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Eighty years on, a tree planted to provide feed stock for a Launceston tennis racket factory is about to achieve its purpose.
The Alexander Patent Racket Company, which once employed 190 people, has long gone out of business and the plantation of English Ash trees established to provide timber for its product has become one of Forestry Tasmania’s most popular recreation reserves.
Planting undertaken by the Ash Plantations company in the early 1930s was carried out with some fanfare and expectations at Hollybank.
A prospectus spruiked returns of many millions of dollars in today’s values. However, despite windbreaks of pines and other exotic species growing well, the ash trees did not thrive in soil found later to be too acidic.
The project was abandoned in 1950 and the land sold to the Forestry Commission in 1956.
Local historian and author Gus Green deals in part with the saga in his book What A Racket! – a history of the racket factory, which is now the home of the Police-Citizens Youth Club.
Photo: Historian Gus Green surveys his trophy tree at Hollybank … still standing with Forest Planner Lee Tunstall.
Mr Green’s passion for local history and family connection to the factory provided the impetus for a project to build a display cabinet and trophies for the building as part of the National Trust’s Heritage Month in May.
“What we want to have is a cabinet to show off some of the building’s memorabilia and I thought it would be nice to have some of the ash trees used to make it.”
Mr Green approached Forestry Tasmania to see if a tree could be found.
An inspection of Hollybank by planner Lee Tunstall identified an appropriate tree, which, having some apparent rot, also presented a potential danger to visitors.
It was duly felled by forest worker Christian Kettle and delivered to Morgans sawmill for processing.
Along with the cabinet Mr Green also hatched a plan to manufacture at least a couple of tennis rackets from the timber as well.
“The idea would be they could be used to actually play, but they’ll really just be trophies for perhaps Tennis Tasmania’s top junior boy and girl.
“I think it’s wonderful that the wood will actually be used to make what it was originally intended for.”
Photo: Forest worker Christian Kettle who felled the tree with Historian Gus Green.
