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| Erin's Western Australia Journals - 11-27-02 Today started out with gorgeous sunshine and a view of the bay from our windows. The owner had told us the day before that in season, you can see whales swimming by from this room! Nice... We wanted to make the 10:45am forest tram from Pemberton, which people had said was about an hour from Augusta, so we left at 9:20am. Well, as we drove, we realized that everyone advised us WRONG if we were to drive the speed limit or close to it, so we pulled up at the train station with 2 minutes to spare! But we were in luck, as there were other latecomers as well, so we pulled off into the forest about 15 minutes later. This was a scenic tram ride through an old karri forest, tall beautiful trees that follow a winding stream. We crossed several bridges on the 90 minute ride, with the engineer giving lots of description of the old forestry industry, steam trains, and pointing out individual plants, flowers & trees as we passed. We even stopped and walked around a couple of times, seeing the insides of burnt-out but still living giant trees. After the tram returned to Pemberton, we had lunch at a little cafe in town, then decided to change the rest of our plans for the day, as it was later than we'd need to reach the Treetop Walk in Walpole. So we stopped at the colossal Gloucester Tree near Pemberton instead, where we had the chance to climb 62 meters (at 3.3 feet per meter). I went about 10 steps up the long spindly pegs that wind around the tree before my stomach told me to STOP, so I watched Glenn climb instead. The flies were swarming around me though, which was a constant annoyance in southwestern Australia. While there, we were abble to feed a bunch of the colorful wild parrots that live in these forests. They loved landing on Glenn's head! After this, we decided to drive all the way on to Albany, which was the furthest point we wanted to see on this circuit. We could have stayed in either Walpole or Denmark, as the Treetop Walk is situated between these two, but then we'd have to backtrack to get to Albany, so we went all the way to the coast instead. We arrived just before dark, and checked into a hostel near the waterfront. This place was nothing special, but we didn't care much. We went out for dinner at a nice little restaurant nearby, then joined the hostel crowd up in the common room for movie night! They played 40 Days & 40 Nights, and Panic Room, neither of which we'd seen, so we stayed up till midnight to finish watching them both. |
| The tingle (eucalypt) trees were HUGE! |