Southern Forests

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Today we left Denmark and set off west across the rest of the Southern forest country. Some of these areas were only opened up for and logging and settlement in the 1930's. Australia frequently feels like a young, raw sort of country (and this from a Yukoner!)
The karri trees were beautiful, I'm posting a picture of one shedding its bark, which is a means of self defense, to annually rid itself of insect predators. The karri trees are nowhere near the size of the karris in NZ, not sure if they are the same tree but smaller because of the drier climate here, or just a naming coincidence.

We drove through the Shannon National Forest and took the Great Forest Trees Drive, through karri and jarrah forests. The road was deserted except for us. It felt as though we were driving through an enchanted forest, as we proceeded under the magnificent trees with their branches touching overhead, and the sunshine beckoning us on at the end of the tunnel. Some of these were old growth, but many had been logged out between 1930's when the country was opened up and the 1980's when massive protest about the eradication of the old growth forests prevailed. Once again, Greenpeace seems to have played a prominent role. We drove through the former townsite of Shannon. The town was completely disassembled and removed, as were all of the spur railway lines used to move the logs around. The rate of regrowth here is terrific, I would never know that 30 years ago much of it was clear cut. Still it will take 200 years for the karri and jarrah to achieve their full height.

Our next stop was Nannup which was threatened by fire earlier this year and there was a display of photos of the fire at the visitor centre- beautiful in a terrible and terrifying way.

In these tall forests there are no high promontories to build fire lookout towers. Now, spotter planes do much of the fire lookout job, but in the past, in order to create a fire lookout post, they climbed up 60 meter plus trees, lopped off the massive upper branches, and built lookout cabins at the top- no mean feat! In Pemberton we viewed the Gloucester tree, one such place, but did not climb it! However, some intrepid young tourists did ! We then stopped at Beedelup Falls and took a short and scenic walk. Susan is standing on the swing bridge, but alas, at this time of year, there is no water in the river, and hence - no Falls!

Finally we left the Southern forests and arrived on the west coast of the Leeuwin peninsula at Yallingup, near to the area known as the Margaret River wine district. In Dunsbourough we shopped for the weekend and had a lovely fish dinner out. Then over to the coast to our accommodation at the Yallingup Caravan Park where we were greeted by the pounding of the surf.

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Comments

[Emily]

I'm not sure that I would want to be at the top of a 60 m tree when I saw a forest fire coming.