GrubsAbout: For the Love of Trees

Tent set up in Pemberton

Austria had us falling in love with all things nature (excluding spiders, and snakes, and going naked in public saunas!), and in particular, trees. Now we’re not your typical tree huggers. We don’t sport dreadlocks, we don’t get involved in the business of Greenpeace, we don’t even grow our own vegetables (not that we don’t want to!), we like beef, but even though we don’t have one yet, I do have ‘Compost’ on my list of things to get for the garden! I’ve got some ‘leaf’ earrings. And my favourite shop is called The Tree of Life. There’s a t-shirt in there with ‘Hug a Tree’ on the front. It’s been there a long time. I haven’t bought it yet.

Tree train!

We just like being around trees, alright? So we’ve made an effort to get to the ‘trees’ at every opportunity we get, including camping weekends.

Ye Olde train station

After Christmas, for the Australia Day weekend at the end of January, we drove five hours south to Denmark. It’s a much cooler climate down there. Between here and there there’s nothing. Lots of ‘flat orange’. And then about half hour from Denmark you can start to see the trees, and some hills in the distance called the ‘Stirling Ranges’ (haven’t been there yet). A ‘cool’ weekend with friends Peta (you might remember her from Stinky Pete and the Cow Dung) and Al. It was the first time putting up the tent for years. Six years in fact. Not a long trip, only two night, but a little taster with some bush walking (bush a bit friendlier than that of Dunsborough), market wandering, take away coffee from the hip (ee) little town, climbing on rocks at the beach and starfish spotting.

Karri tree forest

At Easter we ventured away a bit longer, for three nights, four hours south in a different direction (does that make any sense?) to Pemberton. Much more tree-ie. And cooler still, it being April. It even rained – woohoo! Nothing like a walk in a damp forest! (I appreciate it may not be everyone’s cup of tea!) We took a train ride throught the Karri forest (some of the tallest trees in the world you know!), went looking for blueberries but found none, a bit of biking, Maciek took a dip in the freezing cold lake, and the kids enjoyed just being outside to play and feed the ‘Twenty-Eights’ – green parrots.

Feeding the '28's'

We’ve been on day trips to Dwellingup for a tree fix. And Maciek gets his tree fix every weekend with his ‘mountain’ biking. He’s discovered four tracks, within easy reach after a one hour drive from home. He’s bought me a bike too. And a new helmet. He went out at 9pm to buy it, and then demanded I sit on it, and asked me how it felt. I just wanted to drink my tea and finish my book. He’s obsessed with all things bike. He loves it though. But it’s only a winter sport. In summer he’d get a face full of spiders, hanging between trees. In summer he goes Paddling. No, not like frolicking about in the shallows with his skirt tucked into his knickers. Like in a kayak. The only thing to worry about then is the sharks.