Lone Pine products
This is your opportunity to own a collector’s item made from a branch that fell from the Lone Pine Tree during a storm on 27 December 2008. The story of the tree, which stands in the Memorial grounds, is told below.
Alternatively you can contact the eSales Unit on:
- 02 6243 4438
- 02 6243 4542
- 02 6243 4578
The ‘Lone Pine’ tree
Damaged Lone Pine branch
On 6 August 1915 a great offensive was launched from ANZAC on Gallipoli. The opening attack, by the Australians on the Turkish positions at Lone Pine, developed into a brutal battle that continued for three and a half days. At the end of it, the Australians held Lone Pine, but their losses had been dreadful.
Among the dead was a soldier from the 4th Battalion, Australian Imperial Force. His brother, having gone to Lone Pine shortly after its capture, sent their mother in Australia a cone from one of the pine logs used by the Turks as overhead cover for their trenches. Many years later, the Australian War Memorial acquired a sapling grown from a seed that she had taken from the cone.
On 25 October 1934, with only the Memorial’s foundations laid, Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester (and later Governor-General of Australia), planted the sapling in the grounds of the Memorial. The ceremony was barely over when a severe thunderstorm struck Canberra. A bridge over the Molonglo River was washed away, but the sapling remained standing. It became known as the Lone Pine.
