Pemberton, Manjimup, Bridgetown

Friday 6 November


Not such a good day today, it’s a bit windy with showers around but still, off we go on today’s drive to Pemberton. The first part of the drive is through national parks, mostly jarrah trees I think. Then suddenly around a bend and there are karri trees instead. They really are beautiful, very tall with straight trunks and not many branches until the very top. The forest is more open than the jarrah forest, the undergrowth is not so dense but I don’t know if that’s natural or if it might have been cleared a bit more.

We arrived at Pemberton, found the tourist information place and discovered that the forest tram had just left and there wasn’t another one until the afternoon, by which time we’d be well on our way back to Busselton. Next time maybe!

We made our way out to the Gloucester tree, which is an enormous karri tree used as a fire watchtower, like the Diamond tree we saw last week. It’s taller than the Diamond tree, and is supposed to move about a metre each way in a breeze. We decided to let others do the climbing for us, and in fact the people coming down the tree as we arrived were a young couple who are camped next to us in the park. They’re English, out here on a working holiday for about a year, and seem like a good pair. We’ve talked to them a bit as we pass in the park, and of course stopped for a chat at the bottom of the tree. They’re still getting used to the distances here, and the fact that we talk in hours rather than kilometres or miles when we’re talking about going somewhere. They are hoping to find work soon so they can keep going on their tripping around.

We left the Gloucester tree and were heading back to the road when there was a tremendous BANG and a huge crack in the windscreen. A bit of tree had fallen on it! No damage to us, the screen stayed in place but has a very large set of cracks in it, so we are taking the car back to Perth on Tuesday to pick up a new one. They don’t have another Jetta, so don’t know what we’ll end up with.

After that excitement, contacting the hire company and so on, we came home via Manjimup, Bridgetown, Donnybrook and Capel. We had a very good steak each for lunch in Bridgetown, not enormous but very good quality and cooked just right.

We still haven’t seen a sunset over the ocean as it’s been a bit cloudy at that time every day, but still have a few days here so fingers are crossed.

Something I’ve been meaning to mention is that we drove up through the wheat belt on our way to New Norcia and the Pinnacles on Saturday. It’s much like our wheat belt at home but our driver told us that there has never been a drought there, some dry years but never a drought. Unbelievable!

Check the photo gallery for a photo of our 5 o'clocker - we have it on good authority that it is the responsibility of all good caravan park people to have drinks and so on at 5 o'clock so feel we have to carry on the tradition.