Pemberton maps two climbing karris. The first is a karri turned into a fire lookout in 1947, its trunk fitted with a spiral of steel pegs a prince himself helped drill. Once 61 metres tall, it lost its rotting crown in a recent trim and reopened to climbers in 2026 at a lower platform. You can recognise it by the spiral of steel pegs driven up its trunk to a climbing platform. It stands in Gloucester National Park near Pemberton, Western Australia. The Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree was pegged in 1988 for climbers, never for fires.
0 of 2 visited in Pemberton
Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor) · 250 years · Gloucester National Park, ~3km from Pemberton town centre
A prince helped drill the holes. Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, came through in the late 1940s and worked an auger into this karri's trunk himself, which is how the tree got both its name and part of its ladder.
The ladder was the point. In 1947 the forestry service picked this karri as a fire lookout, one of eight raised across the south west between 1937 and 1952, and George Reynolds drove a spiral of steel pegs up the trunk. Jack Watson, a forester and Gallipoli veteran who later ran Kings Park, made the test climb and took six hours over it. The job at the top was to see smoke over the karri forest before it turned into something visible from the ground. It became the second tallest fire lookout tree in the world, behind the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree a few kilometres away.
It stood 61 metres until a trim took seven metres of rotting crown off. The climb closed in November 2023 on safety grounds and reopened on 1 July 2026, now stopping at a platform 37 metres up rather than the old 53. There is still no harness and the risk is still the climber's own. At the climbing zone the trunk measured 7.3 metres round on that first ascent in 1947.
Its age is a floor without a ceiling: sources say at least 250 years, and nobody has counted the rings.
Photo: David La Rosa (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor) · Warren National Park
This is a lookout tree that never looked out for a fire. The karri lookouts around Pemberton were pegged in the 1930s and 1940s so foresters could spot smoke over the forest. This one was pegged in 1988, for the Australian Bicentenary.
It carries the name of Dave Evans, a local teacher and politician with an interest in tree towers. A spiral of metal pegs runs up the trunk, 165 of them by one count and 130 by another, to a platform about 20 metres up and a hut at the top, above the canopy.
Of the three climbing trees around Pemberton, the Gloucester Tree, the Diamond Tree and this one, it is the tallest. How tall depends on who you ask: 75 metres in one parks listing, 68 in the parks service's Pemberton brochure, 65 on Wikipedia. Nobody has published a girth or an age either, so if you know of one, tell us.
It is in the middle of an overhaul. The pegs and the ladder mesh were renewed in 2026, and the whole site was shut for the work until 2 October. It has reopened, but the tree itself stays closed to climbers until the end of November 2026, so check with the Pemberton Visitor Centre before counting on a climb.
It stands in Warren National Park off Old Vasse Road, about 15 kilometres south of Pemberton by car. A park entry fee applies; the climb costs nothing extra.