Centurion

Australia's tallest tree was found by a computer. In August 2008 Forestry Tasmania staff running LiDAR over state forest in the Arve Valley picked out a return that should not have been there, walked in, and found a mountain ash within a whisker of a hundred metres tall. It was the hundredth notable tree they had catalogued, which is where the name came from. For a while they also called it the Bradman, because an early tape-drop of 99.82 metres landed close to Don Bradman's Test batting average. The measurements have wandered ever since: 99.6 metres by tape in 2008, 99.82 in 2014, a lower 99.67 in 2016, and a laser-measured 100.5 metres in December 2018. Then the 2019 Tasmanian bushfires came through. Centurion survived with a new hollow burned into its base. A neighbouring giant called the Prefect, nineteen metres round, did not. By 2025 the tree was reported at 96 metres, four metres shorter, still alive and still growing. No age has ever been published for it. Getting there is a genuine expedition: an hour and a half to two hours south of Hobart by car, forestry roads through an active logging area that can close without warning, then an unmarked muddy track through rainforest with no phone signal at any point.