It was 9am when we left Margaret River, the caravan park was looking quite empty, when we checked in the lady at reception told us that they are expecting Schoolies to arrive on Friday, she’s warning everyone that it may get a bit noisy. First stop was Busselton Jetty, a 140 year old jetty that is the longest wooden structure in the southern hemisphere at 2km long. I took some photos and had a look at the Interpretive Centre (souvenir shop).
From Busselton we headed towards Donnybrook then onto Manjimup passing through many little towns along the way. There are towns every 30km or so and all seem to have cafés and galleries. The road winds its way up and down through the hills in this part of the country and passes areas of forest, dairy farms, vineyards and orchards. We filled up with petrol in Donnybrook. When we got to Manjimup we called into the employment agency, I had spoken to the lady there a couple of days ago and she was quite helpful. They had no suitable jobs for us today but she did look on the internet for us to see what work there may be in other towns. We also called into the tourist information centre to find out about the area and what there is to visit. Manjimup is the birthplace of the Pink Lady variety of apple.
	After having some lunch we went to see King Jarrah a huge tree only 2km from town. We then went to see One Tree Bridge, which as its name implies, is a bridge that has as its base just one tree. It was a little disappointing that it’s no longer in place over a river, but still good to see that it’s being preserved as part of the history of the region. We decided to travel a bit further to the timber town of Pemberton and stay the night. We’ll have a look around here in the morning before leaving for Albany.

As we were only staying 1 night in Pemberton we didn’t get everything out of the trailer when we set up camp last night. You’d think that would make for a quick pack up this morning? Wrong, we didn’t leave the caravan park until 9.45am. We got into cruise mode because we didn’t have as much to do and we took longer than usual getting going. Oh well, were not in a rush to get anywhere. We talked to a guy who was from Bridgetown, just up the road. He and his wife just wanted to get away from the kids for the weekend, we know the feeling. We went to the Tourist Information Centre to find out the location of a couple of the sites of Pemberton. First stop was the Gloucester Tree, a climbing tree. This tree is 61 metres tall and has a ladder fixed up its entire height and was once used for fire detection.
	In 1963 a survey revealed that 3,000 people climbed the tree in that year alone. By 1990 about 223,000 people were visiting the Gloucester Tree each year, of which 44,600 made it to the top. These days fire detection is mostly done from planes. I decided that it was an opportunity to do something different so I started to climb the tree. It was very slow going; I was making sure of each footstep and grip of my hands. A couple started climbing just ahead of me and the lady got about 10 rungs up and changed her mind. My hands were sweating as I climbed, the thought crossed my mind to go back down, but I thought it would be a great achievement to climb to the top, so I persisted. Once I got past a certain point I thought if I fall from here or further up I’m gone, so I might as well continue.
When I got to about ¾ of the way up I encountered someone coming back down the tree. He moved as close as he could to the tree so that I could step on the same rungs as him and go past, it was easier done than I thought it would be. Tony didn’t do the climb as his ankle is still sore from our little spill at the Pinnacles. After my climb Tony and I sat at one of the picnic tables and fed some bread to the many parrots that were there. They sit on you head and hands and will take the bread right from your hand, very nice. Next stop was the Cascades, a few kilometres from Pemberton, a pretty spot with water gushing over the rocks in a creek. There’s a nice walk alongside the creek, a loop that takes about half an hour to complete. While we were there the Pemberton train went by, it’s a tourist train that takes people through the forest. We had a picnic lunch near the Cascades before heading off for Albany.
	I’ve realised that the year is getting away from us and I’ve been really slack on doing the ABCs of Touring. We need to get photos of Tony, the bike and a Harley magazine beside town signs of every letter of the alphabet. So today we took a detour past Quininup so that I could get the letter Q done. Not sure what I’ll do about X, Australia has no places starting with that letter according to my map book. The ride today took us along winding roads through tall forests of Karri and Tingle trees. We stopped at Walpole so I could put on a jumper and we had a hot chocolate to warm us up, it was really cold. We arrived at the Tourist Info just as they were closing; the lady did give me a map as she locked the door. We rang the caravan park to make sure they had room for us before riding 10km out of town. Happy Days Caravan Park was recommended to us by Mike Smith, a Ulysses member we met last weekend as being very Ulysses friendly, he wasn’t wrong. We were made to feel very welcome and were given a good price. CLICK FOR NEXT PAGE