Title

Plate 23: Forest, Cape Otway Ranges. [by Eugene von Guérard].

Author

Author not identified

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

1868

Type

About the work

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Plate 23: Forest, Cape Otway Ranges.

This view is taken from the summit of a lofty range of mountains, skirting the south-east coast of the county of Polwarth, in the colony of Victoria, and separating the Valley of the Barwon from Apollo Bay. A narrow and imperfectly-defined cattle track, winding through moist groves of fern trees, thick scrub, and avenues of gigantic trees, conducts the traveller from the open country in the interior to the wild scenery on the coast. The journey is as difficult as the physical features of the declivitous and thickly-­wooded ranges are grand and romantic; and it is only at rare intervals that the tourist obtains such a glimpse of the mountain slopes, and wide-spreading forests as the artist has succeeded in doing at the spot which forms the foreground of the accompanying landscape. Lying about a hundred miles from Melbourne, as the crow flies, this tract of country is comparatively a terra incognita; so-impenetrable is the jungle, and so vast the scope of the boundless forests, filled with battalions upon battalions of towering trees, the more eminent of which rise to an altitude of 300 feet. There are indications of the existence of gold, copper, and coal, in various parts of these ranges; but they offer so many obstacles to the explorer, and are so remote from the outposts of pastoral or agricultural settlement, the nearest station (Mr. Roadknight's) being, upwards of twenty miles distant from the summit of the mountain, that their mineral wealth is likely to await development for some years to come.

Accompanying text, 1868.