Karri trees (Eucalyptus diversicolor),Gloucester National Park
We stopped outside of Pemberton today to look at the tall Karri trees. They are the world’s tallest hardwood trees, some of them as tall as ninety metres. We stopped first at the Gloucester Tree. This is one of the original trees used as fire towers, and is spiked with a climbing tower to a platform at over 60 metres up. They actually encourage you to climb the tree, though signs warn you to be careful (I can’t see that ever happening in North America – we’re far to concerned about lawsuits). We didn’t climb the tree (well we did go up about ten feet just to take a picture!) Before lunch we walked a couple of short loop walks that go through the forest. There are a lot of very massive trees that dwarf you when you stand beside them.
We also stopped at the “Bicentennial Tree”. It was a very rough gravel road to get there (when we opened the doors on the cupboards in the motorhome tonight everything had bounced around). This is a tower that was constructed 1n 1988 to honour the bicentennial of European settlement in Australia. The viewing tower atop it is 75 metres from the ground and it sways over 1.5 m when it is windy (it was windy today)!
We stopped at Conto campsite in Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park. It’s quite a large campground, with several loop drives, and is almost totally empty. We only saw one other camping setup when we got here, though a couple of vans have since pulled through and left. Just a few minutes ago about twenty young people with backpacks, about grade six age, walked through on the trail behind our site. Their packs looked pretty big compared to the children. They are obviously on a bushwalking trip from school and camping out overnight.