Sunday, October 24, 2010

To Albany

Oops!! Somehow I posted " Albany " before this one.

It was raining as we left Walpole which we hoped would stop as we were heading for The Valley of the Giants and the treetop walk which is world renown. We travelled through the forest of massive trees, Karri, Tingle trees and the small Karri Oak, were everywhere. When we arrived at the Treetop Walk it was still raining. There was an interesting discovery centre and by the time we had perused all the information here and after a few loud thunder claps, it fined up.

We both had a turn at driving
a "fake" car through a tree. Brian can remember this on his trip around many years ago. Apparently the compacting of the soil at the base of the tree by the cars caused tree to die.

The tingle trees are huge spreading trees that grow very big but have a shallow root system so the spread out at the base of the tree to secure themselves. They can be up to 25 metres around the girth. They are prone to lightening strikes which then burns right through the trunk and causes a burnt out hollow at the bottom. Amazingly the tree can still grow as long as there is some bark.
The karri trees have a smooth white coloured bark and are very tall and straight and the Karri Oak is very similar to a she-oak but has rough bark.

The treetop walk was an amazing structure that takes you 40 metres up in the treetops but many are still towering above us. You really get to feel the grandeur of these ancient trees. Some are more than 400 years old. It was surprising how many more birds you see and hear in the trees when you are so high. Looking down into the forest below it is good to see that it not disturbed by humans. There are long walkways joined by a circular section and held by steel rods. As you walk along the whole thing gets a bounce up. I had to hang onto the rails. The views from this height are magnificent.

Coming down out of the treetops, we were able to stroll around a walk which shows off the ancient tingles from the ground. I was enthralled by the size of the bases of these trees. Many had big knots and they looked liked to wise old men.

We stayed the night in Denmark which is a pretty little town on the banks of the Denmark River and the caravan park was on a big lake. The park was very run down and it turned cold again so we weren’t that impressed.

The next day we headed to Parry Beach which was a free campsite recommended by several people. It was a lovely spot with an avenue of trees and was right on the beach. There is nothing else here except the caretaker’s cottage which is manned by volunteers. It was very overcast so the sea wasn’t its usual magnificent blue.
We went for a walk along the beach. A lot of salmon fishing takes place here in the season and we found some fishing huts in the bush. Unfortunately it rained in the afternoon and overnight so we decided not to stay any longer.
We called in at William Bay to look at Green Pool. What a beautiful scene with pristine green shallows, royal blue sea,white foam and magnificent granite rock. The sun was shining again to add depth to the colour. I scrambled over the huge granite outcrop to view some more inlets and walked around to see Elephant Rocks. If you look very closely you can see a herd of elephants. Lots of coastal walks here for the energetic.


We then headed to the next free camp. When we arrived there it was full so we went straight to Albany and found an old caravan park right in the water. It is mainly full of well kept permanent houses with few caravan sites so it was very peaceful. The old jetty had some huge old pelicans jostling for a resting spot.

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