The southwest of Western Australia is known well for its extensive hardwood forests but nothing can quite prepare you for their immense size and extent when you experience them for the first time. Such has been the case for us after driving many thousands of kilometres through treeless plains, deserts and coastal bush.

We have now entered the huge belt of forests that sit along the southwest coast. We are surrounded in every direction by National Parks with the occasional clearing for cattle or sheep farms and an increasing number of vineyards. Long gone are the endless straight roads now replaced with undulating and winding routes through heavy forestation and between giant Karri trees.

Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk

Today’s adventure takes us to the Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk set deep within a Tingle forest northeast of Walpole. It’s not a place for the faint hearted, those with a fear of heights, unsteady on their feet or suffer from dendrophobia, for today we’re up among the tree tops 45-metres above the ground.

Entry into the Valley of the Giants gives a teasing view of the sheer size of the Tingle tree. Living for as much as 400-years, rising to a height of 75-metres and with a 20-metre girth, the Tingle tree has an extremely restricted range relying on a minimum of 1000mm of annual rain, a low nutrient free-draining gravel soil, hilly terrain and minor seasonal change.

Since the ancient land mass of Gondwana began to break-up all the major continents have drifted away with the exception of the southwest corner of Western Australia. Having moved the least, conditions here remain as they have been for millions of years enabling many species to survive from those ancient times including the tingles, relict spiders and several species of snail.

The red and yellow tingle trees have enormous straight trunks with branching arms almost as thick, though the smaller yellow tingle grows only to a height of 40-metres. They are immensely strong but the red tingle has an achilles heel – its trunk is susceptible to insect and fungus attack that ultimately rots the central core and exposing it to the effects of fire.

Unlike most eucalypt trees the red tingle is unique in not having a central tap root, instead it has a shallow but widespread root system giving the tree a very stable base on which to grow to its enormous height.  And, as the tree ages, its base expands forming a buttress unlike the yellow tingle, which helps to differentiate the two species. The yellow tingle is also less susceptible to insect and fungi damage.

Walking the Ancient Empire trail

A short sealed path guides you around the forest’s Ancient Empire Trail where many of the giant tingle trees can easily be identified between the less bulky but significantly taller Karri trees. Standing by one of these giants is an experience, there aren’t many places in the world where you are dwarfed in such a significant way by a living object. To protect the shallow roots from foot traffic raised timber platforms transport you just above the forest floor.

A flash of colour

While admiring the trees and the peace and quiet of the forest, stand still for a while and you are likely to catch a flash of colour from one of the many colourful birds that live among the trees and one in particular the beautiful but tiny Red-winged Fairy Wren. Trying to photograph one of these is a real challenge, not just because of their diminutive size but the fact they don’t stand still long enough! Take a seat by the coffee truck and the Fairy Wrens will soon be paying you a visit along with raucous crows.

Tree Top Walk

The second, and most adventurous, part of our visit is the tree top platform walk that takes you from ground level right up into the tree canopy of the tingle forest. Brave pants may be required as you begin to notice the high-level platform swaying under foot as the well polished handrails attest.

It is very much worth any fear of heights to explore life among the canopy, a far different experience from just looking up to the sky. It makes you realise just how brave birds must be perched up high on a branch. Just imagine the fear an emu would feel up here!

The platform, assembled by hand without the use of helicopters and heavy machinery, extends for 600-metres rising to a peak of 40-metres and creating a circular route. You can go around as many times as you like and for as long as your nerves will bear.
NB. The second time around is easier as I discovered filming the circuit for Catherine so she can later see what it is like when you have your eyes fully open.

The swaying of each of the 60-metre platform spans is apparently intentional to ‘create the sensation of being in the canopy of the forest’. Well it certainly does that as does the steel mesh deck, which ‘reinforces the sensation of being high up in the forest canopy’.

Wildlife

Though not always visible, the Tingle forest is home to many creatures especially marsupials for which this country is famous. Among the collection you may spot the cute Quokka, Brush-tailed possums, Brush-tailed phascogales, Mardos (a shrew-like marsupial), Chuditch (the Western Quoll) and my favourite – the hell-raising Motorbike frog.

