The Beedelup Walk-Thru Tree: a saga from the karri country

The Pemberton Tourist Bureau’s visitor brochure, circa 1990, featuring the Walk-thru Tree in Beedelup National Park

In 1968 I was transferred from my position as the Forests Department's Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) at Mundaring Weir to that of DFO at Pemberton, in the heart of the karri country.  I was very happy about this, as I already knew the karri forest and loved it.

I had spent a summer as a forest workman at Pemberton in 1960/61 (the fateful year of the Dwellingup and Crowea bushfires) working in a fire crew and as lookoutman on Gardner Tree. Then in 1963/4, having by then finished my university studies, I had become a junior forestry officer stationed at Northcliffe and Pemberton. I was mostly building roads, but also involved in bushfires, assessment, supervising cadet training and a range of general forestry work. These were carefree times, in which the joy of days spent in one of the world's finest forests was combined with weekend adventures to the south coast and a social life of romance, football and fun and games.

However, returning to Pemberton in 1968, a different atmosphere prevailed. I was now The Boss, the DFO, responsible for the Department's Pemberton District, a large and complex operation involving bushfire management, control of the timber industry, reforestation, pine plantations, a sawmill and four settlements. I was also responsible for administration of a staff of twelve field officers and forty forest workmen.  My jurisdiction was about 200,000 hectares of State Forest. The fun and games were over.

DFO Pemberton, about 1970. Inspecting karri seedlings coming away in an area regenerated after logging

However, there was another, unexpected, responsibility. As DFO Pemberton I was also ex-officio a member of the Pemberton National Parks Board. At that time there were two large forest "national" parks in the district (Warren National Park and Beedelup National Park) and a number of smaller ones, including the Brockman and Pump Hill National Parks, and the small forests in which the town swimming pool and caravan park were located. It was a total estate of about 3000 hectares and contained some of the most beautiful mature karri forest in the region.

 Karri forest in the Pump Hill ‘national park’ on the outskirts of Pemberton

These so-called ‘national parks’ were not ‘national’ in any sense of the word. They were not even part of the Western Australian ‘national parks’ (actually State Parks) system. By some quirk of history, the Pemberton parks had been vested in a small independent local committee (known as 'the National Parks Board'), who were responsible for their administration and management. Not long after I arrived in town, I was summoned to attend my first Board meeting. It was held in Toddy's office in the damp old weatherboard building at the misty end of town, once the local billiard saloon, later the pioneer museum and today an up-market cafe/restaurant. 

[An aside: Gaston B. Todd, known to everybody as "Toddy", was said to be a qualified accountant, but he acted as the town’s bookkeeper. He was secretary, treasurer or auditor, or all three, of every local organisation from the P&C to the Tourist Bureau to the local Hospital Board and he also ran a private Health Insurance Fund for timber workers. He was, of course, secretary/treasurer of the Pemberton National Parks Board.

Toddy, who was aged in his late-60s when I first met him, had by then been an institution for many decades in Pemberton. He was notable for being the only person in town who wore a three-piece suit to work every day. Down the front of this you could discern traces of his breakfast and the ash from the cigarettes he smoked non-stop. He lived as a widower in a dilapidated house on the north end of town].

There were three other members of the National Parks Board. These were George Germantse, the proprietor of the Shell Garage and a keen proponent of tourism, Roy Kelly, who drove the mill locomotive, and who was a gentleman and a keen naturalist, and Hubert Jay, a retired farmer and one-time office manager at the sawmill,  who now ran the Education Department's Camp School (which was located on national park land near the swimming pool).

George Germantse and his lovely wife Bernice. George was an enthusiastic contributor to just about every aspect of Pemberton’s civil and sporting life for over fifty years (photo courtesy of Vicki Rose).

The National Parks Board Chairman and Executive Officer was Ralph Kelly, Pemberton's 'Mr Everything'.

