A Plea To Save The Trees

As Jenny Archibald reports in the latest Rarely A Dull Moment, at this week’s Freo Council meeting’s public question time heartfelt pleas were made to the Council to save the Norfolk Pines. Here’s one such plea penned by Hayley Parker O’Toole and the story that goes with it.

Story time, Freo folk.

There’s a street in Beaconsfield named after my great-great-grandfather, Ted Lewington, honoured in historical records for planting thousands of trees across Perth in the late 1800s, including the Norfolk Island Pines still standing on the Rockingham foreshore.

His sons lived opposite one another on Douro Road, right near South Beach Cycles, from around 1900. Just outside their doors, two Norfolk Island pine saplings had just been planted. Ted Jnr would pass them daily, driving folks with his horse and cart into town before the tram was laid and long before the motorcar.

My grandfather, South Fremantle Football legend Clive Lewington, was born on that street in 1920. His mum pushed him past those trees in an old fashioned pram. He pushed my mum past them in the 50s, telling tales of my great-great-grandfather Ted. And now I walk here with my babies and do the same.

These two trees are 118 years old. They predate the car. They survived two world wars and a Great Depression. Ted Lewington Senior may have even planted them himself — and when he was laid to rest in 1929, his wake was held on Duoro Road, and they would have stood watch as the community gathered to honour him.

Now Main Roads and Fremantle Council want to remove them for pedestrian safety.

I’d like to think we can find a way to keep our history standing.

Oppose their removal here.

*By Hayley Parker O’Toole, a South Fremantle resident

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