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BELIEVE it or not, a bunch of palm trees is fed up with Sydney and is looking to spend the New Year break in sunnier climes around Queensland.
They`ll be dug up and shipped out to be sunned, soaked, spoiled and pampered - until returning to the relentless grind of their day jobs right in the middle of King Georges Rd at Beverly Hills.
After years of service in the daily throes of the city`s gridlock, they have earned a bit of respite. So they`ll do what it is trees do best - leave.
The open-ended vacation will give the Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation (TIDC) the time and space it needs to finish roadwork near Beverly Hills railway station.
A TIDC spokesman said the trees would be removed as part of the Kingsgrove-to-Revesby quadruplication project and moved to a "nursery or other suitable location where they will be carefully tended to".
A location in Queensland with a similar climate is being considered.
But the holiday could yet turn out to be a forced redundancy, with the rail quadruplication project not due for completion until 2013.
There`s a saying in the palm tree business that has hit home during the global financial crisis - never go on a holiday.
Five Canary Island date palms that were sent on a forced vacation in 2002 from their posts on Delhi Rd, North Ryde, returned only in July.
After 76 years of faithful service, which began as a group of 50 seedlings in 1932, they came back from an Elanora Heights nursery to find that their jobs no longer existed.
With the new Epping-to-Chatswood rail link completed beneath Delhi Rd, there just wasn`t the demand for experienced trees any more.
The five survivors of the palm colony were replanted in Macquarie Park Cemetery and Crematorium.
It`s enough to make Charles Rennie, the landscape gardener who returned from California in 1929 with the palm seedlings, turn in his grave.
After years of service in the daily throes of the city`s gridlock, they have earned a bit of respite. So they`ll do what it is trees do best - leave.
The open-ended vacation will give the Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation (TIDC) the time and space it needs to finish roadwork near Beverly Hills railway station.
A TIDC spokesman said the trees would be removed as part of the Kingsgrove-to-Revesby quadruplication project and moved to a "nursery or other suitable location where they will be carefully tended to".
A location in Queensland with a similar climate is being considered.
But the holiday could yet turn out to be a forced redundancy, with the rail quadruplication project not due for completion until 2013.
There`s a saying in the palm tree business that has hit home during the global financial crisis - never go on a holiday.
Five Canary Island date palms that were sent on a forced vacation in 2002 from their posts on Delhi Rd, North Ryde, returned only in July.
After 76 years of faithful service, which began as a group of 50 seedlings in 1932, they came back from an Elanora Heights nursery to find that their jobs no longer existed.
With the new Epping-to-Chatswood rail link completed beneath Delhi Rd, there just wasn`t the demand for experienced trees any more.
The five survivors of the palm colony were replanted in Macquarie Park Cemetery and Crematorium.
It`s enough to make Charles Rennie, the landscape gardener who returned from California in 1929 with the palm seedlings, turn in his grave.
