Catch and Kill Your Own

It's that time of the year again or very nearly.  That time when eager eyed people venture out into the wilderness, hack off a little bit of it for themselves and take it home to place in a corner of their lounge room.  Why we do this for Christmas I'm not entirely sure.  It isn't like we go out and gather moss for Easter or anything like that.

Of course in this sophisticated day and age the actual job of wilderness venturing and hacking is usually delegated to specialist wilderness hackers.  Most people satisfy themselves with venturing out into a carpark or sales lot to purchase the fruits of these people's labour.  For many years my father was one of these noble wilderness hackers.  A couple of weeks before Christmas he and his colleagues from the bushfire brigade would head out to a state forest located somewhere in the unpaved part of Australia and there they would assault the trees with chainsaw and axe until, laden with the spoils of war, they would return to sell the thus murdered trees to people who wanted to decorate the inside of their home with dead (actually dying) plant material.  This had the joint advantage of raising some money for the bushfire brigade and reducing the amount of flammable material in the bush.  Oh yes, there was another advantage as well.  We got a free Christmas tree.

Now as my father approaches an age where the trees might be able to outrun him with a brief headstart he has delegated the hunter/gatherer role to the younger generation but still shamelessly trades on his bushfire brigade connections to get himself a tree.  In this he is following a fine tribal tradition where those too old to be useful are nevertheless fed in the hopes that they may have wisdom to impart to younger generations.  Also they're a readily available source of food in hard times.  It would be unwise to think our predecessors were in any way sentimental.  If the old were permitted to live it was because the rest of the tribe wasn't finished with them yet.

Down in Tasmania a much more rugged approach to Christmas tree harvesting is adopted.  As the day approaches the people of Tasmania leave hearth and home and then wrestle radiata pines to the ground in brutal one on one contests of domination.  According to this blog's religious festivals reporter the radiata pine is another of those brilliant "let's introduce an alien species into the environment, what could possibly go wrong?" schemes.  The radiata pine was introduced because it was a fine timbering tree.  The entire of Tasmania is covered in trees that the locals are currently chopping down in order not to make a profit but nevertheless at some point they felt they had to import more.  Frankly I'm more and more amazed that the Tasmanian government was so concerned about foxes.

At least unlike most introduced species the radiata pine fulfilled its promise of being a fine timbering tree.  Unfortunately it was so prone to fire that it almost spontaneously combusted in Summer time and it poisoned the soil so that it wasn't good for growing anything other than (surprise surprise) radiata pines.  Due either to poor control techniques or sheer bloodymindedness the radiata pine swiftly escaped the plantations and is now roaming free.  As Christmas time approaches the good folk of Tasmania do their bit for biodiversity by driving down the road, spotting a likely looking specimen and crash tackling it to the ground.  Sure they've heard of chainsaws and axes but its far more heroic to engage in a physical man/tree contest where teeth and nails are pitted against bark and branches and there can only be one winner.  To the victor the spoils and many a radiata pine will decorate Tasmanian homes come Christmas.  My colleague is planning to take her daughters; presumably they will be pitted against younger radiatas.  She has admitted to me that they also intend to take tree chopping equipment with them.  She has obviously been away from Tasmania for too long, she's gone soft.  Grizzled Tasmanians will sneer at them and children will follow them down the street singing mocking songs.  But they will have a Christmas tree.