CITY of Ballarat is investigating attempts to kill a protected tree at Eastern Oval.
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The city is appealing to the public for information to the incident, which carries penalties for wilful damage under local government and state legislation.
The poisoned plane tree (Platanus x acerifolia) stands near the bowling club and construction site for new cricket nets inside the oval’s Peel Street entrance.
City of Ballarat infrastructure and environment director Terry Demeo said while the tree had no special value, the tree was protected under heritage overlay for the Humffray Street Heritage Precinct.
”In addition, the tree has significant amenity value in that it forms a part of the Eastern Oval surrounds, which includes the Grace Elm, planted in 1874, a substantial tree that is on the register of significant trees of Victoria,” Mr Demeo said.
The attempted poisoning has not killed the tree nor caused it to be removed.
Works have been programmed to prune the tree and remove any deadwood to ensure the tree is best positioned to allow its recovery.
Anyone with information about the damage to the tree is asked to contact City of Ballarat on 5320 5500.
FLASHBACK: Eastern Oval’s glorious return
Called Australia's most English ground by W.G. Grace, it's now reclaiming its former glory as Paul Daffey reported in The Age, August 2003.
During the 1870s, English cricket legend W.G. Grace declared the Eastern Oval in Ballarat to be the most English ground in Australia. A Dutch elm, whose span of branches now reaches forward over the ground and back over the grandstand, was dubbed the W.G. Grace Elm in his honour.
A century after the doctor's pronouncement, the Eastern Oval had more in common with the English Channel than an English cricket ground. In the words of former Ballarat Football League president Wayne Hankin, it was a sea of mud.
During the 1980s, the slush at the Eastern Oval forced its football co-tenants, East Ballarat and Golden Point, to play home games at nearby towns such as Learmonth and Waubra. North Ballarat thrashed Sebastopol in the 1985 Ballarat league grand final at the Eastern Oval, but the next season's preliminary final marked the final day for several years on which the ground would share equal footing with City Oval as Ballarat's premier football venue.
At least it was a good finale. With snow resting on the players' shoulders during the last change, Golden Point coach Barry Allan marched out to the huddle to give one of the shortest addresses in sport. "Do something," he said, and marched back to the boundary line.
Stunned into action, Golden Point rebounded from several goals down to defeat Sebastopol. The next week, the Pointies lost to North Ballarat in the grand final that marked the beginning of the City Oval era.
The Eastern Oval had been a source of pride for Ballarat's easterners since the Gold Rush.
Its first cricket match was held in 1853; the first football match in 1866.
Its eminence prompted those on the other side of town to build the Western Oval, where spectators enjoyed the view from on top of the mullock heaps around the boundary line. The ground, however, was too small to host big football games.
The City Oval, built on the former Saxon's Paddock near Lake Wendouree, came to be the Eastern Oval's main rival in the hearts of Ballarat sports fans. From the early 1920s, the two ovals hosted the Ballarat Football League grand finals on alternate years. It was an arrangement that would last six decades.
Also in the early 1920s, Maryborough joined the Ballarat Football League. Before the Magpies' first game at the Eastern Oval, a portent of good fortune arrived when a magpie alighted on the centre circle. In 1925, Maryborough defeated Ballarat at the Eastern Oval before more than 13,000, an attendance that remains the ground's record.
Other highlights at the Eastern Oval include the banana kick that old-timers swear they saw during a grand final in the late 1940s, a couple of decades before such a kick was said to be invented. Golden Point coach Lance Collins, a Carlton forward in the 1945 Bloodbath grand final, thrilled those jammed into the grandstand behind him when he curled the ball through the goals from the boundary line.
In 1972, the grand final between North Ballarat and Maryborough erupted into a frightening brawl just after the opening bounce. In 1992, English all-rounder Ian Botham clubbed the Sri Lankan bowlers during cricket's World Cup.
Around this time, Ballarat football administrators all but gave up on the former showpiece, which was disintegrating to mush at the first drop of rain. Finally, in 2000, a redevelopment was undertaken. No footballs were allowed near the Eastern Oval for two seasons as the oval was widened and lengthened and effective drainage installed.
Football returned to the Eastern Oval last year, with the surface being so good that the Ballarat league grand final returned to the ground by the Yarrowee Creek for the first time in 17 years. A crowd of 8500 saw Redan defeat Sunbury on a glorious spring day. During the cricket season, a one-day match was held in which Queensland dismissed Victoria for 67, a tally put down to incompetence rather than the pitch. Wayne Hankin this week described the oval's history from a vantage at the back of the delightful wooden grandstand, which was built in 1904.
To him, the only regret about the Eastern Oval's overdue return to glory was the fact that it coincided with the merger between the football co-tenants to form East Point.
He was disgusted that the merged club is now playing in red, white and blue, the former colours of East Ballarat. "How do you expect the Pointies to follow that?" he said.
While Hankin railed against such injustices, his cousin David Greville, the ground manager, pulled a heavy roller across the oval's surface with his tractor. On stepping down from his tractor, Melville, a former Golden Point defender, described breaking his leg during the mid-1980s because his foot was stuck in the mud.
A decade later, as ground manager, Greville received an unusual request when mourners asked whether they could take deceased East Ballarat stalwart Hec Wilson for a final lap around the oval. Greville was happy to grant the request, only to become alarmed when the hearse began to trace the course of the boundary line.
Behind the leading car were 40 others. In the end, the entire funeral cortege did a lap of the Eastern Oval, sending Greville into a panic. Now that the Eastern Oval's surface is less fragile, Greville would be less worried about such an incursion. He would even like to test it out himself. "When I go, I want to do two laps," he said.