Sharon Webb

HOUSING MINISTER Roger Jaensch has agreed that his department will consider removing a huge English sycamore tree causing grief to residents in Deloraine.

For more than 10 years East Barrack Street residents Diane Greenway and Douglas Bignell have been tearing their hair out because of thousands of seedlings created each year by the hardy tree’s winged seeds.

Sycamores are listed by DPIPWE as a ‘common environmental weed’. Despite a Housing Tasmania arborist stating that the Deloraine tree on a Housing Tasmania easement is ‘historic’, the tree is not heritage listed and the sycamore’s fast-growing seedlings cause havoc in nearby gardens, paved areas and even in home guttering. Residents are just finishing removing seedlings from 2020, and now the 2021 seedlings are about to fall.

The tree stands in a laneway next to Diane and Douglas’ historic Federation house which used to be St Hilda’s School. Its prolific roots constantly push up the paving on the pathway to the Davies Place units. In turn, Housing Tasmania constantly repairs the paving.

Recently Housing Tasmania replaced the back yard of one unit’s resident because she kept falling on unsafe pavers pushed up by deep-rooted sycamore saplings.

The sycamore’s branches overhang Diane and Douglas’ garden, where they retired from Victoria looking forward to some relaxing years.

Instead, the tree’s seeds make their lives a misery, along with those of residents in nearby Davies Place.

‘We’d try to clear as many seeds as possible in May when they drop, then clear young trees in October’, Douglas said.

‘But we got sick of it and started to contact Housing Tasmania in 2011.

‘We got nowhere. A couple of years later we contacted the Housing Minister who told the department to take it more seriously. They got an arborist who said the tree was healthy and “historic” and would not cut it down.

‘In November 2014 we rang again to complain and were given an email address. At this point I was so distressed that I gave up.’

Two years later they picked up the issue again, seeking help from local MP Guy Barnett.

Mr Barnett helped them contact the Minister again but since then the issue has gone around in bureaucratic circles with no result.

Lyons Labor MP Jen Butler’s help got them the same ‘historic tree’ response as from Mr Jaensch’s office, as did more recent Gazette inquiries.

At this point Diane and Douglas were upset and tearing their hair out with frustration. ‘We’ve told Housing Tasmania the tree is wrecking the properties of houses in this area’, said Diane.

‘We’re spending weeks in our gardens trying to get rid of the seedlings, we’re spending money on house maintenance caused by this tree.

‘We could poison it but we’re not that kind of people. We try to do things through the right channels.’

Currently residents are now waiting even longer for a decision from Mr Jaensch and Housing Tasmania.

Meanwhile sycamore saplings are infesting the nearby Meander riverbanks, where they are thriving in the damp conditions and crowding out native vegetation.