24 Nov 2015
Last week representatives from St Johns Park Bowling Club and Canley Heights RSL, presented our school captain with a Lone Pine seedling.
The Significance of the Lone Pine
On 6 August 1915 the 1st Australian Infantry Division launched a major offensive at Plateau 400 on Gallipoli. The ridges, once covered with the Aleppo pine, had been cleared to provide cover for the Turkish trenches, leaving just one, solitary pine. The area became known as Lone Pine Ridge.
After three days of brutal fighting the Anzacs succeeded in capturing the enemy trenches, but this bloody action cost the Australians 2,000 men. The Turks' losses were estimated at 7,000.
After the battle, Lance Corporal Benjamin Charles Smith, 3rd Battalion, AIF, collected several pine cones from the branches used to cover the Turkish trenches. He sent the cones home to his mother, Jane McMullin, in remembrance of his brother Mark, who had died in the fighting on 6 August.
From one of these cones Mrs McMullin sowed several seeds, and successfully raised two seedlings. One was planted in Inverell, where both her sons had enlisted. The other was presented to the Australian War Memorial, to be planted in the grounds in honour of all the sons who fell at Lone Pine.
Source :Australian War Memorial, https://www.awm.gov.au/shop/lone-pine-seedlings/