The Wonder of the Blacksmiths’ Tree
My story with the Blacksmiths’ Tree began in 2011. Its own story began in 2009, but if truth be told it began much earlier than that.
Sometime between 2558 and 2532 BC, ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom build the oldest known sculpture in Egypt, The Great Sphinx of Giza. We know it was carved out of bedrock, but how and for what reason is lost to us as might have been the Sphinx itself were it not for centuries of restoration, its distinct features once buried under sand. But in AD 1378 its long beard and one-metre wide nose were chiselled off by a religious zealot when he observed commoners offering gifts and salutations to the mighty rock. According to Arabic historians, he was hung for his vandalism.
In 280 BC, over 2000 years since the Sphinx emerged from a single piece of stone, a statue of the Greek Sun God Helios was erected in the City of Rhodes. The Colossus of Rhodes was said to have stood 33 metres high, celebrating the tumultuous victory of Rhodes’ over the ruler of neighbouring Cyprus. The tallest statue of the ancient world collapsed during the earthquake of 226 BC. Parts of it remain to this day, but it was never rebuilt.
On July 20, 1969, the first human stepped foot on the Moon. It took just under 10 years of a massive scientific and engineering undertaking to not only breach the Earth’s gravity but to reach the Moon and return three astronauts safely back to Earth. The mission was driven by a yearning to outflank the Soviet Union’s efforts, who had themselves thrown the first satellite, then a dog and finally a man into orbit around the Earth.
As incredible as these and other human achievements have been, as far-reaching the technologies that led us here, it did not take the posturing of powerful kingdoms nor their gods, or the celebration of war and the craving for power it underscores, nor had it taken political avarice and cold war theology to motivate a small group of artisans, blacksmiths and welders, engineers and volunteers to create what now stands 9.8 meters tall in Strathewen, one of several townships affected by the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Australia.
In the 21st Century, the makers of the Blacksmiths’ Tree show us that human ingenuity need not be driven by magical thinking, by war and political ambition. It can come to us all by serving our community needs, through collaborative outreach and action… and love. It is this that we may learn from the Blacksmiths’ Tree, that we can come together, today, tomorrow and the days ahead to remake the way we live here on planet Earth. And we do so so that our children and their children’s children may live long, well and safe because this stainless steel Tree, unlike the Sphinx and the Colossus of Rhodes, may, if politicians continue to falter in their responsibilities, this the Blacksmiths’ Tree may well be the last tree standing. But for now, it isn’t and how it came about and what it means to us all is the story I tell in my film, Forged from Fire — the Making of The Blacksmiths’ Tree.
