World cruise 22 - Margaret

From Margaret
Albany, Western Australia
Valley of the Giants (trees)

The Valley of the Giants and the Wilderness Discovery Centre are part of the Walpole-Nornalup National Park in Western Australia. This park is home to the giant Red Tingle trees shown here, and the now quite rare Karri tree. Both are species of eucalypt.

The interpreter commented that Tingle trees grow really fast – as much as a metre a year. So, they don't tend to live more than 500 or 600 years. In size they come close to the giant redwoods. Tingles can reach more than 70 metres in height. When the area was first set aside to preserve the Tingle and Karri trees, there was one Tingle tree so large that a family and their car could fit inside the burned out cavity at the base. It became the picture everyone had to have. Unfortunately, these trees are shallow rooted and the roots are delicate. The constant traffic over that particular giant killed it. Today, visitors are restricted to paved trails and the tree-top walkway.

The tree-top walkway rises 40 metres above the ground and still doesn't reach the tops of the larger trees. It is an amazing piece of engineering. The suspension path 600 feet in length has 5 support poles, and that is it. It sways and bounces a bit as people walk on it.

The view of trees from 40 metres in the air is stunning. Looking at a very large tree from the top down is a quite different sensation from looking at it from the bottom up. A blue wren is supposed to haunt the tops of these trees, but I did not see any.

From the aerial walkway, the path led to the Ancient Empire trail. These were probably the oldest trees in the area and were larger than the ones seen from the aerial walkway. Many of them had burned out or hollow cores at the base, but were otherwise quite alive.

From the Valley of Giants, we took a quick side-trip to a part of the shoreline that is seriously rocky. The goal of the side-trip being the "elephant rocks" and "greens pool". The elephant rocks are huge and do indeed look like three elephants kneeling in the surf.

Greens Pool appears to be the local "swimming hole". A unique one in that it is surrounded by large rocks over and through which the surf crashes before it rolls mildly into the shoreline of the pool. The shore must drop off fairly sharply in that area as I saw a man dive from the rocks at the water's edge directly into the water below. It must have been deep enough at that point to make that possible. Wading is probably not the primary activity at Greens Pool.

Lunch was at the Southern End Restaurant which is the catering arm of Denmark Brew and Ales. They had several brew's on tap, so I had a stout with lunch. Lunch was excellent – I am becoming quite enamored of Aussie food and will be sorry when we leave Australia. The "excursion" ended with a quick stop at a local winery for the wine lovers and a quick look at downtown Albany for those who really like to see towns.