Blue Mountains Library Clarifies…

Impressed by the common sense approach of John Low, the Local Studies Librarian at Blue Mountains City Library in an article on the Explorers’ Tree. He concludes with:

What are we to make of the considerable variation in detail that characterises these accounts of the marked tree ? Does it arise from genuine human error (lapse of memory) or deliberate fabrication ? Perhaps there was more than one tree ? Such questions are difficult, if not impossible, to answer and the debate is sure to continue for many years.

Whatever conclusion we come to about the tree’s links to Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, the fact remains that its symbolic association with the period of exploration is well established.

The quaint little wayside shrine that it has become is, nonetheless, one of the most powerful icons of Blue Mountains folklore. 

Or as one relative liked to say, ” Why spoil a good story with the truth?”