So, the weather overnight was
terrible and we woke up to cold weather and rain – this meant that none of us
were out of bed before 9.30am – that also meant a quick pack up of the caravan
to get out on the road to the next town.
It was awful, I mistakenly put on shorts which meant being cold all
day. We arrived at Pemberton just after
lunch time and stopped in town at the information centre – we wanted to see the
big karri trees that you could climb but we weren’t sure if the national parks
were open with all this rain and whether it would be safe to climb up. It was lovely and warm in the information
centre which made it hard to walk back out but we ran back to the car and van,
made lunch and thought about our options.
We decided to stay and check the place out. After checking into a caravan park and
setting up, we were surrounded by pretty parrots and lots of friendly
ducks. We got some seeded crackers out
to share with the wildlife. We headed
off to Warren National Park to find the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, one of
the three fire lookout trees open to the public the area. It is around 75 metres tall and there is a
platform about half way up as well as at the top, the way to reach it is by
climbing the 130 metal spikes hammered into the trunk – and there is nothing to
save you if you slip between the pegs.
It was rainy, cold and wet and we attempted to climb a small way up, but
the rungs were so cold that our hands were freezing and losing grip. We heard some voices from above and there was
an English couple up in the tree tops about to start their climb down. We watched them climb all the way down
holding our breaths in anticipation and thankfully they made it safely. Amazingly, nobody has ever been killed in the
process of climbing this tree. We drove
on, after a lot of argument from the kids as they wanted to climb all the way
to the top. Back in the car and out of
the cold, we continued our drive along the Heartbreak Trail and out the other
end of Warren National Park. We then
drove just to the east of Pemberton into Gloucester National Park to
investigate the Gloucester Tree, another climbing tree. The kids again nagged us to let them climb it
but we told them it was just too unsafe, needless to say that we were too
scared ourselves to climb up in the cold wet conditions. Not far from here are the Cascades so we went
to look. It wasn’t as pretty as Cairns’ Crystal
Cascades but that might have something to do with the difference in the
weather. We headed back to the van for a
warm shower and a warm meal – thanks to Sami for cooking spaghetti for us all tonight. The heater is getting a good workout –
perhaps we should have packed some more warm clothes…
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