JOIN USI stepped gingerly on the steel bridge suspended nearly 25 metres above the forest floor in the Illawarra Fly Treetop Walk in Australia and paused. Before me stretched a long, long stretch of bridge with dense forest below and around. With the amused guide egging me on, I finally walked onto the bridge and ended up having one of the most enjoyable walks ever.
Located in a warm, temperate forest area, the Treetop Walk enables a 1.5-km walk through temperate rainforest. About 500 m or half-km of this is in a treetop canopy which is about 20 to 30 metres above ground level. The structure is set back about 20 metres from the edge of the escarpment. A one-and-a half-hour drive from Sydney and two hours from Canberra, the Illawarra Fly Treetop Walk is located in an area known as Southern Highlands.
Eco-friendly initiative
This walk is part of many eco-friendly tourist attractions across Australia which are based on the vision of a shared future for people with wildlife and forests. Issues like environmental sustainability and conservation measures are taken seriously. The key areas of energy, water, and waste are addressed intelligently. In order to ensure a soft footprint i.e. minimum environmental damage, the walk was built along existing logging and fire trails so that visitors do not walk on the forest floor. So, you can enjoy being in the canopy of this forest without damaging the forest floor or causing much disturbance to the natural habitat. We were also told that the construction was undertaken thoughtfully without clearing any native vegetation.
As our guide Debra West told us, “The structure was designed in almost a ‘W’ pattern to avoid felling any major old growth trees. The old growth trees are very important to the fauna as the older the tree, the more hollows are formed over the years where the ring-tailed possums, sugar gliders and owls hide to protect themselves from predators and to protect their nests.”
Waste segregated
At the entrance, we had noticed an eco-friendly segregation of garbage. There were three containers — one for cardboard and plastic, another for glass and the third for rubbish. The cardboard, plastic and papers are taken away for recycling. Also, organic waste produced by the kitchen is used as compost in garden-bed areas for some smaller plants. Illawarra’s six-lakh-litre water tank on the site is eco-friendly in two ways — all the water used is collected from the high annual rainfall received here and secondly, not connecting to town water means there was less need for digging and piping on the ground. The bridge looks very clean — no litter. All sticks, leaves, and broken branches which fall on it are thrown over the edge and back into the forest to form natural compost.
Another control is in place. The Illawarra Fly Treetop Walk property is situated within the boundaries of the local government Kiama Municipality and any development activity would have to be approved of by this authority. The local government has set several conditions to ensure environment friendliness in the process of development. Along the walk are decorative panels which explain and display the local flora and fauna. The ‘Rainforest Learning Centre’ enables educational tours for school children or a ‘classroom in the forest’ as they call it. So, kids get their lessons in eco-friendliness early on in life. A popular feature is Sunrise Walk which offers a dawn rainforest experience — a guided walk plus a great view of sunrise over the ocean. The walkway culminates in a tall spiral tower, the Knights Tower which rises 45 metres above the forest floor and offers spectacular views.