We then headed back to Manjimup and Jan-Marie accompanied us down to Pemberton. Pemberton is famous for its forestry lookout trees, with the creme de creme being the Gloucester Tree. 

The Gloucester Tree is a 60 meter high giant Karri tree and is one of 8 with a fire lookout built in its lofty crown. For those who the term fire lookout is a mystery, it simply means someone located in the lookout maintained a vigilance to ensure any outbreaks of fire were reported and acted on early to prevent major disasters. By co-ordinating the readings from the 3 nearest trees it was possible to fairly accurately pin point the location of the outbreak. The Gloucester Trees lookout was built in 1947, and the floor of the lookout is 58 meters from the base of the tree. Access to the top is via spikes driven into the tree in a spiral staircase pattern, the gaps between them a quite large and makes for a challenging climb, especially for the short people. 

We climbed to over half way and took the pic looking back down, but Jan-Marie was determined to make it to the top, and did.

Other than the Gloucester tree, the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree and the Diamond Tree are also open to be climbed by the public.

The region also has a popular site called the cascades and the very popular Bibbulmum track passes through the area. The Bibbulmum track stretches from Kalamunda above Perth to the very south at Albany a distance of 963 Km.

 We dropped Jan Marie back at Manjimup and headed further south to Walpole, home of the amazing Valley of the Giants and the Tree Top Walk. This spot was once used in a series of Adverts promoting Western Australia and featuring Elle 'The Body' MacPherson, not that she was around when we were there!. 

The forest is made up principally of veteran tingle trees, up to 16 meters in circumference, which form what is known as 'the Ancient Empire'. Then high up in the tree tops is the spectacular steel truss walkway, 420 meters long, giving a wonderful insight into life up in the tree canopy. While the walkway is up to 40 meters from the forest floor and billed 'as not for the feint hearted', it is actually suitable for most age groups and even wheelchairs have navigated to 'walk'.

OK, mission accomplished, we can do this travel stuff, back to Dongara via the city and lets go!!.