Anna's Aussie trip, Post 4: WA, Day 3

On Thursday morning (November 17th), our first stop was the Valley of the Giants, located in the Walpole Wilderness Area between Denmark and Walpole on the south coast of Western Australia. The Valley of the Giants is a forest of huge red and yellow tingle trees, some of which are over 400 years old. Tingle trees are a type of eucalypt found only in this part of WA. Red tingles are some of the most enormous trees in the world, growing as tall as 75m (250 feet).

The Tree Top Walk is an impressive eco-tourism attraction in the Valley of the Giants forest. It is a 600m-long metal bridge that allows visitors to weave amongst the treetops up to 40m above the forest floor. Forty metres is in fact quite substantially high, so for me this was more of an extreme sport than a relaxing stroll, but I'm happy to say that I did it!

This is Mum and Dad at the start of the Tree Top Walk. Mum didn't actually go any further than this point as it was a bit too high and wobbly for her liking! We bought the ponchos from the onsite shop as it was a rainy day, but it didn't end up raining while we were there.







Next we did the Ancient Empire Walk, which took us through the tingle forest at ground level.











After lunch, we did part of the Great Forest Trees Drive in Shannon National Park. This is a 48km drive through towering karri forest. Karri trees are another type of eucalypt that are native to WA and can grow up to 90m tall.
Unfortunately the drive turned out to be quite unsuitable for caravans, so we turned around and back-tracked at the earliest opportunity. The earliest opportunity, however, was quite a few kilometres along the narrow dirt track, so we were glad we didn't come across anyone else travelling in the opposite direction!


In Pemberton, we stopped to visit the famous Gloucester Tree. This is a giant karri tree that was pegged in 1946 for use as a watchtower for bushfires. There are metal pegs circling its trunk all the way up to a platform 61m above the ground. The tree is now a popular tourist attraction, and carried its one millionth climber to the top in 2002.
I still can't believe that people are allowed to climb it in this health-and-safety-conscious age, with only a single warning sign to give pause to thrillseekers! There are no nets or harnesses - just your own confidence to get you to the top (and more importantly, back down again!). We didn't see anyone climbing it while we were there, although Dad had climbed it in his younger days!





Later we drove past a paddock full of kangaroos and emus (I think they belonged to a tourist resort), so I got out and took some photos for our non-Aussie readers!






That night we stayed at Hamelin Bay Holiday Park. Here are a few photos from the walk we took the following morning before packing up and hitting the road again...






To be continued!