King karri & the tinglewoods

I'm not normally given to hugging towering eucalypts whose tapering trunks stretch unwaveringly into the sky, but this giant karri tree is special.
It's the highest fire lookout tree in the world and I'm climbing it hand over hand using a spiral ladder of 153 steel rods as rungs, with a gaping void between them. There's just a thin veneer of wire netting on the side to give vertiginous climbers the impression they're safe.
I'm climbing with jerky motions like a frightened spider. Clinging to the thin steel rods I maintain three points of contact at all times as if my life depends on it. And, oh my gosh, it does. Visitors climb this 61m tree to match their courage against the old-time lumberjacks and fire lookout crews of the 1930s.
The Gloucester Tree, just outside the pretty township of Pemberton in Western Australia's southwest corner, must have been a daunting prospect for the original fire scouts who shimmied up these trees with no protection whatsoever. Some used only belts and climbing boots.
The top platform on the crown sways alarmingly but affords a magnificent view over the forest canopy to distant hazy blue hills. It's a view to die for and it feels that way when I look down into the mind-bending drop zone.
About 30,000 aspiring fire watchers have climbed the tree, although forestry surveillance work is now done by helicopter.
Graeme Dearle, of Pemberton Discovery Tours, knows where a huge 81m karri grows in the hidden forest vastness of Warren National Park. The forest giants left behind in the earlier days of select felling are reseeding and producing healthy regrowth.
I'm surprised when he tells me that much of the new growth is cut for wood chip exports to Japan.
The wonderful old-growth forest in the national park is fully protected, however, and we drive through an impressive stand of karri with long, tapering trunks. I'm a little late for the glorious displays of wildflowers that adorn this forest in spring but there's a vestige of colour in the small clusters of clematis, coral vine, wisteria, acacia and tiny delicate orchids.
My guide's personal philosophy of "the best is off the highway" comes into play as we climb the face of the Yeagarup sand dune system, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.
The 4WD is not intimidated and soon we are standing on a mini-Sahara of pure white silica sand. The great Southern Ocean is only a breath away from here, but remarkably a 1km-wide strip of stunted coastal vegetation has re-established itself on the seaward ridgeline, leaving a landlocked island of mobile sand that continues to swallow forest lakes and woodland.
At the mouth of the Warren River all is serene, apart from the screech of gulls and the low rumble of the long Antarctic swell. The beach stretches into a haze of heat and mist. Little fairy terns run along the water's edge and a single hooded plover, an endangered species, flies past. This hidden corner of the Lonesome State may well be the mythical edge of the earth.
Graeme and his wife, Toni, are building a new Australian Geographic-type shop, themed on nature and the environment. The historic timber town of Pemberton is becoming an eco-tourism centre, a base for tall timber touring and fine-wine trailing.
My quest for tall timber leads me on through more breathtaking forest scenery on the highway to Walpole, home of the Giant Tinglewood Tree that is 450 years old with a 24m girth. This big boy comes a close third to the monumental redwoods and sequoias of California, the tallest trees on Earth.
Walpole lies in the heart of the Nornalup National Park, 430km south of Perth and offers diverse scenery, from rugged coastlines to tidal inlets, rivers, heathland and towering karri and tinglewood forests.
I follow road signs to the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk, which holds the promise of the ultimate bird's-eye view of tall timber.
The red tinglewoods are relics of the super-continent Gondwanaland and grow only in a 6000ha area. Because these giants are sensitive to humans trampling on their root systems, six bridge spans have been raised on high pylons to create a long walkway in the canopy.
My treetop guide says some people get vertigo when the quivering walkway flexes. I refrain from boasting about my fire lookout credentials and follow her up the metal grid to a pylon head, which does oblige with a first-order sway mode just to give me the exhilaration of another out-of-body experience. The canopy foliage is beautifully arranged in broccoli-like clusters under ramrod-straight trunks that stretch 40m to the forest floor.
We descend to ground level and follow a meandering boardwalk through the Ancient Empire, a grove of old tinglewood trees distinguished by weirdly-shaped boles that give them the appearance of gnarly old men's faces with bulging hooded eyes. Some closely resemble the talking forest trees in The Lord of the Rings.
Though the tinglewoods are tall and majestic they have an intrinsic weakness in that they can't resist smouldering embers from the periodic brush fires, which get embedded in the base of the trunk. The result is a group of trees with hollowed-out butts that you can walk through.
My guide once found a backpacking couple sleeping inside a hollow. "They were away with the fairies in their own dingle dell," she tells me.
The national park has a curious menagerie of animals fossicking under the tinglewood, karri, marri and jarrah giants.
Western grey kangaroos are the big boys, looking down on furry quokkas, honey possums, bandicoots, bush rats and yellow-footed mice.
There are also shy forest dwellers called woylies (brush tail bettongs) and 160 species of birds flitting about.
Environment manager Julie Ross says that the entire Great Western Woodland, from the coast to the Nullarbor Plain, is the largest temperate woodland on Earth. Having made the acquaintance of some of the most rare and majestic trees on the planet I seek out a comfortable haven for an overnight stay, preferably at ground level.
It is said that the quality of your past lives determines your karma in the present one. I must have led exemplary previous lives for fate to have brought me to Karma Chalets near the town of Denmark.
My chalet is nestled under a canopy of karri with a breathtaking rural outlook and multi-coloured parakeets on the balcony. However, this chalet is a pole-house, set arrestingly high on the hillside. It seems I am predestined to live in pampered splendour in the treetops.
Owner Beverly Ford has provided a feeder for the myriad of birds that come to visit me in my treetop eerie.
Like Tarzan, it seems that I could be forever swinging from limb to limb in this fascinating tall-timber country. Paul Rush travelled to Western Australia courtesy of Air New Zealand and Tourism Western Australia.
GETTING THERE
Air New Zealand offers daily non-stop flights from Auckland to Perth and connections are available throughout New Zealand.
Pemberton can be reached via the Bussell Highway, which follows the coast south of Fremantle through Margaret River. From Pemberton, the Vasse and South Western highways lead to Walpole, 430km from Perth.
Walpole and Denmark on the south coast have an average temperature range of 7 to 15C in winter and 13 to 25C in summer.
VALLEY OF THE GIANTS
The Tree Top Walk is open daily from 9am to 4.15pm and free guided tours are conducted at set times.
WEBSITES
www.westernaustralia.com.au
www.airnewzealand.co.nz
www.pembertonwa.com.au
www.pembertondiscoverytours.com.au
www.walpole.com.au
www.valeyofthegiants.com.au
www.karmachalets.com.au