Port Jackson Fig, The Cloisters

In 1971 an office tower was built around this fig rather than over it. Mt Newman House went up on the site of The Cloisters on St Georges Terrace, and the architects designed the development to keep the tree where it was. The state heritage inventory files the result as a successful attempt to rehabilitate a mature existing tree and integrate it into a major city development, which is bureaucratic language for a decision most Australian cities were not making in 1971. It survived a later redevelopment of the site as well. Its age is a matter of record rather than of estimate, which is rare. A tenant of The Cloisters planted it as a small tree in 1887, and the heritage inventory and the building's own history agree on that, so the tree is 139 years old this year. It has grown into the space it was spared. Eighteen metres tall, a trunk 3.9 metres round, a canopy spreading roughly 15 by 18 metres, condition assessed as very good. Port Jackson figs branch low and wide, so it fills the forecourt between the tower and The Cloisters' old brickwork and turns a piece of hard city frontage into shade. It is a minute's walk off the main run of St Georges Terrace, free, and visible from the street at any hour, and it asks nothing of you but a look upwards.