Ralph owned several businesses in town, including the farm supply shop, and also had a beautiful farm at West Pemberton. He was a man of extraordinary energy and was totally dedicated to promoting Pemberton and (the term he had coined) “The Kingdom of the Karri”. Of this kingdom, Ralph was indubitably the king … in addition to running the National Parks Board, he was chairman of the Tourist Bureau, the Progress Association and the Parent's and Citizens Association. He also managed the Trout Ponds and was Chair of the Trout Acclimatisation Society, was a Shire Councillor and represented Pemberton on several State-level bodies.

Meetings chaired by Ralph always proceeded at breakneck speed, issues on the agenda being resolved by Ralph without recourse to discussion or alternative opinions. Toddy kept the minutes and these were cursory.

The capacity of the Pemberton National Parks Board to do anything out in the major forest parks was negligible. They had responsibility for thousands of hectares of karri forest and other facilities, but only one employee. This was Bill Tracey, known around town as Ranger Bill. The Board had only the most rudimentary equipment (some plumbing and carpentry gear and a spade and an axe) and no funding. The only source of income was the caravan park (the only one in the entire district) and the summertime rental of a kiosk at the swimming pool. This revenue just covered Bill’s wages.

The famous ‘Pembi Pool’ was a dam on the One-Mile Brook, a lovely spot with grassed banks and a backdrop of superb karri forest. It had been constructed by the volunteer labour of townsfolk, under Ralph Kelly's direction in the 1930s. Ranger Bill had a full-time job managing and maintaining the caravan park and the swimming pool and had no time for anything else.  Bill was versatile and personable, a popular man about town, and a favourite with the campers who stayed in the caravan park. Administration, I recall, was not his forte. All of the paperwork, bookings and receipts and so on, floated around in the cab of his ute, mixed up with tools, lawnmower fuel and empty beer cans. Despite this he ran a beautiful little caravan park (to which campers returned year after year) and maintained the pool and its surrounds in pristine condition.

 Pembi Pool in about 1940. A retained karri stag had been pegged to provide the high diving platform.

When it came to management of the big outlying forest parks, another arrangement altogether prevailed. This was an unofficial and unwritten arrangement brokered years previously by Ralph Kelly and one of my predecessors, the famous forester Don Stewart. The arrangement was that day-to-day care of Warren, Beedelup and Brockman parks was seconded to the Forests Department .... in other words, to me, as the DFO. Ranger Bill was not involved, and Ralph took no interest.

In fact, park management at that time did not amount to much. We fought bushfires and did a few hectares of prescribed burning now and again and we kept the roads and firebreaks open. When I took over in 1968 there was not one single picnic spot or camping ground in any of the national parks. There were no scenic drives, no walking trails, no interpretive signs, no park entry statements, no literature. This is not to be critical … the same situation also applied in State Forests in the region, as forest recreation programs were in their infancy in WA (indeed in Australia) at that time. The only "tourist attraction" in the Pemberton district in 1968 was the Gloucester Tree Fire Lookout. The only recreational activities that took place in the forest were marron fishing (both legal and illegal) in the Warren River and fishing for introduced trout in the Lefroy Brook, although many visitors took the opportunity for a guided tour of the sawmill.

Drive-through trees

Ralph Kelly wanted the Kingdom of the Karri to be the ultimate attraction of the south-west, and he was envious of a significant counter attraction in the Tingle forest at Nornalup, on the coast a hundred km or so to the south-east. This was a huge hollowed-out red tingle tree into which tourists could back their cars for a memorable photograph. It was sometimes referred to as a "drive-through" tree but was more accurately a "drive-in tree".  The idea had come from California where there were several actual drive-through trees in the Giant Sequoia forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains and in the coastal redwoods to the north. Ralph had been to California and taken a special interest in the drive-through trees.

