Separation Tree
memorial tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne
The Separation tree is a heritage listed Eucalyptus camaldulensis tree, commonly known as a red river gum, located in the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in Melbourne in Victoria.
Found on the Tennyson Lawn the tree was one of two original river red gums that were along the banks of the swampy billabong which makes up part of the Ornamental Lake.
The tree is a Melbourne landmark and is best known as the site where the citizens of the city congregated on 15 November 1850 to celebrate when the news that Victoria was to separate from the colony of New South Wales after it had been announced by Governor La Trobe. It is one of the few trees left in the garden that pre-dates European colonization. The tree was approximately 24 m (79 ft) in height with a canopy that was around 27 m (89 ft) wide. The trunk had a circumference of 3.83 m (13 ft) at its girth. A plaque commemorating the centenary of the separation of the colonies was placed at the base of the tree in 1951.
In 1982 the Separation Tree was placed on the Significant Tree Register of the National Trust of Victoria.
In 2010 and again in 2013 the 400 year old tree was damaged in acts of vandalism. In the 2010 attack the tree was ringbarked and about 90 per cent of the cambial tissue removed.
“Separation Tree” enters the record as memorial tree in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Separation, Tree and memorial can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q48806929. Authority coordinates are -37.829, 144.984. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1850, 1951, 1982 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Separation Tree” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.