Yarra Ranges

A drive through the Yarra Ranges National Park, Victoria, Australia - North-East of Melbourne It was like driving through the Redwoods in California. Motorcyclists rip through here so you have to be careful crossing the road. The ferns are huge and they look like a cross between a Palm Tree with fern leaves on top. It's all very green and lush.

These are Eucalyptus trees, very tall, (200+ feet?) surrounded by Palm-like Fern trees near the forest floor. Another name for the Eucalyptus is the "Snow Gum".

There are taller trees than this in Australia. They are the Mountain Ash, or Eucalyptus Regnans in the Hume Plateau North of Melbourne. No one knows for sure which trees are naturally the tallest in the world - Douglas Fir, California Redwood or Mountain Ash of Australia.

The Yarra Ranges Eucalyptus are mentioned in Richard Preston's book, "The Wild Trees" as Stringybark Messmate trees.

From the back cover... "The largest organisms the world has ever sustained, coast redwood trees have trunks up to thirty feet wide and can rise more than thirty-five stories into the sky. Their mysterious canopies are rich with hanging gardens, blackened chambers hollowed by fire, and vast, aerial trunk systems fused into bridges and towers. ... Preston unfolds the spellbinding story of Steve Sillet, Marie Antoine, and their tiny group of daring botanists and amateur naturalists who have found a lost world above California that is dangerous, majestic, hauntingly beautiful, and largely unexplored..."

One Chapter is about Steve Sillet's trip to the Hume Plateau in Australia.

The Yarra elevation is too low for the mighty Eucalyptus Regnans. They grow in two places, one West of here in the Hume Plateau and the other in Styx Valley in Tasmania. The virgin forest in the Hume Plateau has been off limits to humans for over 100 years.

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Trees-Story-Passion-Daring/dp/0812975596/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233413571&sr=8-1