On the Barkly Highway between Three Ways junction, north of Tennant Creek and Camooweal, Barkly Homestead is a major roadhouse development and truck stop, strategically located in the Northern Territory.

The Barkly Tableland is mostly devoid of trees in mostly open Mitchell Grass Downs country. Other than grass, there is scattered turkey bush, the predominant shrub, but no trees of any consequence.

So, a traveller might well ask, “How did the Spanish Mahogany trees get to grow at Barkly Homestead?”

When the roadhouse construction was approved, BP Australia won the tender to supply fuel, fuel pumps and underground storage tanks for the roadhouse. The development was a successful enterprise and during my tenure as BP’s Northern Territory manager it was necessary to renegotiate the original fuel supply agreement with the owners, Bob and Lyn Rose.

During these discussions, on one of my trips, I made the comment to Bob, “What you need here Bob are some decent trees. I will bring some on my next visit.”

He did not take much notice other than to agree with me and probably put the concept quickly out of his mind as “so much hot air”.

As a member of the Sailing Club in Darwin, I often admired the Spanish Mahogany trees around the property and nearby. They were big trees with a luxuriant cover of dark green leaves. I thought they looked great, but in a cyclone they were prone to be blown over as the root system was shallow, without a tap root, and not strong enough to cope with extreme winds.

I took a box with about 25 seedlings on the flight to Tennant Creek on my next trip. Then I loaded them into an Avis hire car and headed east towards Barkly Homestead. When I arrived, I said to Bob and Lyn, “Here are your trees!”

This raised some surprised looks and then enthusiastic discussion. I suggested the trees should be planted behind the outbuildings so as to show off the buildings to best advantage. Not only did they grow, they grew strongly and flourished over the next several years: they obviously took to the soil type and thrived on the local bore water, which was an unexpected bonus.

Unfortunately, the Roses decided that as BP had held the contract for 10 years it was time to give their local Shell dealer a turn to supply petroleum products. Such a decision is understandable in an isolated community like Tennant Creek and not uncommon.

About 10 years later, after I had returned to Australia from Vietnam, I joined Tynan Mackenzie and I called in to meet Bill Baskett in Toowoomba at his office one day. Bill was a friend and a transport competitor of the BP Darwin fuel distributor, Dickie David. Baskett Transport ran a Brisbane-Darwin road freight service and in my opening conversation with Bill I mentioned my connections in the Northern Territory.

Out of curiosity I asked him if he had been to Barkly Homestead in recent times and when he confirmed he had on several occasions, I then enquired about the trees. He queried me about the nature of my interest, and I told him the tree story.

Bill asked, “Do you have some spare time so I can show you a photo?” I assured him I did, so we went off in his vehicle to his home on a small rural holding on the outskirts of Toowoomba. We went into the house and he turned the lights on in his pool room and there above the bar was a recent photo of Barkly Homestead, taken from a helicopter.

The trees had grown well to such an extent they had become an outstanding feature of the development in what would have otherwise been a featureless landscape. The trees were truly magnificent.

Bill told me he and a small group of colleagues were now the owners of Barkly Homestead! He commended me for having the foresight to arrange the supply of the trees.

I must share some tree planting DNA with my father. An extract from my brother Richard’s story about the trip he and (wife) Michelle took around Australia in 1989 mentions, “The next day to ‘Yanborra’ (in the Maxwelton district in north Queensland) and from the boundary grid the country was very dry with little grass. In the distance we could see a dark clump of something – it was the date palms that my father had planted before 1920, around the perimeter of the hot water pool holding hot water from the artesian bore. The hot water couldn’t have affected them, as they had taken over the whole area and the hot bore drain appeared at the very edge of the date palms!”

Our Dad told Richard how a fellow he was talking to in later years had been to ‘Yanborra’ and seen the date palms. He then said, “I suppose some old Afghan must have planted them.”

Dad replied, “Afghan be blowed, it was me!”

And this leads me to quote a popular Greek proverb: “Old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

Yes, there is ‘something honest and special’ about the majesty of a stand of trees. Or, for that matter, even one tree.

#ends