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Climbing the Gloucester Tree With No Disclaimer

Our resident expert on all things Down Under, Amanda Kendle, will be sharing the best of South-West Australia this week.

The Gloucester Tree is one of those places where you’d have to sign oodles of disclaimer forms if it were anywhere other than in the remote southwest of Australia. It’s a 201-foot karri tree that has the world’s highest fire-lookout platform and anyone can just wander over and climb up the less-than-safe-looking pegs to the top.

Located just outside the town of Pemberton, you have to pay A$10 ($7) per car to get into the Gloucester National Park, but after that nobody pays you any mind. The climb is unsupervised--except the day we were there, when a large Indian family spent two hours at the bottom applauding anyone who made it back down the tree alive.

And while it looks a bit risky, there’s no record of bad injuries or accidents for Gloucester Tree climbers. It probably helps that the climb is daunting enough to make 80 percent of climbers turn around not long after they start. That statistic sure says something.

Related Stories:
· Gloucester National Park [Official Site]
· Western Australia Travel coverage [Jaunted]