Shrine Stories: The Lone Pine

You've probably heard of the Lone Pine Tree. It's one of the most iconic symbols in the world of military botanicals. But how much do you know about its origins? And how can you tell if a Lone Pine is actually the real deal?

In this episode, we're diving deep into the roots (pun intended!) of this living memorial with Shrine volunteer Mary Ward.

Transcript

LAURA THOMAS: The Shrine of Remembrance acknowledges the Bunurong people of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast was recorded, and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present. As a place of remembrance and storytelling, we honour their deep connection to country and waterways shaped by generations of stories and memories.

MARY WARD: I do feel it must have been so emotionally important to people at the time to have that very special link. And Lone Pine was planted a year, over a year, before we had the first memorial plantings of trees around the Shrine. So, it was just the first of special trees, but that connection, that actual connection with that tree on Gallipoli, must have really touched an emotional vein in so many people.

LAURA THOMAS: You've probably heard of the Lone Pine Tree. It's one of the most iconic symbols in the world of military botanicals. But how much do you know about its origins? And how can you tell if a Lone Pine is actually the real deal? In this episode, we're diving deep into the roots, pun intended, of this living memorial with Mary Ward.  Mary Ward has been a volunteer at the Shrine of Remembrance for the past 10 years, and at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria for 20 years, and she's our resident green thumb with a plethora of knowledge about the Shrine Reserve. Welcome Mary.

MARY WARD: Thank you, Laura. I think plethora of knowledge is perhaps going a bit far, but I do love the reserve.

LAURA THOMAS: Mary, I've seen you do your Shrine tours. I think it's pretty accurate. Now, the story of the Lone Pine Tree actually starts with the Battle of Lone Pine. So, I was hoping that you could share a little information about where this is and what was happening at the Battle of Lone Pine.

MARY WARD: Yes, Lone Pine. Now we need to jump three and a half months beyond the original landings at Gallipoli. Of course, Anzac Day we commemorate, 25th of April. So, we're looking then through to August, beginning of August, 6th of August. And there was fighting going on, of course, all the time. But more battles were started then, some as diversions. And the battle of Lone Pine was launched on the sixth of August. Now those first four days were intense fighting, very intense. The Turks were very well dug in, but during those first four days, the Australians suffered some 2000 casualties. So, it's dead, wounded, missing, and it's also worth remembering, I think, that the Turks suffered about 7000 casualties in that same period, they call that area 'Bloody Ridge'. What's Lone Pine to us is Bloody Ridge to them. So, we do need to consider both sides in this battle. But fighting was so intense, seven Australians were awarded the Victoria Cross just in one 24 hour period right at the start, and four of those men, four of those seven, came from the one battalion, the seventh battalion, which was Pompey Elliott's battalion, and I'm something of a fan of Pompey Elliott, so we'll put that one in there, that their story is actually in the Galleries of Remembrance.

LAURA THOMAS: And why was it called the Battle of Lone Pine?

MARY WARD: Lone Pine was the one Lone Pine tree still on the ridge. That area would have had pine trees growing. They're endemic to that part of Turkey, the Gallipoli Peninsula, but there was one left at the time. It was destroyed during the fighting, but that's how it got its name.

LAURA THOMAS: So how did we go from this awful battle with thousands of losses to having a tree here at the Shrine?

It's a long story, in a way, and quite complicated when you get into the different little aspects of it. But after about the first four weeks, obviously the men were changing their different battalions. But we had the 23rd and 24th battalions arriving at Gallipoli beginning of September, and they took over the trenches, and they alternated pretty much day by day, because of the conditions there. And there was one particular soldier we can think about, Thomas Keith McDowell. He was a Sergeant, Thomas Keith, but he was known as Keith. He collected a pinecone. He wasn't the only soldier who collected pinecones, and that's where the botanical part of Lone Pine becomes more complex, but for Keith McDowell, he collected a pinecone, and he carried that pinecone around in his backpack for about a year. He went on to the Western Front, like most of the men, but he'd developed TB even while he was at Gallipoli, and he was eventually invalid at home in about August 1916.

LAURA THOMAS: And TB, tuberculosis?

