Day 130 31/07/2011 Pemberton to Shannon National Park via Windy Harbour

Day 130 31/07/2011 Pemberton to Shannon National Park via Windy Harbour

Oh my gosh, I’m surprised that we just didn’t float away given the amount of rain that fell last night. I am also grateful that even with everything that is breaking, falling apart and being broken on the caravan we are still relatively water proof.  I say relatively because we have a leak under the front window but this has not had a negative impact on us….so far!! 

Our first glimse of the Bi Centennial Tree

 Once packed up we headed straight to the Dave Evans Bi Centennial Tree, one of three fire lookout trees in the Pemberton area.  The tree is a giant karri tree that has a fire lookout built into the top of it and metal pegs that wind all the way up to the fire lookout.  This didn’t sound so adventurous until we realised that the fire lookout was 68m in the air!!  The kids were so keen to climb, Pete was keen to climb, I myself couldn’t think of anything worse, but thought “oh what the heck”.  To add to the adventure it had recently been raining and the winds were beginning to pick up ….again.  Pete and the kids headed off and I followed, they were making great inways on the climb but I confessed I pulled the pin at about 8m’s.  The rest of the family made it to the one and only rest stop and then they headed off to the lookout.  To say I was terrified for them was an understatement!! 

The wind picked up more and then to make matters worse it started to thunder!! When I looked up to see



And this was the ladder!!



where the family was all I could see was the top of the giant karri tree swaying in the wind!! It was all too much and I demanded that they return to earth.  Pete must have been having similar thoughts to me as he too heard the thunder and felt the first few drops of rain and he began calling the boys back, Claudia had stuck with Pete for the climb.  The boys of course stopped climbing and argued back about why they should be able to get to the top!!  Ultimately the parents won out and the family headed back down the tree with the cries from me in the background “be careful”!!

Zac and Callum climbed approximately 50m’s up the tree and Pete and Claudia about 40m’s!!  I was very proud of their achievement but I was happier still to have them all safely back on the ground.  We had to do the mad dash back to the car as the rain came down.

We decided that we would head out to Windy Harbour with the possibility of camping there for the night!! In hindsight this probably wasn’t the best plan for the day given the weather had set in!!

And there they go!!

Windy Harbour kept true to its name it was cyclonically windy when we got there and there were a number of times on the drive in that the wind tried to push the caravan of peace, love and happiness off the road!!  After a quick look around we assessed that the camp area was a quagmire and we needed to find another spot for the night!!

We finally settled on Shannon National Park campground.  We had the entire campground to ourselves.  It is a beautiful spot to camp for the night.  It even has showers and flushing toilets.  All Pete had to do was stoke the fire in the hot water system with the wood supplied.  After a few hours we all had a lovely hot shower.  Due to the foul weather we spent the rest of the afternoon playing board games with the kids!!  A much better day even though the weather is still foul!

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