Length 37 miles - 3 days walking
Our rest day in Pemberton allowed us to live the high life for the day. We arranged transport to a truffle and winery; drinking a trio of wines with a selection of truffle products over lunch certainly made a change to pasta/rice/noodle dinners. We also made use of the campsite bbqs, to have some burgers in the evening. 'BBQs', actually gas powered hot plates are ubiquitous on this trip, no town would be complete without a few public ones available.
Getting back to the trail I was incredibly excited for the Gloucester tree after reading all about it in the museum in Pemberton. 50-100 years ago some of the massive Karri trees were converted into fire lookouts by creating a ladder of iron bars nailed into the trunk. Miraculously the Australian authorities still let you climb one of these old trees - 53 metres tall without any harnesses or safety equipment. Despite the drizzle this was an amazing experience, not for the faint hearted though.
The trail also took us by some cascades that we're picturesque and serene. Less peaceful was the rabble of year 10 school children awaiting us at our nights shelter. Whilst they provided some entertainment with their ineptitude of putting up tents, it wasn't conducive to a chilled afternoon. There are also over 200 other school kids in the area over the next 10 days that we are likely to encounter!
The highlight of our second day was getting to some more cascades in the river and taking a dip. This was harder than it sounds as the water was fairly shallow so you needed to sit down to be submerged. Shocking to all that know him, Callan got in further than I did. Our final day was a shorter 3 hour walk to Northcliffe. On a walk as long as this, one of the joys is noticing the subtle changes in the landscape day by day: now fewer Karri, a more sandy soil and more open plains. A precursor of terrain to come.
Northcliffe itself was a small town. Our main priority was finding enough to do before we could check in to the hotel for a shower. We explored the town twice and went to the sculpture park - it wasn't the most inspiring at but tided us over until our room was ready. Other mildly interesting things that happened were that upon finding out that Mike couldn't get a bus from Northcliffe to the coast the next day, the lady in the tourist office helpfully suggested that he could walk back to Pemberton (37 miles and 3 days walk) to catch the bus from there tomorrow morning! It's been nice to have Mike's company for the past week and it's a shame he didn't quite have time to join us on the next leg.
There was also a placard in town dedicated to the region's doctor who was the GP, obstetrician, surgeon and anaesthetist until 1980. He rather showed us modern single speciality doctors up.
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