MARY WARD: Tuberculosis, yes. So, he was very keen to keep fighting, and he actually joined Militia back here, but he was never a particularly well man. So he gave that pine cone, and according to, I suppose it's probably hearsay, but according to some reports, he dug it out of his kit bag and gave it to his wife's aunt Emma Gray and said something along the lines, 'You've got a green thumb. See if you can grow some seedlings from this'. She lived near Grassmere, which is in the Western District, not far from Warrnambool, and after about 10 or 12 years, she did grow five seedlings, four of which survived. So, we've got four little pine trees from one pinecone. It's amazing to think that pinecone was still able to produce trees having rumbled around the back of a backpack for 12 months. And you can imagine what that would have been like.

LAURA THOMAS: Well, that's what I was going to ask. If it's been sitting on its own for a year, you can still get seedlings from it obviously?

MARY WARD: It seems to be. Now, this is not something I can actually answer for. I don't know how difficult it would be, but he wasn't the only, or she wasn't the only person to actually get little pine trees from pinecones brought back. And this is where it becomes interesting, because whereas Keith McDowell brought back a pinecone from that pine tree, that Lone Pine at Gallipoli, other soldiers brought back pinecones, mainly from the pine logs that were covering the Turkish trenches. That's one reason the battle was so fierce. They'd made good trenches, covered them with pine logs. And those pine logs have been brought in from outside Gallipoli. So those pinecones weren't related to Lone Pine, the Lone Pine. So, we'll get into that at some stage. Shall we talk a bit more about that? Or should we go back to our original four seedlings?

LAURA THOMAS: Let's go back to the four seedlings, and then we'll return.

MARY WARD: Right, with our four seedlings. So, we're talking 1933 the first one was planted at Wattle Park in Burwood. It's up on the corner of Riversdale Road and Warragul Road, if you know that part of Melbourne, and it was the home ground of the 24th battalion. So, the second one was planted here at the Shrine, and that was in June 1933. The third was planted a place called The Sisters, the memorial hall there, which is near Mortlake, again near Grassmere, where Emma Gray came from. And the fourth was planted in January 1934 at Warrnambool Botanic Gardens.

MARY WARD: And the planting here in June 1933 was actually written up in The Age the following Monday. It was planted on Sunday, Monday the 12th of June, and I'll just read a little bit of what The Age wrote at the time, because it gives an idea of how important planting that tree was. "The little plant cultivated from a seed of the famous Lone Pine on Gallipoli was planted with full military honours yesterday afternoon in the presence of a column of the 24th battalion of the militia forces and lines of war veterans who saw service with the renowned regiment. Headed by the battalion's band, the column marched from the Domain north of Government House gates to the plot mark to receive the plant. Archdeacon Lambell was in attendance to dedicate the plant. Mrs. Gray of Grassmere, who grew the plant from the seed brought from Gallipoli, placed the first spade full of soil around the tree in its new bed". So, it was obviously a very solemn occasion, and it's also worth remembering, June 1933 the Shrine's construction was still going on. There was no landscaped area around it. A lot of thought must have gone into just where to put it. And it was surrounded by a nice, sort of protective fence at the time, because it was only little, but that was one of the first trees planted as a memorial tree, probably the first tree, I would say.

LAURA THOMAS: And it is in quite a significant position. It's very close to the Shrine and almost framed beautifully with the Shrine next to it, where it is now.

MARY WARD: Yes, it's on the entrance, really, from Burwood Avenue, where a lot of people come in, particularly busloads of tourists would come down that Anzac Avenue there. It was planted, the path that we have now there, well the path was there, but the original tree was planted on the left-hand side of that path. Today we have a Lone Pine on the right-hand side of that path.

LAURA THOMAS: Which segues beautifully into my next question for you, Mary, because the Lone Pine that was planted in 1933 is not the Lone Pine that we have today. Tell me what happened there?

MARY WARD: No, it's not the one we have today, unfortunately. The pine we have there today is a replacement, a grandchild pine. The pine that was planted was the child of that original one, but back in 2005, it needed cable bracing because it had lost a major limb, and then a few years later, in 2012 it had to be taken out because it had developed a fungus. It's diplodia pioneer. It's one that affects pine trees, and that had killed it, and so it had to be taken out. But it wasn't put to waste, you could say. The timber was reclaimed, and we've got a beautiful Lone Pine guitar, a Maton guitar made here in Melbourne, a board table for the Shrine board members to sit around, and another table was gifted to Legacy, all produced from that timber, from that tree.

LAURA THOMAS: And it's quite interesting in the guitar and in the table that I've seen, you can see the discolouration of the pine and I'm assuming that's the rot that was in there.

