The Ada Tree

Measured for the National Trust in 1986, the Ada Tree stood 67 metres tall. An article from 1993, reproduced on the Trust's own register page, gives it 76, and another guide says 75.1. The honest answer is somewhere between the high sixties and the mid seventies. The girth is less disputed: 15 metres round at a metre and a half above the ground by the Trust's figure, with the state heritage database reported at 15.5. Great buttress wings flare from the base, and a platform has been built around it so visitors stay off the roots. It is a mountain ash, more than 300 years old by both the Trust and the Yarra Valley tourism page, with the Trust's register putting it at about 350. It stands alone in a small gully of myrtle beech in the Yarra State Forest, protected as the Ada Tall Trees Reserve, and the Trust classified it in 2015. Even the Trust's own entry cannot settle its health: the header says poor condition, the statement of significance says good. There are two ways in. The walk from the Ada Tree picnic area is a 3.6 kilometre loop, about an hour and a half, grade 3. A gated forest road, Federal Road, runs 1.8 kilometres to a small car park about ten metres from the boardwalk. The key to the gate is collected from the Powelltown Post Office, 1657 Little Yarra Road. Check the gate is open before relying on it.