Arboretum

Canberra's Arboretum stage an open day today, so we went to have a look - all 5 of us including Dot, Max, Bec and Rob. The previous arboretum was gutted by bush-fire a few years ago and is only now being restored after extensive clearing of the original forest. So there's little to see in the form of trees, but rather a heap of plantings of new ones from all over the world. Interesting though those may be - for example there is grove of redwoods which might reach maturity by the 31st century (!!), the views from the hills-tops were excellent and this post mainly focuses on these.

The first photo shows the view across to the Brindabella range running south from Canberra towards the Snowy Mountains. The second looks northwards towards Civic - the city centre, with Lake Burley Griffin in the foreground. and the third looks East towards suburban Woden, with the mountains of NSW in the background. The photos also show the protected saplings arrange in rows, though we expect that many will be culled as most of the species grow very large at maturity. A few old trees remained, surviving the fire, and these included some Aleppo Pines from Turkey which were planted after the first world war to commemorate the disastrous campaign against the Turks at Gallipoli.

The last two pictures show an item of public art - in which Canberra abounds. This one shows a bird and bird's nest, with the first picture showing Canberra's Black Mountain communications tower in the background. The second has Max hanging off the sculpture!

AS