Lone PinePrint Page

The pine tree commemorates those who have served in the various conflicts in which Australia has been involved.

A plaque was unveiled at the tree on the 8th May 1953 by the 24th Battalion in memory of fallen comrades who served in World War One. The Lone Pine was rededicated in 1995 in the presence of the 24th and the 2nd / 24th Associations and the ashes of Sir Frank Selleck of the 24th Battallion 1st A.I.F were consecrated.

After the Battle of Lone Pine in 1915 a private of the 24th Battalion (AIF ) gathered three small pine cones. He brought them to Australia. They were planted several years later and produced three healthy trees. One of the trees has been presented to the 24th Battalion of the Australian Militia Forces, and it will be planted officially at Wattle Park on Sunday, May 7, by the mayors of Camberwell and Box Hill. The occasion will be the annual trooping of the colour by the 24th Battalion (Kooyong Regiment), under the command of Lieut.-Colonel Savige. About 200 former members of the 24th Battalion, A.I.F., will parade with the unit.
Argus (Melbourne), 22 April 1933.

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 One and 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, and many years later seeds from the cone were planted by his wife's aunt Emma Gray of Grassmere, near Warrnambool, Victoria 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).

The Shrine of Remembrance's lone pine was felled in August 2012 and the timber used as part of a remembrance project, after a disease known as Diplodia pinea or blue stains fungus as it commonly called killed it.

Another soldier, Lance Corporal Benjamin Smith from the 3rd Battalion, also retrieved a cone and sent it back to his mother (Mrs McMullen) in Australia, who had lost another son at the battle. Seeds from the cone were planted by Mrs McMullen in 1928, from which two seedlings were raised. One was presented to her home town of Inverell (New South Wales) and the other was forwarded to Canberra where it was planted by Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester at the Australian War Memorial in October 1934.

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