Bibbulmun Track; Sunday

We left early in the morning and drove a few kilometres to the Tree Top Walk, a giant steel construction on which you can take a stroll through the crowns of some of the most astonishing trees in the world. The walkway goes up to 40m above the ground, which gives you a kind of "squirrel sight" on the forest; we made it three times as I couldn't part from it. The bridges were designed to swing with the wind which was a delight to me, but obviously not to some elderly people who looked a bit distressed...

Next to it is the Ancient Empire Walk, a grove of impressive veteran tingle trees, some over 400 years old. They are endemic to this area and only grow on some 1600 ha. Most of them are affected by a fungus that has eaten away all the core wood and when there was a fire it burned all the rotten wood away, smouldering for months sheltered from rain through the outer bark, until it reached living, moist wood and went out again. This way most of the trees are hollow to some degree which makes for some interesting cavities. This giant tingle is so huge that you could park a pickup in his trunk. It makes you feel so small to stand beneath it, watching through the gaps in his bark, wondering how on earth it can still be alive. But he is doing exceedingly well. We took part in a guided tour through the Ancient Empire Walk and the guide told us that 1937 and again somewhere in the 70s there were massive crown fires sweeping through that area, going on an incredible speed (no chance of keeping out of its way..... ) and burning vast expanses. But even if these trunks are almost completely destroyed, they still live on and regrow from shoots lying just under the thick outer bark. We saw trees, completely hollow and burned to a bare minimum, hardly holding to the soil, but surrounded by four, five "new" trees emanating from the original trunk, growing strong and green.

These "walks" barely covered 5km altogether, almost nothing. So we decided to tackle a part of that famous Bibbulmun Track that covers almost 1000km from Perth to Albany. I have been told that it is similar to the Appalachian Track in USA, of which I have absolutely no knowledge at all, but others might. So there were more trees to marvel at (no hugging, sadly; on one hand they are simply too big, and on the other hand, huge as they might be, they are also very fragile with shallow roots that are easily damaged when you step on them and they don't like to be touched. They might survive a conflagration, but the guide showed us where people had constantly touched the bark of some red Tingles and how it had damaged the bark, forming large podgy humps like scar tissue. Sigh.).

I "see" with my hands and I love touching things. In German 'to reach for' and 'to understand' are closely related ('greifen' and 'begreifen') and that's how I work as well. It was hard not to touch all the new things I found in this country, but my encounters with nature have been very painful at times in the past, so with all the poisonous stuff here I was fully aware that I'd best keep my hands close by. Not to mention sniffing/trying things as I usually do.

But even so it was a rewarding walk for several hours. One day I'd love to spend at least a week on one of these long tracks, here or elsewhere in the world. That should be serious fun, spending all day outside, sleeping in the woods and all. Even if it rains.