WHAT'S the link between Jesmond roundabout's once prominent, but now gone, bunya pine and a 15th century wooden ship replica?
If you answered "recycling", you'd be correct.
In 2013, a 58-tonne rare timber replica of a 15th century Portuguese caravel sailed into Newcastle harbour for a quick stopover.
Built over 11 years by a Warrnambool (Victoria) property owner, this unique craft was held together by 3500 wooden, not metal, nails. Painted black, this modern "pirate ship" was built on a small budget and a bit of ingenuity. This replica caravel, resembling an Arab dhow, was built almost entirely of milled, originally discarded, Monterey cypress wood, making it both cheap to create and extremely durable in ocean seas. The replica was made from parts of 300 tonnes of recycled logs on a keel of salvaged ironbark by a self-taught shipwright.
It was built from large tree trunks, up to 150 years old, that were being bulldozed on farms in south-west Victoria. Once used as huge windbreaks, the old Monterey cypress trees (the poor man's Huon pine) were deemed obsolete and were to be burnt before some were saved for this unusual boatbuilding project.
It shows, I guess, that if you dare to dream big, anything's possible, even creating (without any plans) the only sailing caravel in the southern hemisphere.
Wallsend guitar maker Matt Semmens is like-minded. In March, he defied the odds to achieve what many might have thought impossible. That was saving and recycling much of the former tall bunya pine visible for decades in the middle of Jesmond's busy roundabout.
The large, native evergreen conifer once seemed it would be there forever. With its distinctive shape (tending to be conical), it provided shelter for parrots and other wildlife. And, with wind rustling through its branches, it 'sang' in the late afternoons.
The majestic tree, though, was felled a few months ago for being in the path of the final stage of the Newcastle city bypass - a 3.4 kilometre, $450 million "missing link" - between Rankin Park and Jesmond.
The ancient bunya tree (araucaria bidwillii) was also an exotic relic, really, a living fossil dating back to the Mesozoic era, related to South America's monkey puzzle tree and now protected in the wild.
You might think though its timber would have limited potential for furniture, although the First Nations' people once sought out the bunya, harvesting its nuts (like chestnuts) for feasts every few years.
But Matt Semmens recognised the tree's potential for another great future in acoustic musical instruments. He realised that the slivers of the felled tree would make excellent guitar soundboards, creating evocative tones. It happened also to be the business he was in, so he started making inquiries and negotiating.
"If I didn't act, the bunya pine was only going to be chipped, like all the others. It seemed such a waste when its timbers could have another life," Semmens says.
His actions have provided a "good news story" to counter mounting public unease about the environmental cost of the huge road project. (More than 40ha of dense native bush have been cleared on the bypass route and the recent discovery of a dead kangaroo on Newcastle Road, Jesmond, has generated further disquiet).
Semmens, of Wallsend's Australian Guitar Making School (AGMS), estimated that the bunya pine when standing had been about 50ft (15m) tall.
"There were six metres (19.8ft) of tree left which were cut into two sections to be removed. I immediately went on Facebook and heaps of people wanted to help, offering use of a truck and an excavator," he says.
"But the trouble then was no outsiders could drive onto the (Jesmond) worksite without proper safety training.
"Luckily, that's when the project company involved stepped in to help, saying 'We'll deliver them. Where do you want them?' Having two site managers owning guitars helped, I'm sure."
Semmens said the two timber logs, weighing about 2.5 tonnes, were delivered to a site and finally delicately crosscut into about 30 panels, each about 65mm thick for use in future prized guitars with a signature sound.
"The end product is light, flexible and resonant," he says.
"To cut up the bunya pine trunks into suitable sections took nine hours. It had to be more careful than cutting planks."
After the timber is sufficiently dried on racks, the very laborious process begins of making a single bespoke guitar over about 40 hours, before another week is spent on finishing touches. The eventual cost to the customer starts from about $5000.
"As for the age of the Jesmond tree itself before it came down, a dark ring inside is said to mark one year's growth. I counted 95 rings, so it was very old," Semmens says.
As befitting the history of the soundboard timber on the slender-necked, elongated violin-like musical bodies, the future instruments will be called Bunya Guitars.
The new guitars will gradually assume pride of place in Semmens' workshop, which is already stacked high with 400 types of timber needed at some stage to create steel string or electric guitars.
Looking at the dark- and light-hued timbers alone is a lesson in how complex the business is, requiring assembling pieces as variable as gorgeous river red gum, to silky oak, Queensland wattle and even ironbark to make the instruments.
Then there's the hardwoods, especially valued in fretboards (fingerboards), such as the incredibly tough gidgee and mulga woods.
"That's the amazing thing about Australian timbers. In Europe they have 700 endemic species of wood. Here we have about 5500. Why import hard ebony timber from Africa when we have our own?"
"On the world's hardest timber rankings, I believe gidgee is rated No.3 while ebony might be rated No.7," Semmens says.
Later, Newcastle's Hunter Street Australian Guitar Making School shop owner, Mark Mignanelli, said there was a new passion among people to make their own guitars.
"There are four outlets now instructing students, but people complain to me,' Why isn't there a guitar school in our suburb?' But at least, the memory of Jesmond's bunya pine lives on.
"It still sings on in its own way," he says.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Join the discussion in the comment section below.
Find out how to register or become a subscriber here.
