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Young World
Walk in the clouds
MURALI N. KRISHNASWAMY
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Marvel at the journey from forest floor to treetop …
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An unforgettable environmental experience because this is a region of geographical change and natural wonders.
OTWAY FLY: Stairway to heaven..
There’s a shriek and a screech deep in the cool temperate rainforest of the tree species of myrtle, beech, blackwood and mountain ash. Then, laughter and wild cries. “Are we going to fall?” You look up through the giant ferns and see the many pattering feet and even someone on a wheelchair on the swaying springboard cantilever high up in the treetops.
A few minutes later, it’s our turn to hoot and shriek. Get ready to fly! Get ready to tree walk! (You are kept safe by 1,220 metres of steel handrails and balustrades.)
The “Otway Fly” is a 600-metre long, 25-metre high elevated tree top walk that ascends gently. Its main feature is a 45-metre high lookout which you climb by a spiral staircase of 105 steps to emerge at eye-level with the crowns of magnificent forest trees in the Otway Ranges (State of Victoria).
The “Otway Fly Tree Top Walk and Café”, its full name, is a private development spread across 85 hectares of land (500 metres above sea level) in the Otways old growth forest, next to the Great Otway National Park, Australia.
Remnant treasure
Its aim is to leave the visitor with an unforgettable environmental experience because this is a region of history, of geographical change and natural wonders — when continents drifted apart millions of years ago and where dinosaurs roamed this part of the earth. Today, there is a part of that treasure left behind — the majestic Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans), which is the world’s tallest flowering plant (it has been known to reach more than 100 metres high), orchids, mosses, ferns, and a great variety of avian/animal life like the “psalm singer of the dawn” or the eastern yellow robin, the powerful owl, the ring-tailed possum, the water rat, or even the unique and carnivorous Otway black snail.
The walk (1.9 km round trip) starts at the visitor centre and descends to the entry structure. You walk past “interpretation panels”, a “Prehistoric path” with concrete dinosaurs lurking in the ferns, and a “Big Boy”, the giant of the forest, five metres in diameter at its base and 65 metres in height. Then, you get onto the steel trussed walk.
… as you descend, you can only marvel at the journey from forest floor to treetop … at the wonder that is Nature.
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