A 1960s photo of the "drive-in red tingle tree" near Nornalup

Ralph decided that Pemberton should go one better than Nornalup, and he set about finding a drive-through tree in one of the local national parks, one that you could actually drive-through, not just back in the family sedan. No suitable tree could be found - mature karri trees are taller than red tingle, but do not develop comparably massive trunks. However, there was a very large old karri growing on the side of the road leading out to West Pemberton. This was a quite a well-known tree and actually had a little fence around it to protect it from well-wishers. Also to protect the well-wishers, because it was hollow-butted, three-legged and unstable.

Ralph reckoned that with a bit of judicious chainsaw work it could be converted into a drive-through tree. He immediately set about the project. The tree was not on any of the local national parks but was growing on the verge of a Shire road. This was no obstacle to Ralph. He made decisions about what went on around Pemberton, not those foreigners in the Shire Office up in Manjimup.

The top faller in the district, a brilliant chainsaw operator and an employee of the local sawmill was Eddie Mulletta. He was hired for the weekend by Ralph, did a great job, and when he had finished, Pemberton had a "drive through" tree. Instead of three-legged it was now two-legged. It was a narrow passage, and you would have needed to be driving a narrow-gauge Mini Moke with the mirrors folded back to get through.

Eddie Mulletta, Pemberton’s #1 faller and chainsaw operator in the early 1970s

Alas, the project was a failure. The conversion to drive-through had left the tree even more unstable than before and in the first strong wind after surgery it broke off and toppled, crashing right across the road. Luckily nobody was attempting a drive-through at the time.

A new concept

We all thought the drive-through tree concept was now a closed book. However, we failed to take into account the determination of Ralph Kelly. He regarded the debacle as a minor set-back, soon forgotten. His new idea was for a "walk through tree", the first in WA.

The idea was backed by the National Parks Board and the Tourist Bureau (of both of which Ralph was chairman). As I was also on both committees and knew the surrounding forests better than any other member, I was requested to find a suitable tree. The one constraint was that it would need to be within one of the Pemberton national parks, over which the Board had jurisdiction.

Eventually I selected a nice karri tree in the Beedelup National Park, within walking distance of the lovely waterfall on Beedelup Brook. I was able to get to it because just then the Forests Department had received a small grant from the Main Roads Department to construct some roads for bushfire management in the Pemberton parks. There was already a "road" to the waterfall. This was part of the original 1860s convict-built track from the Brockman homestead on the Warren River to the Vasse. It was known as The Old Vasse Road, and was a single lane, unsurfaced track that wound between the trees, usually impassable in winter, and overgrown with bracken and karri wattle. The grant enabled us to slightly upgrade it, and this not only provided improved access for fighting bushfires, but also meant tourists could more easily visit the waterfall ... and then enjoy a "walk-through tree" nearby.

Ralph inspected and approved the tree, secured a ‘grant’ from the Tourist Bureau and again hired Eddie Mulletta to do the work.  Eddie was assisted by George Germantse, who was generally to be found up to his neck in any volunteer projects around Pemberton. It took the two of them an entire weekend of painstaking work, making the cuts, hammering in wedges and hewing out blocks of wood. The result was an outstanding bit of bush craftsmanship.

The Walk-Through tree at Beedelup, just after completion in January 1971. In the tree: my wife Ellen and our children Tim and Jane

The walk-through tree was a sensation. There were articles in the local and Perth newspapers, a report on the ABC, and a story and photograph in a popular national magazine. Not only tourists, but locals from Pemberton, Northcliffe, Nannup and Manjimup streamed in to visit the tree, walk through it and exclaim over it - it was not just a fine karri tree in a lovely spot, but a work of art, a bush sculpture. People visited the walk-through tree in Beedelup National Park who had never in their lives before been to Beedelup National Park.

There were critics, of course, including some of my fellow-foresters who regarded it as desecration of a beautiful tree ... but these were the same people who welcomed, climbed and loved the karri tree fire lookouts (where beautiful trees had also suffered indignities in a good cause) and were daily overseeing the felling of numberless grand karri trees for conversion into sawn timber.

