Sweat and tears christened The Blacksmith’s Tree at its final destination in Strathewen on February 14 when a small team of blacksmiths installed the solid steel structure they built as a memorial to people affected by the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009.
The Tree Project manager, Amanda Gibson, co-ordinated the installation with the help of the project’s head welder, Peter Drofenik, Cliff Overton from the Melbourne Fire Brigade, head blacksmiths Doug Tarrant and Roland Dannenhauer, and welder and assembly strategist Shane Kenny.
The installation drew to a close five years of tireless work by the Tree Project team,
the Victorian Blacksmiths Association and a local and international community of blacksmiths who forged more than 3000 individually handcrafted ‘leaves’, hundreds of steel ‘twigs’ and ‘branches’, and 12 heavy ‘branches’.
The installation was kept a low-key event to protect the sensitivities of the Stathewen community, Ms Gibson said.
“It wasn’t really a public event. It was a construction site at the end of a long winding road in the bush,” Ms Gibson said.
“We had a dozen working and about 15 or so there observing, many of whom have had direct involvement with the project.”
Cliff Overton, of Coburg but previously of Diamond Creek, was a volunteer with the Country Fire Authority in 2009 and worked for two weeks straight trying to control the Black Saturday bushfires.
After reading an advertisement for volunteers to work on the Tree Project a week after the fires, he immediately jumped on board and has since forged about 50 leaves on behalf of CFA officers and brigades.
“I had never forged anything in my life. I was impacted by what I saw out in the field that day. So I joined the Australian Blacksmiths Association, bought an anvil and built a forge,” he said.
Mr Overton has remained heavily involved with the project ever since.
The Tree Project’s Facebook cover photo shows Ms Gibson and Mr Overton holding hands in front of the newly erected tree.
A number of people have asked Mr Overton why he’s squinting in the photo.
“I was crying,” he said.
“What was going through my mind at that moment? Holy crap, we did it.”
