Gembrook Things to Do

3 more images

For a taste of the sublime forest which used to cover everything around here walk downhill from the main drag for maybe five minutes.
Mountain ash and mountain grey gum, and messmate stringy bark - and two non indigenous redwoods planted in the 1920s or 30s. And down in the damp gullies, tree ferns.
This is a small stand of trees - about 29 hectares - and they are young. They don't look young mind you, they are towering, glorious specimens of arboreal nature, but they are no more than a hundred years old.
But if you want a taste of the forest here it is. There are marked paths and you couldn't get lost and the day I was there it was deserted.
You might see a wombat or hear a lyrebird. Though as lyrebirds imitate everything under the sun unless you see a brown bird (something like a drab pheasant) emenating noises like Metallica or Kiri Te Kanawa or a chain saw or a camera shutter, you wouldn't know you had heard a lyrebird.
They are called a lyrebird because the males when courting erect a tail shaped like a lyre.

I love gum trees because they loose their bark and it catches on the lower branches and they stand like nubile artists' models holding their draperies.

Don't risk going deep in here on fire hazard days.

1 more image

Not every town has an Avenue Of Honour - a tree for every man lost. I like to think all the trees flourished. They all seem well grown and burgeoning.
The one I took a photo of is for G. Raleigh. It makes me think up stories, about who he was, where he died. Somewhere in France maybe. Or at Gallipoli. Anyway, he was from this district and he never came back.
Maybe he still has relatives here. Grand children even.