Big Tree Country

After a couple of days in Albany, we headed south and west to a beach-camp in West Cape Howe National Park. The surf was pretty fierce, so we didn't venture in for a dip.

We did however find an amusing diversion in sliding down the sand cliffs that had formed on the beach. To get back up to the top however, you had to run as hard as you could up the cliff, the sand collapsing all around you, and with limbs flailing, frantically hurl yourself back over the top before the sand swept you back down.

At Ocean Beach in Denmark I was very excited that the surf was gentle enough for me to use my new boogie board! It's not the flashiest of boards - really just a hunk of polystyrene, but she rode the waves a treat. Having previously poo-pooed my purchase of the board ($2 in an op shop), I could tell Andy was more than a little envious when he saw it in action.

Along the road towards Walpole we stopped in at a honey farm. Here we tried numerous samples of honey mead and scoffed down some honey ice-cream to round off. Needless to say, we were feeling a little queasy by the time we left.

In William Bay National Park we snorkelled around Green's Pool, a natural sea-pool protected from the surf by massive granite boulders.

A short walk away in the shallows we came across the huge huddle of boulders collectively known as Elephant Rocks. You could wade through the crevasses between boulders that form a kind of natural maze.

Around Walpole we entered the famous tall-tree forests of south-western WA. Red Tingle (Eucalyptus jacksonii) is the predominant tall tree in the Valley of the Giants. These monsters grow to around 60 metres, with a circumference around the base of up to 25 metres. The inner trunk tends to get hollowed out by fungus and fire, so the remaining outer layer must flare and buttress outward to retain the tree's stability - hence the enormity of the basal circumference.

With no tap-root and and a very shallow root system, it's a wonder they stand at all!

The big attraction in the Valley of the Giants is the Tree-Top Walk. This narrow walkway is suspended 40 metres up in the canopy of the giant tingles, allowing you a spectacular view usually reserved only for the birds. In case just seeing the canopy isn't enough for you, the walkway also sways with the trees in the wind, so you really get a (somewhat unnerving) taste of life at the top.

Further into the Walpole Wilderness area (a conglomeration of around 8 big tree national parks), we swam in a pool in the Shannon River. This abundance of water made quite a change from the bone-dry Australia we have mostly seen so far.

With our new power source – the solar panels on the roof of the van – we are able to indulge in a couple of little electrical luxuries. In a bold move, Andy decided that he wanted me to learn to trim his mop, so that he can have it done whenever he wants. So we invested in some electric clippers (for about the price of a haircut with a barber), and I got busy. To my great surprise, I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself!

Back at the coast, we took a walk along the cliff-tops on the wild coast at Windy Harbour.

At window lookout along the walk, a hole in the limestone cliff framed a view down to the waves gnashing at the base of the rock.

Heading back inland, we visited the Gloucester Tree near Pemberton. This 60 metre Karri tree was used as a fire-lookout until the 1960s. Spikes were driven into the side of the tree in a spiral arrangement to provide rungs for the watchmen to scale. Having read about it in the guidebook, I had ambitions of scaling the thing myself.

However, on actually seeing the beast in question I had no hesitation in chickening out. You can't even see the “cabin” at the top in the photo, but it was LONG way up. No sir-ee, no way, na-ah, not climbing that thing.

That night we camped among Californian sequoias in the Tall Tree Arboretum near Pemberton. The morning happened to be cool and crisp. Together with the smell of the sequoias, it was strongly reminiscent of our mornings waking up in the back of a van on the west coast of another continent.

Our arrival at Cape Leeuwin, the most south-westerly point in Australia, marks the transition from travelling westward to travelling northward on our circuit of the continent.

This water-wheel was constructed in 1895 to supply the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse with drinking water from a nearby spring. Incredibly, the tank in which the wheel used to turn has become entirely filled by limestone precipitating out of the spring water, with the wheel itself being half-entombed.

From here we have nowhere to go but north, so north it shall be...