The Valley of the Giants and Tree Top Walk is an excellent experience and highly recommended for all ages. There is also a night time tour available during school holidays and for group bookings, where you may get to see some of the many nocturnal creatures that call the amazing tingle forest home.

To survive as a small outback town these days requires the ability to attract passing trade. And it appears to have become customary to try and create, or at the very least promote, something unique about your town to tempt the curious to stop for a while longer than a casual glance or a fuel stop on the way to some distant destination. It may be a collection of old machines stretching for a mile by the roadside as was the case in Ilfracombe, a museum or hall of fame dedicated to some local collection, talent or character such as The Waltzing Matilda Museum in Winton or The Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach, but if it can be made yours only then all the better. And, of course, we must not forget the giant possum, galah, lobster, ram, banana, pineapple…

Nannup

All this brings us to the small and easily passed town of Nannup surrounded by forest at the junction of Highway 10 and Highway 104. Here stalks a local beast rarely sighted but encountered often enough to rouse interest and keep the story alive and in the news. Allegedly a large dog-like animal, of a type previously thought to be extinct, wanders throughout the region occasionally posing for a blurry photograph. The beast has a distinctly long snout with tiger-like stripes to the rear half of it’s body and an unusually long dark tail.

It is thought the creature is a Thylacine – a marsupial carnivore, otherwise known as a Tasmanian Tiger – though the last one believed to exist died in captivity in 1936. Not unique to Tasmania despite its name, the creature became extinct on the mainland about 3,000 years ago but the thylacine is known to have spread as far west as Western Australia and north into Papua New Guinea with fossil records dating back at least 4-million years.

So, it might just be possible in this vast land of ours that a few survivors may still exist out there.

But is this just a ruse to attract tourists? After all, Nannup is well provided with cafes and interesting country shops to stop and explore for a while – would it really need to make up such a story? Well, in the brief time that we had to stop for a coffee and stretch our legs along the high street, I was startled to catch sight of the creature lurking among bushes beside the pavement!

It is definitely not a dog. But, despite its rather plastic-looking demeanour and remarkable stillness, it does in fact look like a Tasmanian Tiger and, strangely, it appeared quite happy for me to take a photograph. All I need to do now is add a little blur in Photoshop and add it to Nannup’s collection of sightings.

If you happen to be passing through Nannup, stop for a while, enjoy a great coffee or a meal in one of the many cafes and help support the local economy. And keep your eye out, you never know, you may too encounter the Nannup Tiger.

Today marks the day that we reach the most south-westerly point in Australia, a place called Cape Leeuwin, named by Mathew Flinders in 1801. It is a place where, somewhat controversially, two great oceans – the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean – meet.

It appears all but Australia consider the Southern Ocean to actually begin along the 60th parallel south line of latitude, which is a very long way south of Australia. But let’s not spoil an opportunity to attract tourists to the cape.

Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse

Sitting close to the tip of the cape is Australia’s third largest lighthouse and the largest in Western Australia – Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. Standing at 39-metres tall, almost twice the height of Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse, Cape Leeuwin’s lighthouse was built from locally quarried limestone and first lit in 1895. Like all other lighthouses around Australia, Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse wasn’t spared the march of ‘progress’ and it too became automated in 1982.

There is a small fee to access the grounds of the lighthouse or a tour of the lighthouse itself giving a grander view from the top deck and a great viewing point for the migrating whales, which pass close by. All proceeds go towards the maintenance and preservation of the lighthouse, cottages and supporting buildings. An onsite cafe serves tea, coffee and light meals with great views of the oceans.

Waterwheel

An unusual attraction in close proximity of the lighthouse is a waterwheel, though it’s not quite what you would expect. Built during the construction of the lighthouse, the waterwheel was powered by a natural freshwater spring and pumped water up to the construction team at the lighthouse for concrete and cement mixes saving transport costs in, what was at the time, a very remote location. Even the limestone was local being extracted from the nearby, and appropriately named, Quarry Bay.

Now, however, the calcium rich water has encased the wheel and much of the pumping mechanism in calcified lime. The water level has since dropped and now an electric pump is used to feed water along the trough to help preserve the timbers from drying and cracking.

It’s certainly an unusual sight but well worth the short stroll from the lighthouse car park even if it’s just to enjoy the views across the bay.