Kolkata banyan tree is the world's biggest
We have climbed down from our air-conditioned bus, with its endless water bottles and sanitiser, and melted into Kolkata's summer, pre-monsoon heat.
I haven't even bothered to look at the official temperature, as I just have to tell you that it is very hot and humid.
I just have to tell you that I have chosen a shirt that doesn't look much different when wet (unlike those light blue shirts that quickly look like you've just fallen into a swimming pool).
I just have to tell you that I did my old trick (taught to me by Aboriginal bushmen) of loading up on tea at breakfast, and will now only sip on room temperature water.
And so, our little group walks with local guide Vikal to the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden's big attraction, a Ficus benghalensis tree.
This banyan tree is a living heritage site.
It is huge.
In fact, it is so big that there is no longer a central trunk — this living tree is a conglomerate of more than 1000 aerial roots.
And, according to its 1989 entry in the Guinness Book Of World Records, it is the biggest tree specimen in the world, as judged by canopy coverage.
The tree, which is more than 250 years old, is a forest in itself.
The paved path around it, outside the wall and metal fence protecting it, is a 330m circle.
Inside this, a man is working on supporting thin, new aerial roots, with bamboo props tied with jute string. It strikes me it is like a giant bonsai.
In 1925, the main trunk was removed to keep the remainder of the tree healthy. It had become infected with a nasty and potentially fatal fungi, after being damaged by two cyclones.
In October 2024, the high winds and torrential rain of cyclonic storm Dana hit the botanical garden, in Shibpur, which is one of the biggest and oldest in South Asia, uprooting more than 2000 trees.
It left two empty patches in the giant banyan — but nature, of course, abhors a void, and aerial roots will continue to fill these.
The banyan continues to draw visitors — perhaps more than the rest of the collection of exotic plants from five continents. There are more than 14,000 plants representing 1300 species.
It is no secret that it suffers from a lack of money — it is reported that there is no specific funding for the garden; it is in a pool with many others.
But the 110ha gardens also give insight into a different, less manicured, more natural way of presenting a botanical garden.
The botanical garden isn't actually in Kolkata — it is in its twin city, Howrah, the other side of the River Ganges.
It was originally called The Royal Botanic Garden, and founded in 1786 by the East India Company, on the advice of Colonel Kyd, who became its first superintendent.
It was renamed the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in 2009. Bose was a son of Kolkata, and one of whom Bengalis are very proud.
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, who died in 1937, was a polymath scientist who was a pioneer in the investigation of microwave optics and, more relevantly, made significant contributions to botany. He is also considered to be the father of Bengali science fiction.
The banyan tree in Kolkata's botanical gardens is an old friend.
I have visited it before and watched the protective wall and fence around it grow into a bigger and bigger circle.
I hope I will visit it again one day.
It is always worth any amount of heat.
Of course.
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West Australian
3 days ago
- West Australian
Kolkata banyan tree is the world's biggest
There is just one moment of weakness when I wonder if it's worth the heat. We have climbed down from our air-conditioned bus, with its endless water bottles and sanitiser, and melted into Kolkata's summer, pre-monsoon heat. I haven't even bothered to look at the official temperature, as I just have to tell you that it is very hot and humid. I just have to tell you that I have chosen a shirt that doesn't look much different when wet (unlike those light blue shirts that quickly look like you've just fallen into a swimming pool). I just have to tell you that I did my old trick (taught to me by Aboriginal bushmen) of loading up on tea at breakfast, and will now only sip on room temperature water. And so, our little group walks with local guide Vikal to the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden's big attraction, a Ficus benghalensis tree. This banyan tree is a living heritage site. It is huge. In fact, it is so big that there is no longer a central trunk — this living tree is a conglomerate of more than 1000 aerial roots. And, according to its 1989 entry in the Guinness Book Of World Records, it is the biggest tree specimen in the world, as judged by canopy coverage. The tree, which is more than 250 years old, is a forest in itself. The paved path around it, outside the wall and metal fence protecting it, is a 330m circle. Inside this, a man is working on supporting thin, new aerial roots, with bamboo props tied with jute string. It strikes me it is like a giant bonsai. In 1925, the main trunk was removed to keep the remainder of the tree healthy. It had become infected with a nasty and potentially fatal fungi, after being damaged by two cyclones. In October 2024, the high winds and torrential rain of cyclonic storm Dana hit the botanical garden, in Shibpur, which is one of the biggest and oldest in South Asia, uprooting more than 2000 trees. It left two empty patches in the giant banyan — but nature, of course, abhors a void, and aerial roots will continue to fill these. The banyan continues to draw visitors — perhaps more than the rest of the collection of exotic plants from five continents. There are more than 14,000 plants representing 1300 species. It is no secret that it suffers from a lack of money — it is reported that there is no specific funding for the garden; it is in a pool with many others. But the 110ha gardens also give insight into a different, less manicured, more natural way of presenting a botanical garden. The botanical garden isn't actually in Kolkata — it is in its twin city, Howrah, the other side of the River Ganges. It was originally called The Royal Botanic Garden, and founded in 1786 by the East India Company, on the advice of Colonel Kyd, who became its first superintendent. It was renamed the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden in 2009. Bose was a son of Kolkata, and one of whom Bengalis are very proud. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, who died in 1937, was a polymath scientist who was a pioneer in the investigation of microwave optics and, more relevantly, made significant contributions to botany. He is also considered to be the father of Bengali science fiction. The banyan tree in Kolkata's botanical gardens is an old friend. I have visited it before and watched the protective wall and fence around it grow into a bigger and bigger circle. I hope I will visit it again one day. It is always worth any amount of heat. Of course.
