Historical information

An early black and white photograph of a sample acre of tall trees near Marysville in Victoria.

Significance

An early black and white photograph of a sample acre of tall trees near Marysville in Victoria. After the devastating 1939 ‘Black Friday’ bushfires, Victoria’s tallest known trees were to be found in the Cumberland scenic reserve, 20 km north-east of Marysville. This stand of trees was set aside in the 1920s to preserve a ‘sample acre’ of tall trees. It originally contained 27 trees, the tallest of which was said to be 92 m, whilst the average height was 81 m. A severe wind storm in 1959 blew down 13 trees and left the ‘tall tree’ at a reduced 84 m (Munro 1992). An examination of the crown of this tree by arborist Tom Greenwood (Tom Greenwood pers. comm. 2001) suggested that it was unlikely that it ever reached the original figure of 92 m; the current height is 81.5 m, a figure used as the starting point for this search for Victoria’s tallest trees.