ALMOST everyone seems to remember when a restaurant at Pelican collapsed without warning into Lake Macquarie seven years ago.
That was on February 8, 2016. The footings supporting Milano's On The Lake, a popular seafood restaurant and wedding venue, gave way and it suddenly lurched into the water.
Part of the marina, plus a two-storey building with offices there, fell into the lake and have never been replaced. Changes in water flow, eroded pylons, channel dredging changing currents, even flooding in 2007 and 2015 were all blamed for the disaster.
Site demolition followed, with timber debris hauled away to the tip, or so you would expect.
So, imagine my surprise going to a recent midweek lunch at another waterfront location, the Star Anise cafe below units at 56 Brooks Parade, Belmont, only to discover strange reminders of the monumental Pelican event long ago.
Actually, about 14 reminders overall. For the cafe's small timber tables are made from timber salvaged from the former Milano's On The Lake. Each has been stamped to remember the former Pelican landmark.
"Our tables are repurposed timber from floorboards from Milano's after it sank into the lake," Star Anise owner Rowell Davidson told Weekender.
"They are from this site's previous owner. The Milano's team transferred here when our cafe was known as Deck 56.
"Our (unusual) table markings bring back a lot of memories for many customers who once dined at Milano's. A lot of them even want to buy a table as a souvenir, but they sadly can't."
The ultimate timber recycling project, for me though, would have to be the forest logs milled near Dungog which transformed the Sydney Opera House interior into an exquisite beauty to rival its exterior.
Speaking of timber, remember when timber bridges ruled instead of steel, guns all had wooden butts, planes flew with wooden propellers and most 19th century ocean-going ships had wooden hulls?
Where would we be without wood? Besides furniture, let's not forget the value of trees for carbon capture, providing cleaner air and when trees line hot bitumen city streets temperatures can drop by as much as 10 degrees.
And what are its other uses? Well, back in July I wrote about Wallsend guitar maker and musician Matt Semmens. He's recycling two giant Bunya pine logs from Jesmond's inner-city bypass project into unusual and distinctive guitar soundboards.
Since that story, John Ure, of Mount Hutton, has added more detail to the saga of bunya trees. He emailed me to say he had a bunya tree, about 15 metres tall, on his property.
"It drops nuts every couple of years - each weigh about 2kgs and it can drop 50 or 60," Ure said, providing photographic proof.
"When they're dropping, I mow under the tree (on the ride-on) very quickly - perhaps I should wear a crash helmet. I suspect our tree is about a century old, although this is just my educated guess. Our tree is very healthy.
"Bunya trees have an interesting history. They played an important part in Indigenous diets, no doubt for many thousands of years. The kernels were roasted or ground to make flour.
"We had a go at grinding them down years ago to make pancakes that turned out to be quite nutty and flavoursome, but it was a bit of a process.
"Now I just gather them up, tip them into a bit of a gully on our property and let them break down.
"A year or so ago we advertised them for free and they disappeared in no time.
"We will do that again next harvest time," he said.
"Now, back to the Indigenous history. The fruiting used to generate a huge gathering along what is probably now the Gold Coast area. Tribes came from as far away as what is now Melbourne and far north Queensland and it could last for up to three months".
Meanwhile, all these Bunya pine facts made my mind turn to another, much rarer tree, Tasmania's legendary Huon pine. It has a similar fascinating history. It grows only in wet, temperate rainforests of south-west Tassie and can survive up to 2500 years.
Huon pine also doesn't reproduce until it's 600 to 800 years old, so its slow growth makes any plantations very unlikely. It's highly prized in boatbuilding (if you can get it) because of its very high oil content and is impervious to insects.
In 1999, a newly built Huon pine replica down south of the famous colonial sloop HM Norfolk was commemorated at Stockton with a special plaque. The original vessel, seized by convicts from Sydney in 1800, was wrecked at today's Pirate Point near our port entrance.
The replica sloop was constructed from scarce, once abandoned Huon pine logs in Tassie.
Mark Mignanelli, the owner of the Australian Guitar Making School on Hunter Street, knows a thing or two about the myriad timbers used in acoustic instruments.
"Did you know they're now recovering trees, like scarce Huon pine plus sassafras, blackwood and myrtle, from underwater down in Tasmania?" he said recently.
"The timber is perfectly preserved, rot-resistant and is from trees being harvested inside dams. It's called Hydrowood."
From a trial in 2012, workers are now salvaging the submerged forests, using barges, an extraction claw and a submersible chainsaw. The slogan is: 'Retrieving the wood you can't get anymore'.
The recovered, waterproof Huon pine (from up to 26 metres deep) ages to a honey gold and is easily shaped without splitting.
Which brings me to another unusual timber yarn from down at Newcastle Museum at Honeysuckle. Here, among its many donated exhibits, is an impressive and intricate cedar chaise lounge - but in miniature and behind glass. It's so small, it would probably fit into the palm of your hand.
Arthur Bignall, an upholsterer and antique dealer, created this model in 1998 when in his 70s. The sofa's leather is from kangaroo hide, but it was handcrafted from recycled cedar, reclaimed from the skirting boards of a house damaged in Maitland's monster 1955 flood.
