Had another great nights sleep to the sound of the ocean. I headed inland today to the big trees around Pemberton. This was the biggest drive I’ve don since arriving in Yallingup. Spoke to a really nice guy from Melbourne whilst I as doing my dishes. He said to me ‘are you on dishes duty then?’ to which I replied that I was on every duty as I was travelling alone. I told him about my trip and we discussed Melbourne and the infamous Nullarbor crossing. He’d taken 4 days to cross it. I decided to drive to Pemberton via Nannup which was supposed to be a lovely traditional town. It took about an hour to get there and it certainly was a quaint place and it was very quiet. I got some fuel from the BP as it was pretty reasonably priced and then I had a walk around. I bought some chips for my lunch and then went to eat them down by the river. There was an interesting information board about when the river had flooded and there were markers on a tree as to how high the waters had got. Unbelievably high in 1982 and 1910 when the water wasn't far off the top of the tree. After lunch another hours drive to Pemberton. What I noticed today was just how quiet the roads were.On both journeys I encountered no vehicles ahead of me and no one passed me and I only saw a handful of cars coming the other way. And this is a relatively populated part of Australia! I did however see my first emus. There were two of them strutting about in a field. I also saw my first road kills, two dead kangaroos at the side of the road being picked at by the birds! I had my Spotify music playlists on random play today, all 3,333 tracks. Would be interesting to see what came up. Spotify provided me with a wonderful random play list and some tunes were just so right for today’s journey. These are the stand out tracks:- Drive My Soul - LIGHTS, Echo - TRAPT, All You Need To Know - THE PINEAPPLE THIEF, Kryptonite - 3 DOORS DOWN, Now It's For Real - BARRY MANILOW (Yes I know I know Bazza Manilow, but give the poor guy a chance. This one is from last year and is really good, I promise. Go on be wild and give it a listen, you know you want to!!!!)
I went to see the Beedalup Falls on the way into Pemberton and had a short walk here and then I went to The Gloucester Tree. This is one of the climbing trees in the area. This tree is 61 metres (200 foot high)!! It used to be used as a fire lookout as it is taller than all the other trees in the area. It certainly is a monster of a tree. There is a metal rung ladder that winds its way round the tree all the way up to a viewing tree house at the top. Anyone can climb this tree If they wish but there is a warning sign advising you not to climb if you have a heart condition or have a fear of heights. The UK Health and Safety brigade would have a fit over this. Don't think this would be allowed in the UK! When I got there a couple of guys were already at the top. I watched them wind their way down in horror. I got talking to a young couple from Melbourne. They were just watching like me, scared of heights. Some other people then came along and someone started to climb. They went up fairly quickly and made it look easy! I foolishly thought I’d give it a go, I thought I’d challenge myself as I’m terrified of heights. I have dreams/nightmares where I’m stuck at height too scared to move up or down, just terrified and stuck to the spot. Anyhow I got going and got up to maybe 25 feet high when I started feeling weird and just knew that if I went any higher my dream/nightmare would become a reality! I came slowly back down and was very relieved to feel the hard ground under my feet. I felt annoyed with myself that I didn’t do it, but it was just asking too much. I’ve never been good with heights. I remember back at school when I was maybe 14 this really horrible PE teacher ( In fact don't get me ranting about PE teachers, teachers is the wrong word for them as all they do is encouraqe the kids who are naturally good at sport to excel and they just ignore and humiliate the rest. I thought they were supposed to teach. PE teachers in my my experience are just sadistic bullies. Anyhow I digress ( feel slightly better now I’ve got that pent up childhood anger out of my system!)( this PE teacher in a climbing lesson tried to get me and my mate Chris to climb the sports hall wall. We both only got about 6 feet up when we both felt unwell and had to come down.So this nasty 'teacher' said that next week he’d force us to climb all the way to the top. We never went to that lesson. We went and sat in the park and ate crisps instead! My other bad experience of heights is when I lived in Swinton and had a leak in the roof. The roofer came round and went up there and was stood on the roof. He called down, having found where the water was getting in, and asked me to come up so he could show me. So I climbed the ladders and got to the top. But I felt weird and panicky and couldn't properly look. I just quickly mumbled that I'd seen as I had to get down quickly. I was so glad see the ground. So heights aren’t my thing. I like trees, trees are great but I won’t be climbing them. I dare any of you lovely blog followers to do it. Let me know if you would/could climb a 61 metre tree. ( Except Uncle Rodney who I know could/would no problems!!). So I went for a bit of a hike through the woods instead. The trees here are simply majestic. I thought I’d camp at the Big Brook Arboretum tonight, a cheap National Park camp site but it was tricky to find. I did find it eventually but I didn’t like it. It had been raining and the place looked miserable. I opted instead to go to the Pemberton Caravan Park with proper facilities. I checked in and got a bag of fire wood as I had my own fire ring here. I’d just got my fire going when it lashed it down with rain. I thought my fire was a gonner, but it recovered and I got a pretty good fire tonight. Took some more photos in the dark again around the fire and got more beautiful orbs. They are most definitely travelling with me and it’s comforting to know that my wonderful gang of spirit energy is here and around me. Went to bed happy with the fire but a bit ****** off about the tree. Take me away from these trees. I need to be by the coast again. Goodnight campers.