After a few days exploring coastal locations, we spent today in the forests and national parks arouond Pemberton. However, tomorrow we will be back by the ocean when we travel to Albany.
Pemberton is an old timber town that has stayed a little of how it looked in the 1930s. As you drive down the main street, the most significant building is the old pub. The side streets are home to many small cottages that would be homes to timber workers and their families.
We drove to Pemberton through rich grazing land and small areas of forest. The rainfall must be high around here as the grass was very green and our sat-nav map showed hundreds of small farm dams and ponds across the landscape. It obviously has enough rainfall to support its tall tree forests.
The area around Pemberton was home to extensive apple orchards. Many of Australia’s Royal Gala apples are grown around here. Some of the original orchards have now been replaced with Avocado trees.
On the way to Pemberton, we stopped at the Diamond Tree, one of eight giant Karri trees that were used as lookouts to detect bushfires. Its wooden viewing platform was built in 1939 and is located 49 metres up, being the oldest wooden platform fire look-out in use until its closure in 2019.
The other local trees used for this purpose (the Gloucester Tree and Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree) were also closed in 2023 because of an increased awareness of safety. These trees were all similar in that they had steel bars driven into the trunk in a spiral form with a cabin at the top in which a fire spotter lived and worked.
The Karri tree is king in the bush around here. It is a giant tree over 60 metres ( 200 feet) high, slim and straight with smooth bark. Like the Gloucester Tree, these lookout trees are accessed by a daunting 153 rung ladder which winds around the trunk. To build towers high enough to see over the forest would have been too expensive. The alternative was a cabin built high enough in some of the taller trees. The Gloucester tree was prepared for use as a lookout in 1946. During the construction of the lookout cabin the Duke of Gloucester visited the site and the tree was named after him.
Once used for transporting timber, the Pemberton Tramway Company Pty Ltd is now a privately operated tourist railway. It takes tourists through the deep forests and picturesque countryside as well as recreating the history of the timber railways that were so important to the region’s development and growth. It uses the tracks of the old Pemberton to Northcliffe Railway, which was completed in the early 1930s. In its day, this railway was the most expensive in Western Australia costing about £20,000 a mile as it cut its way around hills and across bridges.
We had read about a scenic forest drive and decided to explore it. The local Information Centre gave us a map of the Karri Forest Explorer drive (an 86 kilometre route) through the forest on a combination of local roads, highway and a narrow one-lane stretch of road. It took us to most of the major tourist sighs – the Gloucester Tree, Gloucester National Park, the Cascades, the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, Warren National Park, the Warren River and the Big Brook Dam.
Our first stop was at the Big Brook Dam. it was built in 1986 to supplement the Pemberton town and Trout Hatchery water supply . Locals enjoy it as a venue for their recreational activities including its sandy beach which is great for swimming.
Another area on the drive is a small arboretum where the undergrowth is cleared to give a clear view of the Karri trees.
While the roads were sometimes narrow, they had a firm surface and gave us a good look at the tall trees along the way.
At one place we thought that we were driving through an avenue of yellow wattle trees but on closer inspection we found that the flowers were really pea shaped and they were not wattles at all.
One of the more interesting places along this drive in Beedelup National Park were the Beedelup Falls. They are in the form of a rocky cascade which is particularly dramatic after rain. There was a circular walking track which took me across a rickety swing bridge and then a path that climbed to the top of the falls . I counted around 100 steps on my way back to the car park and this little walk made a good contribution to my exercise program.
It was near these falls that I found the first example of a wild orchid that we have seen..
Our final stop before the 33 kilometre return trip to our hotel in Manjimup was at ‘The Cascades’. This is a lovely place on Lefroy Brook where it cascades over a series of granite pools. The brook produces rapids over winter but becomes a gently tinkling stream in summer.
