The Gloucester Tree in 2003
The Gloucester Tree is a karri tree, which is a type of Eucalyptus. It’s about 60 metres tall and you can climb the tree using the pegged ladder which spirals around the trunk. There’s a cabin at the top of the tree that’s about 58 metres from the ground. That’s quite some distance and not for the faint-hearted or acrophobic (one who has a fear of heights).
I would have loved to climb that monstrous tree again. I climbed it once when I was a teenager on a holiday trip with my parents, but that was years ago. I would’ve made the climb if we weren’t chased out of the area by March flies, also known as as Blow flies or as the Australians call them, “Blowies”. They’re named March flies because they’re mostly around during the month of March. These March flies are vicious little buggers, they bite and each bite hurts, not stings but hurts.
That would learn us to go into the forest during late afternoon in March, that’s when the flies are most active.
We did have an interesting experience with some birds in that area. There were these little birds about the size of a finch, that were whizzing around us. At first we thought it wanted to hurt us, then we thought it liked us, and finally we realised it was after a snack of March flies, which were buzzing all around us.
