Aunt Effie: Part 5

By JACK LASENBY

"Long before you were born," Aunt Effie, "Captain Cook bumped into an enormous tree floating off Cape Horn. He towed it behind the Endeavour back to England and up the Thames to London.

'It's proof,' he declared, 'of an unknown land in the South Pacific!'

The Lord Mayor planted the tree in the middle of London and German and Japanese tourists came in thousands to take photographs and carve their names on it.

"Now, Admiral Nelson had just thrashed Napoleon and the Battle of Timbuktu, and Queen Victorious showed how grateful she was by making him a lord and casting a statue of him.

She called for a volunteer to climb the tree and bolt the statue on top. I was just a girl at the time, but I stuffed my crinoline into the legs of my bloomers and shinned up.

It took me several weeks, the tree was so tall. I couldn't see much of England because of the clouds below, but over their white bulges I could see the Mediterranean, the Pillars of Hercules, and - just over the edge of the world - the beginning of Africa."

Publisher: Longacre Press

Price: $16.95

Age group: 9-13 years


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