Gloucestor Tree

Another night of rain last night, but this time with the tarp up over the tent so at least no rain came in. It did mean packing up a wet tent again though, so it’s a bit stinky again. We’re supposed to have good weather over the weekend though so hopefully it will dry out and air out. We moved a bit slowly due to the rain (which kept going in the early morning), and due to the fact that the camp kitchen at the caravan park had a toaster, which we all miss not having, so of course everyone had to have 5 slices of toast each for breakfast. Conor has always been a big breakfast eater but on this trip he is just outdoing himself. One day he had a bowl of porridge followed by 3 bowls of cereal. This morning it was only 3 bowls of cereal followed by 3 slices of toast. He’s not a big person so the mystery is where it all goes. After we had packed up the soggy tent Nick and the kids went to the skateboard park just around the corner from the caravan park where they had been the night before and loved it. It’s smaller than the one at Cooleman Court so better suited to their size and ability (and empty). While they did that I went to the supermarket and post office (expect a parcel soon Grandpa), and then just before lunch we headed off, stopping first at the Gloucestor Tree nearby. It is a 60m tall Karri tree which used to be a fire observation tower, I think in the 60’s. They first went up the tree to check out if it was suitable to be used as an observation tower (I think if it had the right view) and then put pegs all the way up and a platform on top so that someone could climb up and sit there being a lookout. There was information there describing how they first set it up – one lucky guy got to climb all the way to the top to assess its suitability, and he did this with just a belt and climbing shoes – took him 6 hours to go all the way up and down – then later a guy had to go all the way up hammering pegs in to act as a ladder, then get to the top and lop the top off. Apparently when he was lopping off higher branches one of them fell the wrong way and knocked out a whole group of pegs (ie his ladder), so the poor guy had to wait up there until someone else could get more pegs, climb up to the ones that were knocked out and put more in so that he could come down. Some people get all the good jobs. It’s called the Gloucestor Tree because when they were working on putting the pegs in the Governor General of the time, the Duke of Gloucestor, happened to be visiting Pemberton and decided to come out and watch – he had a picnic at the base while the pegging was going on, and so they name it in his honour. Anyway we all had a go at climbing it, Daniel made 10 rungs and Conor made 20, which was pretty good considering that they’re quite wide apart.

It’s a beautiful walk through the forest to get to the tree, tall straight Karris and Marris with sap oozing down and Karri Oaks. It’s really nice that a lot of the tourism for the town revolves around trees – you don’t have to go on an expensive tram ride, you can just go for a free walk in the forests around about.

After that it was a shortish drive to our camp for the next couple of nights, at Conto’s Field not far from Margaret River. We thought we might use this as our base for a couple of nights and visit Augusta and Margaret River. There seem to be quite a lot of people here, I guess because it’s a long weekend in WA this weekend, and the ranger said that it’s only 3 ½ hours from Perth now with the freeway.