details

Statement of Significance

This tree was planted very early in the state's history, by a wealthy settler, whose intention was to create an English park-like setting for himself and his family. Local history has recorded this tree as a deodar, but it is a Mt Atlas cedar, of enormous size and the first known to be planted in SA

History

This Tree was planted in 1842. HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, the first member of the royal family to visit SA, carved the initial A on the tree to mark his visit. A stands for alfred, Prince alfred, who later gave his name to Adelaide's Prince Afred's College

Location

By one of three ornamental lakes, now part of Highercombe Golf Course

Other

see note attached above

Notes

CEDAR TREE AT HIGHERCOMBE GOLF COURSE: 2017-RESEARCH
THE STORY (Draft)
The place:
Highercombe Estate, at Paracombe, close to Tea Tree Gully, is in the Adelaide Hills Council area. It was originally a 150 acre (162-hectare) property, purchased in 1841 by George Alexander Anstey (1814-1895). It was named after the home of his father Thomas, at Dulverton, Somerset, in England. Thomas left England for Van Diemen’s Land (which became Tasmania in 1856) with tools and goods worth more than £8000 – about $663,000 today, auguring well for his son, who made a substantial early-settler investment in pastoral land.

George Anstey chose Highercombe as his place of settlement in the very early days of the colony, when nearly the whole of the Crown lands were unclaimed. The site where he first pitched his tent in a forest of sheoaks was a few yards off the avenue leading from the gate to the house and was sacredly preserved in its primitive wildness.

George Anstey also developed a vineyard as well as having properties on Yorke and Eyre peninsulas. He effectively left South Australia in 1851, so all the aesthetic achievements with the landscape of his estate were carried out within ten years. In 1895 some parcels of land were sold, others in 1901, and more in the 1920s. His large house burned down in 1929 and was rebuilt on a smaller scale. In 1963 the Tea Tree Gully Council acquired 167 acres which became the Highercombe Golf Club in 1967. The Adelaide Hills Council asset manager David Collins has confirmed that Adelaide Hills Council owns the land and the Golf Club leases the property from AHC. (pers comm.27/10/2017).
This remarkably attractive, once-large family residence and successful small holding, has had at least six owners, two of whom were State Premiers. Its most notable visitor was HRH Prince Alfred, who gave his name to Prince Alfred College, Adelaide, in 1869.

The man:
George Alexander Anstey, born in London in 1814, immigrated to Tasmania with his father, in 1827. He came to South Australia in 1841 after his father died. George was a successful agricultural pioneer, sheep farmer, orchardist, and vineyard grower. He was a successful social climber, and an unsuccessful politician. He returned to England in 1868, where he died in 1895. He appears to have been a forward thinking, creative, ambitious, but remarkably unpopular person. A letter to the editor of the South Australian Register 29/12/1851 complained that Anstey was:

“Clever, sarcastic, versatile, and well informed, but without either judgment or self-control, he is just the man to be put forward by others who laugh at his absurdities and disavow his violence, while availing themselves of his smartness and recklessness.”

When head of the Road Board he upset folk by spending public money on a road to his own house, suggesting a sense of entitlement, or benefit of office. He was nonetheless a persistent experimenter when it came to wine grapes, orchard development and ornamental plantings.

His goal was to make Highercombe a place of horticultural and aesthetic renown from the large number and variety of trees he planted. Later newspaper reports show that it was regarded a beautiful and well-planted show place, which attracted two of the State’s Premiers to live there, and was a place worthy of a visit from HRH Prince Alfred, the first member of the Royal family to visit Australia.

The estate
In the Adelaide Chronicle of 1903, Highercombe was seen as especially noteworthy because of its many fine trees, including chestnuts, walnuts, and oak trees planted by Lady Ross. Some trees were planted by HRH Prince Alfred, then Duke of Edinburgh, a guest here when he visited Australia in 1867. As a lasting memento of his visit he carved the letter A into the trunk of the cedar (of this story), but his blaze has long since become overgrown, and disappeared.

The garden had an extensive and excellent collection of pines and shrubs. Mr. Anstey was received packages by the best means available from Europe and elsewhere, and plants from England and warmer climes. He had a range of plant catalogues, acquired from George McEwin, when he left Anstey to set up his own place.

