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St. Leonard's Park is one of Sydney's great 19th century parks. Occupying the 40 acre heart of surveyor Thomas Mitchell's planned town of St. Leonard's (later to become North Sydney), it came into existence in the late 1860s through the foresight and politicking of the Municipality's first Mayor, Alderman William Tunks. The grandson of a First Fleet marine and a man of considerable energy and imagination, Tunks once gave his occupation as 'capitalist' but spent much of his public life establishing community amenities, especially parks and reserves, for the future North Sydney. St. Leonard's Park was perhaps his greatest and most personally satisfying achievement. A man of impressive physique and with a keen interest in natural history, Tunks is known to have walked in the park daily, personally supervising the placement of paths and the planting of trees. Many of the original plantings are purported to have come from his private garden. His death in 1883 was also said to have been park-related, the result of an accident there from which he never recovered. A memorial fountain, erected in the park in 1885, pays respect to his vision. While it is not certain exactly when cricket and football were first played in the park, by the 1880s North Sydney Oval had been established and was home to the 'Pirates' who, with skull & crossbones sewn into their black jerseys, defended the honour of the harbour's north side at rugby (union). Though the objections of an important financial backer eventually led to the demise of their name and motif, the team became the basis of the first North Sydney Rugby Club that formed under the new district system in 1900 and nurtured a number of players who later switched to rugby league following the Great Rugby War of 1907-08.  For youngsters like me, growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, St. Leonard's Park was a source of wonder, a green world where the interplay of sunlight and shadow nurtured our youthful inclination to fantasy. It was big, with more trees and paths and mysterious corners than the smaller more frequented parks closer to home. The avenues of Moreton Bay Figs, most probably a part of Tunks's original plantings, were particularly intriguing. Having no idea at the time that they were indigenous, these truly impressive trees were what I imagined Enid Blyton's “magic faraway tree” to be, not the oak or whatever else she had in mind. With their tall, thickly buttressed trunks (that ooze a milky white sap when scratched), they reach into a broad canopy of dark leaves, their roots spreading visibly at the base before digging deep into the earth. They are trees that invite you to touch them and to climb into their branches. They are protective, solid and safe, an expression perhaps of what we mean by 'Mother Earth'. Rugby league's adoption of North Sydney Oval took place only after its controversial enclosure within a wooden fence occurred in 1909, in order to accommodate paying customers. 'The Shoremen', as the new rugby league team was known (the bear totem was not adopted until 1959), in the red and black jerseys, played their first match on the oval on 30th April 1910, defeating Glebe 13-9. In 1914 the club complained to council about fans watching the game from the fig trees outside the fence. A grandstand was constructed in 1929 and the old timber fence replaced with the present brick wall in the mid-1930s. Just which of these developments was responsible for separating one of the Moreton Bay Figs from its companions is uncertain, but one tree did become isolated within the grounds of the oval and has become something of a 'landmark' tree. Here it has grown comfortable and emblematic in its own space, on match day 'dressed' in black and red, young fans climbing into its branches for a better view, gathering meaning and stories, speaking “a language by which hearts are stirred / deeper than by a feeling clothed in word”. It is part of the character of the oval and of the tradition of North Sydney rugby league. Wherever we were seated the fig tree was a visible symbol of our tribal identity, like the old 'dule' trees once common in castle grounds throughout Scotland. Though the 'dule' trees were generally associated with grief and the mourning of the dead and were used regularly as gallows, while tempted on occasion I can't recall any hangings at North Sydney Oval. Nevertheless, on far too many afternoons when the final whistle blew there was more than enough grief and sorrow left to mull over. |