Forrest is a small rural township in the Otway Ranges, Victoria, Australia. At the 2016 census, Forrest and the surrounding area had a population of 230. History The History of Forrest started more than 40,000 years ago. Forrest is at the northern end of the Otway Ranges. Historically, the Otway Ranges are the land of the Gadubanud people. The current boundaries of the Otway Shire Council partially include land belonging to the tribes of Gadubanud people and Gulidjan. Niewójt (2009) attempted to reconstruct the cultural landscape created by the Gadubanud people prior to their disastrous encounter with Europeans in the late 1840s. The vast territory (Figure 1) stretching from Painkalac Creek (near Aireys Inlet) in the east to the Gellibrand River that flows west of the mountains is over 100 kilometres. Niewójt (2009) noted that food supply through the coastline yielding shellfish, the presence of several wetlands and productive estuaries, and the plant foods available both in open land and potentially acquired through trade with neighbouring groups. This lead him to deduct that the archaeological record, historic coastal survey maps and assessment of regional food resources suggest that the pre-contact population of the Gadubanud was far larger than indicated in the documentary record. The existence of a sophisticated resource management regime and movement corridors were maintained through the selective deployment of fire to generate a specific type of landscape mosaic. Wetlands, such as those found near the outlets of the Gellibrand and Aire rivers, provided a fine variety of foods. Fish, eels, waterfowl and bird's eggs added much protein to the diet yet responded to exploitation with a high rate of annual regeneration. In the region's lakes and wetlands, particularly those at Gerangamete, Irrewillipe and Chapple Vale, food was reliable and easily accessed. Hemmed in by a rising ocean that stabilised about 7000 years ago, the uplifted sedimentary rocks of the Otway Range run from north-east to south-west at an elevation of about 500 metres above the sea. A few isolated peaks reach up to 675 metres, and at many points along this coastline bare mountains and tree-clad ridges plummet dramatically into the sea. In the north, the narrow belt of foothills merge with the undulating volcanic plain that is the definitive feature of Victoria's Western District. Littoral plains are found only at Apollo Bay and further west, but even these flat stretches of coastal terrain do not exceed five