Searching for Australia’s largest blackbutt tree on my Royal Enfield Himalayan Motor Bike.

I'm currently in Sydney and I'm making my way north. But before I left the city, I thought I'd drop in on a mate's place. So, I've worked with wood in projects. I mean, I've renovated a 130-year-old house that was all made of wood. But Dave, who I'm about to meet, he's next level. You'd call him a craftsman. I mean, when you can look at a piece of wood and identify it immediately, you know you've gone pretty well down the rabbit hole of your passion. But what's interesting about Dave is he uses wood that is really old for his projects. The older, the better. So, this is Dave. G'day. So, the first thing I wanted to find out from Dave is what is it about wood that lights his fire? You know, this tiny little seed becomes a sapling. And with the right conditions, it grows and it grows and it grows and it becomes just the most amazing thing. Something that becomes a home to birds, something that gives protection from big storms and winds, provides shade, and then when you knock it down, you can create houses and buildings and the most amazing structures. And then you can create furniture, you know, things like I create. There's just so much to love about it. It's one of those products that just keeps on giving back. You know, you get to the end of its life and you put it in a fire and it gives you warmth. So, next question is, what is it about creating physical objects? I've spent 20 years on a keyboard. I deal with zeros and ones, mostly. I sit here and I do this. What I actually produce is something that people see on a screen. But when you get to deal with timber, when you're building something physical, you're actually using it with your hands, using amazing tools to create something that people love that's going to go on for potentially tens, twenties and hundreds of years, you know, that's pretty cool. The next thing I want to know, does the idea come first and then you go find the wood, or do you find some amazing wood and then come up with what you want to make out of it? Well, I go both ways, so to speak. Sometimes I have a design. Like, there's a bunch of designs that I have with timber. You know, I imagine a piece of furniture and I think about what pieces of timber I want. But it's not just any timber that will actually do the job. So I have the design, I go away and I look for this timber, and that piece of timber I know, and that piece of timber also knows when it is the right piece. There are other times where I'll get a piece of timber and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it until I actually get it. And then it's a process of collaboration, which doesn't really make sense because I'm kind of talking to the wood and it's kind of telling me back, but together we come up with what this design should actually be. So next question is, what is it about using old wood instead of newly felled timber? Well, there's a lot to love about old timber. You know, environmental reasons, waste, but the character is phenomenal. Take a look at this, for example. This piece here would have been above a fireplace. And ordinarily, with any timber, you'd cut all that stuff out. But for me, like, I'll retain all of this. Like, I think it's just part of, it adds to the story. It's part of the character. You know, this piece of timber is 120 years old, and it's like, why cut that out and hide all of these natural features that it's grown in its lifetime? So the next question is, do you like the search to find this really old timber? I think the search is half the fun. You know, you don't even know what you're going to find. That's the best part. You know, I jump on my motorbike, I go exploring out in the fields. I just look for stuff. I look for old stuff. And you just, the best part about it, you find a piece of timber. Could be this as an example. You know, it's old. It's terrible. Like, most people would throw that out. You know, you've got this dark exterior that's got this pre-use on it. You know, this piece of timber is like over 200 years old, and most people would actually throw it out. But as part of the venture is actually coming back with this piece of timber, I still don't know what I'm actually going to get out of this. You know, I come back, I get to the planer or the thicknesser, and I put it through, and it's going to come back and it's going to give me something. Now that comes into something like this. You know, we've got this beautiful, you know, 200-plus-year-old timber. These actual boards were in the Department of Education, in the Department of Education building in Sydney. It's tallow wood. It's very, very old. You get this beautiful, rich character. You've got these old holes, which I'll retain. You know, there is just, this is part of the adventure. I went out on a hunt. I didn't know what I was going to find. And all of a sudden, I find this old timber that most people would throw out. You know, this stuff ends up in tips everywhere. But for someone who actually cares about it and gives a bit of love to it, instead of this going to the fire pit, I can actually create a new chapter and create something like this, which will go on in someone else's house for a very, very long time. Do you want to see this? This is one of the latest projects I'm working on. It's a desk. Beautiful timber that is all connected together, but you get this waterfall feature. Comes up, goes all the way