The tenth anniversary of the planting of the Lone Pine at our Melton Campus is an opportune time to delve back into the history of this special tree, which is a descendant of the original from World War 1.

The Lone Pine was the name given to a solitary tree on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, which marked the site of the Battle of Lone Pine in 1915 during World War I. It was the sole survivor of a group of trees that had been cut down by Turkish soldiers who had used the timber and branches to cover their trenches.

The tree was obliterated during the battle; however, pine cones that had remained attached to the cut branches over the trenches were retrieved by two Australian soldiers and brought home to Australia.

Private Thomas Keith McDowell, a soldier of the 23rd Battalion, brought a pine cone from the battle site back to Australia. Many years later, his wife's aunt Emma Gray of Grassmere, near Warrnambool, Victoria, planted seeds from the cone, and five seedlings emerged, with four surviving.

These seedlings were planted in four different locations in Victoria: Wattle Park (May 8, 1933), the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne (June 11, 1933), the Soldiers Memorial Hall at The Sisters near Terang (June 18, 1933) and Warrnambool Botanic Gardens (January 23, 1934).