The following correspondence details the history of this tree and the connection with Keith Bate, grandson of the gentleman who planted it in 1912. Mr Bate still lives in the house located opposite the tree (Taylor, C. 2014)

     'In 1908ish, Keith's grandfather, William (Bill) Bate, came to New Zealand on the way to Antarctica with Robert Falcon Scott's supply ship "Morning". While they were here, William met and fell for a local Lyttelton girl, Fanny Salt; her father Richard (as a wee lad of 18mths) arrived with his family on one of the first four ships, the "George Seymour".
     On his second voyage here, again with Scott, Bill signed off and married Fanny, and they bought the property we now live in, and moved into a cottage which had been built here in 1880 as a workman's home. Keith and I, and our 2 children as youngsters, lived in the old house until 1972, and only demolished it when it was dangerous, around 10 years ago.
     On the birth of their first child, a boy, Jack, Bill planted the gum tree as a proud gesture in honour of the baby, in 1912.
     At that time the ground on which the tree still stands, was separated from the house by a small creek, and the old dirt track/road ran very closely to the front of the house up to the neighbouring property off the end of the road. The gum shared the land with numerous fruit trees, and we still knew this plot as the orchard when we came here in 1964, although by this time there were only a couple of plums, a pear, an apple and a quince. The Council subsequently (around 1995/6?) swapped the land around in order to reshape the creek, and we added the old road to our property.
     In all the years we have lived here, we can only remember a couple of occasions when there was a limb come off; one was during the Wahine storm, and the other of fairly recent times during another of our fierce southerlies.
     We are very fond of the old tree - we would be devastated if it was removed before it became absolutely necessary for safety reasons.
Diane Bate, pers. comm, email 18 September 2013