Denmark & Walpole are also known as the valley of giants, the giants being the humongous Karri, Marri and Jarrah trees. These babies grow for 300 years and top at about 80mtrs. These trees only grow here in south west Australia due to the unique climate and soils. Its not to be confused with rain forest as its a lot drier here, though it is similar with thick, dense canopies above, and very little vegetation on the forest floor, but still enough to cause forest fires in extreme heat.
There is so much wildlife here, in particular birds, and every morning we are woken to amazing chorus of the birds waking with the rising sun, which is one of the best ways to break from dreams. This doesn't make it any less annoying though, as 5:30am is damn early, and we need our beauty sleep!! So we generally try and sleep through the noise until the sun turns our tent into an oven - this is generally by 7am ;)
We can hear all these birds - parrots, kookaburra's, cockatoos, loriketts, honey eaters, etc - but we cant see if their colour matches the beauty of their sound as they are too high up. Even with binoculars, they are very hard as they blend in perfectly with the leaves...
Anyway, what did we do here. On our way to the tree top walk in Walpole we stopped off at the Green Pools and the Elephant Rocks. It was really beautiful to see how nature has carved the coast line. The rocks are formed in such a way that one side is rough see and the other is a perfectly calm bathing beach.
The tree top walk was good, though we expected it to be a boardwalk and a little less "man made". Still, it was a nice walk, with good views from the top of the trees. The walk was high, at 40 meters, and swayed in the wind.
We did several forest drives between here and Walpole, which were made more interesting with the radio commentary. The parks have pre-recorded stories about the Forest, trees, wildlife, timber trade and aboriginal tales, which can be picked up by tuning the car radio to 100fm. This is a really good feature of the drive and should be done everywhere!!! Along the drive you can also go on short boardwalks to various lookouts and see the biggest and oldest trees.
Between drives, there are little craft stores where you can stop for a browse, and sample the locally produced food and drink. Of course, once you sample the honey wine and toffee, there's no turning back and we have a few souvenirs to bring back home, if they last that long, the best stop being the honey wine ;)
For one of our two nights in this area, we camped in the Warren National Park. This is just forest, and nothing but forest!! The site was in the heart of these massive trees, and 50mtrs away was a river cutting the forest in two. There was nothing at this site apart from a BBQ. There was no power, so we cooked in the light of dusk. We then tried to get a fire going, the park provides the wood so we don't chop down the trees and shrubs around us, but the wood is Karri wood, which by its very nature is designed to withstand forest fires ;) And with the size of the logs, a fire was never really going to happen, though we tried for a good hour or two!! It also didn't help, that we didn't have much kindling, as whilst this was with the logs, there is a real danger that snakes, spiders, and other nasties may be taking a nap in here.
The toilets were in total darkness, and whilst Marc stood guard for Evelyn, he got a bit scared and there are lots of photos of nothing as he used the camera flash to ward off any creepies ;) As mentioned above, the bird call in the morning was one of the best. Despite the lack of amenities, this added to the experience, and this has been one of the best camps so far, 2nd only to Okavango!
No comments:
Post a Comment