The Path Less Ridden

Straight on the road this morning. I followed the coastline for a while, heading west.

I’m a sucker for dumb place names, so when I saw the sign for “Conspicuous Cliff”, I took the turnoff. A lovely run through the countryside to the coast:

After which I hit the coast. Pretty, but not as good as other bits of the coastline I’ve seen so far.

The Walpole area in south-western WA has several species of giant eucalypts that exist nowhere else, so I ventured into the National Parks to chase them.

This particular type of tree, called a Red Tingle, has a trunk that is 24 metres in circumference. The centre has been burnt out in fires before but it’s still alive, surviving with just a portion of its base.

Moving once more, I hit the highway, which was an interesting road with wide open sweeping corners, but it wasn’t quite hitting the “adventure” button – so I picked a turnoff into the D’Entrecasteux National Park to go cross country.

The road was sandy and corrugated in places, which wasn’t great on the now completely worn road tyres, but much more interesting visually.

After a while though, disaster struck.

Apparently a bridge was down ahead, but sometimes adventure is like that. It was easy enough to track back and box around.

Heading towards the west coast, the next stop was the Warren National Park. One of the key attractions here is an old fire watch tree that is now a tourist lookout – 65 metres up!

There are no safety harness or guides, there’s a bit of wide mesh on the sides to stop you falling out, but nothing between the bits of reo bars to stop you falling through! The first platform is 20 metres up.

Then it gets more interesting.

The view from the top over the forest is amazing though!

Note the size of the ute at the bottom for scale.

Coming back down was even more ‘interesting’ than going up – because you need to look down to place your feet, seeing how far the ground is below you, and seeing the reo bars bend under your weight! Plus I took the time to inspect more closely how the structure was all mounted…hmm, maybe I wouldn’t have gone to the top if I’d looked earlier!

 

Once safely back on the ground I did a loop through the rest of the park.

Next stop along the road was the Beedelup National Park, to see the falls there. Despite the hail yesterday, I don’t think much rain fell this far west, because there was only a small amount of water flowing. Still a nice spot though.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who hears the Indiana Jones theme music when faced with a shaky suspension bridge!

The rest of the day passed in a blur of rolling hills and forestry sections, on interesting roads with lots of open sweeping corners.

I pushed on as far as Augusta before calling it a day, to have an easy run into Perth tomorrow.