Nola Farman's The Wind Tree is one of a series of three permanent public artworks commissioned in 1998 by Griffith Artworks, Queensland College of Art, and installed at the new Logan Campus of Griffith University south of Brisbane. The Wind Tree stands on a site that was once occupied by indigenous inhabitants and from the time of white settlement until the recent sixties, the homestead site of the dairy cattle stud Ellerslie. The Wind Tree has been christened according to a traditional pedagogical symbol: the Tree of Knowledge. Ross examines Farman's site specific work in relation to its complex functional and aesthetic qualities.