The Lone Pine of Girraween

Lone Pine of Girraween

On a mountain top grows a small but perfectly formed pine tree. This natural bonsai grows out of a crevice in the otherwise seamless granite. There is almost no soil for this beautiful little tree to find nourishment in, but somehow it still grows, has grown there now for many years.

The mountain is one of the "Pyramids" of Girraween National Park near Stanthorpe in Queensland. These 400 meter high granite tors have been weathering under the sun and wind and rain for around 200,000,000 years. A long time to grasp when a five minute wait for a bus seems like a long time. Triassic lava flows congealed into granite massifs and so this place began.

For much of those 200,000,000 years, trees like this pine have been growing in this place. An ancient breed of tree that grew across the Pangaea supercontinent. You can see ones like it growing in California. Goes back to a time when Australia and North America were pushed up against each other and then gradually drifted apart by a few centimetres every year.

One has to admire what a survivor this tree is. It must be perfectly adapted for life here. To live for so long in such a hard, hot and cold place for hundreds of millions of years gives new meaning to "survival". Gives new meaning to what living in harmony with one's environment is about.

In a way, this page is the dream of the Earth realised. As I looked at this beautiful little tree, still gasping for breath after the steep climb, I knew with certainty that I should tell its story to the world of people. My stay on this mountain top was brief, brief like the time the human species has existed compared with the Pine's. I was like the march flies that live there and buzz about, landing only briefly before flitting away.

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