At the presentation of the Shire’s Wilcannia Community awards on Wednesday 22nd February, the tables were decorated with vivid yellow flowered gum branchlets, which also carried bright red gum nut caps. These attracted lots of comments.

So for those interested – here is the story.

They came from the front of Christine Smiths house, the old Bushman’s Home, previously the Cricketers Arms Hotel.

The tree is Eucalyptus erythrocorys or Illyarrie. It was first noticed in 1851 growing along a stock route between Geraldton and Perth. Another early observer of the tree, Augustus Oldfield, reported that the local Noongar people called it Illyarrie, claimed by some linguists to mean ‘outback’. The botanical name comes from two Greek words, erythro for red and korys for helmet. And the story continues, or rather the research did.

The tree was voted the 2020 Eucalyptus of the year, the vote being announced on 23rd March, which is National Eucalyptus Day (NED), (who knew?), which commemorates the birthday of Norwegian born Klaus Bjarne Dahl.

Klaus came to Australia in 1928 and was employed by the Victorian Forestry Commission as a Forestry Assessor. In this role, he travelled through the states forest, mapping and assessing the volume of standing timber.

After leaving State Forests in 1948 he was employed by Australian Paper Manufacturers, where one of his jobs was to buy abandoned farmland for forestry plantations. Some of the land was deemed unsuitable so he bought it himself, thinning the already growing timber, selling the timber and then sometimes the land as well. When he died in 1993, he left his whole estate of $2.5 million to Forestry Commission of Victoria to establish the KBD trust to ensure the perpetuation of eucalyptus forests.

Held by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, the KDBTrust, through Eucalypt Australia, promotes NED and awards the Bjarne K Dahl Medal, in honour of their benefactor, to publicly recognise and reward those who have made a significant and sustained contribution to eucalypts.

Since 2018 there has been a competition to name the Eucalyptus of the Year. To vote for the 2023 Eucalyptus of the Year go to https://www.eucalyptaustralia.org.au/eucalyptoftheyear/.

Voting closes on the 19th March.

The winner of the first competition was the tree well known in Wilcannia, the river red gum or Eucalyptus camaldulensis.

This article appeared in Wilcannia News, March 2023.