Officially Drouin's favourite gum

It's official - a 130 year-old tree in Lampards Rd has been chosen as Drouin's favourite eucalypt tree.
Known as the "Old Swimming Hole Giant" the tree won a poll from four other nominations in a poll conducted by the Friends of Drouin Trees with the result announced at an event at Alex Goudie Park on March 23, National Eucalypt Day.
The winning tree stands some 30 metres high, has a trunk girth of 4.5 metres and a canopy spread of 20 metres.
The rare Strzelecki gum is located opposite the Drouin hockey field and close to a site that was the swimming hole for locals around the start of the 1900s.
Eucalypts are a feature of Drouin with the Friends of Trees group's Peter Ware saying there are thousands of them in the town.
In taking out the favourite tree award it beat off the challenges of The "Settlement Giant," a Mountain Grey at the corner of Settlement Rd and Springwater Drive; The "Grandfather Tree", a Messmate Stringybark in Civic Park; the "Railway Giant", another mountain grey gum, and the corridor of Ficifolia in Princes Way.
The competition marked the national eucalypt day's theme for this year, Celebrating our Urban Champions.
The day commemorates the birth date of Bjarne K. Dahl, a Norwegian born forest assessor who spent most of his working career in Gippsland.
He left his entire estate to establish a trust, today administered by Eucalypt Australia, to educate, promote, cultivate and conserve eucalypt trees.