The big tree
There was a big tree at the front of our house. I mean big - mighty, towering. No-one was sure how old it was and no-one knew how it got there. My dad had several theories, some less plausible than others.I say, “at the front of the house”, but, really, the tree was at least half in the neighbour’s. Antonio Gramaci was our neighbour - a thick set man with very hairy eyebrows. He spoke with that very sing-song intonation common for Italians speaking English. Of course, to prove he was “an aussie” he had to throw in a few expletives.
“That bloody, bloody tree, Westerman,” he would say, “One day itsa gunna fall on you and that’s your own bloody, bloody fault.” I wasn’t quite sure why I was implicated in the trees impending collapse, but Antonio was adamant.
As I grew older into my teens and then to adulthood, the tree began to change. The upper limbs became fragile and occasionally, a huge branch would crash below. Antonio would shriek out the window. “You see, Westermani. You gunna get bloody killed.”
It did seem likely that someone at least would perish when they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dad speculated on whether the council would come and order it to be felled, or whether he should take a chainsaw to it. Not that he would. It was just too big and we didn’t even own a chainsaw.
The night of “the great fall” came when I was turning 22. By that time, I lived elsewhere but returned occasionally to mow the lawn, or to berate my mother on the dangerous way she used a blunt knife in the kitchen.
We might’ve noticed a steady creaking had that night be still. But a storm raged upon us, with gust after gust lifting the iron on the back shed and then slapping it down again. None of us witnessed the last moment of this giant, but we all felt the shuddering of the impact, followed by a dazzling display of sparks as it took out the power line and plunged us into darkness.
As if the felling were some grand punctuation, the storm stopped abruptly and in the silence we heard Antonio screaming. “Westerman. Westerman. Are you there? Are you under there, you bloody great idiot.”
With our torches waving chaotically about, we could make out the giant corpse lying now across the road, strangled by the wires. The power lines had ignited the upper branches and, despite the rain, they burned with a flickering glow.
Morning, still without power, showed us the true scale of the beast. An upright tree can deceive you into thinking it is less than it is, but when it lies on the ground, you begin to get the measure of its size. The fire had smouldered through the top and now the upper branches lay in a crumpled mess across the road. But the massive body was whole and, now we could see it clearly, the trunk was less weathered than we had imagined.
The council truck arrived at 2:00, delivering a chap in a high vis vest and a bunch of disinterested workmen in work clothes with reflective stripes. After several minutes, they began to bundles the debris from the road into the truck. The well dressed high vis vest guy approached.
“Sorry mate. Can’t do much for you. The trees on your property. Best get the electricity people to sort the lines.”
That was it. Antonio blew a valve.
“Youa gotta be kidding, mate. What we do with this bloody great thing?”
“Sorry. That’s not within our jurisdiction.”
After they left, Antonio’s English became less coherent and more rich with expletives.
Dad mumbled that we would have to get the tree cut up. But what a task. No chainsaw was going to be sufficient for the diameter. And what size pieces would be able to be cut and how would they be lifted?
“It’ll have to be milled.”
“My cousin has a truck. He can get it to the mill.”
“What mill? The nearest is Mullgara, 80 miles away.”
“No worries. We’ll get it there, mate. Don’t-a-worry.”
No doubt, Antonio’s cousin did have a truck and probably a crane. But what of the milling? Someone would have to pay for this and, if the timber was any good, someone would have to sell it.
Dad rang the power people and by that afternoon power was restored. And Antonio’s cousin arrived with the truck and crane. A flatbed truck with a swing crane attached. “No,” my father said. “You’re not going to …”
But they did. The crane ground to a screeching halt as the truck leaned over. Then it came back into life and lifted the trunk just high enough to be able to swing it on. But it could not swing it. Never one to let these obstacles overcome him, Antonio took his utility and, with the help of a rope that would snap at any moment, dragged it onto the bed.
Antonio’s cousin produced some flimsy ropes that barely reached across, let alone secured the load. After another series of “bloody” Dad persuaded Antonio to use these new-fangled ratchet straps.
“You gotta be joking, Westerman. Those things don’t work.”
Dad assured him they did and demonstrated so.
With the load ‘secure’ the journey began. Mullgara was only technically 80 miles away - along the goat track. If you didn’t want to drive the precarious mountain road, it was 200 miles around the mountain. Of course, I could persuade neither Dad nor Antonio or his cousin that the long way was safest.
There was never going to be any other outcome. As we approached the peak, Dad and I following in the old Holden and Antonio and cousin in the truck, a stretch of road was sharply sloped to on side. Too late, Antonio’s cousin realised that the truck was tilting. By the time it halted, the load had lurched to the left and the truck was left with a rear wheel off the ground, like a dog lifting its leg to urinate.
A precipice loomed only metres away. Antonio and cousin piled out of the truck, Antonio’s face now ashen and his language subdued.
“Oh, shit, Westerman. Oh shit. What will we do?”
No matter how he wrestled the strap, the ratchets were not going to budge. Inconveniently, it was on the downhill side and each moment trying to free it was inviting the load and truck to descend and crush you.
“We’ll have to cut the bastards.” The raw tone in Dad’s voice betrayed his reluctance to part with the expensive straps. He took the pocket knife he always carried and hacked away for minutes, gradually replacing exasperation with frenzy.
The strap let go with a “poiiiing” and the rear of the tree slowly moved left. Dad leapt from the truck just as the tree slid out of the front strap, teetered for a moment on the edge of the bed and then slid unceremoniously off the truck, plunging into the ravine below. The truck, relieved of the weight, crashed back on to the elevated wheel.
Dad, Antonio, cousin and I stared down into the ravine and the trail of destruction it had wrought on the way down. The giant was not going to be timber any time soon.