Title

Plate 13: Ferntree Gully, Dandenong Ranges, Victoria. [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 13: Ferntree Gully, Dandenong Ranges, Victoria.

ONE of the most characteristic and beautiful features of the mountain scenery of Australia is what is known as a Fern Tree Gully. It combines the vivid verdure, the cool freshness, and the shadowy softness of an English woodland stream, with the luxuriant richness and graceful forms of tropical vegetation. A rill welling out from the summit or the shoulders of a lofty range hurries down its shaggy sides, wearing a channel for itself, trickling and sparkling over the mossy boulders which impede but scarcely divert its course; and, on either side, nature builds up a vista of rounded columns sometimes attaining a height of thirty feet, and from their summits spring out the exquisitely curved and brilliantly green fronds of the fern tree, overarching the ice-cold brook below, and constituting one of the loveliest cloisters it is possible to imagine. The banks of the ravine are carpeted with aromatic shrubs and creepers, among which the musk and the dog-wood occupy a prominent place. From the Gully, matted with this delicate and fragrant tapestry, arise the giants of the forest, the lofty eucalypti and blackwood trees, straight as a javelin, and branchless until they attain an altitude of 200 or 250 feet, when they spread their plumes to the sun and air. The wind may be “chanting a thunder-psalm” overhead, but below all is calm and silent; save for the musical ripple of the mountain brook, or the peculiar note of the lyre-bird (represented in the foreground of the picture) whose graceful plumage seems to have been designed to harmonize with the exquisite forms of the surrounding foliage.

The scene selected for illustration in the accompanying engraving, lies in the vicinity of the Southern Dandenong Saw-Mill, about five and twenty miles eastward from Melbourne; and as there is a comfortable hotel in its immediate neighbourhood, the Gully is a favourite resort for summer tourists. A clearance in the forest has enabled the artist to represent the fern trees unenclosed by that dense warp and woof of vegetation by which they are generally environed.

Accompanying text, 1868.