Tuesday, January 6th

Tourism Land

The smell of rain hung in the air when I opened the door. Outside, the asphalt looked wet, too. The clouds were still hovering in the sky. When I finally left the hotel, they had started to scatter and the sun came out slowly. I drove down Bridgetown’s main street, the by now familiar arrangement of shops under sheet metal arcades. It ended at a bridge over the Blackwood River in something not entirely unlike a gorge.

The road climbed out of the river valley and back into a mixture of farms and forests. Most of the farms and homesteads were offering accommodation or even additional excitement like horseback riding. Around here, tourism was not entirely unknown.

Outside Manjimup, a sign advised that ‘local police are now targeting’ with an exchangeable line below for what they were targeting. These kind of signs had appeared outside of quite a few town already. They had suggested either speeding or drink driving (as the Australian term seemed to be). This one was new and announced fatigue as the number one enemy. Which bears the question: How do they target fatigue? Will there be fines for yawning?

Manjimup itself welcomed its visitors with a large wooden gate erected from tree trunks over the highway. The town centre was off to the right and proudly included a ‘shopping precinct.’

No shopping for me, though, but rather back to forests and fields. My chosen road, Tourist Route 259, whizzed past. Until I finally had stopped I also had ran past something called the Diamond Tree Lookout even though there was nothing but large trees. This needed researching.

Back before aeroplanes, bush fire watch had been done from tree tops. Specifically, so called tree towers were employed in the venture. A suitably large tree was chosen and a platform placed on its top. Other tall trees around were felled for a better view. A network of eight of tree towers covered this particular area.

Diamond Tree had been one of them. When tree towering was abandoned in the seventies, it was kept as a tourist attraction. You could now simply climb up. Steel rods had been driven into the trunk sticking out about a metre and placed half a metre apart spiralling up the tree. It was 119 ladder steps up to the platform at 52 metres—seventeen stories (or a bit more than three in Berlin). Up there was a wonderful view over the treetops far off into the distance.

Down again there was a shelter with information displays. One of them kindly gave a quick introduction into the local trees, specifically into the various types eucalyptus trees. Most important of them, or at least the tallest, is the Karri, easily recognisable by its smooth silvery bark. It was so recognisable, in fact, that the local forests were known as Karri forests, even though there were plenty of other trees, many of them eucalyptus but also cedars and oaks.

Tourist Road 259 brought me to Pemberton, unofficial capital of the forests. A sign pointed to a Tramway station. This was the tourist leftover of the old narrow gauge railway down to Northcliffe. I went and nosed around the yard for a bit. An old steam train quietly reminisced about the days of yonder. The Pemberton Tramway Co owned the yard and operated daily diesel car excursions. I had missed the departure of the morning service by a mere ten minutes.

On the far end of town I came by the large Pemberton Timber Mill before the road returned to farm-busy countryside. It was winding left and right, up and down like a proper country road should. Better yet, even when it was running through fields it was lined with large trees.

The clouds had caught up with me again. It was properly overcast now and suddenly a light drizzle sprayed onto the windscreen. But it only lasted for a short while.

In Northcliffe I turned right towards Windy Harbour. I kept driving through Karri forests and fields until, suddenly the trees stopped and the road ran out onto an near endless plateau of bushes. It ended in the still far distance at a minor range. The road aimed for a point where the range broke off vertically.

That was Windy Harbour, a summer home community of dirt roads and cabins by the ocean shore. There were quite of few of either and I erred around for a while before finding a paved parking lot at the boat launch. It also served as the start of a 2.7 kilometre trail to Point D’Entrecôte, I am sorry, Point D’Entrecasteaux. I decided to finally go for a to hike.

It was a fine, walk, a bit over half an hour, through hip-tall, scrawny bushes and the occasional larger vegetation and, yes, hordes of flies. The destination was a tall cliff, the aforementioned Point. It featured a section where the centre of the cliff had broken out and one was able to look through a gap in the rocks down to the ocean, irritably named Windows Lookout (I am sure you can produce your own lame joke). Half-way there was Cathedral Rock, a large free standing stone that looked nothing at all like a cathedral.

As I walked back, the sun came out and the clouds slowly disappeared.

There was also a road leading to the Point, stopping at additional lookouts along the way, but I forfeit the option and rather started the long drive to Margaret River. I didn’t want to arrive there too late, given that it was a known tourism hotspot and this was the summer holidays.

The road there, first back to Pemberton and then onwards due west, kept changing between deep, dark forests, some claiming to be regrown in the 1920s and 1930s, and busy fields. There were plenty of vineyards, for this was wine country, and apple orchards, or so I believed.

As I neared Margaret River, the road became busier and busier. That couldn’t be good. Outside town, a sign proudly proclaimed it winner of the Top Tourism Town Award. That definitely wasn’t good.

I drove down main street, at four already rather busy with punters, as far as the information board at the other end of town. I snapped a picture of the town map (the wonders of modern gadgetry) and went back to find a room. I was offered the last available room at the first place I asked, a large but rather pricey cabin. Since the hunt for cheaper alternatives never goes well and only leaves you disappointed and roomless, I went for it. In return I got a two bedroom suite with a four poster bed, jacuzzi, and a private outdoor area.

I walked into town to shop for supplies, since parking seemed to have been an issue. The walk wasn’t all that far and it had become properly sunny by now. The coast was only ten kilometres away and I decided to find a nice spot to enjoy the setting sun.

The motel’s proprietor suggested Prevelly. But the beach there was right next to a village. It was also a rather popular haunt for surfers, as given away subtly by the name Surfers Point. By Western Australian beach standards, it was crawling with people.

His other suggestion had been Redgate, far away from any settlement inside the local national park. Besides a long stretch of white sands, it also provided a section where rocks littered the shallow waters. Far out, two large rocks proudly stood in the waves’ way and entertained the onlooker with large fountains.

It was there that I found myself a nice, reasonably comfortable spot and watched the sun sink, yet again, behind a wall of clouds hovering just above the horizon.