Sinclair on life: Tree slayers need to go bake a cake

By PETER SINCLAIR

The nice thing about being semi-retired, or whatever you want to call it, when neither 9 nor 5 means much any more, is that you get to do rewarding things like spending a whole rained-out afternoon on the internet learning about the Wollemi Pine.

The what?

You are excused for never having heard of the Wollemi. Once, in a great green wave, it covered vast tracts of the Australian continent. Then, about 150 million years ago, it took early retirement and has only just been coaxed out of it again.

As climate change decimated its numbers, this Rip van Winkle among trees slumbered on in the deeps of time in a single precipitous gorge west of Sydney, its damp sides so sheer you can only abseil into it.

Towering to 40m and 3m round, with waxy dark green foliage, the tree is just as extraordinary-looking in its way as some of the other fossils, like the coelacanth, which have sprung back to life, for it is covered in a rich, brown, bubbly bark that makes it look as though it is thickly coated in Coco-Pops.

For a complete history, The Wollemi Pine, by James Woodford, was published this week by Text at $A27 ($33).

"The discovery is the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur still alive on Earth," says Professor Carrick Chambers of Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens.

For the Wollemi Pine provides not only the missing link between our own equally ancient kauri and Australia's Norfolk, hoop and bunya pines, but a vivid illustration of the persistence of life.

And while the Aussies celebrate their new genus with unqualified delight, what are the citizens of Cambridge doing?

An unknown number of them are trying to murder New Zealand's finest recorded specimen of the Wollemi's close relative, the rare and quaintly beautiful bunya bunya (Araucaria bidwilii).

I read a report in this newspaper last week with mounting horror. Someone, for no reason I or any other sane person could imagine, is drilling holes in its trunk with an auger and pouring poison into them.

I have always loved Cambridge for its quiet, tree-lined beauty, the peace and sweetness of its leafy streets.

So what exactly is going on behind the pleasant facade of this loveliest of Waikato townships? Are there hidden undertows behind its green fields and pleasant avenues, as in some novel by Stephen King - trickles of hatred, secret jets of weirdness? What Blair Witchery is at work here?

I rang the Waipa District Council's parks manager, Chris Brockelbank. Her theory: some unstable individuals feel threatened by large trees in urban areas, even when they're on someone else's land. There are no clues - police are considering a hidden camera - so one can only speculate that it may be some vile-tempered old treephobe whose car got dinged by a plummeting cone.

In my present circumstances I am not at all in favour of things dying, for whatever reason, let alone a unique tree which looks engagingly like an illustration out of Dr Dolittle.

Why can't Cambridge rejoice in its bunya bunya, cherish it, do something useful with it, instead of pouring herbicide into its veins?

Like bake a cake?

I am not joking. The bunya bunya was a rich source of food for the Aborigines of south-east Queensland. During the season they would gather in the Bunya mountains near Gympie for great bunya nut feasts every three or four years when the tree fruited, although the menu these days is likely to feature slightly more upmarket dishes than yesterday's plain roast or boiled bunya: bunya nut pikelets, bacon and bunya quiche, bunya bikkies ...

So to the nameless tree-slayer I say, make yourself useful for a change and all will be forgiven. Here's how you bake a:

Bunya Johnnie

You'll need 4 cups roasted, chopped bunya nuts; 2 eggs; 2 tsp baking powder; 2 Tbs each sugar and powdered milk; 1 Tbs butter; 1 tsp salt; add chocolate bits if you feel like them. Mix all the dry ingredients, including the bunyas, add eggs and softened butter until you have a mixture which will just pour - add water if necessary - and bake at 230 deg C for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 200 until done.

Voila! A 150-million-year-old Coco-Pop ... Send me a bit.

* petersinclair@email.com