Wednesday March 26

We arrived here in Augusta mid-morning yesterday, having endured one of the longest drives we have put in for a while – 126 kilometres! Not long after we got ourselves set up the drizzle started and during the afternoon it turned into the first rain we have had to endure, which the locals were much more excited about than us.

But, back to our travels on Friday, March 21 and our arrival in Windy Harbour, a small settlement surrounded by D’Entrecasteaux National Park which stretches 130km along the coast between Walpole and Augusta. Point D’Entrecasteaux and its limestone cliffs are incredible and the natural limestone bridge of Nature’s Window provided a very different view of the ocean.

Point D'Entrecasteaux

Nature's Window

A fishing expedition to beautiful Salmon Beach provided an opportunity to experience the reason for the name Windy Harbour, but no fish unfortunately!

Salmon Beach

Salmon Beach from Tookulup lookout

On Saturday we drove back to nearby Northcliffe, once again marvelling at the sudden changes of vegetation from heathland, to woodland, to Karri forest because of the extraordinarily diverse soil types, to indulge my plan to visit Understorey. This sculpture walk is a 1.2km circuit through the pristine native forest and features 26 sculptures by national and international artists exploring our relationship with nature and the ‘spirit of place’. Fair to say I enjoyed it more than Murray, but he did enjoy the superb forest!  

'Nurture II' recycled from 20,000 pages of government reports (mostly unread!)

Nature's artistry

Harking back to my comment in the previous post about local environmental activists saving the old growth forests of these areas, I can only assume that the former owners of this Northcliffe building were of that ilk, so good on them! In case you can't read it, the message on the roof says 'SAVE OUR OLD GROWTH FORESTS'.

Next stop was Pemberton, some 30km north-west. What a gorgeous little place it was too – in a valley surrounded by the Gloucester National Park. Many of the houses are the original mill houses:

Taking the advice of the lady at the Northcliffe Citizens Advice Centre, we camped out of town at the Big Brook Dam Arboretum, amongst the Karri and a selection of exotic trees planted in the 1930s. I don’t have a photo of any of the trees, but what about this amazing fungus, which was growing on a fallen karri tree.

Close to Pemberton is the Gloucester Tree, one of three former fire lookout trees. Those with better knees and legs than the Goddards can still climb this and two other trees in the area – at 61 metres to the tower on top of the tree, Murray decided discretion was definitely the better part of valour. Between watching others ascend and descend, I managed to get yet more bird photos – the collection is growing!

Female Western Rosella

Male Western Rosella

On Sunday we set forth on the Karri Forest Explorer Drive, which winds through some magnificent Karri forests in four different national parks around Pemberton – Gloucester, Greater Hawke, Beedelup and Warren. The Karri can grow up to 90 metres high, making it the tallest tree in WA and one of the tallest in the world. Amazingly the flowers of Karris take 4-5 years to grow from buds to gumnuts and one season of flowers can influence the development of other flower crops on the same tree, either speeding them up or slowing them down. This way, areas of Karri forest are bathed in heavy blossom every 4-7 years.

Karri trees - pretty impressive size!

Grass Trees (Balga)

Snottygobble Tree (Persoonia longifolia)
So called because the flesh of the fruit is mucous-like and green
Had to include this plant because of the wonderful name!

Bark of the Snottygobble is beautiful - red, soft and papery

Twisted paperbarks in Gobln Swamp

Murray on the suspension bridge at the Beedulup Falls

Warren River

Karris reaching for the sky!

Murray at the start of the climb up the highest of the climbing trees -
the Bicentennial Tree (68 metres)

Marianne North Tree - a huge Karri with a burl all the way
around. Marianne North, an intrepid English artist, painted the tree
in 1880 and her painting now hangs in the Kew Botanic Gardens.
Apart from being larger, the tree looks remarkably similar.

Nearby Manjimup was Monday’s destination, as Murray was keen to visit the Timber Museum. The trip there was most enjoyable – along roads lined with vineyards, orchards and vegetable gardens. Another fascinating fact I have discovered is that Manjimup is the birthplace of the Pink Lady apple!

