“SAVING AUSTRALIA”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 120, 11 August 1927, Page 18

“SAVING AUSTRALIA”

TREE-PLANTING SCHEME BEAUTIFYING STREETS AND HOMES “A great monument for the saving of Australia,” was the way in which Mr. Daniel G. Stead described the launching of a big tree-planting scheme at Vaucluse, Sydney, recently. The Town Planning Association and kindred bodies are aiming at extensive street and home beautification by trees. In the past, said Mr. Stead, there had been a kind of perfunctory tree-plant-ing arrangement—in the country more particularly—a spasmodic kind of thing that had not borne much fruit. But in the last ten years there had been a tremendous rise of national consciousness, bringing with it a desire to preserve those things that were typical of Australia; and there was nothing more typical of the soul of their native land than their beautiful trees. OBJECT OF PLANNING One of the objects of modern townplanning was to plant trees in such a way that they would not be interfered with for the sake of public utilities — not cut down or lopped to make way for telegraph wires, but planted so that they would be permanent objects of beauty. The trees they were planting that day—the red-flowering gum—were the most beautiful trees Australia could produce. The Australian Forest League, the Wild Life Preservation Society, and the Children’s Gould League were among the Jodies identified with the beautification scheme, which aimed at restoring to the towns and cities the natural beauty which was once theirs, and preserving the beauty with which they were already graced