Thats a big one Traditional Cache
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The Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) is the tallest flowering plant in the world. It also has the smallest flowers of any of the Eucalypts.
Through land management and fire, old growth Mountain Ash Forests are very had to find and are of risk of becoming extinct on the mainland. In the Black Saturday fires we lost populations in the Wallaby Creek and O'shannassy catchments. Other populations such as this one in the Donnelly Valley where only damaged by fire. The last large stands now exist here, an area stretching from Healesville up to and around Mt Donna Buang. There are also some good sized remnants in south gippsland, around Mt Baw Baw and other places in the central highlands, but most of it is regrowth.
These trees are around 75m high, a little down the valley, there are some trees around 90m. Most of these trees would have reached that size, but they out grow themselves and the top of the tree snaps off.
Somewhere along this track there was a tree measured at close to 130m when it was cut down.
These trees are around 500 years old and are part of an ecosystem that has collected and stored carbon from the atmosphere for thousands of years, provided fresh air and purified water. These are the most carbon dense forests in the world.
A hot fire will kill the adult trees, but will also provide the stimulas for a new generation of trees to grow. They start off germinating at a couple of hundred seedlings per square metre, grow at 1m per year for the first 60 years of their lives in a competition to reach the sun.
As the trees get older they thin themselves out as only the strongest survive and you get the well spread giants like what you have here. This is compared to the younger more flammable forests across the road. These forests where burnt in a back burn after Black Saturday to try and stop the fire travelling greater distances. In the old growth like here they had a lot of trouble getting the fire to burn far enough, to be safe from spot overs. A rather unfortunate side effect of a fire service in shock at the events of Black Saturday (and understandably so) is that they decided to backburn along the entire length of the road rather then go and put out the 3 trees that had been hit by fire induced lightning in this valley.
This area is also very diverse in native wildlife. This clump of trees has its own populations of Victoria's faunal emblem the endangered Leadbeaters Possum, but I shouldn't tell you which trees I have seen them in.
When looking for the cache try not to the touch the 2m high grass, it is full of silicone and may cut your hands. This grass known as the tall Mountain Grass had not been seen in the area since after the last fire around here in 1939.
Feel free to do the other caches in the area and if your visiting in summer you may get to see the view from above this forest from the nearby fire tower.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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Treasures
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