LISTEN TO THE TREES
When tree hugging was a thing, I gave it a good nudge.
I’d wrap my arms around those solid, dependable trunks,
sending warm fuzzies deep into their growth rings. In all
the times I did it, I never expected to be hugged back.
Then one day, a 75-metre-tall beauty returns the love.
Named the Walk-Through tree, I find her at the end of a
leaf-strewn bush trail flanked by trees that are among the
tallest in the world. Believed to be 400 years old, her
gnarled base has formed into an arch, and a ladder grants
entrance to her open-sided cavern. I step in and am gently
cuddled by impenetrably dense, living wood. Its age and
strength emanates contentment, calm and, remarkably,
zero claustrophobia. As I lean back in the darkness, I have
the most unusual feeling: I sense a heartbeat.
The Walk-Through tree – and her countless cousins- are found in Pemberton, 3.5 hours’ drive south of Perth.
A place where tracts of pale, smooth-surfaced karri trees
rise like Roman columns and fringe the rolling earth like
stubble on a man’s chin. And while everyone’s attention is
focused on Margaret River, 1.5 hours’ drive west, these
giant trees are left to whisper among themselves.
There are several elders in Greater Beedelup
National Park, their old-growth grandeur – measuring
up to 90 metres in height – clear to see against those that
have sprouted since the milling days of last century. I’m
enchanted by them all as I trace the springy, cinnamon-hued
trail back to Lake Beedelup, a man-made waterway that
reflects more enormous toothpicks in its still surface. Fed
by a nearby waterfall, the lake poetically draws its name
from a Nyoongar word, meaning place of rest or sleep. It
was dug in the 1960s to hydrate a huge hops garden – the
The karri forests of
south-western Australia
are some of the tallest
in the world.AUSTRALIANTRAVELLER.COM 93
11 1