By Renee Wood
Wandin resident Russell Sebire was shocked to discover a 119 year old English Oak tree had fallen on his property after a large dousing of rain.
A sad moment for Russell and his wife Barbara, with the tree of great significance to his family – it was planted by his grandfather Wandin Sebire in 1902.
Russell said he shed a tear when he saw the tree had fallen.
“I just thought yesterday everybody on this earth has been born and died virtually while that tree has been alive,” Russell said.
The tree with a trunk circumference of 5.2 metres came down on Saturday 16 October following 68 millimetres of rain.
Thankfully it did little damage when it fell between two buildings.
“My son lives is in the house over the road and he came up and said the tree’s broken down and then we went down to have a look and of course it was up, roots and all – it just tipped over.
“Where it dropped, you just couldn’t credit how it fell, it couldn’t have fallen any better.”
Wandin Sebire was the first birth recorded among the pioneering white settlers, the son of Henry and Martha Sebire who settled at Mont De Lancy in 1867.
Wandin moved to the property with his new wife Emily Briggs and planted the English Oak, which was popular for its acorns as a source of food for pigs.
“I don’t know why but it grew to the west and it just got heavier and heavier.
“I thought it was coming up you could see the roots coming out of the ground but because the big limbs are bigger than a normal tree they were resting on the ground and I thought they would have supported it but when it decided to go, it went.”
Like many other Yarra Ranges properties, this tree is not the first to be damaged by the wild storms that have lashed the region this year.
“We’ve had our fair share of cleaning up. There were a lot of broken limbs and I’ve been cleaning up the past month. I just about caught up, down to my last couple of trees and then this happened.”
Now the family is looking into how to remove it, Russell hopes the wood can be put to good use by a craftsman.
“It’s good valuable timber, I’ll have to find someone who wants it and see if we can make something out of it.”
