By Alesha Capone
The council administrators voted in favour of an amendment to the Brimbank Planning Scheme last week, to safeguard trees along the Older Calder Higway between Green Gully Rd and the Maribyrnong River, at the Keilor Recreation Reserve and Lagoon Reserve.
Some of the trees date back to the 1850s, when Keilor was a stopover on the way to the gold fields.
The trees served as a landscape marker, guiding travellers heading to the Australian Gold Rush to find their way to the Maribyrnong River crossing.
Brimbank’s history enthusiasts welcomed the council’s introduction of a “Significant Landscape Overlay” to protect the trees.
“We see it as an important recognition of the trees’ place in history and how important they are to the local area,” Keilor Historical Society member Susan Jennison said.
David Anderson, from the Sydenham and District Historical Society, said the trees were central to Keilor’s character.
“There’s been too much lost of that original heritage and to be able to safeguard some of those trees is wonderful,” he said.
“We’d be happy to see it go further to protect other significant trees in the area.
“It can help people to get some idea of what the environment was like in that period.”
The council report on the issue said the trees in the Lagoon Reserve dated back to 1860s and those on the Keilor Recreation Reserve during the 1880s.
“Within Brimbank, there is generally a lack of mature trees along road reserves which makes this streetscape significant due to its rarity and uniqueness,” the report said.