Fed: Record book says eucalypt not a Christmas tree

AAP General News (Australia)
12-19-2000
Fed: Record book says eucalypt not a Christmas tree

The Guinness Book of Records has denied Australia the chance to have the world's tallest
Christmas tree, saying the country's flowering eucalypts don't measure up.

A decorated concrete smokestack in the American state of Massachusetts qualifies as
the tallest artificial Christmas tree but the giant eucalypt in Tasmania's Styx River
valley, about 50km from Hobart, has been disqualified.

Tasmanian Greens senator BOB BROWN says they've got to recognise that there are two
halves to this world and the half down here has got a world-beater when it comes to this
Christmas tree.

The 77.8-metre-high swamp gum or mountain ash tree is almost as tall as the flagpole
on federal Parliament House.

The tree attained an international reputation last year when it was decorated with
3,000 fairy lights to draw attention to its likely short future as it was in the middle
of a logging area.

AAP RTV kjp/daw/klw/jx

KEYWORD: CHRISTMAS (CANBERRA)

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