After our stay at Windy Harbour , we continue on . Now I must add that if you don't like tall trees , stop reading now , there's plenty of them . The drive to Walpole is impressive to say the least , giant Karri trees abound here , lining the road for a lot of the drive .
Stopping at a rest area along the way was equally impressive , making the ute & van look like toys .
Despite the photos , it's actually a bit hard to get good photos of the trees because they are so tall and the sunlight comes through making for high contrast images . Fortunately it was a little overcast today which dulled it down a bit . Good timing with the car to show some perspective .
Imagine this section in another 20-30 years , how thick and dark will it be ? and this is beside the road .
Finally arriving at Walpole , we stayed at Coalmine Beach CP , which is right beside Coalmine Beach . The wind was blowing straight off the water of Nornalup Inlet , it certainly wasn't hot at all !!
Near the CP is a drive around the Knoll , it's about 6 klms around and a one way road . Yes , you guessed it , more trees and forest . This is one of the picnic areas beside the inlet .
There are plenty of old trees of many different varieties , this one is an old tea tree / paperbark . That trunk has been around for a long time .
Here's an aerial view of the Knoll in the foreground and left of photo . The waters of Nornalup Inlet are this side as well as the other side , and then there is the township of Walpole . The water this side is very shallow and has a sandy bottom .
This is the end of the Knoll with more of the inlet . It goes out to sea near the top left of the photo .
Next day we headed out for a drive through the forest to check out the giant Tingle Tree again . It was only about 5klm away from us and in some magnificent forest .
There are 3 varieties of Tingle Tree - Red , Yellow and Rates Tingle . The last one was named after a forestry superintendent who discovered it . As a sad note to that - John Rate was killed by a falling branch in a forest - hopefully not a Rates Tingle !
Tingle trees grow to be quite large trees as well , they have very large bases that taper upwards , they have developed this way to cope with bushfires . With a large circumference at the base , the fire doesn't get to the trunk as easily , but they do burn . The result is a large base that can appear to be completely burnt out , but while ever there is life left in the trunk , it will survive . This one is still growing strongly even though you can see through it .
This one is twisted and contorted but still alive , and has a great model to show some size comparison .
The Giant Tingle has historical photo's of people and their cars parked in the tree . Here's a photo of the tree . Just imagine a VW Kombivan parked in there .
From here we went to Nornalup - a small village a few kms up the road that sits beside the Frankland River . This is the highway looking back toward Nornalup Inlet with The Frankland River running from left to right .
And this is Nornalup
From here we went to the Valley of the Giants , to have a look again . There's the treetop walk there , it was busy as , so we went on a Bradley tour instead . Taking back roads and fire trails through the forest and National Park on our way back to Walpole , we saw some more magnificent forest as well as sections of the Frankland River . This firetrail has you driving between 2 Karri trees - that's one lane of the track .
Anyway , that was another great day of checking out the region , probably a bit of visual overload , as it can be somedays . Here's a map link , we're exhausted ! :- https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1w3_rkzkkQqz1g74K7thrhVyHGhiC98U&usp=sharing
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