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It was very important to me that whatever this be,
that it be like a beautiful object.
I am always a fan of things that float,
of curves.
I like things that look like
things that shouldn't be able to do that,
, and that's when something becomes immediately interesting and catches your eye.
You look at it and it has some sort of magic and some poetry about it.
There's elegance and inherent grace.
I'll scribble and scribble and scribble for hours and hours.
I guess it's my process in trying to
bring an idea out.
I can find out all sorts of things just through sketching.
Some type of floating spiral - that was the thing that I kept coming back to.
And the building part is where it all starts to
often unravels,
get richer
or change in this case but the people would did all those things
This one's quite small and this will get connected to I think another half.
So it'll be a full circle
which will hold
plants
in pots, as such.
So this would be --
that's your fair number 8.
That's actually your full shelf from a plan view,
each circle
is each pot.
And this will get sent
down through to the C&C machine.
From there you will operate the machine to cut these exact shapes out of
a sheet of ply.
The final step will be that these shelves will get loaded up onto a truck
and
taken down to The Rocks
at Circular Quay there, and constructed and put together.
We started with a lot of aluminium pipe,
long sections of aluminium pipe, 6 and a half metre lengths.
We had about 20 of those. We had to roll those into 24 different radiuses.
120 metres of pipe up there
and going to get them cut up and drilled.
There's 600 odd holes up there,
and then tart to get it altogether like lego.
It's just been incredible.
Whatever we had to do, we had to do 600 times for everything.
So then it was a case of actually putting this together, like a massive
Meccano set.
And you know what, right now, the things that resemble something of a
supersized garlic.
We'll have an irrigation line
that'll weave through this entire thing.
In that will be packed Perl-Lome which is a growing medium,
it's like a granulated polystyrene.
Once that's packed in there, then we'll plant each of our succulents. There's about 27 different types we've got so far. Once this is done, we have to move this out of here somehow.
We have a height limit, which is 3 and a half meters.
We also have a
width limit
of which we can fit on the back of a semi-trailer and that's 2 and a half meters.
The whole tree is 5 metres wide, 7 metres tall.
The sub structure will come apart but then all the outer pipes
and everything
is going to be
a whole other thing.
Loading it all onto the back of a couple of trucks was heart stopping for me
but it made it here. When we got here yesterday, it was frenetic.
Trying to get this thing set in position , levelled
but we got it done
and we were here until 12.30 last night, and we are so close to getting this all planted out with succulents.
We are now getting all the shelves in that will hold the Rhipsalis, which is going to take it up to another level again.
We've got all the irrigation and the soil within
the structure, so it's still growing while it's here in The Rocks. And it's such a beautiful and Australian tree. Brendan's chosen a really beautiful assortment, all the little beautiful gorgeous ones on the outside and then we'll have long gorgeous Rhipsalis on the inside which will look like a waterfall, so it's quite beautiful.
The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority
does a whole range of different projects
from something like Australia Day where you've got 120,000 people
in one place
to kind of more boutique projects
which might be an event or they might be an installation kind of work.
In the past, our Christmas Trees in The Rocks have been made of
all sorts of things
-- trees, bottles,
bicycles, plastic signage.
The theme is always around sustainability. This year, like okay, we really wanted it to be a living tree so we're delighted with The Rocks Christmas Tree this year.
We're still finishing, putting the finishing touches on and we've got to do the lighting.
And already, all the general public are walking past, people are having their photographs taken in front of it,
people are stopping and pointing. I can see them looking out of car windows
so I really think we've hit our mark in creating a talking point. And I'm sure once we see the lights on tonight, it's going to be even better. So look, hats off to Brendan and the whole team who put it together. I think they've really achieved a great outcome.
I love it, I think it's a really great way to express Christmas!
I think the installation
is absolutely amazing with all the use of succulents, that are just fresh and vibrant and really beautiful. And the fact they get to last the entire time until Christmas, which means it's sustainable.
I've never seen anything like this.
I love the tree, it's really cool.
It suits the whole Rocks kind of thing.
This is a Christmas tree
and it's about
Christmas. And it's about all of the good things about Christmas.
And if people see this Christmas tree, and they feel happy;
it makes them think about their family,
, it makes them have thoughts for a hopeful future
then that's when the tree is doing it's job.