Sherbrooke Forest is a wet

sclerophyll Sclerophyll is a type of vegetation that is adapted to long periods of dryness and heat. The plants feature hard leaves, short internodes (the distance between leaves along the stem) and leaf orientation which is parallel or oblique to direct ...

forest within

Dandenong Ranges National Park The Dandenong Ranges National Park is a national park located in the Greater Melbourne region of Victoria, Australia. The national park is situated from at its westernmost points at Ferntree Gully and Boronia to at it easternmost point at Si ...

, 40 km east of

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, in

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

, Australia, close to the suburb of

Belgrave Belgrave may refer to: Places *Belgrave, Cheshire, an English village *Belgrave, Leicester an English district *Belgrave, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia ** Belgrave railway line **Belgrave railway station, Melbourne **Belgrave (Puffing ...

. It lies within an altitude of 220–500 m asl and is dominated by the tallest

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the world; mountain ash (''

Eucalyptus regnans ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including ''Corymbia'', they are commonly known as euc ...

'').

History

Sherbrooke Forest is situated within the historic territory of the indigenous

Wurundjeri The Wurundjeri people are an Australian Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourn ...

clan, of the

Woiwurrung The Woiwurrung, also spelt Woi Wurrung, Woiwurrong, Woiworung, Wuywurung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin alliance. The Woiwurrung people's territory in Central Victoria extended from north o ...

people, of the

Kulin nation The Kulin nation is an alliance of five Aboriginal nations in south central Victoria, Australia. Their collective territory extends around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River va ...

. From the mid-19th century until 1930 the forest was logged. In 1958 it was gazetted as a park, and in 1987 it was merged with Doongalla Reserve and Ferntree Gully National Park to form the 32.15 km² Dandenong Ranges National Park.

Attractions

Grants Picnic Ground is located within the forest. This site features a kiosk, public toilets, drinking fountains, and park benches. Sherbrooke Falls is a small

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in severa ...

that can be accessed via the walking trails.

Puffing Billy Railway The Puffing Billy Railway is a narrow gauge heritage railway in the southern foothills of the Dandenong Ranges in Melbourne, Australia. The railway was one of the five narrow gauge lines of the Victorian Railways which opened around the beg ...

runs through the southernmost edge of Sherbrooke Forest, near the Belgrave terminus.

Fauna and flora

The dominant tree species in Sherbrooke Forest is the mountain ash (''Eucalyptus regnans''), which is the tallest flowering plant in the world, and the second tallest plant overall, after the California redwood (''Sequoia sempervirens''). The

understory In forestry and ecology, understory (American English), or understorey (Commonwealth English), also known as underbrush or undergrowth, includes plant life growing beneath the forest canopy without penetrating it to any great extent, but abo ...

consists of a variety of plants, including many

tree fern The tree ferns are arborescent (tree-like) ferns that grow with a trunk elevating the fronds above ground level, making them trees. Many extant tree ferns are members of the order Cyatheales, to which belong the families Cyatheaceae (scaly tree ...

s. Sherbrooke Forest is famous for its population of

superb lyrebird The superb lyrebird (''Menura novaehollandiae'') is an Australian songbird, one of two species from the family Menuridae. It is one of the world's largest songbirds, and is renowned for its elaborate tail and courtship displays, and its excell ...

s (''Menura novaehollandiae'') and was an early, and still important, site for the study and conservation of this species. One of the early lyrebird researchers and sound recordists of the 1930s was Raymond Littlejohns. Another researcher who analysed lyrebird

song A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetit ...

was Konstantin Halafoff.

References

External links

Dandenong Ranges National Park

Friends of Sherbrooke Forest

iNaturalist
Forests of Victoria (Australia) 1958 establishments in Australia Sclerophyll forests {{VictoriaAU-geo-stub