The Big Fig

No source agrees on this fig's exact age, but everyone agrees on its size. The Big Fig runs about 12 metres round at the base, buttressed and surface-rooted rather than a single slim trunk, under a canopy that spans 30 by 35 metres over a corner of Miriam Vale's Station Street. Queensland's heritage register places its planting between 1897 and about 1900, likely as part of a beautification scheme that put a single large weeping fig at several stations along the North Coast Line between Bundaberg and Gladstone, though the tree's own history is unconfirmed. The fig has done more civic work than most buildings. It served as the town's milk and cream collection point until 1977, and the earth mounds of the old loading ramp still sit beneath it. It has sheltered Anzac Day services since the war memorial went up in 1921. Locals brought sick animals to be looked at under it in the 1950s and 60s, an informal veterinary consultation with no walls. Today it is the chosen emblem of Miriam Vale Community Development Inc, which has plans, not yet built, for a boardwalk and signage beneath the crown. Gladstone Regional Council last confirmed it standing in January 2015, when arborists trimmed its roots and fitted a barrier to protect the road. No fence separates the tree from the street. Anyone driving the coast road to Agnes Water or Seventeen Seventy already passes directly beneath it.