Bump to Bark: Melbourne’s Tree Root-Formed Kickers
Walking around Melbourne’s city center, it is hard not to take note of the leafy trees that line its bluestone-tile paved sidewalks, a combination of Eucalypts, Corymbia, Plane, and Elm trees.
The Plane trees, specifically the London Plane Tree (Platanus x hispanica) – a hybrid between the Cyprus Plane (Platanus orientalis) and the American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) – are the most populous. Making up 63% of the inner-city tree population, they are spread out every twenty metres or so throughout the main thoroughfares of Swanston Street, Elizabeth Street, and Collins Street. Due to their wind-resistant nature, tolerance to atmospheric pollution and being one of the most efficient trees in removing small particulate pollutants, they are a popular tree for urban environments globally. London Planes can be seen in cities including Sydney, New York City, Johannesburg, and of course London, where their planting was first popularised during Victorian times.
While popular in urban environments, the London Plane has caused quite a bit of drama for their use in Melbourne for a variety of reasons. The city aims to phase them out, replacing them with other tree species, intending to reduce the number of Planes to 5% of the city’s tree population by 2040.
The biggest concern is that their short, stiff hairs that are shed by the young leaves and dispersing seeds are an irritant if breathed in, exacerbating breathing difficulties for people with asthma and being a large cause of hay fever, particularly in the spring and early summer months.
Another major issue caused by the trees is that their vigorous roots cause many problems in cities, making tripping hazards, buckling the surface around them. The City of Melbourne has combated the invasive root problem by covering the base of the tree in a flexible, permeable pebble mix paving, to save the bluestone pavement while keeping the roots covered and suitable for the environment. Due to the flexible nature of the paving it bubbles up, forming unique, bumpy, wavy, natural bumps, perfect for skateboarding. The permeable paving bases at the bottom of the hayfever, allergy causing Plane’s, have been skated by basically everyone to ever skate the city within the last decade, whether it be rolling over them while skating down the street or launching off the bump.
Melbourne is by no means the first city in the world to introduce a permeable paving (or different flexible material) at the bottom of the trees nor the only city where the obstacle has been skated, Blondey McCoy got hit by a taxi in London after doing a wallie on a tree using the permeable paving to assist him in Palasonic. However, they seem to have become a characterisation of Melbourne street skateboarding in a way no other cities trees have become. Speaking to Melbourne-based filmer and Nike SB Australia team manager, Geoff Campbell about why this might be the case, he likens Melbourne skateboarders to ‘lemmings’, the small, rodent-like animals who are known for blindly following the will of others. ‘With the bumps being relatively easy to get a clip on but still looking good, everyone will try to get a piece until there’s basically nothing left to do,’ he says.
Recently, talking with friends I found out about the Urban Forest Visual, a website started by the City of Melbourne, that holds information about all the trees, including their age, names, even their individual email addresses. Yes, you can email a tree. With all the information from the Urban Forest Visual, I was curious if there’s a correlation between the age of the tree and how good their root induced bumps are to skate or if there is a species of tree that is better to skate than others.
Tree 1025160 is a London Plane situated at 145 Collins Street. A mature tree that has reached its full potential in the landscape and potentially the bump has reached its final form. Tree 1025160 is the most famously skated tree in the city, Campbell credits the 1025160’s popularity to the hill it resides on. ‘You can blast off it and get more airtime than what you would on flatground,’ he says. The first sighting of 1025160 being skated in its current pebblecrete form is that of the Dave “Battlecat” Harris’ ollie over Maxwell Mapstone, photographer Andrew Mapstone’s then five-year-old son in James James’ Melbourne Autumn 2013 clip. Two years later, in 2015 was the true birth of the spot with Jack Kirk’s Kr3w Killers part by Geoff Campbell, kickflipping off the bump after a frontside tailslide the ledge connected to the outside of The Scots Church, then ollies off the smaller bump of Tree 1025159, a semi-mature London Plane further down the hill – a tree originally seen in Chris Middlebrook’s 2001 video Blank Vandals, prior to the permeable paving when Anton Jeandet flew down the hill at full speed and ollied over the whole dirt patch.
Kirk’s’s line opened the floodgates to the “spot”, which over the next decade has found itself being skated regularly. People often opting for single tricks rather than Kirk’s route of a line, with the likes of Sam Sutton, Paul Battlay, and Harry McEvoy all contributing to the list of tricks boosted off the uneven pebblecrete and down the footpath of the city’s steepest hill, which really isn’t that steep.
It took until 2021 for another proper line to be done at the spot, Shaun Paul in his Shaun Paul for Hoddle part like Kirk frontside tailslides the ledge at the top of the block, this time to fakie, leading into a fakie bigflip on flat and finishing it off with a varial flip off Tree 1025160’s permeable paving.
Further up the block just before the ledge out the front of The Scots Church, is a mature tree, Tree 1025163, which was skated by Nick Cave’s son, Earl Cave in a WKND video, he wallied the tree landing on the pebblecrete before quickly rolling off the curb into Collins Street against traffic.
Now, that kicker is close to being unskateable, it’s buckled with a crack at the roll up. Looking at Google Maps, it seems to only be backdated to 2022 and you can see it forming, proving the roots change rapidly and are regularly changing the shapes of the ground above the roots, meaning maybe there is a perfect age for the trees.
As of more recently, Tree 1023782, a mature London Plane on Elizabeth Street, whose roots formed a bubble at the tree's base, has become a new hot spot, thanks to Campbell and co. skating it in his WAIRMAX edit for the newest Ishod Wair shoe in 2024. With Dante Narita-Johnson, Tai Wepa, and Hayley Wilson boosting out of it onto the freshly resurfaced bluestone footpath of Elizabeth Street as if it’s the most perfect skatepark bump.
The most prominent examples that have been skated are Plane trees with it evident that the older the tree the better. However, there is a time frame of it being “perfect” before it can get too old and the roots too big, causing cracks in the gaps between the bluestone tiles and permeable paving, which can be seen above with Tree 1025163.
Wanting to know what Campbell’s favourite trick is that he’s filmed off any of the bumps is, his answer is surprising, ‘Kirksy’s line from $21.50 at Black marble ledge where he does an impromptu frontside flip off one [Tree 1025498] at the end.’ A trick on a tree which for the most part has been relatively untouched, but makes sense when you watch the line.
As Melbourne attempts to phase out the Plane Tree, the question comes: will this be the end of an iconic Melbourne terrain, much like we have been seeing with the removal of the yellow tram barrier?
