Due South-West
Although I was breathing sighs of relief at the thought of staying in one place for longer than I had for the past 4 months, I still had one small trip to take before I could settle into Perth properly, this time due south west.
The weather and landscape changed almost immediately only an hour or two outside of Perth, to yet another completely different Australian surrounding.
After stopping at ´the roadhouse at the centre of the universe´ for a morning caffeine boost, we continued swiftly on to Busselton. Some tyre trouble on the truck meant we stopped there a little longer than originally planned. Busselton is a quaint seaside town with one famous feature, the longest jetty I have ever seen. It continues on for 1.9 kilometres, and boasts much more than your average wander along the pier. It was appropriately blustering that day, to the point where you could almost imagine yourself at some seaside town in Britain.
From the windy jetty of Busselton our next destination was Ngigli cave, one of the many around that area, and full of its own Aboriginal ancestry and legend. Wolgine, an evil spirit, originally inhabited the cave, and the story is how Ngigli, the good warrior spirit, gathered together the spirits of the waves, lightning, rain, thunder and wind and created a huge storm to drive Wolgine out. The battle which ensued was so intense that the mouth of the cave collapsed inwards, and Wolgine was driven up through the earth where the entrance now stands. Wolgine was banished and Ngilgi claimed it as his own, which is why we know it as Ngilgis Nurilem (cave).
It was first discovered as a ´tourist attraction´ by Edward Dawson in 1899, who was so blown away by the cave that he spent the rest of his life conducting tours of its chambers. We were given a tour of the cave, which essentially meant we traipsed around the chambers and up and down the varying degrees of narrow passageways on our own. It was nice to take the time we wanted and needed in the depths of the underground cavern, which included a children´s tunnel that myself, Karen and Susan just about managed to squeeze through. In addition to the stalagtites dripping from the ceiling and the stalagmites inching their way up from the rockbed, there were curtains or ´shawls´ cascading down from the ceiling, thousands of years old yet delicately intact.
Margaret river was our next spot of interest, a region famous for all means of tasty delights and refined tastes. Vineyards lined the side of the roads, complimented by a winery almost every 100 metres. Our first wine tasting of the trip was at Kneedeep, which has since become one of my favourite wines, though don´t mistake me for an expert by any means, more of an appreciator. I also found out an interesting fact. Many of the vineyards had a rose planted at the end of each row of vines. rather than being a pretty extravagance to make it easier on the eyes, this actually allows the cultivators to spot any disease in the soil as early as possible, by looking at how healthy the flower is.
From acres of vineyards lined up neatly in never-ending rows, the next day saw us entering the Karri forest, where I have yet to see taller and more slender examples of vegetation. It somehow came into my head that this is what Sherwood forrest would be to robin hood (don’t ask me why, I also had the tune stuck in my head for the whole day…’Robin hood robin hood riding through the glen…’).
These monoliths reach 75 metres with no difficulty at all, and glorious red-tinted wood to boot. With the clouds rolling in and the rain beginning to spit, it wasnt long before we were all stood in front of our challenge of the day – Bicentennial tree. Climbing to over 60 metres, we had the choice to climb it, via a series of what I can only describe as ´extended nails´ hammered in spiral fashion all the way to the top. With nothing more than a wire mesh around the outside, and absolutely nothing between each spike, we were actually obliged to sign a disclaimer form by the guide before we attempted the climb.
Going up was the easy part I soon discovered, and one of the scariest part of the whole experience was the natural swaying motion of the tree in the wind. the half way platform was more than sufficient for me, and I excessively carefully grappled my way down the tree to get to the bottom with a sigh of relief!
After precarious heights of Bicentennial tree, I felt a lot safer at our next stop in the Valley of Giants – the tree top walk. This is an impressive structure to say the least, of platforms built 40 metres above the ground, and walkways adjoining the trees in a huge loop. You got the feeling you were a bit drunk as it was almost impossible to walk in a straight line along the pathways due to the wind. The same kind of feeling you get on a ferry trying to get back to your cabin. When I looked back over my photos, I found one which, if you were not told it was taken from the top of the trees, would look simply as a line of bushes planted in the security of the ground.
The rest of the day was something of a drama, because as we travelled along the road from the treetop walk, we were stopped by a kindly motorcyclist to tell us our trailer door was open. After some close inspection, and a hauling out of all the bags, we realised that two of them had been left behind ‘somewhere’ between the 40 minute drive. We spent an hour or more driving back and forward along the same route, scanning the edges of the road in the hope that someone had either left them in full view, or that we would somehow be able to spot them in the undergrowth. When this brought no results, we drove to the nearest town on the map, Pemberton, where the two distressed travellers were blissfully happy to find that good deeds are not entirely obsolete in this world, and that someone had dropped their belongings at the local police station! With the stress over, it was onwards to Augusta, dropping in at a fudge factory for some tasting along the way (it was in fact just about to close but our guide stood at the window and made a few begging signs to get us in : )
