MAHATMA Gandhi, a man unique in human history because he was both wise and a vegetarian, once spoke of the achievement of conquest as if it was a curse.

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary," he said.

Obviously, Mahatma had never encountered a root like the one I did on the weekend.

Besides, he was a vegetarian hippy and therefore as sensible as a Great White Shark during mating season.

My whole rooting experience reeked of the stench of violence but there was nothing momentary about it.

In fact, it lasted for hours which felt like days. It was dirty, frustrating, mind-numbing and inexplicably rapturous, all at once.

It started with an innocent pledge to do a bit of gardening. It was Sunday, a holy 24-hour period once reserved for rest and reflection.

While others were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ by raising a beer in salute to the heavens, I was wielding a shovel to dig a hole into the proverbial depths of hell.

Jesus ended up with holes in his hands during the Easter long weekend, and by the end of it so did I.

Well they weren't actual holes. More like crevices filled with calluses and weeping blisters that almost resembled stigmata.

OK, it didn't resemble stigmata at all but it was bloody painful. And that is my point, made all the more clearer when you read the preceding passage backwards.

Anyway, my target was a relatively small tree. The tree looked fine to me. It had branches that stretched out with leaves on the end which were green.

But alas, it was a weed and a pest invading the garden that was meant to be overflowing with native species such as coconut palms.

I know coconut palms aren't native but it works for Palm Cove so go tell it to the tourism authorities.

"Right, now listen here, from this point forth we hereby rename this luxurious suburb Dugong Slaughter With Tinny and Spear Gun Bay. It'll be a bitch for marketing but bloody hell it sounds native."

But back to the foreign bit of flora in my front yard, and the Olympian struggle to remove it.

Put simply, the tree had to go. I just didn't realise my sanity would have to go with it.

The tree looked easy enough to get rid of but nevertheless I started the removal process strategically and methodically.

I focused on one particular side and dug and hacked at what I thought was the biggest and meanest of the lateral roots.

My arsenal of weapons was impressive and included a tree saw, tomahawk, shovel, spade, a pitchfork and a fence hole digging crowbar.

After I'd finished, only the saw and tomahawk remained intact, but only because I gave up using them once I had dug a hole so deep it became mortally dangerous to swing sharp instruments while perched on such a precarious precipice.

The sun was hot the way the sun often is and sweat poured from every pore.

Unfortunately there was no beer around with which to rehydrate.

As the layers of dirt were cast aside, the gargantuan root progressively and menacingly revealed itself as a colossal mass of ugly tendrils like the hair of Medusa after she'd turned herself into stone.

It was utterly frightening, like the medical history of a backpacker's groin. If I was a religious man I'd say it was the root of all evil.

Lo and behold, somewhere at the end of the dark tunnel I had dug myself into, a light started to appear.

It took more than four hours, approximately 3752 swear words and many, many seated moments of rest and recuperation but the root finally started to loosen its seemingly immovable grip on the earth.

Just when I thought I had the monster beat, one last arm of the root wouldn't budge.

It was soul crushing. Do you know that feeling when you work so hard and come so close to achieving the impossible dream only to have it stifled at the very last moment?

Fair dinkum, at this point I wanted to blow the f---en thing up with enough dynamite to turn Cairns into a crater so big it'd make the Grand Canyon look like a pothole.

But I couldn't let the bastard beat me. So I took a deep breath. And then I took another. And another.

About 90 minutes later I still couldn't budge it. Then, all of a sudden, it happened.

With one last muscle torturing heave I hoisted the root above my head in a triumph so sweet I almost cried, but I'm sure it was just the flecks of soil falling into my eyes. No, really.

Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trees, I will fear no evil, for I have uprooted it, and removed the deep seed of wickedness and banished the origin of this earthly garden's iniquity forever more. Amen.

If you go out into the garden this weekend do not - I repeat - do not under any circumstances attempt to take on a tree's root system.

You'd be better off nailing yourself to a cross. It'd be less painful.

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