Obituary for a mango tree

It was a vision of towering arboreal grandeur: a mango tree that is said to have been planted in the 1930s by Mr Saranealis. He owned the property on the corner of Blackall Street and Victoria Parade and he and his family lived in a corrugated iron shack there. In those days, people grew most of their own fruit and vegetables, and mango trees were a valuable source of food. The tree was known as Buddy Saranealis’s tree.

But now the tree is no longer.

 Buddy Saranealis's Tree on 5 November

The Fresh Food Company owned the property after Mr Saranealis. There was a butchery on the grounds and they used a tree stump as a cutting block. Later, the property passed to Mr Cadzow and his wife, Ivy, who built the place that became known as the Four Winds Building. Sometime in the seventies, the Department of Native Affairs, the DNA, bought the property. In the mid-nineties, a friend of mine and her daughter rented out the upper level. In the early 2000s, Maritime Safety had an office there and in April, 2004, the TSRA’s Gab Titui Cultural Centre was opened and with it the café.

I can recall many visits to the café. I reclined in the shade of the massive mango tree and sipped my coffee while the children ran around on the lawn and hid in the bushes that circled the base of the trunk. They picked the red star-shaped flowers from the bushes and sucked the ‘honey’ from the stems. I never thought much about the tree except that it gave great shade. It had been there forever and I assumed it would stay that way.

When the word got around in October that the tree was to be lopped, chopped and chipped to make way for a performance area, there was quiet dissent within the community: ranging from ya gar-style nostalgia to mild anger.

“I heard plenty children were conceived under that tree”, said one man.

“I heard there’s been plenty parties there, too,” said another.

“They can’t cut an old tree down,” said some.  “It provides shade.”

“Surely, the tree should be heritage listed,” said others.

 So I set out on an investigation. I wanted to record something of the tree’s life and maybe get together a small band of tree-hugging protestors. In the back of my mind I felt sure the tree had some heritage-listed significance. But if my mission failed, at least there would be some record of its life, so it didn’t die in vain.

I hoped I would hear many sentimental yarns about kids, now in their sixties and seventies being chased off as they collected mangoes, lovers meeting in the dead of night behind the massive trunk or yarns about broken arms from falling off boughs. Surely, there had to be lovers’ initials gouged out of the crumbly, black bark?

But I found nothing.

Some people could remember the tree always being there, but they had no juicy memories. It was a mango tree. There are many mango trees on the island.

A few people even said they couldn’t even remember it. After all, it was back from the road on private property.

There didn’t seem to be anything that would get it within cooee of a heritage listing (the tree had to have some cultural, historical or aesthetic significance or some special association to the people of TI). And no one came forward.

The lopping deadline, 5 November, drew near. People muttered about the injustice and suggested ‘someone’ should do ‘something’ to stop it. Some even concocted fantastical naked protests (tee hee!).

I mentioned the matter to my husband while I was making dinner, the week before deadline.

When he told me he was cutting down the tree, I grabbed the sink to stop myself falling over. So shocked was I.

“And before you go on about it,” he said, “it’s really rotten and the branches could fall and hurt someone.”

“Can you save it?”

He could if he cut back every branch to the trunk (which would be a bit of an eyesore for a year).

But the roots were growing under the building; a major problem. 

And the TSRA wanted it removed. It needed the performance space.

The community remained silent (except for complaints to each other), waiting for ‘someone’ to do ‘something’.

Monday the fifth came and passed peacefully, aside from the mechanical whir of chainsaws that shattered the still, dry season heat.

What took eighty years to grow was nothing but a pile of woodchip six hours later.

What an ignominious ending to a long and inconspicuous life that was, briefly, greater in impending death.

Lots of space thereafter!