West Australian
03-07-2025
- West Australian
Mabu Buru: Broome's new Aboriginal souvenir shop opens its doors
A new souvenir shop is bringing Aboriginal culture to life through authentic art and local products in the heart of Broome. Mabu Buru Shop is the latest venture from Mabu Buru Tours, founded by former Indigenous ranger Johanni Mamid. Brightly coloured T-shirts featuring prints by Aboriginal artists hang on racks, while nearby shelves display jars of bush honey and traditional medicine. Aboriginal prints share space with cultural artefacts from the Broome region, alongside stuffed animal toys of Kimberley wildlife. Mr Mamid says the store grew from tourists asking where they could buy authentic items they saw on his tours. 'They wanted to buy Aboriginal products that were actually made by Aboriginal people,' he said. Through his business, Mr Mamid is correcting a market flooded with inauthentic Aboriginal products. A 2022 Productivity Commission report found 75 per cent of Indigenous-style souvenirs sold in Australia were fake. The report, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Visual Arts and Crafts, said the trade in counterfeit merchandise undermined cultural integrity and deprived artists of income. It called for mandatory labelling and stronger protections to prevent exploitation of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property. Supporting Aboriginal-run businesses is important, Mr Mamid says, especially when many First Nations people were building from scratch. 'We as Aboriginal people are often playing catch-up,' he said. 'We're not inheriting anything because there's no old money in our families. But culture is what we have.' While proud to showcase items connected to local Aboriginal culture, the shop follows strict guidelines about what can be sold. 'We only display artefacts we have permission from our mob to show, just like the cultural experiences we offer on our tours,' Mr Mamid said. He points to one example, twin boomerangs which are also musical instruments, handmade for the store. 'A lot of boomerangs are mass produced out of cheap wood, but we sell boomerangs that are handcrafted by Aboriginal people from the region,' he said. 'The wood is from a type of hakea macrocarpa which is native to Broome, and we refer to is as being from a boomerang tree, because the tree itself has a lot of bends in it.' 'They are actually found inland, because our people are not just the saltwater people, we are also bush people.' One of the featured businesses in the shop is Mijinali, created by Yawuru/Djugun sisters Ali and Mitch Torres. Their range of soaps, candles and body products use native ingredients such as gubinge — a vitamin C-rich Broome plum. For Mr Mamid, his latest business chapter transcends commercial gains, it's about educating non-Aboriginal people about his people's culture. 'It's not just about buying something,' he said. 'We are teaching culture through sharing and practising. 'And a part of that sharing is giving people the opportunity to buy an authentic product from the local community.'
