Granny MacMahon’s Tree

Granny MacMahon’s Tree.  Binder Reserve, Regan Street, Hurstville. 

A plaque in Binder Reserve commemorates the planting of a Port Jackson fig tree in memory of a younger member of the MacMahon family.  Mrs MacMahon, it is said, used to conduct Sunday School under its shade.  At one time the tree was enclosed by a metal railing with a plaque on the tree itself, but these are long gone.

In the 1970s, a nearby home-owner, Ivy Tudor stated: “An early resident of Patrick Street, Mrs Pearse, told me that when she and a son of the MacMahon family were about seven years old they each held a branch of the Moreton Bay fig tree while adults filled in the soil and planted it.  Mrs Pearse believed that the land was donated in memory of that son, who died aged 21.”

The Mrs Pearse referred to was likely Mrs Margaret Pearse of Patrick Street, who died in 1950 aged 85.  She would have been born circa 1865, which would suggest that the tree may have been planted as early as circa 1872 – fifteen years before the foundation of Hurstville as a municipality.  One of Patrick MacMahon’s nine children, John Stephan MacMahon, born in 1863, was of a similar age, and may be the boy referred to who held the tree with her when it was planted.  He died in 1887, and it may that it was in his memory that the land for the reserve was donated.