Trees of life

Can you remember a tree you used to climb as a kid? If you head back home, wherever that may be, do you still go to pay that tree a visit if you can?

Nick has a tree like that in his mind. He thinks this childhood experience and connection has a little to do with why he became an arborist. He’s now a teacher of arboriculture diploma students at TAFE NSW Ryde. After all the cuts to the TAFE sector over the years he says “we’re still hanging in there” and feels the value of TAFE education and training might be being re-appreciated.

Today, around 20 students are at Addi Road doing tree measurements and what Nick calls “health assessments”. He explains the way his students are taught to make visual assessments of the tree “from the leaves to the structure. We look for necrotic (dead) leaves. Chlorotic leaves that starting to yellow. Things like that.”

The students are scattered in groups around the nine-acre Addi Road site. It’s not that well understood, but the grounds of Addi Road are home to over 170 trees, not to mention two Tawny Frogmouths and a plethora of other bird life.

A habitat tree – saved by arborists from a dying Blue Gum – is one especially popular spot for parrots in need of a home. It was also the inspiration to our very popular children’s book The Hollow Tree in 2020, with illustrations by inner west kids who’d been taking part in Robyn Chiles’ Drawn to Seeing workshops on site.

Integrating the imagination with a green state of mind– a love of nature and what it can be mean – goes to the core of that book project. It’s something that similarly carries through in the care and passion driving the adult arboriculture students visiting Addi Road today. Tape measures are out wrapped around tree trunks. Surveying equipment is used to measure height. Up-close to the trees, people take note of the branches, reach up and feel the quality and texture of the leaves.

Nick says they will get to around 90 trees. It’s as much as they can do over one day. The data is not shared with Addi Road unless there’s something of concern. “It’s not officially usable data as they are all students, but it’s usually pretty good.”

“The students gain a lot from the day at Addi Road,” Nick says. “It’s great they can get so much information on so many trees in an actual environment, especially one that has commonly used areas, a place where people move around, an occupied real world environment.”

It’s a surprise to learn this particular TAFE class has been coming to Addi Road for something like 20 years or more. “It’s become an institution of this unit at TAFE,” Nick says. “Most of the arborists working now in the city have done exercises here at Addi Road. I’d say pretty well all the consulting arborists working now have visited here when they were learning, because most of them in NSW come out of the course at Ryde TAFE.”

As his students take to measuring the trees immediately beside the circuit road, Nick can appreciate their low-branches and convenience for kids who visit Addi Road and climb them. “We all start out with a love of trees,” he says. “Then we grow out of it, forget it. But it’s there in us. Being an arborist is one of the ways to keep that childhood love and connection alive. We can still help the trees. And get more in as well.”

It’s then that the talk turns to revisiting trees you may have climbed as a child yourself. Nick can relate. He says it’s an issue of deep time.

“Trees can be one of those things that have a degree of permanence. You climb a tree when you’re 10 years old. You come back 20 years late. Even 30 years later or more, and a lot has changed in your life and your world. But if the tree is still there and you come back to it, it will probably not look a whole lot different as long as we haven’t developed it out of existence.”

“Just put the time scale of a tree’s life next to ours. It can be there before us and likely be there long after us. That can mean a lot to people. If kids are able to climb trees, I think there’s hope for them, hope for us too if we can appreciate them and remember our connection.”

Given Addi Road is marking is 50th birthday this year with a big fiesta in October, its nice to remember just how long the trees have been with us. What they mean to the feeling of the place, its calming atmosphere as a community centre, a site with its own natural history affecting all who visit us.

Nick smiles. He checks on his students. They welcome the chance to get a photo taken by a tree. “Yeah,” Nick says, “a lot of arborists working now have come to Addi Road from Ryde TAFE, just mulling around here like us, learning about trees for a while.”
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Addi Road Community Organisation will be presenting Eco Fest Inner West on Sunday 27 September, 11am–3:30pm inside our Gumbramorra Hall. It celebrates urban ecology relevant to inner westies and Sydneysiders, connecting strategies and objectives with the technical and practical action we can all take. More information is available here.