Changing times

Just at about this time there were some rumblings in the Pemberton community. Ralph was getting on in years and starting to lose his authority. A new Tourist Bureau committee, without Ralph, was elected, and became more independent and active, hiring a consultant to produce a new brochure and tourist map, backing a proposal to upgrade the Rainbow Trail (which Ralph had vehemently opposed), developing a pioneer museum and putting its weight behind all sorts of new visitor facilities in and around Pemberton, many within the national parks. Although I was a member of the Tourist Bureau committee, I was not there when they made a fateful decision: to re-name the Walk-Through Tree the "Underwood Tree".  A sign was made and erected before I even knew about this, making it a fait accompli. I felt honoured, as it was a gesture by the community to recognise not just me but the generations of foresters who had looked after the district's national parks.

The Underwood Tree, 1972

These were also times of big changes to the way we expanded our role of developing and managing recreation sites and tourist attractions in the forest.  The department had a busy program at Pemberton, building scenic drives and walk trails, installing picnic sites and setting up camp sites. This was done in both the national parks and State Forest, as we were managing both, but I always ran the parks program past the Board to make sure I had their endorsement (as I always did). I was particularly proud of one development in the Warren national park, the upgrading of the Heartbreak Trail and construction of the Maidenbush Trail. This provided a one-way loop drive taking in the ridge on the north side of the Warren River, and provided access for forest visitors, in the family sedan or on foot, to some of the most beautiful virgin karri forest in the region, plus spectacular views across the Warren River valley.

The Pemberton National Parks Board, however, eventually become an anachronism. It could not be sustained in the modern world and eventually in 1975 it was disbanded. The vesting of the Pemberton parks was made over to the Western Australian National Parks Authority, a fully-fledged state government agency. I considered this appropriate, as our little local board could not adequately look after these important areas, and they should rightly become part of the State's conservation reserve system. One of the last things I did was to write a management plan for the parks. It set out the history of each park, identified key requirements and laid down guidelines for future management. I heard later that this was the first management plan written for any national park in Western Australia. It goes without saying that not a word of it was implemented.

The NPA flexes its muscles

The National Parks Authority (NPA) soon became aware of Underwood Tree, and did not take kindly to it. They did not like the concept, nor did they like having one of "their" trees named after a forester. The NPA was surprisingly anti-recreation and anti-tourism in those days. Park rangers used to call tourists "terrorists" and preferred to have their national parks uncontaminated by them. (Later I came to refer to this culture as ‘The Basil Fawlty Syndrome’. It was the hotelier Fawlty, it will be remembered, whose philosophy was that he could run a really good hotel if it wasn't for the guests). Moreover, this was just about the time when a campaign was being mounted by environmental activists to vilify foresters. Because we were responsible for management of the state’s timber industry, and because producing timber meant felling trees, foresters were branded as cruel, forest-hating vandals. The Board of the WA National Parks Authority was replete with people who bought right into this, so one day in about 1976 I received a rather brusque letter from the Authority's Director. He advised me that henceforth the Underwood Tree was cancelled.

I admit to having been taken aback for a moment or two, as it seemed to me to be a rather trivial issue for the Authority to bother about, but it was also amusing in a way, and I accepted it ... and in any case, by then I had been transferred from Pemberton and my life and career was taking another trajectory.

And so it was that this particular tourist attraction was taken off the books. It was erased from the literature and from the Authority records and maps. The signs in the park were taken down. Officially, the tree became an ex-tourist attraction.

The trouble was, the tree itself did not disappear, nor did its attractiveness. It had become part of Pemberton folklore, and was still being promoted by the tourist bureau, who had a postcard for sale with a photograph of the tree. The bureau's brochure ("Big Tree Country") featured the tree on its cover and had it clearly marked on an inside map:

Eventually, possibly because of pressure from the local Tourist Bureau, but more likely because its existance could not be denied, the NPA reinstated the tree as an attraction, but its name reverted to the original, becoming again The Walk-Through Tree (although usually written "Walk-Thru").  The reinstatement reflected its popular status in the community. If you lived in Pemberton and people came to visit or stay, you would always take them to see (1) the Gloucester Tree, then (2) the Beedelup waterfall, and while at the latter, you would then take them (3) for a walk through the Walk-Through Tree.  Children especially loved it.

