There’s absolutely nothing remotely challenging about flying an airplane. Well, that’s not exactly true but it was a Bazflyer verdict after confronting perhaps Australia’s scariest vertigo inducing tourist experience.
Pemberton is a former timber town in the southwest corner of Western Australia, surrounded by some of the tallest trees on earth, centuries-old Karris that grow upwards of 70 metres high. Around Pemberton three of these beautiful monsters were repurposed as fire lookout trees and in regular summer use for decades. It is an entirely reasonable theory that if you can get above the forest canopy, you can see whether there are any fires in the distance.
Rendered redundant by technology these former fire-lookout trees are nowadays there for anyone to climb...that is, anyone silly enough to risk life and limb. To get up there...all of the way to the top...the only way up is a worryingly unprotected spiral of metal pegs hammered into the side of the tree.
There's no harness. There's nothing to clip on to. And there's nothing to catch you if you fall. The only concession to “nanny-state” is a sign at the bottom. It’s entirely up to the climber to not make any mistakes. Perhaps that’s why no one’s ever died climbing these trees. Health and safety experts should take note...the survival instinct has an incredible ability to trump natural clumsiness when sure-footed concentration is required. And the tree climbing episode of one Bazflyer can vouch for that....!
Signage is the only concession to health and safety.
It’s a long lonely 56 metre climb all the way to the very top.
Climbing the spiral of metal pegs hammered into the side of the tree.
Wow!! I am impressed, guys.
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