Big Trees

G'dye, mites. Got our campervan, and each night we pop off the dual carriageway, look for a caravan park with a clean ablution block, community kitchen with gas barbie, and park the camper. Next day, we look for a local bakery, where we choose among caramel slices, hedgehog slices, and melting moments, to name a few, and wash those delights down with the long black or flat white previously noted. Then grab a couple of the ubiquitous meat pies (there are veggies versions too) for dinner.

Working our way along the coast of South Western Australia. We have spent the last several days looking at Big Trees. The karri trees, a gum, or smooth-barked eucalypt, are claimed to be the third tallest trees, behind redwoods and Australian mountain ash. They get up over 300 feet high. A karri wood has this special feel about it, with all the stems ghostly white, straight up for many feet and then branching to a full crown. There are also jarrah-marri woods, rough-barked species. The wood is deep red and used for fine furniture making. Lots of logging in these parts, with virgin forest going for gold mining needs, railway sleepers (ties that is), wood chips, and more. Painful. Yesterday we did the Tree Top Walk, in red tingle forest. It soars 40 meters into the treetops on a suspension bridge type of construction, sways in response to walking, and offers great views into the forest.

We have had rain most every day, a surprise. We are in a rainsoaked country!