Speeches
Friday, 02 October 2026
Lunch on the Lawns Tree Planting Ceremony
Rod and I warmly welcome you to Government House, during South Australia’s Nature Festival, for Lunch on the Lawns and for this Tree Planting Ceremony.
The Government House garden is a beautiful space for engaging with guests and hosting events.
Importantly, it’s also a piece of living history, with plantings going back to the earliest decades of South Australian settlement.
The southern garden, where we stand today, features a number of trees commemorating the conclusion of Governors’ terms.
Those who joined this morning’s garden tour may have seen that in the garden bed, a little closer to the main entrance, are trees planted by my distinguished predecessor, the Hon Hieu Van Le, and his wife, Lan Le.
Just next to us is a White Magnolia planted by the late Lady Neal, wife of former Governor, the late Sir Eric Neal.
Tree plantings have also been used to mark important historical events, including to commemorate the contribution and sacrifice of South Australians at war.
The gum tree in the south-eastern corner, originally planted at the Villers Bretonneux Memorial in France, was brought to Adelaide and planted on Anzac Day, 1939.
There have also been plantings to celebrate historic Royal events, such as the stand of acacias which Rod and I planted, assisted by members of the public, to mark the coronation of His Majesty the King and Queen Camilla in 2023.
It is therefore Rod’s and my great pleasure to make this contribution of a Wollemi Pine to the Government House garden.
Wollemi Pines are astonishing, because, for a long time, scientists thought they were extinct.
Fossil evidence for these trees goes back 91 million years to the Gondwana. They were thought to have disappeared millions of years ago.
Then, in 1994, a national park ranger in New South Wales stumbled upon Wollemi Pines in a remote canyon of the Blue Mountains.
The longevity of this species is extraordinary. Australia has undergone enormous climatic and environmental changes over its lifetime, and yet these trees have endured in the Blue Mountains long after they disappeared in South Australia.
I note Todea Barbera (the Austral King fern), considered a Gondwanan relic plant still grows in deep pockets of the Mt Lofty Ranges.
There are no naturally occurring wild Wollemi pines anywhere else on Earth.
For me, the Wollemi Pine represents resilience, endurance and adaptation. In spite of challenges and changes, these trees have persisted in an extraordinary way.
In the wild, they can reach 40 metres tall, inducing a sense of awe and majesty in those who see them.
A Wollemi pine can produce multiple trunks from a single root system. Some wild trees have dozens of trunks, forming a little colony that is genetically connected.
I appreciate this symbol of interconnection and interdependence, and see it reflected in my engagements with the South Australian community during my term.
Friends, thank you all for coming along today.
It is now Rod’s and my pleasure to complete the tree planting.