Twentieth-century forest management has always involved fire suppression. That requires identifying fires before they get too large. To facilitate that, fire lookout stations have traditionally been established on the tops of mountains. If the peak is relatively barren of interfering trees, the lookout is situated on the ground. In other cases, a tower is built of wood or metal. In some cases, nature's ready-made towers have been modified for human use — a lookout platform is added to the top of a tall tree, and some form of stairs / ladder attached to access it. Australia had a number of these lookout trees, and some are open to the public; one is still in use. One such tree is the 58 m high Gloucester Tree. We set off in search of it.
In our search for the Gloucester Tree we visited several other interesting Eucalypts, but eventually we made our way to the real deal.
Some friends had climbed this giant Eucalyptus tree when they were in Southwest Australia about a decade ago, and we (Gary) wanted to do the same. It was a cool tree, and had re-bar steps winding around its trunk. We had a bit of trouble finding our way to the tree, but our wanderings led us to some fun places we most likely wouldn't have found otherwise.
One of the places we found in our search was the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk. It has an elevated set of bridges between giant Red Tingle (Eucalyptus jacksonii) trees, one of several old, very tall, species of Eucalyptus trees. It didn't get us up into the tops of the trees, only into the mid-sections about 40m up, but the walkways did give us a different perspective and the interpretive trail was well worth it. I always get a kick out of comparing the Australian and New Zealand tree walks and observation towers with others in places like Borneo. The former are super-secure steel and aluminum structures; the latter are more like something I would build as a kid scrounging for materials. But both got the job done — you get up where you can see more.
The right way to enjoy the walk in the trees from my perspective is to camp nearby and get there when they open in the morning. That's not super early, but one would have a better chance of seeing some interesting birds that way. As it was, we were too late in the day for much bird activity, and they close at 16:00 so you can't really be up there for birds in the evening, which is too bad.
While the elevated walk around the trees was fun, we saw a lot more down on the ground. It was impressive how some of these trees could be virtually burned out from the inside and still be alive and flourishing. There is a burned out Giant Tingle Tree that has a hole / cavity large enough to fit a car through. The trees have large, shallow buttressed roots to support them, one reason for their tremendous girth.
While the Tingle Tree is Southwest Australia's undisputed giant in girth, the Jarrah and Karri trees are the giants in height.
The Valley of the Giants was not the location for the big tree Gary wanted to get to the top of, so we continued on. But it was getting late in the day and we needed a place to camp, so after a good look at the map we headed to a park by Fernhook Falls on Deep River in Mt. Frankland South National Park.
One of the things we had learned by now was that most parks in Australia, at least this part of Southwest Australia, whether private or government parks, had community barbeque facilities. Not only that, but the barbeques came equipped with fuel, so all we needed to do was show up with food. Food we had, so despite the cool weather we enjoyed a great meal of barbequed lamb chops, asparagas and carrots. Yum!
We discovered the Optimus brand propane/butane fuel cans didn't work well with the backpacking stove we brought. We had to take off the big gasget to give the pin enough length to go deep enough into the can to actually get at the fuel.
This was a dry time of year, so the falls was rather subdued, but still very pretty. The river is very dark coffee-colored from tannin in the trees in the watershed. There was quite a bit of foam in the water at the falls. I think that is a result of the tannin in the water, but I'm not sure. I've seen other streams that I know were not polluted with a similar looking foam.
As we walked around that evening we could hear frogs and a fair number of birds singing, but had difficulty seeing them. It was pretty frustrating. We did better the next morning.
The next day we continued on our search, having finally ascertained that the Gloucester Tree was in the neighborhood of Pemberton. We thought such a famous tree would be well signed, but even when we got to Pemberton we had to inquire to find our way.
The Gloucester Tree is a Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor). It is either 58m high or 72m high, depending on which source you refer to. It may be that the tree itself is 58m but the three storey lookout structure on top adds another 14m. Or maybe it was 72m before they cut the top off to put up the observation platform. In any case, it's way up there.
If you click on the images below to view the larger versions, you can see the large rebar pegs driven into the trunk in a spiral to make stairs leading up to the lookout tower structure at the top. The tower consists of three levels; it's not clear to me why there are three levels, as one would expect only the top-most one to be used for the intended purpose of spotting fires. Perhaps it allowed one to take a nap in the shade without having to climb back down to the ground.
In any case, Gary had to head up the tree to see what he could see.
The view from the top was all encompassing, but not particularly inspiring — it's pretty flat country on the whole, or at least not mountainous, so you don't see a lot of vertical relief.
The tallest of the lookout trees is the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, located in Warren National Park in the Pemberton area.
Having gotten Gary's need for excessive heights out of his system for the moment, we headed back towards the coast. We camped at a nice small campground near Barrabup Pool in St. John Brook Conservation Park outside of Nannup. We took some short walks to look for wildlife in the evening and the next morning. Apparently there is a nice "rail trail" there, the Old Timberline Trail, so if we are ever there again we may take a day or two to ride that.
On one of our walks through the woods we came across a raptor of some kind sitting on a nest, but we couldn't identify it. It was late in the day and pretty dark.
And then there was the Musk Duck. We thought it had a bad growth on its neck until we found it in our bird book. Apparently the lobe under his bill is one of those weird breeding "advantages" — while splashing by kicking his feet and raising and fanning his tail over his back, he inflates the bulbous whatever-it-is. OK girls, I'm sure it's impressive somehow.
We were heading towards the coast still, but were more or less in the middle of Southwest Australia's wine country. We stopped for a bite of lunch at a small winery next to the "Lavender Cafe" before we got to Yallingup. We shared a black brioche with pastrami sandwich which was pretty good; Dona had some wine but I opted for my favorite, a ginger beer.
Then we continued on to the coast and Leeuwin National Park.