Kangaroo Island, South Australia

We headed back inland across beautiful green farmlands dotted with white sheep and amazingly tall grass trees. Tates Grass Tree or Yakka Trees are very slow growing - a metre every hundred years. This one was unusual with two tall stalks where normally it would have one. The gum from the Yakka was once used to make fireworks, flares and waterproofing but the tree was almost wiped out so is not harvested any more. Now you know where the term 'hard yakka' came from as the harvesting of the gum was a lot of hard work!