Forest walk

14 Feb 2014

Members from the Queanbeyan Probus Club recently walked through the Redwood Tree Forrest at Fairbairn near Canberra Airport.

These trees are over 95 years old and were planted in 1918 as part of Walter Burley Griffin’s vision for the surrounding landscape of the nation’s capital.

Originally, 10,936 giant redwoods and 110,910 coastal redwoods were planted, but after a grassfire in 2001, only 3000 survived.

They are the largest stand of mature redwood species remaining in Australia and the forest is registered on the Commonwealth heritage list.

Alongside the pathway are three memorial plaques to two people and a dog who enjoyed walking through this serene area over many years.

The walk also took in a visit to the Air Crash Disaster Memorial. This involved parking the cars at the entrance gate on Yass Rd and walking up to the site.

On arrival, we read that on August 13 1940 a Lockheed Hudson plane flying from Melbourne to Canberra crashed into the side of the hill killing all 10 people on board.

It was the first car crash in the capital since 1927.

The very descriptive memorial records the tragedy of that fateful day and is surrounded by pine and eucalyptus trees.