Alistair Watt's induction into an exclusive, invite-only club of tree collectors happened by accident.
He jokingly downplays his obsession with rare trees as akin to a very large and cumbersome stamp collection.
But his determination to hunt down and introduce new species to his garden (and Australia) also has a worthy purpose.
A furniture maker, Mr Watt sometimes worked with Huon pine — one of the oldest living organisms on Earth and native only to a corner of Tasmania — until he decided he could no longer use such a rare tree for furniture.
"Once you've logged an area of Huon pine, that's it gone for 10 generations perhaps," Mr Watt says.
Instead, he tried growing his own Huon pine at his Lavers Hill property in the hills behind Victoria's famed Great Ocean Road.
It's a place where rain and mist are plentiful and Mr Watt, a Scottish emigrant, feels most at home.
The Huon pine ignited a passion for conifers, and it wasn't long before Mr Watt was looking beyond Australia for new varieties to grow in his garden.
"So then became a new challenge: how to find a way to go and get them from overseas to bring them back for the garden," he says.
Thrill of the find
Tree hunting is slow and sometimes painful work, requiring months of planning and bureaucratic wrangling.
Travelling to countries like Chile, China, and New Caledonia with permission to collect trees, Mr Watt says he has introduced about 200 new species into Australia over several decades.
Battles with extreme weather, unreliable transport, and the luck sometimes involved in finding what he sought were part of the thrill.
Even when Mr Watt managed to bring seeds and cuttings back to Australia, the journey was only beginning.
To ensure there were no diseases or pests hiding within his cargo, it would be housed in special quarantine greenhouses, most often at the Sydney or Melbourne botanic gardens.
Months or years later, he might receive the plants, "and it's a big might".
"Plants in a greenhouse can get too hot, or they might just die because the roots aren't formed on the cuttings," he says.
Of all the species he has introduced to his woodland garden, Mr Watt says his favourite is the Dacrydium guillauminii, a conifer that grows in one location beneath a waterfall in New Caledonia.
"It looks so ancient, you just can imagine a dinosaur walking down to drink at the river and splatting his big foot on top of it, and there it goes getting even rarer," he says.
Mr Watt says he was able to assist with the Dacrydium guillauminii's survival.
"When I first went there in the late 1980s … [the location] was being trashed as a local swimming spot, and I was able to contribute to getting it put into a reserve," he says.
Not like the 'old days'
Many of Mr Watt's tree-hunting expeditions were made in conjunction with Australian botanic gardens.
"It's often really good to work with people like [Alistair] who are passionate about plants … [and] have good collaborative relationships," says Brett Summerell, chief scientist at Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens.
These days, Professor Summerell says, most plant-hunting trips are conducted within Australia for the purpose of collecting seed and propagating material of threatened species.
"It's not a situation as in the old days, where you just went in and picked whatever you could get and brought it back and then worried about who owned it, what were the responsibilities," he says.
The times of plant hunters who search the colonies for species with economic potential or beautiful and spectacular plants to collect and introduce into European cultivation are over, he says.
Collaborations with other countries are also focused on conservation, with the aim of creating insurance populations in case a particular threatened plant species are wiped out in situ, Professor Summerall says.
"So you're ensuring the greatest chance for survival. That's one of those things that we do put a lot of effort in now," he says.
Mr Watt no longer collects new species from overseas due to more stringent biosecurity regulations and the expense.
Instead, he is content to visit and photograph rare plants where they grow.
Mr Watt sees his vast tree collection as another insurance policy for rare trees, which could be at risk in their original location.
His accidental career as a tree hunter also gained him an invitation to join the International Dendrologist Society, which promotes the study and enjoyment of trees.
"There was an article published on the most exclusive societies in the world and our society was on this list," Mr Watt says.
"You can only be in if you're invited to join."
The society has no secret handshake, although members do receive a very special hat pin.
But a lifetime spent collecting trees, some of which could grow for thousands of years, is presenting a new problem: what to do with the garden once Mr Watt is no longer here.
What was once a bare paddock has become an expansive woodland garden.
"It's not feasible for us to hand it over to the state or the National Trust, because we'll need the money to live on," Mr Watt says.
Instead, he hopes to find a buyer with a suitable love of trees to become a custodian of the garden.
Decades after planting his first Huon pine, Mr Watt recently cut off a small branch measuring about 10 centimetres in diameter.
He plans to work with the wood he has spent half a lifetime watching grow.
"I'll make something out of it, even if it's a serving fork and spoon," Mr Watt says.
"People say you're mad to start a garden like this, but then after 40 years, you get used to doing it and living it.
"I don't know how people manage not to build a garden."
