Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Letter not found. The text given here is from 'News of the Day', Age (Melbourne), 11 June 1878, p. 5. It is introduced by 'The following letter, containing some interesting particulars of the monster trees which abound in the vicinity of Mount Baw Baw, has been received by Baron von Mueller from Mr. G. W. Robinson, of Berwick:'. The item was subsequently reprinted in part in other papers, for example, Advocate (Melbourne), 15 June 1878, p. 15; Leader (Melbourne), 15 June 1878, p. 1 S; Australian town and country journal (Sydney), 10 August 1878, p. 264.

I hasten to reply to yours requesting information of the height of the tallest trees measured by me at Baw Baw.

2

Letter not found.

The particulars are as follows : — Nearly eighteen years ago, during a tramp overland from Gippsland by way of Mount Baw Baw, we came to some very tall timber. Being accustomed to the tall trees in the other ranges, we would not have noticed them here had they been of the ordinary size of forest trees, but these trees appeared to us to be of an extraordinary length, much higher than any seen by any of us before, so that we paced one (as we had neither tape nor footrule) that had fallen down from the butt to where the tallest branch had broken off, and we found it to measure the extraordinary length of 157 paces, each pace being a full step, or, as near as we could guess, one yard. This would give this tree up to where the top was broken off a length of 471 feet. The length of the tops that were broken off appeared as if it would reach another twenty or thirty feet, so that this tree could have been but very little short of 500 feet in length when standing erect. Whether this was the only tree of this length of course I cannot say, but the appearance of the other trees in the neighborhood gave us the impression that there were many more of the same height to be seen there. The place that we believed that these trees were growing was in one of the deep gullies at the source of the Yarra, near Mount Baw-Baw; for anything we know it might have been the head of one of the Gippsland streams.