Crowning celebration

LAKE Boort Cub and Scouts on Monday planted a commemorative gum tree to mark the coronation of King Charles.

Leaders Garry Schmidt and Matt Doyle organised the special planting in Commonwealth Jubilee Park, Godfrey St, as a link with the town’s planting of a tree when the King’s mother Queen Elizabeth became monarch 70 years ago.

On Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation in 1953 almost 1000 people including councillors and Politicians witness the Boort tree being planted.

After the ceremony in Nolen’s Park a bonfire was organised for that night in the Commonwealth Jubilee Park where the King Charles coronation tree was planted on Monday.

Paul Haw, who attended the 1953 event as a school child, said Loddon Shire contributed by preparing the soil and supplying the new tree.

“The gesture of a tree for the new king by local Cubs and Scouts gives a new link to how the Queen’s coronation was marked in Boort back in 1953,”

Paul said.

The Scout leaders helped members Carrie Byrne, Beau Kane, William Haw, Alice Marsh, Luca Lanyon, Riley Beattie, Henry Hawken, Eva Perryman and Floss Rogers place the Sydney Blue Gum eucalyptus saligna during the brief ceremony.

Elsewhere in the Loddon, Inglewood antique store owner Catherine Norman had memorabilia from the Queen’s coronation.

She said there had been a spike in interest in royal collectables following the Queen’s death last year.

And while the Queen’s portrait is still displayed in many halls across the region, Loddon Shire has been quick to place a portrait of King Charles on the wall of its Wedderburn council chamber.

The coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla last Saturday night (Australian time) in Westminster Abbey was viewed on television by millions of people around the world.