The Otway Fly Tree Top Walk - Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia

"Buckley’s Chance" - An extraordinary tale of survival in a hostile environment...

On the 27th December 1803 William Buckley and 19 convicts escaped from the isolated penal colony at Sorrento. Most were recaptured but six remained at large, including Buckley who was taken in by the local Aborigines. The story of the “Wild White Man” who lived with the Wathaurong people for more then 30 years is an amazing one. It has given us the saying “Buckley’s Chance”.

Buckley was the first European to live in and around the eastern end of the Otways. Cut off from European contact, this giant of a man gradually lost the ability to speak English. After re-assimilation, Buckley acted as an interpreter between the Aboriginal people and settlers before becoming disillusioned by the impact of settlement on the Aborigines. It wasn’t until the 1830s that European settlement began on the northern and coastal slopes of the Otways.

Timber-cutting began in the 1850s, mainly along the coast, from where the logs were taken by ship to Melbourne. The railway to Colac and Warrnambool provided an alternative and when the Beechy line was opened (to Beech Forest in 1902, then Crowes in 1911) timber could be taken straight from the sawmills to the cities and towns where demand was high.

After some serious debate between forestry and agricultural proponents in the 1880s, a compromise saw a large section of the Otway ridge opened for farming. Clearing the forest for farmland became a priority and much superb timber was simply ring-barked and burnt,

By the 1900s, the landscape was dominated by dead, burnt tree-stags and open farmland.

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