Ignoring the debacle that began about 40 years ago when our local councils mistakenly (or willfully) planted hundreds of Cook Pines, Norfolk Island Pines have become synonymous with our coastal landscape. It is a moot point as to where the idea came from.
The leaders of the first fleet were well aware of Norfolk Island Pines. Phillip had specific instructions to check them out as a possible source of timber for ship’s masts, spars, etcetera. Suitable timber for the British Navy was becoming in short supply in Europe.
In the end, the trees did not prove suitable. The problem was not that the timber was not inherently sound enough, as is sometimes stated, but that the branches occur at specific levels on the trunk, rather than at random heights. The series of rings of knots that resulted when a trunk was trimmed introduced fatal weak spots.
However, they did become fashionable trees in the colony from its earliest years, no doubt helped by Governor Phillip planting one in the garden at the first Government House, the site of today’s Museum of Sydney.
But a particular connection to Manly came from the Johnston family, three of whom lived in Manly in its earliest years. Their grandfather George – (in)famous for arresting Governor Bligh – brought back some seeds from Norfolk Island on return from his posting there in 1791. He planted an avenue of them on the driveway to his mansion Annandale, that he built on his farm at today’s Stanmore.
Perhaps the Johnston clan were influential when Manly was designing its streetscape in the late 1870s, although there had been some use of them from its beginning under Henry Gilbert Smith, 20 years earlier.