Sadly though, the Timber Museum was closed so Murray was less than happy, although there were some other fascinating bits of historical timber/logging industry paraphernalia in the Heritage Park.

A 'whim' - hauled by oxen or horses to drag fallen logs out of the forest

Not to be outdone in the live tree stakes, Manjimup also had, amongst other things, the King Jarrah tree, the photo of which gives all the information you will need and whilst checking out some other large Karri trees we came across this one which had fallen across the track at some stage, so just to impress you with the size of these trees:

Back to camp and we finally got to see some of the wrens we had been hearing, although the frustration of trying to get a photo of the breeding male just about did me in! Here is a lovely photo of the female Red-winged Fairy-wren and a less than good one of the male just so you know what I am talking about.

This brings us back to our arrival in Augusta on Tuesday, which is a really lovely town and much smaller than we had expected. Augusta is the state’s third oldest settlement and is set on the banks of the Blackwood River and Hardy Inlet, where it meets the Southern Ocean. Just south of the town is the Cape Leeuwin, the most south westerly tip of Australia and where the Southern and Indian Oceans meet. The Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, built in 1895 to light the way for ships carrying Karri and Jarrah to England, is the tallest on the Australian mainland

The old Water Wheel nearby was also constructed in 1895 when a spring was tapped to provide fresh water for workers building the lighthouse. Over the years the timber wheel has calcified giving it the appearance of stone

Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park stretches 120km from here at Cape Leeuwin to Cape Naturaliste in the north. There is over 100 caves in the spine of the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Ridge, which belong to a series of complex and fragile karst systems – landscapes formed by the flow of water underground. Like so many other of our natural features, these caves are also being affected by climate change. Today we visited Jewel Cave, the largest show cave. The floor of the cave is 42 metres underground and we were suitably awed by the massive stalagmites, flowstones, shawls, cave coral and helictites (ones which, incredibly, go sideways).

A Jarrah root growing down through the cave

A wondrous collection of straws 

Just to finish on a familiar note, here are a couple more birds I met on the river – a Pied Cormorant which was busy trying to pinch the fishers’ bait and a pair of White-faced Herons which look like they have just had a serious difference of opinion.

Off to nearby Hamelin Bay tomorrow morning, before going a little further north into the Margaret River region. Next post should have photos of wineries rather than birds!

Monday March 24

Sticking to the plan, we left Denmark last Wednesday March 19, but seeing as the weather forecast was quite wrong and it was a beautiful day, we called in to Greens Pool and also Elephant Cove, which we hadn’t even bothered with the day before, as we had to drive right past them on our way to Parry Beach.

Was an inspired move, as it was just glorious down on the beach and the pool looked just as it does in the tourist brochures – what a difference the sun makes! Murray enjoyed a swim and we relaxed on the beach for a while before walking around the ‘corner’ to Elephant Cove. More absolutely stunning granite rocks, nestled in the clear, shallow water of the cove which would have looked much less beautiful if the sun was not shining, so we felt very lucky that the weather was so perfect for us.

Greens Pool 

Greens Pool

Elephant Cove

Elephant Rocks

After dragging ourselves away from here we set forth for Parry Beach – a whole 24 kilometres away! When we arrived at the little camp ground we discovered much to our horror that our van would not fit under the ‘bar’ erected at the entrance to keep out giant caravans. After much advice from the ‘assistant’ caretaker and other assorted caravanners we found ourselves in the overflow park, which happily had no such obstacles.

Murray, being the hunter-gatherer that he is, noticed a great deal of activity further around the bay, so cadged a lift with the Ranger who was driving down there - more beach driving, in fact it was like a road there were so many going up and down. It transpired that the commercial fisherman who has the licence for the area was hauling in some 15 tonnes of salmon in his nets. Murray enthusiastically lent a hand, so ended up with a lovely salmon – big bonus for us!

The salmon haul

Murray's share!

Cleaning the salmon on the rocks

Thursday morning dawned grey and windy, so we decided to move on and set ‘sail’ towards Walpole. This brought us into the Southern Forests region and forests like we had been introduced to around Denmark took over from the beautiful heathland vegetation as we travelled further from the coast and entered the Walpole Wilderness. East of Nornalup is the Valley of the Giants, the only area in which Western Australia’s enormous Red Tingle trees (Eucalyptus jackonsii) grow - a total of only 6,000 hectares, as they require at least 1200mm of rainfall per year to survive.

