(TRANQUIL MUSIC)
(BIRDSONG)
MAN: We're so lucky in Australia.
Eucalypts are just these incredible organic sculptures.
There's nothing like the eucalypts anywhere in the world.
It wasn't till I started climbing trees
I started actually sort of looking up and appreciating
how spectacular they are in our daily lives.
When you're attached to a tree,
you get a real sense for the way that it moves and responds to wind,
or you get up to the canopy and you get these amazing views.
My name's Duncan Young
and I'm a climbing arborist and furniture maker.
Every tree is perfect for its environment,
and any work that you do to it
is going to be detracting from that in some way.
And that doesn't mean that you should never do work on a tree.
You know, I wouldn't have a job if that was the case.
But it does mean
that sort of like a less-is-more approach is always best.
This tree is a river red gum
and it's really significant for the area.
You can tell that it's been slightly stunted in its growth
because of a shallow root plate.
These trees can grow up to 50, 60 metres tall,
so for that to have grown to about 20 metres
tells me that it's got a fairly shallow root plate
and so it's put most of its energy into growing at the trunk.
This tree would be around 300 years old,
so, predating colonisation.
We can see that there's been a shed put in behind me,
and because of that, this has turned into more of a high-traffic area,
and so we've got to do some work to it,
you know, to get out some of the dead wood
and just make it a little bit safer.
I've tried to take the opportunity
to use the dead wood for habitat generation.
I've cut the ends out of the dead wood
but left the stubs there in the hope that they'll hollow out
and they'll be really good nesting habitat
for cockatoos and galahs.
It's not the easiest job getting up here,
but, jeez, it's worth it.
It's just astounding.
Never gets old.
So this is a really good example of the sorts of hollows.
It's right up in the top of the canopy.
It's over 40 metres up.
And you can see there's no birds or possums in there at the moment,
but you can see all the little leaves someone's put in there as a nest
and all the bark's been smoothed out by coming in and out,
so it's a really perfect example of where the value in these trees lie.
You can see that they're so high up,
they're so protected.
And, you know, it's an amazing vantage point.
It's not just the fauna that they support, it's also the flora.
Through the mycelium network, through the root system,
this tree will be connecting and sharing nutrients
for all the trees around it.
And they create a sort of micro-ecosystem amongst themselves.
So, during periods of drought,
this tree has the potential to support all the trees around it.
Things like that can be really easily overlooked,
so it's really important to value it properly.
The veteran tree is the tree that's sort of into maturity.
They're these magnificent sort of monolithic sculptures.
And if you think about it in the context of urban environments
where foliage density has been decreased
because of population increase and development,
the tree's not going to be given the opportunity
to grow for 200, 300, 400 years,
so these veteran trees that we have,
they're never gonna come back once they're gone.
As my appreciation was growing for trees and timber,
it became perverse or obscene
to just be having these magnificent trees
that are just ending up getting burnt for firewood
or get chipped into mulch,
so I started squirrelling logs away, taking them home
and doing spoon carving,
and then that sort of led to doing some furniture-making courses.
And the endpoint for timber work is furniture making,
and so I decided to pursue that as a career.
This one here is ironbark,
Eucalyptus tricarpa.
This I got
in Victoria, in the Dandenong Ranges.
Similar to, like, a blackbutt or a spotted gum,
it's sort of got those little flecks in it
and it gets a sort of residue over the edge, over the top surface,
which makes it glue-resistant,
so, you know, you've got to choose the right applications for it,
but it's just a really beautiful, rich timber.
This one is Blakely's red gum,
which is a subspecies of red gum,
commonly found sort of on the border of South Australia and Victoria.
You can see the sort of lengths...
I have to collect what I can carry, basically,
and what I can fit in my truck.
So, never really long lengths,
but it's really useable in terms of furniture making.
(MACHINERY WHIRRS)
Sustainability is a huge kind of focus in my furniture making.
I try and source my own timber through my tree work
and use that in my furniture.
And in a sense I kind of see that
almost as like a micro version of a carbon-capturing system.
A tree is this huge warehouse of carbon sitting in the ground
and as soon as you cut it down,
that carbon starts to be released into the atmosphere.
And if you chip it into mulch,
then all those small bits are gonna break down really quickly
and that's all just gonna be released into the environment.
Through salvaging timber from those tree removals
and then using it in my furniture,
I really try and see that as a way of honouring the tree that was removed.
I try and use native timbers as much as possible
so that I can elevate them to their rightful place
and make people realise that they have the same value
as any other timbers
and in a lot of cases, when put to the right application,
are actually sort of more suited to certain things
than, you know, your English or American oaks.
I really try to communicate the value of timber
and, through that, hope that people can make the same connections
to other materials
and see that all materials have come from the earth at a certain point
and deserve a level of reverence
that stands outside of cycles to failure
and modern manufacturing and consumerist sort of ideas.
Especially in the face of human-induced climate change
and urban deforestation,
I feel like we're at this critical point
where there are still these veteran trees
in urban landscapes
that can be protected and looked after
and conserved in a way that is much more sustainable and manageable
in a long-term sense.
A tree is a living, breathing organism.
Their value far exceeds
something that can just be rebuilt if it's damaged.
It's a case with trees
where you don't know what you've got until it's gone.