MARY WARD: It probably has had an effect from the fungus. Yes, because in most cases, it wasn't large pieces they were able to use. That was sort of, particularly with the guitar, it was bits they were able to put together. And I don't know how to make a guitar, I do have a Maton guitar, actually, but not made from Lone Pine timber.

LAURA THOMAS: So obviously, with the first tree that was planted, did they take pinecones off that to propagate as a keep safe like, how did we get a grandchild tree here?

MARY WARD: Fortunately, yes, while it was still alive, babies were grown, grandchildren of that original one. City of Melbourne actually have quite a few still. They grew about 500 in all, I believe, from the original Lone Pine plant at the Shrine and back in 2006, one of those grandchildren was planted on the right hand side of the path, more or less opposite where the original Lone Pine was planted, and directly opposite Man and his Donkey. But that always grew at a 45-degree angle, which caused a bit of concern among some of us. It unfortunately didn't survive, and it was taken out because of rot, not the fungus. And that was back in March 2016. But the following year, April 2017, 21st of April it was, after the school's Legacy Day service, a second grandchild was planted there, and that's the one we have today, and it's looking beautiful at the moment. It's always been lovely and bushy, it's growing a good trunk, and it's got nice pinecones on it, so hopefully more. But from those other pine trees, the four that Emma Gray grew, the one, unfortunately at Grassmere, succumbed to a storm back in 2016 as well I think it was. But the one at Wattle Park is still growing, and the one in Warrnambool Botanic Gardens is doing particularly well. Perhaps being in a botanic garden has helped it. It's got a plaque underneath. It's a tourist attraction, and they, with help of a volunteer programme, continue to propagate seedlings from that tree. So, it's from one of those children of Lone Pine.

LAURA THOMAS: Wow. So, keeping that living link alive

MARY WARD: And that's what makes our Lone Pine so special. It's a living link. And when you think about when that first one was planted in 1933, now we've got to think back, that was what, 18 years after the Battle of Lone Pine, people were still feeling that still. And because the bodies of the dead soldiers didn't come back, for so many people, this would have been the closest thing to having their loved one coming back, the closest idea of a funeral, being able to actually connect through that living link, a tree grown from the tree where those men fought. It must have been a very emotional, a very special time.

LAURA THOMAS: You've run lots of tours of the Shrine reserve over the last couple of years. What are visitors’ reactions when you tell them this story and the significance of this tree on our reserve?

MARY WARD: People are interested in the history of it definitely, to give a feeling of connection, I think they sort of think, oh, okay, for us, it is history. And as a person who loves history and trees, it resonates in both areas with me and we do look on, yes, it's wonderful, we have that living link that somehow connects us. But going back to what I said before, and I've been thinking quite a bit about this just recently, I do feel it must have been so emotionally important to people at the time to have that very special link. And Lone Pine was planted a year, over a year, before we had the first memorial plantings of trees around the Shrine. So, it was just the first of special trees, but that connection, that actual connection with that tree on Gallipoli must have really touched an emotional vein in so many people. That was their son, father, uncle, brother, coming back in a way.

LAURA THOMAS: And as you mentioned, provides a physical space for them to come and visit, with a lack of grave or place for them to go. Do we have any other living links on the Shrine reserve that date back to any other battles?

MARY WARD: We do. We have two other living links. We have a Gallipoli Oak, a holly oak, they called it because of its prickly leaves. It's an evergreen oak, again, from the Gallipoli peninsula, and it was grown from acorns, from a tree that was grown from acorns brought back from Gallipoli. And we have the Tobruk fig, which has grown from a cutting from the original fig tree on the boundary, the red line, at Tobruk during the Siege of Tobruk. That fig tree is still there, very, very ancient and again, so that provides another living link. But we need to go back to the botanical part of Lone Pine.

LAURA THOMAS: Yes, let's go back there.

MARY WARD: Because there's always been a bit of discussion about different Lone Pines around the country, and just what is a Lone Pine?

LAURA THOMAS: Can you answer that question, Mary?