Anstey chose ornamentals for the avenue leading to the house and the plantations around it, with many different pines, oaks of six or eight species, acacias, hollies of four varieties, oranges, lime trees, olives, walnuts, half a dozen sorts of thorn, and an endless variety of choice flowering shrubs. A splendid bay tree grew near the house over 9m tall; magnolias of wonderful growth, yielding wagon loads of flowers; English mistletoe grew on a hawthorn, and two other trees; lilacs and holly hushes thrived amazingly.

Broad carriageways diverged in every direction, flanked with trees and hedges of myrtle, rose, privet, or Osage orange. The whole was surrounded by a ring of walnut trees. Elsewhere groves of pines and olives were planted as windbreaks, 300 used to be in ‘full bearing’. The house was described as surrounded with fruit-bearing hills and vales. The hills were covered with apple, peach, pear, cherry, and other fruit trees and the gullies were planted with nut trees and pines, the tall stems of which rose above the surrounding foliage to present a beautiful appearance from the high ground.

A Norfolk Island and a Deodar were mentioned as having borne cones for two or three years by 1903, the first in the colony to do so. These trees were 28 years of age in 1903, meaning they were planted in 1875, although the first reference to the subject Deodar says it was planted in 1842; maybe there are more than one of them? The deodora cedar had produced more than 250 cones, from which young ones were easily raised of this pine, and presented a really noble appearance.

There were complete forests of young oaks in some parts of the garden, whose acorns were fed to the pigs.

The house
Old colonists knew Highercombe under the name of Anstey estate garden, originally and largely set out with a winding carriageway through a pinery and shrubbery which led to the residence, a comfortable stone house with spacious veranda’s, and abundance of foliage all around it. In 1857 the house had sixteen rooms. In 1929, it was burnt in a fire, but was rebuilt on a smaller scale. Lady Ross built the stables which have been renovated and are now the golf clubhouse.

The subject tree:
This tree is 32m tall, 27m wide (E-W) and 28m wide (N-S), and it has eleven trunks; a twelfth trunk was removed in recent years because it has sustained storm damage. The main trunk is 5.65m in circumference at 1.3m above ground.

The measurements were recorded on 11th November 2017.

Mr. Anstey received packages of trees by the best means available from Europe and elsewhere, and plants of England and warmer climes, one of which was a cedar, planted in 1842, a mere three years after South Australia’s foundation as a state. In 2017, this very large, handsome tree is 175 years old.

In 1862, Ebenezer Ward MP wrote “We know that the magnificent deodara cedar, a native of the Himalayas, which grows close to the lake, was planted in 1842. We also know that somewhere under its thick bark is embedded the initial ‘A’ for Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, which he carved when he visited the estate on his official visit to SA in 1867.”

The subject tree was examined on 11th November 2017, after considerable research and using three separate keys, members of the Significant Tree Assessment Panel found it to be Cedrus atlantica. Both Chris Lawry and Andrew Nichols believe it to be that species. One other Panel member, Tony Whitehill, also confirms it as an Mt Atlas cedar. Their reasons for this assessment, based on their knowledge, and the three keys noted are:
1. The needles are in tufts of 31-35 individual needles, growing from a basal collar;
2. The needles have a blue-green appearance, called glaucous, in the keys;
3. The tips of mature branches tilt upwards, as in the keys;
4. The upper branch structure is clearly upstretched;
5. The characteristics of this tree are not those of the Deodar cedar or Lebanon cedar;
6. The characteristics of this tree are those of the Mt Atlas cedar.

Statement of Significance
There are three other Trust-recorded Atlas cedars:
• Anlaby is 13m tall, and aged 110 state
• Rockford has no data, but is 128 state
• St Vigeans is 30m tall, but its age is unrecorded regional
• Highercombe is 32m tall and aged 175 state
This tree has an enormous stature, and was planted in 1842 by a wealthy early settler, George Anstey, and is the largest and oldest in SA, in the English parkland setting he was developing.

Sources:
Adelaide Chronicle, 22 April 1871;
Adelaide Chronicle, 9 Oct 1903;
Adelaide Chronicle, 28 Oct 1930;
Carole Simmonds, President, TTG & District Historical Society, 15 October, 2017;
David Brooks, Community History Coordinator, City of TTG Library, 17 October, 2017;