Here the Tree Top Walk, a very impressive 600 metre suspension bridge, soars 40 metres into the forest canopy and the views of the Red Tingle and Marri trees from here are awe-inspiring. As high as we were, many of the trees still towered above us as Red Tingle trees can reach a height of 75 metres, with a girth of 20 metres.

Despite the size of the trees, the Red Tingle tree flowers are very small and delicate

At ground level the Ancient Empire Walk allowed us to meander through a grove of giant trees, some of which are estimated to be 400 years old. As we contemplated the grandeur of the Red Tingle, the growth habit of which defies logic, we kept asking ourselves how they had survived the vicious regime of clearance which accompanied the arrival of European settlers in the Great Southern. Maybe the large hollowed out bases which develop as fire, fungal and insect attack remove the dead wood from the centre, which in turn causes the development of the large buttressed trunks required to support these shallow-rooted trees, made them unsuitable for timber.

Buttressed, hollow trunk

Hollow trunk extraordinaire! Note the 'boardwalk' - because of the shallow roots,
these trees die very easily from soil compaction caused by people stamping all over them!

It is impossible to give any real impression of the size of these
trees, but I can't help trying

Nature's art work at its best - the bark and maybe even the beginning of a burl
on a Red Tingle tree

'Grandma Tingle' - so called because of the gnarled bark and
burls (could just as readily be called a 'Grandpa Tingle'!), giving
it an almost human presence watching over the forest.
Sadly, many humans would not be so benign, so some other
sort of being might be more appropriate

From here we travelled on to Walpole, set on Walpole Inlet which is joined by a narrow channel to the larger Nornalup Inlet and where Karri and Tingle forest grow right to the waters’ edge. Walpole is surrounded by the 18,000 hectare Walpole-Nornalup National Park, which is in turn one of the seven national parks which make up the 363,000 hectare Walpole Wilderness area, so it was a wonderful spot in which to spend the rest of the day. As impressive as all this sounds, we must keep reminding ourselves that a mere 4% of this country is protected in national parks.

The Knoll, Coalmine Beach, Walpole Inet

The area features three sites together called ‘The Walpole Wilderness Discovery Centre’ – the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk, Mount Frankland and Swarbrick, each of which is designed to offer a different interpretation of this environment.

As the weather had improved we spent the afternoon visiting the two sites we had not yet seen, starting with the Swarbrick Art Trail which winds through old growth Karri trees. Whilst most of the art work did not do much for us, the 39 metre ‘Wilderness Wall of Perceptions’ – a huge mirror with historical information about the settlement, exploitation and subsequent action to protect these old growth forests (more pesky environmentalists and thank goodness for their efforts!) etched into its surface was very impressive.

Hope you can read the extract on the leaf - it is pretty scarey!

From here we travelled up to Mount Frankland through absolutely superb old growth Karri trees, which towered beside the road and elicited constant exclamations of wonder and delight. As it was still quite misty and drizzly, we didn’t make the trek up to the summit, but we did thoroughly enjoy the Wilderness View – a raised walkway offering spectacular views across the Mount Frankland National Park Wilderness area.

Magnificent Karri trees

Back down to the Frankland River where we walked to Circular Pool, an area of calm rocky pools which are apparently ‘raging torrents’ of water after winter rains. More beautiful black rocks!

We just managed to make it to the Giant Tingle Tree before the light faded too much and what an amazing and impressive sight it is! This tree has a girth of 24 metres, is 75 metres tall and is probably over 400 years old - how it continues to grow is nothing short of miraculous! It is one of the ten largest living things in the world.

A magnificent Karri tree with quite a collection of burls.
If these are the result of damage to the tree, this one must
have had a tough time as it was growing up!

This will have to be it for this post as we are currently camped in an area out of Pemberton which has no signal at all, so I have organised this much to upload today whilst we are in Manjimup and will bring you all up to date properly when we next have internet access. This has been such a fascinating area I need more time to do it justice!