The British author who wrote ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ and ‘Allan Quatermain’ – the stories on which the Raiders of the Lost Ark trilogy was based – stood on the summit of Two Tree Hill and remarked that the view was the finest he had ever seen.
SOME believed the two giant Moreton Bay Figs were planted in the early 1870s.
One on each knob of the hill, which had been named for the landmarks as Two Tree Hill.
The ‘planting’ was part of the folklore which grew around the hill at Tallegalla in the Rosewood Scrub.
That bare knob with its two giants was a favourite picnic spot for school outings and for groups of young people released from their chores on Sunday afternoons.
A report in 1912, recorded Two Tree Hill as the favoured spot for end of year picnics for the schools at Rosewood, Marburg, Kirchheim (Haigslea) and Tallegalla.
The report was of a school picnic organised by the teacher and parents of the students attending Tallegalla School.
“The school is on a spur of Two Tree Hill,” the reporter wrote, “and the scenery around it is magnificent.
“The features of the landscape stand out boldly and clearly – here and there small patches of virgin scrub on the lower hillsides in a checkerboard of green and brown, where the cane and sorghum crops are growing luxuriantly or the maize crops are standing ready to be harvested, and chocolate where the rich volcanic soil is waiting for rain and the sower.”
To give the correct description of the placement of the school … “it is on the crest of a hill between two hills -Two Tree Hill and The Bluff”.
The summit of Two Tree Hill was also the place special visitors to the area were taken to give them an understanding of the rich agricultural areas of the settled districts.
A writer in 1924, explained why the men of the British Agricultural Commission where taken there during their visit some years before.
Sir Rider Haggard, author of ‘King Solomon’s Mines and ‘Allan Quatermain’, was a member of the Commission and later described the view from Two Tree Hill as … “as one of the finest he had ever seen”.
The writer of the report explained why the comment was made by the famous author.
“To the east, some 15 miles [24km] away, lies the town of Ipswich, the tall building of the Ipswich Woollen Mill standing out very conspicuously, and beyond, in the distance, the blue peaks of the McPherson Range.
“A little to the south, Peak Mountain lifts its cone, and as the eyes circle westward Mt Forbes, Mt Walker, and the rugged tops about Spicer’s and Cunningham’s Gaps are visible.
“To the north stretches the Enoggera Range, and from a little valley a silver streak gleams from the surface of Lake Manchester.
“Westward the vision is bounded by the Main Range, running from Toowoomba to Blackbutt.
“At a moderate estimate, the eye ranges over a circle some 49 miles [78km] in diameter, and all through it are cultivated fields and farms.
“The writer has stood on the top of Mt Eden at Auckland, the Red Bluff on the Cairns Range, and Mt Coot-tha, in Brisbane, but for spaciousness and arcadian beauty, the view from Two Tree Hill is equal to any of them.
“Two Tree Hill derives its name from two beautiful fig trees that crown the summit; one feels inclined to ask a blessing on the axeman who spared them.”
The writer’s reference to the axeman is indicative of the origin of the two sentinels.
Before the district was first settled, a huge area ranging from Mt Tarampa and Lowood in the north to the edge of Laidley, Calvert, Rosewood and Thagoona in the south was covered by a dry rainforest known as the Rosewood Scrub.
It was interspersed in places by pockets of open eucalypt forest, but in most places, it was regarded as dense, dark and impenetrable.
Among the forest giants in the scrub were the fig trees.
Reporters interviewing locals in the times when the two trees stood on the hill, described them as Moreton Bay Figs, which are normally found in wetter areas.
But turning to reports from the settlers in the Rosewood Scrub, many remarked when looking back on those earlier times that the annual rainfall gradually decreased as the scrub was felled.
So, it is possible that the trees were Moreton Bay Figs.
The clue to the trees ‘being spared the axe’ rather than being planted by a settler can be seen in our photograph. The trees are ‘bare trunked’ to a great height indicative of them pushing up through the dark scrub in search of the light before putting much energy into expanding branches and leaf cover.
Where Moreton Bay Figs are afforded lots of light, the trunks fork early to produce the thick divided trunks, which is their preferred habit.
Those two trees may have been spared the axe because the soft, moist wood of the trunks was notoriously tedious to chop into. In addition, if the main roots weren’t removed, it was likely the tree would reshoot.
Whatever the reason for the ‘sparing of the axe’, it is more than likely that the trees were in the ancient category before the scrub around them was felled.
So, what happened to the two trees on Two Tree Hill?
In the Spring of 1927, the owner of the land on which the trees stood, reported in regard to the disappearance of one of them … “a bushfire swept the hill a few weeks ago and as the tree was an ancient one, it was quickly enveloped in flames and practically destroyed . The centre of the tree was old and dry, and it burned within three minutes. As expected, the first heavy wind felled what remained.”
There is no doubt the tree was a community talisman as indicated in the last lines of the landowner’s report: “The tree was a friend to man, beast and bird alike, and it will be much missed by our large community.”
Six years later, on Sunday, November 26, the second tree was felled in what was described as a cyclonic storm.
