Black Rock locals throw 100th birthday party for ‘magical, majestic’ tree

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On Sunday, residents hosted a 100th birthday party for a dear friend, outside their community of units in Black Rock, in Melbourne’s south-east.

The guest of honour was actually a tree, but no one batted an eyelid. The love lavished on it was genuine.

Linda Baird, CEO of Eucalypt Australia, celebrated the Sydney red gum’s 100th birthday on Sunday.Credit: Penny Stephens

Guests sang Happy Birthday, ate a multi-layered mud cake made by a resident, and a poet recited an ode to the tree’s virtues.

A plaque at the base of the tree, which sprawls over the Semco Court community, says that the Sydney red gum – Latin name angophora costata, and dubbed “Angie” by the poet – was planted in 1923.

Kumari Pease (right) and Joan Couzoff celebrate their favourite tree’s centenary.Credit: Penny Stephens/The Age

Kumari Pease, who lives opposite the tree, said she and neighbour Nicola Graham wanted to honour their “majestic, magical” tree and sought to do something positive after the pandemic and news of wars.

They were amazed that more than 100 people turned up to the party.

The plaque says the tree – given the common name, apple gum myrtle, at the time – was planted by CC (Clarence Clive) Buckley.

According to Sandringham and District Historical Society, Buckley was then-director of the Semco art needlework company. In 1923 Semco acquired 3.2 hectares of land for a new factory here, when Black Rock was an outer suburb of Melbourne.

For more than 50 years, Semco made linen, cotton threads and embroidery kits here, employing hundreds of locals, in roles from gardeners to machinists and accountants.

The company left the area in the late 1970s and later merged with a multinational. The land was sold for housing in the 1980s.

Joan Couzoff with the Sydney red gum on Sunday.Credit: Penny Stephens/The Age

Those at the tree’s birthday party included a former Semco designer, Joan Couzoff, nee Staindl.

Sunday was also Couzoff’s 92nd birthday and there was a 1950s photo of her at Semco on display.

Couzoff, who designed products and ads for Semco for decades from her late teens, says it was a good company with plenty of social events.

“It employed about 400 people from around the area,” she said. “We needed them because there weren’t many jobs about.”

Bayside councillor Laurie Evans, whose aunt, Jean Davis, worked at Semco, said the tree was an example of a positive legacy left for future generations.

Linda Baird, CEO of not-for-profit Eucalypt Australia, said: “Happy birthday, beautiful tree.”

Baird told the gathering that Eucalypt Australia has just named angophora costata as the eucalypt species of the year, based on a poll.

“What an amazing thing to do,” she said of this tree’s birthday party, noting its “curly wurly branches”, “beautiful, smooth red bark” and distinctive ribbed gum nuts.

Locals told her that currawongs, kookaburras and rainbow lorikeets are among bird species sheltered by the tree.

Baird praised the residents “for understanding just how important it is to have our middle-aged trees revered, kept, nurtured and sustained”.

Poet Ian Bland, who as a child attended fetes in Semco’s grounds, recited an ode describing branches that “weave as though in dance”.

Writing as the tree in first person, he said: “Now houses keep me company yet my majesty lives on. I am valued, I am cherished, the last standing of my peers. You may not see my like again, not in 100 years.”

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