Saturday 6 February – Touring – Valley of the Giants, Rainforest Walk, Circular Pool

The problem is, that we are surrounded by National Parks. From Parry Beach at 12 o’clock is Mt Roe National Park, at one o’clock Mt Lindesay NP, at three o’clock is west Cape Howe NP, at nine o’clock is Walpole-Nornalup NP, at ten o’clock Mt Frankland south NP, at eleven o’clock Mt Frankland NP. Oh, and at about 12.45 is the tiny William Bay NP. From three o’clock to nine o’clock is the Southern Ocean, otherwise there would probably be more.
You get the picture? The place is beautiful. Beeeaauuutttifuuuullll. So much to see, so little time.

We opted for the most famous attractions of the area and then what else appealed. Parry Beach camp had been chosen for it’s proximity to the Valley of the Giants Walk in the Walpole-Nornalup National Park. So that was our first stop of the day.

The Valley of the Giants Walk is a walkway up in the tree tops of the rare Tingle trees found in the area. This is an ancient forest. At its highest point it is 40 metres and as I looked down to the forest floor I could feel every metre. The walk is 600 metres long and goes up at a fairly gentle gradient so that you suddenly find you are higher than expected when looking down. It also has the added joy of swaying in the breeze. Lovely. While I was up there I was stopped by a Dutch couple who thought I was the French girl whom they had given a lift to the day before, when she was hitch hiking. They were amazed when I said I wasn’t and were both quite adamant how alike we looked. It was a somewhat surreal feeling to know that my double is out there somewhere hitching the roads.
After the walk we joined a tour of the forest floor, called the Ancient Empire Boardwalk. Here we learned that the trees we were looking at were about 500 years old, they were growing in Elizabeth I’s era, amazing. They hold an enormous amount of water, which means if a forest fire hits them, they do not burn as easily.

Later we took a drive to ‘The Giant Tingle Tree’, this in the past has been photographed with cars, horses and carts, people, inside its hollowed out trunk. Now no cars can get to it, and we had a meandering walk on more board walk to take a look.
When we got to it, I realised this is not a tree you could hug to much effect.

Next we drove to a place called Circular Pool, and had lunch in the empty car park before the walk to the pool itself. We had expected this to take a while, but after only a couple of minutes we were at the water’s edge. Parts of it are said to be 5 metres deep, and apparently cars used to be able to get to the water’s edge, until one car nearly rolled in, and it was decided perhaps parking further away was a safer option.

After that we were tuckered and treed out, so we headed back to our camp town.