The Southern Forests

Well, it hasn't really stopped raining yet. Well, it does stop and the sun will shine for a bit, but then it will bucket down again, and that's been going on for a few days now. Five of us in the caravan together for half a day this morning....nothing like this for an exercise in family bonding....until we all had enough cabin fever to push us out and try and do some exploring between downpours. We had the most amazing rainbow that any of us had ever seen yesterday here at camp.

Camp is another fabulous find and tonight will be our 3rd night here. Sid and Anne have a 100 acre property here at Northcliffe and they have created a quirky little campsite made out of a lot of recycled bits and pieces. We have power and water and a hot shower and flushing toilet and camp kitchen complete with wood burning stove, as well as very friendly hosts all at less than a quarter of the cost of any caravan park around here. In addition to this, we have the place all to ourselves. It was also a good place for the kids to gain some initial driving skills..

Northcliffe is up the road from Windy Harbour and Point D'Entrecasteaux in the D'Entrecasteaux National Park which is a bit of a mouthful for anyone who doesn't speak French like me. We found our 4th 'natures window' of this trip and got some more great coastal scenery.

Also in the same National Park we climbed Mt Chudalup which is a huge granite boulder giving some good views from the top.

There are so many National Parks in this area, another two just up the road from Northcliffe that we visited are Warren National Park and Gloucester National Park at Pemberton, which are both on the Karri Explorer route. The fact that's it's raining is at least a good excuse to not have to entirely climb the fire-lookout 'climbing trees'; the Bicentennial Tree and the Gloucester Tree, because they advise you not to climb in rainy weather. These trees were originally used to spot fires in the forest (Bicentennial not original) and today are left there for anyone to climb. But talk about dangerous and freaky!! Sid, our host, and an ex NP ranger told me no one has ever fallen off, however there have been a few deaths such as from heart attack. We just played around a bit at the bottom. Bicentennial tree is 75m to top platform and 25m to intermediate one. Gloucester Tree is a bit less at 53m. The first 3 photos are the Bicentennial Tree, showing the intermediate platform (and Cem halfway up to it), the 4th photo is my huge(!) effort up the Gloucester Tree.

Here we are dodging the rain storms in the Warren National Park at the Warren River.