Tim The Yowie Man uncovers the mysteries of the Well Tree

The Canberra Times

The Birrigai Well Tree was formed by the Indigenous ancestors who once journeyed through to Kosciuszko to ensure there would always be a source of water along the way.

Transcript

00:00 It's amazing what you can walk past in the bush without noticing, whether it's by night or even

00:07 in broad daylight. For around the last 30 years or so while walking along the Birrigai time trail

00:14 near Tibbinbilla, I've walked straight past an apple box tree. An apple box that has been

00:20 culturally modified several centuries ago to capture and hold fresh water. I recently caught

00:28 up with two of Birrigai's indigenous rangers who shared with me the remarkable story of the Birrigai

00:35 well tree. Well tree is a cultural modified tree that our ancestors would have made for

00:49 when they were traveling through on our song lines up to the Kozi Osco. They would

00:55 make these trees up so they that always have water along the way. They would find a tree that would

01:00 be around 225, 25, 30 centimeters in diameter and then they would cut it off about two foot from the

01:07 ground and then they would they put a stone on top of the stump and then over time the epicormic

01:13 growth of the new branches would grow up around the rock and then they would they would join

01:20 they would join the epicormic growth together to to form the sides just so it would be like a bowl.

01:25 Yeah my mob being from Victoria we definitely have well trees so you know it's a widespread

01:35 all around Australia. Not many left like we had the it was a 1950s big bushfire that

01:41 come through here and then we had the big one in 2003 and another one in 2019 so you know these ones

01:49 would be the last ones that survived that. This one here that we're looking at today

01:54 would have been the last generation one before white sediment here in Australia. They would

01:59 have made it for like our great-grandchildren or their great-grandchildren you know it wasn't for

02:06 them for their for their time when they first made it because obviously they wouldn't catch water but

02:11 it would have been made for yeah for the generations so they always had that water supply.

02:17 It means we're telling stories and information like passing on information that our

02:23 ancestors have told us and it just you know it means that everyone's learning about country

02:28 all the time and it's not just getting lost in the into the history. Yeah I feel a sense of energy

02:35 coming off this tree so it makes me feel grounded and connected that we can we still have these old

02:41 trees around and yeah real privilege to show people.

02:48 you

02:48 me

02:50 me

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