Redwoods of the Otway Ranges
Measurements in 2004 showed the trees have the potential to be as tall as their Californian counterparts, if left undisturbed from bushfire, pests and disease, or trampling by tourism.
Following the occupation of most of the fertile plains and foothills around Melbourne by early European settlers, the forests of the Otways hinterland were progressively cleared and settled for agriculture.
[3] Much of the abandoned and degraded farmland was purchased by the Forests Commission Victoria and, from the late 1920s, was planted out with either native species or exotic conifers, creating the Aire Valley Plantation.
After that, there was a new focus on developing native forests in eastern Victoria, owing to the destruction caused by the 1939 bushfire salvage and to provide timber for post-war housing construction.
The big step came in 1961, after the chairman of the Forest Commission, Alfred Oscar Lawrence, attended the World Forestry Conference in São Paulo, Brazil.
The location proved to be ideal, with high rainfall, good soil on the river flats, cool climate, and summer fogs — very similar to its native habitat in California.
[1] Early in the development of the Aire Valley Plantation, the Forests Commission built camps at a number of sites to accommodate workers.
The Forests Commission built a new camp next to the Aire Valley Redwoods in March 1948 which consisted of a kitchen cookhouse and mess, shower block, toilets, woodshed, and eighteen small, two-man Stanley Huts.
[1] The bulk of the planting work in the Aire Valley Plantation was done by post-war immigrants, and refugees from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.
The first batch of "Balts" as they became known, arrived at Colac in April 1949, and lived in the Aire Valley Camp for up to two years as part of their government-sponsored resettlement program.
[7] As early as 1866, Ferdinand von Mueller, the Government botanist, published some astonishing, and probably exaggerated claims of a mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans - monarch of the eucalypts) on the Black's Spur near Healesville being 146.3 metres (480 feet) high.
There were reports from nurseryman David Boyle[8] and others, of trees in the Yarra Valley, Otways and Dandenong Ranges reaching "half a thousand feet" (500 m).
[9] In 1856, on an overland trip across the Otways Ranges from Forrest to Apollo Bay, Edward Snell, civil engineer and surveyor, made one of the earliest reports of hundreds of trees at least 120 metres (390 feet) tall.
Whether a mountain ash over 400 feet (120 m) high ever existed in Victoria, or in the Otways, is now impossible to substantiate, but the early accounts from the 1860s are still quoted in contemporary texts such as the Guinness Book of Records and Carder,[13] as well as being widely restated on the internet.
In the forest behind Apollo Bay, along the West Barham River, stands a small patch of about 80 mountain ash trees that are thought to be about 400 years old and have survived bushfires, storms, and landslides.
[1] The small grove of Coast Redwoods in the Aire Valley has been now been incorporated into the Great Otway National Park and has been classified as a site of Biological and Cultural Significance.
[1] In 1930, a small stand of redwoods was also planted by the Melbourne & Metropolitan Board of Works, as part of a revegetation program in the Cement Creek catchment, near Warburton.
The plantation provided small study plots to examine canopy interception of rainfall and for comparison with native forest in the Coranderrk area.
