Visitors strolling through the gardens at Werribee Park are less likely to be hit by a pine cone falling from a tree after a Parks Victoria harvesting effort.
Senior horticulturist Adam Smith and crew members See Mee and Pan Soe boarded a cherry picker to remove cones from the park’s 12 bunya pine trees. The cones can weigh up to 12 kilograms.
“Unlike a lot of other pine cones these fall to ground intact, and being around the size of a pineapple they can do quite a lot of damage if they land on someone’s head,” Mr Smith said.
“These Jurassic-looking heritage trees are very old and huge, so we needed to go about 45 metres vertically upwards to collect around 100 cones. The biggest challenge for us was how to remove them safely in windy conditions at such a great height.”
Staff harvest the huge cones every two years.
