Some details from the last few days

Friday 30 October


Today we set off on the Treetop Walk and Valley of the Giants tour. It turned out to be a very long day, as we didn’t get back to the hotel until after 11 pm, but was very interesting as we covered quite a lot of ground. We had morning tea in Donnybrook, named after the town in Ireland, then headed off to the Diamond Tree for lunch. This is a fire lookout tree, and has a platform in its higher branches, about 51 metres from the ground. You can climb the tree if you like, and a few of our group went at least part of the way up. We, however, kept firmly on the ground at this stage.

After lunch we went the Treetop Walk and Valley of the Giants near Walpole. The treetop walk is just that, a walk through the treetops on a suspension walk. It was very strange being so far off the ground (about 50 metres I think) with just a suspension walk under us. And yes, I did walk around all the way, about 600 metres, mostly looking straight ahead but managing to take some pics on the way. Very brave, I think!

After that we went to William Bay for a look at the Southern Ocean before setting off on our way back to Perth. We had dinner at Kojonup, at the tourist information office which is run by volunteers and serve meals to tour groups to make a bit of extra money. It was a bit of a rushed stop but still good. One of the local Aboriginal men, Jack Cox, gave us a short tour and talk about the local area. He used to be a boxer and ran one of the boxing tents that went around the shows. He was WA champion in 2 weight divisions, but gave it away to get married.

We finally made it back to Perth about 11 o’clock. Bed was very welcome indeed!

Saturday 31 October

Back in a coach again and off northwards today to New Norcia, a wildflower farm, and the Pinnacles. New Norcia is a monastic town run and owned by the Benedictine monks. It was started in the middle 1800s and is another interesting place. The original monks were Spanish, and left Spain because of an anti-church government of the time. They came to WA to establish monasteries and do good things like education in the local areas. New Norcia is the only one of three monasteries to survive. There are still 8 monks there which is pretty good going.

We had lunch at a wildflower farm, it has about 4000 hectares of flowers, but they’re nearly all finished now so we didn’t see many though we did manage to find a few patches.

We made a brief stop at Thirsty Inlet near the town of Cervantes for our first look at the Indian Ocean. It was very windy there, we talked to some wind surfers who said it was really too windy for them to do anything more than go in a straight line and it wasn’t much fun. They were packing up when we got there.

Next stop, and the whole point of the day I thought, was the Pinnacles. These are small rock formations, and appeared out of the desert years ago. There are various theories about their development but nothing certain. They look a bit like termite hills, but there are lots of them covering quite an area. It was very windy which made it a bit difficult to walk around them much as we were being sand-blasted and it was most uncomfortable. Very good place but I think I was expecting something more spectacular. The formations are quite small, most are shorter than an adult but the shapes were quite good.

We returned to Perth about 8 o’clock, and rang our friends from France, Geraldine and Gordon, who live in Perth. We’re going to spend some time with them on Monday which will be good.

Sunday 1 November

Our final coach day for this holiday, and it was just a half-day around Perth and Fremantle. We went up to King’s Park, which is really beautiful, overlooking the river and the city. We saw lots of native flowers there, and quite a lot of people enjoying it too, which is what it was designed for. The Botanic Gardens are part of the park, too.

After a drive around some of the Perth suburbs we headed out to Fremantle for a bit of a look there too. I think we might go back there tomorrow with Geraldine and Gordon for a bit more of a look.

Quiet afternoon, a bit of a walk down to the Hay Street Mall and maybe a bit more of a walk later.