"Don" wrote in message
Folks

as like most of you we are in really dry conditions. I have a garden of
many different types of Pittospurums and have been limited in water. I
live in a cool to cold (Adelaide hills) very wet area (normally around
1400mm pa rain). I have two 6 year old pittospurums that are starting to
die from within. There are branches and leaves within the plant that have
gone completely dead. They have dried off to a crinkly brown and the
branches just snap off. The trees in question are maybe 15 foot high and
the rest of the leaves etc look fine. Any ideas?

I don't know if it will help you at all but there has been a number of
widespread reports of pittosporums dieing suddenly in the past few years
(which seems to have co-incided with our drought conditions).

I did a hunt and found this article:
http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/stories/s1914648.htm

The remedy to try would be long deep watering, followed by an application of
seaweed emulsion and more long deep watering. Dunno how you can manage that
in drought conditions though. If it is phytophora then I think it might be
a case of "goodnight nurse".