Moving up past the tree in yesterdays posting, the view down towards the southern side of Cornwall Park starts to show our elevation, with sheep turning into small ant size…sheep.

As mentioned yesterday, One tree Hill is covered in Trees. However, back in the day, it had a big tree on the summit of the hill. Visually recognisable from miles around, the tree was cut down in 1852 by the ‘white settler’ either for fire wood, or as an act of vandalism. Sir Campbell attempted to plant new native trees on the summit (Totara being the preference for its cultural value), but they did not survive, and in the 1870’s two radiata pines were planted and grew. Along came the 1960’s and again one tree was felled (but is ok, there was still one left!). We then reach the 1990’s and the surviving tree was subject to a number of attacks from Maori activists (I won’t go into great detail here, but the activists were making a point about injustices from the past). Sadly (regardless of which side of the fence one sits with the activist points), in 2000, after a second attack, the tree was deemed a danger, and a lost cause recovery wise and was felled.

(more tomorrow)

Shot on the Sony Nex and edited in Gimp.