Thread: Welcome .....
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Old 11th April 2008, 02:56 PM   #790 (permalink)
Sean Freeman
PDF King & Arborist Extrodinaire
 
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Townsville Nth Queensland & Gold Coast Sth Queensland
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Default Re: Welcome .....

Funarty I'm assuming you mean the park to the north of Brownhill Street



If so, no they are not Tamarind trees (Tamarindus indica)

They are raintrees (Albizia saman) native to South America brought to Qld by the Brits in the 1860's intended to be used as shade and fodder trees for cattle properties. Probably the first ones planted in Townsville were in the grounds of what is now the Cathedral School,in the 1890's it was the residence of one of the early shakers and movers in Townsville local politics Robert Philp, later to become Premier of Qld (twice).

Raintrees are a very reliable species in our dry tropical climate, extremely tough and resiliant with hardly any significant pests or diseases...on the down side they grow incredibly large! Those in the park are nowhere near their fulll potential and probably will never reach that...before building works at the Cathedral school in 1999 there was a raintree with a radial spread of 39m and that in a tree that had been badly dmaged by Cyclone Althea in the early 70's.
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Sean

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
- Kahlil Gibran

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