Stories Along The Edge: The Dune Runner

When you explore The South West Edge road trip, you’ll meet all sorts of local characters who will give you a glimpse into their world. Immerse yourself in their stories along the edge.

Graeme Dearle is intimate with Pemberton’s old-growth Karri forest. He knows the individual trees – his special “big girls”. Is aware of the seasonal changes. He understands how the topography and soils influence growth patterns in a forest that undulates through karri, jarrah and coastal heath tree formations. What a system jolt it is to climb a wall of sand out of the forest and up onto the cinematic grandeur of the Yeagarup Dunes.

But as much as anything else, Graeme is intimate with visitor reaction.

As the operator of Pemberton Discovery Tours, Graeme has spent 20 years stepping up the uninitiated into his trusted Troopcarrier and driving them into a relationship with a unique piece of the South West Edge.

“When you come though the forest and up into the dunes you do view it with the eyes of the person who’s seeing it for the first time,” Graeme reflects. “I see it for what they’re experiencing and I take a lot of enjoyment from that.”

Yeagarup Dunes is an accident of geography. “The dunes mobilised in from the coast twelve thousand years ago when the Northern Hemisphere froze and dropped our sea level by 90-metres. They are travelling and consuming the forest as they roll in,” - Graeme Dearle, owner/operator of Pemberton Discovery Tours.

What they’re experiencing is an accident of geography. Karri and Gondwana-era sheoaks interspersed with spring-fed perch lakes and threatened by a creeping dune landscape whose sandy march inland began twelve thousand years ago.

The obvious environmental fragility of Graeme’s Pemberton patch speaks to the preciousness and diversity of this entire route in a visceral and highly visual way. Shifting sands. Reduced yearly rainfalls impacting the security of 400-year old trees.

Graeme shares his knowledge to create the awareness needed to shift perspectives and behaviours. But also to help visitors understand the difference between natural cycles and man-made environmental damage.

“The dunes mobilised in from the coast twelve thousand years ago when the Northern Hemisphere froze and dropped our sea level by 90-metres. They are travelling and consuming the forest as they roll in,” Graeme explains, noting it as a natural phenomena driven by capital ’n’ Nature. But the slowing of the rainfall? That’s us.

“The karri forest has been dying back for many thousands of years but the belief is now that we’ve probably sped up the process,” the operator is matter of fact. “We’re pushing it on faster than it would happen naturally.”

Having custodians like Graeme present to guide and teach and show the diversity of our region helps to keep us on the right side of the edge en route to finding the balance between interacting with and protecting our landscapes.