MARY WARD: Oh, I can, yes. This is one thing actually I do get quite passionate about with visitors here, explaining about it. People might think I'm a bit strange, but it is important. Our Lone Pine, the Lone Pine, the pine tree that was growing at Gallipoli, which used to be surrounded by many others, is Pinus Brutia, and that's from the eastern Mediterranean basin. It grows on the Gallipoli peninsula of Turkey, and then on the Asian side of Turkey, down the west and south coast. That's what grew. That's native to the Gallipoli Peninsula. That's our Lone Pine, Pinus Brutia. Now, a lot of the other pine trees that are being brought back, planted, grown as a Lone Pine are Pinus halepensis, and these are from the pinecones from the logs brought in to cover the Turkish trenches. And Pinus halepensis comes from the western Mediterranean, particularly down the east coast of Spain. It does not grow at Gallipoli. So, this is where a lot of confusion arises.

MARY WARD: And one of these other soldiers who brought back a pinecone, he from New South Wales, gave it to his mother, who lived around Inverell, and she grew two pine trees. And interestingly, it was about the same time frame, because one of those seedlings was planted the Australian War Memorial, the other one at Inverrel, and the one that the War Memorial was planted in 1934.

LAURA THOMAS: So just after the one here.

MARY WARD: So, we're talking roughly same time frame. So perhaps that's an indication of how long it took to get anything to grow, I don't know. But that one, those two are Pinus halepensis. Now the Lone Pine cemetery at Gallipoli. Obviously, it was felt that a pine tree there to represent Lone Pine would be fitting, and one was planted in 1920 and that was shown by an Australian botanist back in 1987 to be the Italian stone pine, Pinus pioneer. So, we're getting widespread. But then to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the battle, two more pine trees were planted at Lone Pine cemetery. They were taken from pinecones from the one at the War Memorial. So, they are Pinus halepensis, not native to Gallipoli. But that doesn't really matter. Any pine tree can represent Lone Pine, but to be a descendant of the actual Lone Pine, it has to be from those pinecones, from that tree, a Pinus brutia.

MARY WARD: And if we cross to our Anzac companions in New Zealand, from research done by their forestry people, there's only one pine tree growing Lone Pine that can be traced definitively back to that Lone Pine at Gallipoli, and that's on a golf course midway between Auckland and Rotorua. The one at the War Memorial in Auckland has been shown to be Pinus Radiata, which is actually a Monterey pine from California. So, there's lots of different pine trees being used as memorials to Lone Pine, including Pinus canariensis, which is another pine tree at least, close to the Mediterranean, and Pinus Radiata. So, this is where people can get confused and a little bit hot under the collar at times even. But a lot of the visitors will say, 'Oh yes, I've seen a Lone Pine in our local park, or schools have planted them’, because from trees grown from actual the Pinus brutia that we know, particularly the ones from Warrnambool and some of those from the City of Melbourne, grown from our original Lone Pine, they have been planted at Anzac ceremonies around the country and at schools. So quite a few actual lone pines, Pinus brutia, are surviving around the country,

LAURA THOMAS: And it just hearing that, it really does just make ours even more special, don't you think?

MARY WARD: Oh, I do. I do. And this is why I perhaps get a little carried away at times for visitors, sometimes, if they start to glaze, you, move on, but it can be interesting. And for people who understand trees, there is a reason, because they are different. And our Lone Pine, Pinus brutia, the one from Gallipoli, we know, is real.

MARY WARD: Another aspect of the Lone Pine that I do like to mention, and again, resonates with visitors, because this is it's not ancient history, and we have to remember, 110 years ago is ancient history to most people who come here, we still have a family connection with Lone Pine through Keith McDowell's grandson, Lindsay McDowell. And he grew up hearing about the story of Lone Pine, he never met his grandfather, but he did remember seeing a pinecone sitting on the mantelpiece at the family home. He was a former Army Medical Officer. He'd served in the East Timor. He was also with the Flying Doctors, and he was also based for a while at the Gallipoli Barracks at Brisbane's Enoggera Army Base. And interestingly, another grandchild tree from our original Lone Pine was planted there at the Enoggera Base around 2009 and then in 2014 he attended the service to mark the 80th anniversary of the dedication of the Warrnambool Lone Pine. And also, there was Alan Gray, whose grandmother was Emma Gray, who'd grown those original seedlings. So, to me, that's very special, and it shows that family connection through Keith McDowell and Emma Gray continuing today.

LAURA THOMAS: Well, Mary, it's been so wonderful to talk to you and hear about the story of the Lone Pine. Thank you so much.

MARY WARD: Thank you, Laura. I love talking about it.

LAURA THOMAS: Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. For more, just search Shrine of Remembrance wherever you listen.