More forest under gray skies.
Well... we drove south from Pemberton down a secondary dirt road, heading towards Shannon National Park. I must say that CALM does a great job disguising the amount of logging going on in the southwest forests... they make sure that there's a 100 meter wide strip of forest on either side of the roads for wildlife protection. Look a little farther and you see the clear cut logging going on.
Now, having said those words: 'clearcut', or as they call it here, 'clear felling', with all their emotional charge... I'm not totally opposed to clear cutting. The other option--selective logging--means intruding into the forest with heavy machinery a lot more, tearing through the bushes and undergrowth, compacting the soil, and generally making a mess out of things every five, ten years. At least with clearcut and burn, if it's done on a rational rotation basis, means that the forest grows undisturbed until the timber is harvested. Yes, it's traumatic looking, but so is a forest after a bushfire goes through it.
Anyway, we didn't get far--the river was flowing far too fast and deep, so we backtracked 15km to the main road south towards Shannon National Park. Shannon NP has a forest drive of 60km or so, with eight stops where you can tune to FM 100 and listen to a tape loop explaining how logging was done, or the dairy industry, or the forest structure. It was mildly interesting, though there wasn't any other interpretation to be found, save three small signs saying 'this is a jarrah tree... this is a karri tree... this is a marri tree'. Oh well.
After Shannon, we drove to Walpole, arrived at 2pm, and tried to figure out what to do. Shop for magnets? That took 15 minutes. Finally, we just went over to the Tree Top Walk, a series of 60 meter walks into the tops of the tingle forest.
Tingle trees (Eucalyptus jacksonii) only grow in the southwest of Western Australia, in the wettest part of the state on only 6000 hectares of land. They are impressive, with large flared trunks and rich maroon fibrous bark. You wouldn't think they were a eucalypt if you saw them. At their base, they're often hollowed out by fungus and bushfire, but they still live on. Many of these you can walk through!
The Tree Top Walk was a bit disconcerting. It was intentionally built to sway a bit, to 'take visitors out of their comfort zone.' It made me a bit seasick, to be honest. The paths were a bit too narrow, and there were warnings about only 6 people per span and ten per node. Ack!
I liked the Empire trail better. There, you can see the trees up close, and see their lack of insides. That was more pleasing.
After the walk, we stayed in the little town of Walpole. Today was surprising; I'm starting to realize that Western Australia isn't all just wind and sand blown, but has cool, moist, wet temperate forests that are the equal of any. It's a bit of a shock; from all my reading I formed this impression of WA looking more like the coastline from Santa Barbara to San Diego than the coastline of southern Oregon.
It's a pleasant surprise.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Oh, the ringneck parrot that was eating tingle seeds out of the pod on the treetop walk.