Bypass tree down

TRAGICALLY sad are the words Greater Dandenong mayor Peter Brown chose to describe the felling of a 400-year-old river red gum in Dandenong South this week.
But the large tree will now be carved up and given to council to use for souvenirs, furniture or construction.
A large river red gum tree until last week sat in the path of the under-construction Dandenong Southern Bypass, and as reported by Star last week, Greater Dandenong mayor Peter Brown has been lobbying to save it.
But this week construction firm Thiess John Holland told Star it had no choice but to remove the tree.
“Avoiding significant trees and vegetation has been a key objective of Thiess John Holland throughout the design of EastLink,” a spokesman said.
“In this instance, it is not possible to avoid this particular river red gum, which is directly in the path of the Dandenong Southern Bypass.”
Cr Brown told Star that its removal was ‘tragically sad’, but even if council had found a way to retain the tree, it was likely to lose a lot of its water supply once bypass works were completed.
“Even if we retained it, it would be in the middle of a large intersection and the other difficulty of course, it would be totally surrounded by bitumen,” he said.
“Particularly in summertime, it would not get adequate water and would suffer extreme heat stress from the radiated heat off the pavement.”
Cr Brown said Thiess John Holland had arranged with council to give it the tree once it was pulled down, to be used for a project at council’s discretion.
Thiess John Holland said it was planting 500,000 trees along EastLink’s roadside, including 250,000 river red gums.
“These river red gums have been propagated from seeds collected early in the project by Greening Australia,” the spokesman said.