Grow your own

Graeme McAlpine is ready to pass on the secrets of his mind-bending craft. 

By Liane Arno
 
TO ALL you whittlers, woodworkers, crafties, artisans and chippies – you’ve been doing it all wrong!  You don’t make a walking stick – you grow it.  That’s right – grow it.  It will take a little longer of course – but what you end up with is an amazing, unique and treasured ambulatory aid like no other in the world.
 
It took five years and much trial and error for Graeme McAlpine to master the technique of growing walking sticks.

​Graeme was born at Yarram Hospital on one of the coldest and bleakest days of the year in 1951 and was brought home to grow up on a dairy farm at Carrajung Lower. 
 
He loved being at the farm and like any of the farm boys at the time became hands on from a very early age.  Of all the general handy skills he learned it was gardening and plants that he loved most. 
 
He started trying to grow cuttings at about eight or nine years of age.  From age 12 he was growing a trailer load of Queensland Blue pumpkins which would keep the family going all year. 
 
He never liked school.  At the time he didn’t understand but he now realises that he was mildly dyslexic and so it was with great pleasure that he left school the day he turned 15, with a very poor education.
 
He went to work on the farm – but this time for a wage.  The farmland was really wind swept, as you can imagine.  The early pastoralists had of course cleared the land – but they had gone too far.  Graeme wanted to find a better balance between the cleared land needed for a dairy farm and regenerating the land.  It became a life-long passion to grow trees.
 
When he moved into share farming he commenced a journey of 32 years of renovating a rundown farm which included planting 3000 trees every second year.

And some of those trees he grew to make walking sticks.  As Graeme puts it, “I had a light bulb moment.  Why couldn’t I grow a walking stick?  Why not bend and twist a sapling into shapes and endless possibilities?” 

​The result of the light bulb moment meant that he created around 200 highly individualised, strong, signed and numbered walking sticks with no joins, pins or glue.

A grower's guide

​Graeme says, “You want to plant  seeds of gums or wattles or any tree that is strong enough and quick growing enough for the walking sticks.  They need to reach 900mm in two or three years. The best in my experience is southern mahogany (Eucalyptus botryoides) which will grow very quickly.
 
“Also you need to start with seeds.  If you buy the tubes then replanting them stunts the growth.  Don’t bury the seeds – just put them on the surface of the soil and water them in – they will find a crack on their own – just like nature.  And finally – not too close.  You need at least a metre apart for each.”

No two are the same.  Each tells its own story.  Most have now been sold but a few remain at the Meeniyan Art Gallery and are certainly worth a look if you are heading over that way.

A few years ago Graeme, then in his early 70s and retired from farming, had a number of potentially life-threatening health issues.  That, and the chiding of friends and strangers, resulted in him now trying to document the lessons learned in making the walking sticks so that it will not be lost.

Now living at Cape Paterson, he is in the process of writing a book.  He writes a little bit every evening complete with hand-drawn figures to better explain the process that has been perfected after many years of trial and error. 
 
It is quite a challenge to do so given his dyslexia but he wants to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to grow their very own walking stick.  It takes a couple of years – so better get cracking! ​