Apart from anything else, it seemed that the opportunity to explore the tree and its insides was a positive experience for most people, leading to a better understanding of karri trees, or to enhanced awe at their resilience.

 Fight back

Not only did the tree survive as a tourist attraction, it fought back. Being a relatively young and vigorous tree, it started doing what all eucalyptus trees do - repairing a wound. New bark and wood started to grow around the hole, bit-by-bit sealing it up. It's not finished yet, but the most recent picture I have seen shows it well on the way. What the National Parks Authority was unable to achieve, nature is accomplishing with quiet ease. In another 50 years, the hole will be gone.

The Walk-Through Tree in 2020 - fifty years after construction.

Interestingly, there is now a short ladder enabling the visitor to enter the hole, where in my day you simply stepped in. This does not imply that the hole is moving skywards; rather the ground around the tree has been compressed by the feet of the thousands and thousands of visitors over the years.

A touch of karma

The saga of the Beedelup Walk-through Tree culminated in a nice touch of karma. In the mid-1980s, the WA National Parks Authority, having failed to cancel the Walk-Through Tree, was itself cancelled. It disappeared into the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM), never to be seen again. CALM also disappeared some years later and the new department now incorporates the word “Attractions” in its name, emphasising its role in promoting and managing things that the public wants to see and do.

I have not visited Beedelup Falls or the Walk-Through Tree for maybe forty years. I bore no animosity about the status of the tree or its name, just had other things to do.  And times have changed. Today I would probably disapprove of a project like this, although I have been to and enjoyed the Treetop Walk near Nornalup, a tourist attraction in a national park that clearly exploits the cutting of lovely trees, and I thoroughly approved of the Dave Evans Tree – a replica fire lookout tree, located in the Warren National Park.               

But I will visit it the next time I am in the karri country. I understand that the current managers have embraced the tree (not literally, as in tree-hugging, but metaphorically, as in recognising that it is a legitimate tourist attraction). They maintain a walking track to it, and have signposted it, and it is highlighted in their brochures and maps. I understand they have developed a new road into the area and constructed an elegant boardwalk and interpretive shelter. All of this speaks of professional management, rather than a futile attempt at cancellation.

And why would they not embrace it? Yes, tourist attractions are regarded as politically incorrect by an anti-tourism element who believe that the forest should be left to Mother Nature, untouched by the hand of man or woman. But only a tiny proportion of forest visitors are wilderness seekers or wish to spend a holiday sitting under a bracken fern in the rain communing with nature. Most of today’s visitors are urban people on holiday, families with children. They enjoy something different and interesting and mildly challenging, and the Walk-Through Karri Tree at Beedelup provides one such experience.

As for the name, my own preference was always for it to be called the Ralph Kelly Tree. He and I did not always see eye to eye, but I had nothing but admiration for the way he devoted his entire life to his beloved Pemberton and to promoting The Kingdom of the Karri. Today I cannot think of a single memento or monument in his name.

Finally, a strange coincidence

Leafing through a book on Interesting Trees of the World the other day I came across a photograph and description of The Chandelier Tree in Leggett, California. This is a redwood through which, way back in 1937, a hole was cut to make a “Drive-thru Tree”.

But here’s the thing. The Chandelier Drive-thru Tree was the work of one Charles Underwood. It still stands, located in the Drive-thru Tree Park, owned, operated and immaculately maintained to this day by the Underwood family (no relation), and is a popular tourist attraction in northern California.

I was pleased to read this, but momentarily sorry that it had not been called the Underwood Tree. The entirely unbiased view of my Everloving is that the world could do with at least one tree, so-named.