Ooline

    (Cadellia pentastylis)

A remnant of the dry rainforests that flourished here some 20,000 years ago, Ooline is now on the vulnerable list. The large examples pictured can be seen along the road between Injune and the Carnarvons near the bottom of the 'jump-up' (local term for 'escarpment').

  Ooline dislikes losing or having its surrounding vegetation disturbed so regular burning by aborigines for thousands of years and clearing for agriculture in more recent times has all but wiped it out. A fine example of this is the trees that the Main Roads Dept left standing on the easement when they sealed the final sections of the development road in the 1990's.  They obviously knew the trees were important as they were the only trees left behind - to die a slow death! I'll never understand why they couldn't have left a bit of scrub around each one to give it a fighting chance.

  Most known stands of Ooline remaining are within National Parks but there are still a few to be found on private property. The timber occasionally becomes available through windfall that can be collected with a permit in northern NSW where Ooline is found over a larger area although the trees are apparently not as big as these examples.

Ooline is a hard timber to turn and curly grain can be difficult to deal with. It sands OK and the heartwood finishes well but the sapwood is a pain. The square bowl pictured was a series of mistakes but a valuable learning experience. It's been about two years since I turned through the bottom of a form and came so close to going through this one that I had to add the Gidgee foot to get it finished.  Trying to include the sapwood for it's rich golden colour was also a mistake as it is quite difficult to get a good finish on so what worked for one didn't work for the other - difficult to differentiate at 1000 r.p.m! Final boo-boo was forgetting the golden rule - 'stick to the plan'. The pattern of piercings I was originally going to use would have looked much better but I was worried about losing too much sapwood - would have been better off without it!

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