We were driving to a place called the Valley of the Giants, a three hour drive from where we were staying. Three hours is a long time to be in the car, Jonathan and I agreed. So I picked a spot half way there for a break.
Tim was against stopping, but he was overruled.
We stopped in early morning at Manjinup Timber Park.
On first glance, Manjinup Timber park seemed pretty cool. There were toilets with both soap and paper towels. That's pretty nice.
Around the building from the toilets, there was a huge log. That's pretty cool.
And this nice bridge over a little river. That's not bad.
I was pointing out all the nice things about the stop, showing Tim how wrong he had been to try to veto, when we crossed out of the trees and saw this in the distance:
A giant slide.
And as we watched, a little kid, maybe five years old, crawled out of the slide.
"You went down again?" an adult mother-figure asked him as he skipped away, as though he had just done something routine. Not as though he had just slid down the most massive slide I have ever seen in my entire life.
So Jonathan and I decided to climb to the top. And this is what the view looked like from way way up there. Those tiny dots are Tim and Grandma.
Or you could look beyond Tim and Grandma, out into the far far distance -- we were that high.
The far far distance in another direction:
Time to go down. Jonathan was already nervous enough to be on the top of that huge tower. Plus he read the Slide Rules of Play:
"You are advised not to use the slide if you have ... back/neck problems."
"Oh, I strained my back last week, so I'm not going down," he said, and walked back down the stairs.
I had no such excuse. So I stood there a little while, and looked down the tube.
And looked around the tube. That's pretty steep. And a pretty long drop. What if I get stuck, like Homer Simpson in the waterslide?
After considering for a little while longer, I came to the reasoned conclusion that I should do it! And so I did.
That was totally awesome!
Let's do it again!
Only then we found the ziplines. Everyone was down for the ziplines.
Even Grandma.
Wow. What an awesome stop. So glad we picked it off of the map and went! What a great way to spend 30 minutes on a Wednesday morning in southwest Australia. Even Tim agreed that it was a nice place to stop.
Ok. Continuing. An hour and a half later, after driving through lots and lots of trees, we arrived at the Wilderness Discovery Centre at the Valley of the Giants -- our original planned destination.
The name Valley of the Giants refers to the size of the trees. The red tingle trees are a type of eucalyptus that grows very large, but only in a very small geographical area. Because their roots are delicate, a system of platforms and suspension bridges allows people to walk among the trees without touching the ground. The Tree Top Walk.
I wanted to see it.
Although we all took pictures, it is impossible for to show you (a) how high up we were, (b) how scary that was with the wobbly platforms and bridges, and (c) how hugely tall and huge the trees were. With those three things in mind, here are some pictures we took.
"Congratulations!" Reads the sign. "You are at the highest point of the Tree Top Walk -- 40 metres above ground level." Recall that a metre is about three feet. We were 120 feet above the ground!
The picture below is my shadow on the top of a large tree far far below me. Kind of scary just to take my camera out of my pocket and take the picture, honestly! But I love you all so much that I took the photo for you anyway.
If you click on the photo below, you may see near the top of the large tree there the very small bridge that was part of the walk. And notice that the camera doesn't even show the bottom of that tree. We were really high!
Ok. Tree top walk finished, we ate a picnic lunch and then went on another walk, around different trees.
The tree behind me below is known as Grandma Tingle. She has a face and keeps watch over the forest.
Tim and his mom showing you the size of the trees.
This is a burl. These knobby things grow to protect the tree from disease. They make the trees look cooler. Like a tattoo only lumpy.
Ok. Having seen everything there was to see at that stop, including the gift shop in which a plush quokka was purchased, we hopped back in the car and started to drive home.
You will remember that the total drive was three hours. That's three hours both ways. Again Jonathan and I voted for a break half way. This time we had totally planned our stop.
The Diamond Tree.
In the forests of the western US in the 1930s and 40s, the forest service built a series of cabins on tall stilts in which forest rangers could look over the treetops and spot the smoke of forest fires in the distance. My paternal grandfather spent a summer watching for fires in the Uinta mountains in the US.
In Australia, rather than build cabins on stilts, the people found the tallest trees on the tallest hills, and apparently just built cabins at the very top. The Diamond tree was one of these, built in the 1940s. This is where we stopped. And below is a picture of it, surrounded by other trees, but if you look closely you can see the cabin at the top.
So how do you get to the cabin? You climb. Well -- if you can manage it. You don't need a permit, or special permission, or anything. You just turn off the road at the appropriate place, park your car, walk up to the tree, read the sign (below), and then climb. If you want.
This is how you climb. These pegs are hammered into the tree, so you can climb them like a ladder. Easy going. As long as you never ever ever look down. Ever.
Jonathan went up about two metres.
Grandma climbed up about two metres.
I told Tim to climb two and a half metres so his head would be in the sunshine and it would make a better photo. But he wouldn't do it.
As for me, I started climbing, and I went up about three times my own height, to where I could see a platform far far above me. And I tried to reason with myself: The pegs are reasonably spaced. They are easy to climb. I would be totally safe climbing -- as long as I didn't look down. I would likely never pass through there again. The view from the top would be completely amazingly amazing. I might regret it forever if I didn't climb to the top. I tried to talk myself into it. You can see it from the photo below. I was totally trying to talk myself into climbing.
But in the end, I didn't do it. It didn't help that the rest of the family was simultaneously trying to talk me out of it. And that I knew I would have to look down sometime before I reached the top. And then what?
So I didn't climb it either.
Here is some literature to read while you contemplate climbing.
And here is a view of the whole tree again, backlit to help you see the pegs going all the way up up up 50 metres into the sky -- that's about 150 feet -- even higher than the Tree Top Walk of the last stop, and all by way of that peg ladder!!??
And one more view of the cabin at the top -- that I did not visit.
After a quick stop at the Diamond Tree toilets, we were back on the road again.
That evening, Tim stopped by the desk at the place we were staying, and mentioned that we had visited the Diamond Tree.
"Did you climb it?" asked the man at the desk.
"No way," was the gist of Tim's response.
"Yeah. I've never worked up the nerve to climb it either."
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