For more than 50 years,Semco made linen,cotton threads and embroidery kits here,employing hundreds of locals,in roles from gardeners to machinists and accountants.
The company left the area in the late 1970s and later merged with a multinational. The land was sold for housing in the 1980s.
Joan Couzoff with the Sydney red gum on Sunday.Credit:Penny Stephens/The Age
Those at the tree’s birthday party included a former Semco designer,Joan Couzoff,nee Staindl.
Sunday was also Couzoff’s 92nd birthday and there was a 1950s photo of her at Semco on display.
Couzoff,who designed products and ads for Semco for decades from her late teens,says it was a good company with plenty of social events.
“It employed about 400 people from around the area,” she said. “We needed them because there weren’t many jobs about.”
Bayside councillor Laurie Evans,whose aunt,Jean Davis,worked at Semco,said the tree was an example of a positive legacy left for future generations.
Linda Baird,CEO of not-for-profit Eucalypt Australia,said:“Happy birthday,beautiful tree.”
Baird told the gathering that Eucalypt Australia has just namedangophora costata as the eucalypt species of the year,based on a poll.
“What an amazing thing to do,” she said of this tree’s birthday party,noting its “curly wurly branches”,“beautiful,smooth red bark” and distinctive ribbed gum nuts.
Locals told her that currawongs,kookaburras and rainbow lorikeets are among bird species sheltered by the tree.
Baird praised the residents “for understanding just how important it is to have our middle-aged trees revered,kept,nurtured and sustained”.
Poet Ian Bland,who as a child attended fetes in Semco’s grounds,recited an ode describing branches that “weave as though in dance”.
Writing as the tree in first person,he said:“Now houses keep me company yet my majesty lives on. I am valued,I am cherished,the last standing of my peers. You may not see my like again,not in 100 years.”
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