Sugar Gum or Eucalyptus cladocalyx and the inability to reply to comments on Blogs

Firstly I would like to apologize to those of my readers who have left comments on my blogs, for not acknowledging them. For some reason the cursor will not engage in the reply box and I find that very frustrating as I have no idea why that has suddenly happened.

I just thought you may be interested in the huge Gum tree at my front gate which I mentioned in my last blog. Fortunately it is on my neighbour's property.  Eucalyptus cladocalyx can grow to great heights and very often has three, four or more layers of canopy. They are very easy to coppice when young and this was done quite a bit on farms in the early days as the wood is excellent fire wood.It is also a beautiful wood to make into furniture.

One evening in August in 2020, there was an enormous thunderclap which was a total surprise as there was no lightening or  rain or rough weather of any kind. It was quite dark so I didn't go out to see what had actually happened.

The following morning I thought to just check what might have happened and found the big Gum tree had dropped a huge limb on my neighbour's shed causing extensive damage as you can see by the photos I took. The noise had been caused by the limb falling on the shed roof and reverberating like a thunderclap.

It took my neighbour quite some months to have his shed repaired.

Being a South Australian and from an old Willunga family , he ought to have known not to build a shed under a Gum tree as they are notorious for dropping their limbs without a moments notice.

The poor tree is no longer the handsome specimen that it was. It would not surprise me if the tree is well over a hundred years old....there was a whole line of them before these paddocks were divided up and sold in the early eighties...

 Some men cleared the wood away very quickly as it would make excellent fire wood which is now at a premium price....