This highly adaptive plant can grow almost anywhere in Tasmania and much of mainland Australia, from rainforest and swampy areas, where it can grow tall and straight, to arid coastal sites where it is often short and spreading.

Tasmanian Aborigines used its wood for weapons and digging sticks (for digging up roots and tubers). They found the fibres of its bark made strong lines for fishing and other purposes, and that this same bark could be used soaked in water for an infusion to treat arthritic joint pain.
Aborigines found food value in blackwood gum soaked in water, and may also have eaten its seeds. Blossom from this and other acacia trees, hung near where they slept, was thought to induce sleep. 

These days blackwood is a prized timber, known worldwide as one of the best furniture and craft timbers.

Like other acacias, Acacia melanoxylon is an effective fixer of the essential element nitrogen, thereby making it available to other plants. Blackwood seeds can survive for hundreds of years in the soil until fire or other disturbance breaks their tough outer casing.