The Birrigai Well Tree was formed by the Indigenous ancestors who once journeyed through to Kosciuszko to ensure there would always be a source of water along the way.
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00:00 It's amazing what you can walk past in the bush without noticing, whether it's by night or even
00:07 in broad daylight. For around the last 30 years or so while walking along the Birrigai time trail
00:14 near Tibbinbilla, I've walked straight past an apple box tree. An apple box that has been
00:20 culturally modified several centuries ago to capture and hold fresh water. I recently caught
00:28 up with two of Birrigai's indigenous rangers who shared with me the remarkable story of the Birrigai
00:35 well tree. Well tree is a cultural modified tree that our ancestors would have made for
00:49 when they were traveling through on our song lines up to the Kozi Osco. They would
00:55 make these trees up so they that always have water along the way. They would find a tree that would
01:00 be around 225, 25, 30 centimeters in diameter and then they would cut it off about two foot from the
01:07 ground and then they would they put a stone on top of the stump and then over time the epicormic
01:13 growth of the new branches would grow up around the rock and then they would they would join
01:20 they would join the epicormic growth together to to form the sides just so it would be like a bowl.
01:25 Yeah my mob being from Victoria we definitely have well trees so you know it's a widespread
01:35 all around Australia. Not many left like we had the it was a 1950s big bushfire that
01:41 come through here and then we had the big one in 2003 and another one in 2019 so you know these ones
01:49 would be the last ones that survived that. This one here that we're looking at today
01:54 would have been the last generation one before white sediment here in Australia. They would
01:59 have made it for like our great-grandchildren or their great-grandchildren you know it wasn't for
02:06 them for their for their time when they first made it because obviously they wouldn't catch water but
02:11 it would have been made for yeah for the generations so they always had that water supply.
02:17 It means we're telling stories and information like passing on information that our
02:23 ancestors have told us and it just you know it means that everyone's learning about country
02:28 all the time and it's not just getting lost in the into the history. Yeah I feel a sense of energy
02:35 coming off this tree so it makes me feel grounded and connected that we can we still have these old
02:41 trees around and yeah real privilege to show people.
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