Where to see Australian trees: snow gums, boab, wattle, karri
Branch out to Australia’s greatest wooded wonderlands.
In his 2016 book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben introduces these magnificent plants as social creatures, communicating through scents, electrical signals and underground via a fungal-linked “wood wide web”. Whether Australian trees do all this with an Aussie accent is not revealed. From frozen snow gums to bloated boabs to Jurassic-era Wollemi pines, our continent is home to some of the world’s most incredible trees. Many though are fending off threats wrought by climate change, logging, introduced pathogens and disease. As the trees talk to each other, it’s vital we also hear their cries. Find a tree that means something to you, stand alongside it, and listen carefully: you might learn the language of a truly hidden world.
1 Snow gums, Australian Alps
Nothing says High Country more than windswept ridgetops speckled with marbled-trunked snow gums. In winter, icicles hang from leaves and snow clumps on frigid branches, twisted and tortured by the wind, as though frozen in convulsion. The most archetypal examples are found on the Main Range of Kosciuszko National Park (especially around Perisher) or in Victoria’s Alpine National Park, where Traverse Hotham runs a snowshoe tour from Mt Hotham. Worryingly, snow gums are battling a mysterious dieback, with researchers engaging “citizen science” to track the extent. Download the Save Our Snow Gums app and upload suspicious sightings to assist in their conservation.
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2 Huon pine
These trees can live for more than 3000 years, and will happily spend every one watching the world go by from the water’s edge, draping their lime green branches over the rivers of Tasmania’s lush forests. The rot-resistant timber (which floats when green) was prized by the early “piners” who felled and floated the trunks downstream, bundling them together into makeshift rafts to tow across Macquarie Harbour. Visit historic Morrison’s Huon Pine Sawmill in Strahan for handcrafted woodwork. Catch the daily 3pm framesaw demonstration, timed to meet the cruises returning from the Gordon River, where you can see ancient specimens the piners missed.
Stay Wheelhouse Apartments, Strahan
3 Giant satinay, K’gari/Fraser Island
It seems to make no sense that something so large can support itself growing out of nothing but nutrient-deficient sand. But stroll through the rainforest interior of Fraser Island and you’ll inexplicably find 1000-year-old giant satinays 3m in diameter and 40m tall. Native to the Cooloola Coast, satinays (peebang to the local Butchulla people) were heavily logged before the entire island became a World Heritage Site in 1992. Fraser Island Hiking offers a four-day fully guided trek that visits lesser-known satinay sites such as the aptly named Valley of the Giants.
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4 Daintree rainforest
It’s no reflection on mental capacity to go in search of the idiot fruit tree. Sometimes called the Green Dinosaur, this ancient, poisonous plant is just one of thousands of unique species found in the world’s oldest and most complex tropical rainforest. It’s a truly supersized world, from the bull kauri, a giant conifer, to the king ferns that suck water from streams to hold rigid their vast fronds. Cruisers ply the Daintree River near Port Douglas, slipping inland from coastal mangrove swamps. Saltwater crocodiles are ever-present, so don’t think about swimming, unless you want to be named after a certain fruit tree.
Stay Mali Mali, Port Douglas
5 Karri, Pemberton
Those with a fear of heights need not apply. A staircase of pegs climbs 53m up the mottled trunk of a giant karri tree, near Pemberton in Western Australia. Conquer all 165 pegs for the paradox of a soaring heart rate and heart-stopping views. The Gloucester Tree was selected as a fire lookout in 1947, offering a sky-high vista in the days before spotter planes. Australia’s second tallest tree after the mountain ash, the karri is truly a monster of the moist forests of the south-west, reaching up to 80m tall, and from this giddying perch you’ll certainty know it.
Stay RAC Karri valley Resort
6 Mountain ash, Yarra Ranges
The fern gullies of Badger Weir Picnic Area in Yarra Ranges National Park offer cool respite on a hot Melbourne day. The temperate rainforest is dominated by the tallest flowering tree in the world, the mighty mountain ash. Found also in the Otway Ranges and in Tasmania, where the highest living specimen recorded was measured at 99.6m, the older trees provide essential habitat for the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum and greater glider. Step outside the national park to see these stunning eucalypts from a less majestic angle, strapped to logging trucks destined for the paper mill, making this pocket of protection especially precious, and all too rare.
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7 Boab, the Kimberley
The bloated, bulging trunk of the boab resembles something from a Dr Suess book. The Kimberley’s famous examples are related to the African baobab tree (although not to the somewhat similar-looking Queensland bottle tree). No one knows how the species got to Australia, or why it grows only in one corner of the country. Denuded for most of the year, it sprouts pale flowers to signal the start of the wet season. Call into Norval Gallery in Derby to purchase boab nuts exquisitely carved by local Indigenous artists.
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8 Deciduous beech, Tasmania
Few natural events can warm the heart in the cool Tasmanian mountains like the “turning of the Fagus”. Tasmania’s only deciduous native tree (and not a beech at all) puts on a stunning autumnal show, usually peaking around ANZAC Day. Twisted and stunted (it also goes by the name “tanglefoot”), this Gondwanan relic is an evolutionary outlier, and needs cold and rain to survive. Head to the Central Plateau or Cradle Mountain for the Festival of the Fagus in late April, when the landscape is ablaze with colour against a backdrop of snow-dusted peaks.
Stay Cradle Mountain Lodge
9 Golden wattle
Residents of Western Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland and Tasmania could feel justifiably aggrieved that Australia’s floral emblem is native only to the southeast corner of the mainland. But the gorgeous golden wattle has a unifying mystique that transcends state borders. Spring sees them erupt with fluffy, golden-yellow flower heads, set among thin, green leaves, the tonal combination that inspired our national colours. We have National Wattle Day on September 1 (no public holiday, alas) and last year we even blasted seeds into space to spend time on the International Space Station. One Tree Hill in Bendigo is a great place to see the Spring show.
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10 Wollemi pine
Assumed to have gone extinct 100 million years ago, the Wollemi pine was discovered by chance in 1994 in the wet canyons of Wollemi National Park, northwest of Sydney. Its location is now a closely guarded secret. With an evolutionary line extending back to the time of the dinosaurs, fewer than 100 wild trees remain. Luckily, they were able to be cloned, so you can grow your own “dinosaur tree” in your backyard, or visit them near their native home at Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, where scientists are conducting research on how the trees reproduce, to help ensure their survival for millennia to come.
Stay Spicers Sangoma Retreat