Great Southern Forests

18 – 26 July

 

From the extreme South West of the country, we headed back east towards a little seaside village called Walpole where we were to meet some friends in a few days time.

 

The road took us back into the great forests of the southwest which were absolutely drenched from the 150mm of rain which fell over the preceding few days, and continued to fall, somewhat lighter now. We selected a camp site in the forest close to Nannup, relying on Google for directions, that was a bit of a mistake. It assured us that it knew where it was going, and we would be there by 4:15.  Off the main highway we took the advised track into the trees which quickly started to descend, and turn into a small stream from the rain. After a couple of km we were directed to take a right down another less well maintained fire track, sure, why not. At the bottom of the valley we got the feeling something was up, so checked with Google again, only to find it wasn’t taking us to the campground, but to the nominal central location of the forest! Luckily we could see where the campsite was on the map. It wasn’t too far away, but in the opposite direction to where we were going. Eventually we found our way after having to go into 4WD and cross some huge mud puddles, but we got there. Turns out if we had stayed on the highway for another 500m we would have had a nice big gravel road to go down.

 

 

Onwards the next day we continued on our quest to Walpole via a lovely little town called Bridgetown. Funnily enough it has a beautiful old wooden bridge and a really nice main street. We had yet another world famous bakery pie and a stroll around town before again finding ourselves in the pub in Manjimup, but at least this time it wasn’t completely horrible weather outside.

 

The next stop on the road to Walpole was another forestry town called Pemberton. This is where the Karri trees start to get real big. We stayed at the local Arboretum which was set up during the forestry boom to work out which trees from overseas would grow the best in the local climate. Interesting place with a good walk, though you can tell that people lost interest in the outcome of the experiment a long time ago.

 

The main attractions in the area are the fire lookout trees where the loggers used to insert steel rebar rods into the tallest of trees in a spiral pattern to create a ladder to the top.  There were nine trees like this in the area. By taking bearings of smoke from multiple trees they could pinpoint a fire very quickly and deal with it.  The more modern of the trees is called the bicentennial tree which was ‘laddered’ for the bicentenary of Western Australia.  The tree has a spiral ladder which goes up the tree for approximately 60m, then a series of platforms with ladders to take you to the top of the canopy at 75m.  I quite enjoy tree climbing, so this had to be done.  I’m not sure I was quite prepared for it. The ladder has a sort of cage over the top of it, but not much under it to stop you falling through the gaps between the rungs if you lost your footing, not that this had happened to our knowledge. I can now understand what a fear of heights must feel like!  I made it to the top using my best ‘three points of contact at all times’ technique and what a view I was greeted with! Estelle was just a dot on the ground below me, and the forest and farmland spread out around me as far as the light mist would allow me to see. What a great experience, though I am amazed that that sort of thing is allowed in this day and age with all the OSH regulations we have all grown used to.

 

 

We now only had two nights till we needed to be in Walpole, so started heading in that direction, ending up at Fernhook Falls for the night. The falls, although not tall made up for it with girth and volume. Green-brown water spewed over the granite rocks creating a good froth. Estelle saw this referred to as ‘Cappuccino flowing over the falls’, which describes it well, but is a little disturbing at the same time.

 

We were now so close to Walpole that we didn’t have much to do between the falls and the town. Nevertheless we headed in that direction, counting down the km with the highway signs marked as ‘WP 50’, ‘WP 40’, ‘WP 30’ etc. We hit the town, then overshot the town as we decided we would stay at Peaceful Bay that night.

 

Peaceful Bay was anything but. Howling winds and heavy rain made it an unpleasant 20m dash from the car to the caravan park office, where the guy on reception took pity on us and gave us a sweet deal. We drove around the campground for a while unable to decide on which section of grass we would get battered about the least. We ended up right next to the camp kitchen and found the caretakers in there creating very artful signs to put around the camp. They also relocated their fire pit made out of an old 9kg gas bottle into the kitchen so we could warm ourselves.

 

The next day was Walpole day, as you can probably tell, we were quite excited about having a roof over our head for four nights. We headed down the road to Denmark (the town, not the country, I know, confusing right) and picked up some supplies for the weekend, then off to the house!

 

The four days in the house in Walpole were awesome. The house was nice and modern, warm with a log burner, multiple living areas, a good kitchen and the opportunity to have a shower every day! It was great to catch up with the group of Uni friends who came down from Perth to meet us for the extended weekend.  Walpole is situated on a beautiful inlet separated from the Southern Ocean by only a small opening. It is a quiet little town with an info centre, a couple of cafés, two service stations, a YHA and a ‘magic’ takeaways.

 

Over the next few days we checked out the local area and the attractions it had to offer. We were still in the Great Southern forests, but now a new type of trees were added, called Tingle Trees, they are not so much tall as very wide at the base, some having a circumference of over 25m. This stat is a bit misleading as most of the trunk at the base is air. The trees get attacked by fungus and bush fires at the base if the trunk, hollowing it out. The trees take this in their stride however and just continue to grow outwards.

 

We took the scenic drive through the hills to Denmark, stopping off at the mammoth ‘Giant Tingle Tree’ and local cheese & wine places sampling what they had to offer. During the evenings we made dinner and sat around talking or playing card games in front of the fire. For Sunday lunch we went to a nice winery restaurant called Pepper and Salt for a fusion of Fijian-Asian-Australian cuisine.

 

 

On our last full day in the area we went to the treetop walk, which as the name suggests is a walk through the canopy of a Tingle tree forest. The walk is a series of self-supporting bridges between platforms which get progressively higher up to a maximum height of 45m around the 1km loop. It really gave us an appreciation for the height and grandeur of these trees.  Adjacent to the treetop walk was a ground based walk (not quite as thrilling I must say) around similar trees. This did however have the highlight of a tree which had the face of a grandmother on its trunk, sort of.

 

We also went to check out the ‘conspicuous cliffs’. Upon walking up the hill to view them, we came to a tee intersection which had a sign pointing left to the lookout and right to the viewing platform. Didn’t realise there was a difference between those two things, but apparently they make that distinction.

 

After one last amazing night in a real bed, under a real roof we were back out in our vehicle, with it’s shiny new number plates (riveted on with seven rivets) which our friends brought us down from Perth.

 

M

 

Special thanks to Corbett Photography for some of the images this week!