details

Statement of Significance

The story (compiled from the data)
Although commercial timber was felled in the Tiers area from the 1880s, there was a scarcity of imported timber for props in the Broken Hill mines during the First World War. The Broken Hill Proprietary set up a Sawmill at Hindmarsh Tiers in South Australia to harvest timber from the locally abundant Messmate Stringybark trees (Eucalypus obliqua) or the Brown Stringybark (E. baxteri). Ivan Holliday, a South Australian tree enthusiast, notes in his book ‘Gardener’s Companion to Eucalypts’ (1980) that this gum’s timber ‘is hard and straight-grained, and milled extensively in Victoria and Tasmania’.

In Hindmarsh Valley logging activity continued to create a small workforce who needed a school for their even smaller band of children, and Hindmarsh Tiers School was the second school to be built in the area. The first was known as Mt Jagged school, situated almost across the road from the Tiers, on Section 38, Hundred of Encounter Bay. It was needed because schools at Hindmarsh Valley and Myponga were too distant for the children to reach on horseback. The building was made of vertical slabs of stringybark supplied by the Zinc Corporation and the Globe Timber Mill. When the slabs dried out, paper was stuffed into the cracks to keep out the wind, rain and snakes. It had a shingle roof and was built by voluntary labour in 1882 to educate the local children. It closed in 1890 because of insufficient attendance. Sometime thereafter, its site became private land, on which the abandoned wooden building stood, until it burnt down in the late 1890s.
The second school became known as Hindmarsh Tiers School. It opened on Monday October 27th 1919 and closed on January 15th 1938, when the seven remaining scholars went to Myponga Primary School. This school was made of sawn timber supplied by the mill. It comprised one open room, complete with fireplace. It was only ever a small enrolment school, where student numbers fluctuated until they became too small to warrant a full-time teacher, but it lasted for 19 years. The name Tiers originated because the nearby hills were supposed to rise ‘in tiers’. Research has established that pine planting took place, as space became available, from the 1920s, by the Zinc Corporation, which ran one of the mills.
This school, then a private house, eventually burnt down around 1968 because of a family vendetta. Someone waited till the occupants were out and set fire to it.

The current address of what was the school site is No 1147 Hindmarsh Tiers Road, otherwise referred to as Section 706. In 2018, this property is owned by Gino and Mandy Pacitti.
As the local timber was felled, it created space that was replanted with pine trees. Over the years, the school children also planted trees on the edge of the school playgrounds, and between 1933 and 1936 a row of pines was planted. Surviving school records note that the natural environment was of great interest to the scholars of this school and each year they packed a case of local wild flowers for display at the Adelaide Wildflower Show.

In 1935, the school celebrated Arbor Day by planting more pine trees, and stated their intention to also plant Cootamundra wattles (Acacia baileyana). These are relatively short-lived and would not have survived until today.
In 2018, the only planted tree remaining as a memento of this school is one solitary oak tree.
The oak tree was planted by Norma Haskett, who was born in 1917, so would have attended school from approximately 1923. Her daughter, Colleen, who lives in the area, has said that the oak was planted in 1929 or 1930, making it 88 or 89 years old in 2018.
In 2018 this tree is quite young, by oak standards. It is in good condition, except for some minor tip dieback, and unpruned. It is surrounded by piles of scattered permapine posts. If they could be cleared away, one day, that might make the tree’s qualities easier to appreciate.
It is an English oak, sometimes called the pedunculate oak, because its acorns grow from stalks known as peduncles. This tree has large healthy acorn on short stalks
It is 13.3m tall; its trunk circumference at 1.3m is 3.6; its n-s height is 20.6m; its e-w height is 20.4m. These measurements, and the photographs (of the tree) were taken on 24 March 2018.
It stands today, a lone, but lasting, embodiment of a small pioneer tree-felling community, which placed commendable importance on educating its children, to the point where it willingly set to, to build, not one, but two schools. This oak tree shows us where it all took place, almost 100 years ago.
It’s probably no accident that an oak tree was chosen so often as a commemorative tree by our early settler forebears. They are robust, long-lived, shade-bearing, and redolent of the homeland of many of our early migrants. They typify strength in adversity, long term planning, a productive wood, and a welcome source of shade throughout a lengthy, hot summer. Their size, shape and dependability make them good place-makers, and good historical companions.
References:
1 Hindmarsh Tiers: The upper basin and surrounding hills..., Pat Uppil, 2010
2 Secretary Myponga Historian, Society Merilyn Mclaren, pers. com.,2018
3 Willunga Library: Hazel Zilm article, Victor Harbour Times, 3 August 1984

History

this English Oak was planted at Hindmarsh Tiers School on Arbor Day 1930 by a student Norma Haskett. it now marks the place where this school stood.The local woodsmen felled trees in this area to fuel the war effort by Broken Hill Pty. they felt that a school was important for their children. the area was too far from the nearest of two existing school, so the woodsmen built heir own. The community was aware of the natural environment in which it worked, and it planted a range of trees over several years. this oak is the sole survivor of those trees, of the entire community, and the school they built.

Location

The tree is now part of Misty Brae Farm, a holding for Holstein cattle production

Other

This tree represents the eagerness of a remote woodsman community to educate their children. They funded and erected a school that the Government was unable to do. It hired the building from the people who built it. They were keen on plants and trees, planting several of the relatively short life of this school. the oak is regarded as a symbol of longevity and permanence, typified by the determination of this remote tree-felling community. it has outlived them and their school.it is a permanent exemplar of what it takes to care for children in a pioneer community where the government proved unable to provide a public school

Notes