across, so it'll have a single leg connected to the wall. The actual timber is blackbutt. Beautiful, beautiful century-old blackbutt. I got it up in Narrabeen, which is about an hour north of here. A person was throwing it out, actually had collected it for a long time and wanted to use it for their, you know, save it for a rainy day project. Didn't come. I was fortunate enough to get it, and this is going to be one of the first projects I make out of it. Incredible. Incredible timber and blackbutt as a product. Unbelievable. Speaking of which, you're heading north. Yep. You should definitely, on your way home, go and check out a place called the Bird Tree. Go north of Taree, turn in at a place called Moorland, followed up this amazing dirt road. You just see this beautiful back, you know, back country land of Australia, and you find this tree. It's about 15 metres circumference and it's about 70 metres tall. Go check it out. Sounds like a plan. Time to get on the bike again. See you, mate. Safe riding, mate. Good luck. Firstly, I've got to go through the city, so that'll be interesting. It's not every day you see an A380 flying just above the trees. Riding in the city isn't normally great, but Sydney does have one bonus, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. No matter how many times I go over it, I wonder in amazement. They started building it on the 28th of July 1923 and finished it on the 19th of March 1932. So it's nearly 100 years since they started building. From the city, I make my way up just north of Taree. Today's instructions were to take this turn off, follow the road until it turns to dirt, and then soon after that there should be a right-hand turn and the trees are somewhere around there. So I'll have a crack at that, and when Dave's instructions fail, I may have to go to another map. Dave was right. This area is stunning. I rode through the small town of Hananpa and then onto the dirt road. Then cows. Then narrow bridges. And narrow dirt roads. Even narrower dirt roads. Somehow I spotted the turn. Dave should have just said, make a right at the cows. I could ride these backcountry dirt roads for days. I got to the end of the road where Dave's instructions ended. So a quick look at the maps showed that if I turn right here, I should come across the trail to get to the Bird Tree. I then spotted signs which were the green colour of the National Park signage. So I rode onto the trail, and yes, the sign said, Bird Tree, 11km. The track narrowed and started to deteriorate with more ruts. Then the ruts got deeper, and I was wondering if Dave had sent me on an old, unused trail that had been closed. And yes, the barrier had a closed road sign on it. So the track's probably only used by guys on dirt bikes. But my Royal Enfield got the job done. The sign read, Bird Tree, 400m. And that looks like a well-maintained dirt road. It seems Dave has sent me up the more difficult, less used backside trail up the mountain. Well, that took way longer than expected. But I did make it to the National Park this tree's in. I think there's a path up there. It's the only path I can see, so hopefully that's it. There are really big mozzies here. It's after 6pm. That trail took a little longer than expected. And there were some big holes in it. No wonder the sign said, Road Closed. Anyway, going to see if I can get to this tree before dark and get back out of here. So I don't get lost. This isn't it, but this is quite a big tree as well. Onwards. Left to right. When in doubt, always go left. Another giant. This thing is quite huge. Huge! Black butts aren't the biggest species of tree in the world, but this is close to the biggest they get. Thankfully the walk-in wasn't too long. It is quite a majestic looking thing. They believe this is at least 300 years old. So that means before Europeans even settled to Australia, like nearly 100 years before that, this thing was still here. So I continued walking around the path, and this is the other tree, I gather. It's hollow inside. How is that thing standing? The whole core's gone. Pretty insane. There's no signage on them, so I'm not sure which is which. One of them's 67 metres. This is the type of tree that would have made that desk that Dave was working on. Not sure it was this big, but it's probably that old because the wood was already 100 years old plus. So now I've got to get my butt out of here. No pun intended. And try and find the camp spot closest to here. I found one on an app. I think it's Wikicamp. It's a really cool little app that just helps you find free camp spots or any sort of camping. So I'm going to make my way out of here before it gets too dark, and I'll probably take the other road back because it looks a little more well-maintained, we'll say. And just like that, I bump into the Pacific Highway. Quick U-turn and back a couple of kilometres to the free campsite. I've been up and down this highway a lot of times, but never knew the Bird Tree was just a few kilometres into the forest. I wonder what else is just off Australia's National Highway that thousands of people pass every day. Well, I did make it to the campsite just as the sun was setting, so lucky not to be out on those trails in the dark going nowhere. So Dave's comment about, ah, seeing you're going north, you should go check out the biggest blackbark tree, turn the day from a boring ride up the Pacific Highway into quite a little adventure. So thanks Dave. Until next time.