G'day from WA

If we were pleased to see the end of the Nullarbor, it is hard to imagine how Arthur Richardson felt in December 1896, having crossed the Nullarbor on a bicycle, doing so some 16 years before the first motor vehicle. In just 31 days, this superhuman covered 2100 off-road kilometres from Coolgardie (WA) to Adelaide (SA) on what must have been the most primitive of cycles by today's standards. But before you ask, I don't have a clue why he did it. He must have got some kind of kick out of it though – in 1900 he became the first person to cycle the Australian coast circuit, some 18,507km in 8 months.

From the drab mining town of Norseman that marks the end of the Nullarbor drive, we turned south for Esperance, situated on the coast. Esperance was named in 1792 when two French ships, L'Esperance and Recherche sailed into the bay to shelter from a storm that hit them while exploring the coast of New Holland. Esperance makes the bold claim of having the finest beaches in Australia. And by gum, they've got a point – the beaches were rather idyllic.

Lucky bay on nearby Cape Le Grand is perhaps the finest of the fine. Never have I seen such white sand, and as fine as flour too.

One cool morning we climbed Frenchman's Peak, a bare-topped granite dome near Lucky Bay.

After a steep scramble to the top, we were rewarded with excellent views of Cape Le Grande and the Recherche Archipelago. Incredibly, this photo is taken under an immense arch that was carved by waves many millions of years ago, when the sea-level was 250 metres higher than it is today.

It was slightly unnerving to walk under this huge overhang, also carved by the ancient sea, but I suppose it's held this long, so we'd be pretty unlucky to get squished now!

Throughout our travels in Australia so far, I have been struck by the unrelenting flatness of vast tracts of the continent (and that's saying something from a fenlander!). Coming as we are from North America and New Zealand, the contrast in Australia's topography is stark. Australia is an ancient land whose hills and mountain ranges have been largely worn to dust over billions of years by the forces of wind and water. We had already come across some of the most ancient land on Earth, in the shape of the Recherche Archipelago (off the coast at Esperance), which as part of the Yilgarnia escarpment is over 2.6 billion years old. But for me, nowhere has the erosive effect of time on the earth been more apparent than at our next stop - the Stirling Ranges National Park. Having climbed to the top Mount Hassel, of one of the rounded granite-dome hills of the Stirling Range, the view evoked the countless aeons in which mother nature has patiently stroked mighty mountains down to mere ripples in the landscape.

Once we got to what we thought was the top of the steep walk up Mount Hassel, we were faced with this large granite stack. We managed to scramble about 90% of the way up, but unfortunately the last section proved too steep for us to undertake, so we never got to see the view from the very top.

The next day, we tackled the three peaks trail in nearby Porongurup Ranges National Park. The Porongurups are characterised by a deep red loam soil that allows immense karri trees (Eucalyptus diversicolor) to thrive. The steep trail led us up to bear peaks for impressive views over the tops of the trees to the Stirling Ranges.

The grass-trees on the tops of the peaks reminded us of the Joshua-tree yuccas way back in southern California.

Still in the Porongurups, we took another hike out to a precarious balancing rock. Something tells me I'm probably not the first person to pull this pose!

Well, if you though that was a classic, what about this one?

Just beyond balancing rock was the mighty castle rock. We scaled it it on the kind of ladders and platforms where “don't look down” is generally good advice.

Returning to the coast, we stocked up with supplies in Albany, the oldest European settlement in WA (founded 1832).

Next to the supermarket we came across charming "dog rock".

Two exciting things happened in Albany. The first was positive - we bought some solar panels to sit on top of the van and charge things like the laptop and mobile phone. The second was rather more negative - some moron reversed into the back of our van. We caught him in the act of driving off having broken our number-plate on the bike carrier and bent the pedal crank-arm on one of the bikes. The guy was a German tourist, and boy did he have some nerve! When we stopped him driving away, far from apologising, he started telling us that they were muddy old bikes and couldn't be work much!! Andy very reasonably tried to straighten the crank-arm there and then in the car park, but the effect was less than satisfactory. In the end we negotiated that the German should give us $50 (that's only about £20) for a replacement. The next day however, Andy managed to straighten the crank-arm a bit better, so we treated ourselves to fresh fish'n'chips at the harbour with the German's cash - deeelish! The biggest consolation though was the enormous dent in the boot-lid of the German's hire-car! Justice is sweet.

From here we head along the south coast towards the big trees around Walpole... see you then.