The Advertiser
15-06-2025
- The Advertiser
Hidden Hunter: it's time to take a swing by the lake
LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing. LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing. LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing. LAKE Macquarie is full of wonderful hidden places. The latest I've just stumbled across is the popular 'swing bridge' concealed in suburbia on Dora Creek, behind the Avondale Campus, at Cooranbong. But more about that later. My interest in such sites began several decades ago after searching for, and finding, some unusual concrete igloos from World War II in secluded bushland, high on a hill above Catherine Hill Bay. They were the remains of the once top-secret radar station 208, which acted as a shield, or early warning system, for the largest seaplane base in the southern hemisphere at Rathmines, south of Toronto The Catherine Hill Bay ridgeline site also once hid twin timber towers, reportedly standing about 45 metres, holding the actual radar installation. Beneath it, from memory, one of the two Nissen-style curved concrete huts, or igloos, housed a generator, while the other held the female radar operators from early 1943. The Bay radar station only came into existence after a Japanese enemy submarine shelled the sleeping city of Newcastle early one morning in June 1942. After the war, the timber towers were demolished and recycled into houses, while the solid concrete structures were simply stripped of anything valuable and abandoned. The last time I saw them, years ago, someone had managed to drive a small, presumably stolen car, up a steep, rough track high above the beach, drive it inside one structure, jam it sideways, then set it ablaze. Hiking up to the hilltop site had been memorable, as had the sight of the blackened interior with a car inside one igloo. Over the years, visits to other hidden Lake Macquarie sites have never been as memorable, but always interesting. For example, there was once the odd sight of a light aircraft, minus its wings, sandwiched into a Swansea coffee shop as a novelty. I had been recycled after it had crash-landed elsewhere. Or the Aboriginal legend on a plaque once at Reid's Mistake (Swansea Heads) telling the story of Malangbula. Two upright rocks here represented two women transformed into stone after an altercation with a native warrior. The silent sentinels were to forever guard the ocean entrance to Lake Macquarie to protect the lake from fierce sea monsters trying to enter. Going now towards the western side of the lake and passing Speers Point, we soon come to the Five Islands Road crossing Cockle Creek. Here, just to the north on the opposite shore, parallel to the northern railway line, is Racecourse Road. Only the road beside the creek now reminds us of the story once told around here. In 1927, intrepid aviators Charles Kingsford Smith (after whom Sydney's airport was named) and Charles Ulm made an emergency landing here on the then-existing racecourse after suffering engine trouble. The sight of their aircraft, temporarily left there, went down in lake folklore. Then further on, not far as the crow flies from the Fennell Bay bridge, lies a now-submerged petrified pine forest in the shallows, or at least what's left of it. Called Kurrur Kurran, it is reputed to be more than 250 million years old, but there are only petrified stumps left now on the silty lake floor. Much of the ancient, petrified wood was souvenired, pilfered, up to 60 years ago. Some of this prehistoric forest (once 500 trees) ended up as pieces of a household fence in nearby Blackalls Park. The water site is generally regarded as the biggest and best preserved in situ of the Permian period in NSW. On the edge of Toronto itself, we come to relics of the now lost Toronto-to-Fassifern 3 kilometre railway (now the Greenway Track) and the site of the once popular Stoney Creek Swimming Club started in the 1930s. Moving again, but west, going along Awaba Road before going south on Freemans Drive heading to Cooranbong. Here, opposite the Avondale College entrance, is another gem of a place - the Elephant Shop with its unusual wares. But a little before that, motorists might be diverted down a side street to the South Sea Island Museum with missionary artefacts, including drums and a full-size former islander war canoe. Back on the road, we come to my latest find. It's Cooranbong's suspension or historic 'swing bridge' (since 1934) off Freemans Drive. Today, the wobbly bridge is a local landmark, but maybe for many of us it's still a hidden place, until you get precise directions on how to find it. Weekender was alerted to the site recently by Valentine author and bushwalker Greg Powell, who pointed out the nearby, flat 2.4-kilometre Sandy Creek Walk loop on part of the Avondale Estate for those who want to immerse themselves in nature. The Cooranbong swing bridge is at the old Weet-Bix factory on Dora Creek. The bouncy walk over Dora Creek originally provided handy access for workers of the Sanitarium health food factory. Without the bridge, people had to either row or swim across the creek or face a long walk around. At the back of Avondale College, the bridge over Dora Creek can be a little hard to find initially. Access is via a cul-de-sac after leaving Freemans Drive at Victory Street, just before a bridge under the M1. The first swing bridge was designed and built in 1934 by Harry Tempest, a Sanitarium division manager. The bridge was said to be built to help teacher Oleta Leech, the wife of a Sanitarium scientist. Living south of the creek, she was terrified of deep water and local boats were often 'borrowed' by persons unknown. Initially, the college faculty said using the bridge was out of bounds for its indoor students. This rule was relaxed in 1965. A tall eucalypt on the college side of the waterway also became known as the 'Billy-can tree'. Customers of the college dairy would hang their milk cans (to be filled up later) on nails hammered into the tree trunk. The original swing bridge partially collapsed in the 1980s after surviving multiple floods. In 2006, it was feared the repaired bridge might be closed, but it has survived, a testimony to its workmanship, stout timbers and galvanised steel supports. But while walking over the old, swaying suspension bridge can add a touch of adventure to any journey, since 2023, a wider, stronger, more stable, flood-free concrete bridge opened alongside, providing a more stress-free crossing.
