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Published: November 8th 2009
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Hostel
Our cute little cottage style hostel. Sunday evening we arrived in Pemberton. It’s a little town nestled among some fantastic rolling green hills. When we arrived, we showed up at the hostel to a bit of a surprise. Turns out there’s a pretty big backpacker population who works in Pemberton, and the main hostel is for workers. The receptionist then drove us a few hundred meters down the road to the cottage used for traveling backpackers. Very cute. Best part was that it was right across from the local supermarket. Score. That night we met our roommate from Germany, Wencke (pronounced Venx). She had been living/working in Margaret River, and was enjoying a weekend trip to Pemberton. With just the three of us in the whole cottage (holds 10), we didn’t have any trouble becoming friends.
The next morning we started by taking up some of the sights. First was the Gloucester Tree. We’d heard about the tall Karri climbing trees here in Pemberton, and were excited to give it a try. Personally, when I imagined “climbing” I was thinking climbing with spiked shoes, ropes and professional supervision. Well, it wasn’t exactly like that. Instead, it was a series of metal spikes (rods) set around the
Hostel - 2
It had a wood burning stove, which we used as a heater all evening because it was getting pretty chilly! tree, spiraling to the top. You climb them how you’d climb a ladder. So in other words, imagine climbing a spiral ladder 60m into the air!!! To think this is actually a very popular tourist attraction.
Well, did we do it? Of course! Hillary and Wencke went first. There’s a 6 person limit to avoid crowing. Could you imagine trying to climb up a ladder while someone was trying to climb down?! Anyways, they seemed to get to the top pretty easily. But they both found coming down the hardest part, since you’re always looking downwards for the next step. You can imagine that looking straight down and seeing the ground 50m away would be pretty scary. Once back, it was my turn. Of course to make things worse, a 50 year old guy tried before me, got 15 spikes up (the popular point of no return) and turned around with a laugh saying he had grandchildren to watch grow up. Anyways, I climbed it. Halfway up Hillary heard me yell down that this was one of the scariest things I had ever done, and I stand by that. I’m not sure how long it took to climb, but
Town
There were some great views of the rolling green hills just behind out hostel. I recorded a video while climbing down and it took over 6 mins! I actually found it easier going down. I think mentally I was thinking that with every step, I was that much closer to the ground (making the likelihood of my death less and less probable, lol). Anyways, the view of indeed amazing, and it was something all of us could be proud of. That afternoon we did a bit of driving and checked out the cascades. Lucky for us Wencke had a truck, so now all those out of reach places were now attainable! That night we had some more guests, this time from Switzerland, and we chatted the night away.
Tuesday morning we visited the Pemberton visitor’s centre. There was a little museum showing off the early settlers and how they lived. It was really interesting to see how the fire lookouts came to be. Supposedly it took the first person who climbed Gloucester Tree 4 hours to get to the top! And this was without spiked shoes!
That afternoon we went to the Bicentennial Tree, another climbing tree. This one was 75m tall! Though I’m not sure if that’s measured to the bottom
Walk
We went for a walk through the forest, which has some huge trees! of the platforms or top. Hill and I climbed this too, with more ease having already climbed Gloucester Tree. But it definitely wasn’t easy. Wencke was a bit worn out and climbed to the middle rest stop. We then drove around seeing more of the national parks, before retiring to our little cottage for the evening. This time we had locals (Australians from Margaret River) with us enjoying a girls weekend. A bit of drinking and card playing helped the hours fly by. Just a shame we had to be up early for our next bus ride!
Kevin
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