificence! Even the browned foliage glowed, as the sun began setting behind me on a rainy day in August 2019.

(Yes, it leaned, but simply growing towards the sun; not because of damage, nor as much as my angle here implied!)

But before we farewell it for good, let me share a little of its longer pictorial history... Here's the earliest photo I have of it, c.1920 (via Brian Reid) with a considerably narrower girth. The photo title mislabels it as a Norfolk Island Pine.

Another photo of the pine and church building from the 1920s; before the hall was built, from the church tennis courts, which stood approximately where the northern tower of @UOW Marketview Residence now stands.

Here's a different angle, from the NE, dated to "before World War Two" where you can see the Cook Island Pine now above the roofline of our beautiful 1859, Blacket-designed, church building.

Here's a screen grab from p24 of the @GongCathedral Conservation Management Plan 2003 by Paul Davies, featuring a late 1950s photo held in Wollongong City Library, which shows the tree's development well.

Jump forward to May 1987, to a view, this time from the angle of the Court House and Police Station, featuring the distinctive double leaders. (Brian Reid)

The Cook Island pine's double leaders featured in the @GongCathedral logo of some years until the mid-2000s... By then both leaders had come down in separate weather events (I believe one by lightning and one by windstorm).

Here's another photo dated to 1987, this time with the Steelworks brass band playing underneath the pine, at the church fete. (The notes in the photo file say '125th anniversary', although dates don't quite add up; B.Reid)

A view from Thomas Street, with pine and @GongCathedral spire seen over the top of the 1925 hall (with 1967 addition). Date is October 2005, with the site clearance works prior to building of the Ibis Hotel (later @UOW's Marketview Residence). (Brian Reid)

And here's a view from the glass walkway joining to the two Marketview (then Ibis) towers soon after opening in October 2006, courtesy Brian Reid.

Here's the Cathedral and Cook Island Pine with a glorious sky in 2008, courtesy of Mark Whitelock.

And here it is just poking out behind the spire behind the jumping castle on our Annual Thanksgiving Day, Sept 2104, to celebrate the opening of @GongCathedral site works, addressing drainage problems, disabled access and beautifying the grounds, again courtesy Mark Whitelock.

Think of the weddings our pine has overlooked. This one is the marriage of Brad and Jodi Gibson...

And for the centenary of the World War One Armistice, in November 2018, we wrapped it with 55 poppies of remembrance, one for each man memorialised in our @GongCathedral Honour Board, for giving their lives in that terrible war.

Alongside our Cathedral, that Pine looked so beautiful just after a misty December 2014 dawn...

And just as glorious in this April 2017 sunset...

So you can imagine how sad we are to see our beloved Cook Island Pine succumb to its wounds and have to be removed for safety. I'm glad to say the tree surgeon reported the anxious raven's nest was empty, no eggs, no hatchlings remained.

This is all that was left yesterday afternoon. But I can report we expect to replace it with another Cook Island Pine, hopefully 2-3 years old, and possibly even a daughter of our late pine, since the nurseryman said he'd saved some of our seed in earlier years.

Thank God for trees!

All this reminds me of a wonderful biblical meditation from our former Assistant Minister, @MooreCollege lecturer, @lionelwindsor, developed from a sermon preached @GongCathedral http://www.lionelwindsor.net/2009/03/24/what-is-a-tree-for/ [END THREAD]