I hope this answer is not too late. For sure you should try the Geo::GDAL module, it works fine. Lately I had some trouble compiling it (on openSUSE 11.0 64 bit, perl 5.10 and GDAL 1.5.2) but in general it does what it is expected to do. I certainly recommend it.
or joint the GeoPerl mailing list: https://list.hut.fi/mailman/listinfo/geo-perl
The creator of Geo::GDAL has also done some interesting applications with GTK, although I can't find the webpage now.