Gnarly trees – goblins

Now you might be like a lot of people and believe that goblins only exist in a world of fantasy and imagination. Perhaps your beliefs might even place them in the same mysterious world as aliens, fairies, witches, dragons or weird creatures from another world.

Well, after a recent visit to a little place near Pemberton in the southwest of Western Australia, I’ve got some news for you… Along the road to Donnelly River where we were going to check out a popular river boat cruise, we came across a walking trail through the bush to ‘Goblins’, or as it is better known to the locals, Goblin Swamp.

It seems that for many years these same locals have kept this spooky place a real secret and the best you could get out of them may have been a rough mud-map which, because of its vagueness, was like being led up the garden path.

In recent times, however, the helpful National Park folk have erected a sign (leading off the quite well used Donnelly  Boat Landing Road) and carved out a small car park to make finding this mysterious place now very easy indeed.

After parking our vehicle and following the signs along a not very well worn path, some 500 metres through the bush, we arrived at Goblin Swamp – a low lying area full of old tangled, tortured looking melaleuca trees, better known as  paperbarks. In this strange, eerie setting spread over several hundred square metres, the sight of these poor, gnarly, twisted trees really takes your breath away. What curious forces of nature must have been at work here to create a virtual forest of weird, mysterious shapes so much out of character with the delightful bush trail that leads here?

Entry to Goblins parking area

With a little imagination, the whole place seems to be an ideal home for a family of goblins or other ‘out of this world’ creatures – indeed it looks like the area has been specially made for them. A friend travelling with us claimed that the scene here would be ideal for a horror movie!

On the day of our visit we were quite thankful that the eerie creatures that actually live here were obviously out for the day. There was quite a prehistoric sense of timelessness about the whole place and as we came away we were somewhat thankful that our visit was around the middle of the day, for indeed we knew in our hearts that as the light faded and the place became even eerier in the shadows of darkness, the goblin family would soon be returning to their contorted forest home, at which time we didn’t want to be anywhere near the place!

Colin Kerr amongst the gnarly trees in the Goblin forest

For those with more curiosity and a good deal more courage than us, perhaps you could time your visit very late in the day, or perhaps in the early morning dawn light. It would even be good on a dull, overcast day where the uneven light could provide an enhanced surreal, mystical atmosphere to the place.

Our advice in such conditions would be to approach Goblin Swamp extremely quietly and it is most likely you will hear and see for yourself the real world of goblins (doing whatever goblins do) that has made this place famous.

Assuming you survive the experience, it is most likely that you would then be looking for somewhere to make camp and sit down with a nice stiff drink! Those thoughtful park rangers have once again come to the rescue with two nice karri forest bush campsites just a kilometre or so up the road. Creatively, these campgrounds go by the names of Grasstree Hollow and Snottygobble Loop – all part of the goblin atmosphere in this great little corner of the WA southwest.

Category: Destinations
Written: Tue 01 Oct 2013
Printed: October, 2013
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