FALL OF A WILLOW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23222, 21 June 1937, Page 14

FALL OF A WILLOW

WANAKA LANDMARK REMOVED MENACE TO MODERN TRAFFIC (From Our Own Correspondent) PEMBROKE. June 20. Nature has not been so prodigal with trees in Central Otago that the passing of sylvan landmarks can be expected to pass unnoticed, but it is doubtful whether in the whole of the Lake County there was ever a tree about which the soft and mellowing light with which the imagination invests the past, clung more closely than the old willow tree that for more than 50 years has weathered countless storms on the main highway in front of the Wanaka Hotel at Pembroke. Horses have been tethered there, dogs have dozed there, cattle have browsed beneath its spreading branches, and in these modem days petrolly-smelling motor cars have been parked there by the hour and by the day. How old the gnarled willow was no one can be found to say, but among " oldest inhabitants" there is a conviction that it was high, wide, and flourishing half a century ago. And now it has fallen to the axe of modern t-xigency, torn up by its very roots* to make a traffic holiday. A county engineer, unmindful of its burden of years or of its familiarity through half a dozen decades with the fluctuating fortunes of this popular watering place, decided in the fullness of his authority that it was a menace to traffic and that it must go. The moment of its felling was a poignant one for many who, man and boy, woman and girl, had seen it greet the succeeding seasons, now leafy and green, now spindly and bare, for the greater part of their lives. In this ruthless wrenching of its roots is to be found evidence in support of the local legend concerning how the willow came to grow where it did. As its reluctant roots came sadly away from the mixture of soil and macadam which for so long had been their home, they brought with them an assortment of quaintly-fashioned and queer-shaped bottles whose like cannot be found on the streamlined bar-shelves of to-day. And this is how it is told. In the spacious old days of stage coaches, long journeys and high freights between Pembroke and Dunedin, the local hotelkeeper grew tired of spending his substance on the transport of " empty returns." He kept them by him until considerations of space compelled action. Then ho dug a large hole at the side of the winding track which was the best Pembroke could boast in the way of a pathway Io the lake, and there he buried his glassy store. With the idea that his horde might some day repay salvaging, lie drove a willow stake into the spot to mark where "the body" lay. Years rolled by, but the bottle market remained powerless to cope with stage coach freights, and the spoil lay buried from sight. But the willow stake exhibited the recuperative powers of its kind and sent down its roots and spread forth its green shoots year by year until a tree blossomed forth, to increase and grow and flourish into generous proportions of sheltering shade which were not removed with either ease or despatch.