Gotcha Australia: 3. – 6. December

Porongurup National Park and Albany Second start for our tour through the southwest of WA. This time we went via the Albany Highway – hopefully we won’t find any troubles with the van and 4 people ;-)

We camped at a free site close to Mt. Barker. During the night it started to rain and got quite chilly. The tourist information in Mt. Barker is only open from Thursday to Sunday so luckily we arrived on a Saturday and could gather some information. First we went to the lookout on Mt. Barker and enjoyed the vistas in between the showers. We could see all the heavy rain clouds but it didn’t start to rain while we were outside.

Next stop was the Porongurup National Park and we were hoping for a nice walk with no rain – we had our fingers crossed. There are several hikes so we couldn’t decide which to take… So we just walked to the main attraction – the tree on the rock. It is a funny sight. The tree is really growing out of a rock or on top of a rock. And believe me the tree is tall. We decided to climb the rock (it was only 1m high) to have a closer look at the tree and we saw that the tree is breaking the rock apart. I think some microorganism are responsible that the tree can grow on the rock.

It hasn’t starting to rain yet so we kept walking. While walking we saw more tall trees – mainly Karri, Marri or Tarri trees (I can’t recall 100%). Anyway the trees can grow up to 90m high and reach an age of 400. Such tall trees are also wide – all 4 of us were needed to hug the tree. Some trees even offer some kind of shelter – a fire or some fungus created a hole…

The walk went uphill and offered several views – in the north to the Stirling Ranges and in the south to Albany (of course you need clear skies to see). But we could only recognise the coming rain – it looked like the next shower was not far away. But we had luck and it didn’t rain. Unfortunately we had to return the same way as we must have missed one turn-off. Back at the van we had a little coffee and tea break.

Next stop was Albany and we had a look at the region. There are some hills and several walking tracks along the coast. First we went to the war memorial on top of one hill and had nice views of Albany and the harbour. We also saw some bobtails and other lizards – they must have liked the sunshine after two days of rain. And my mum was afraid not to see any wildlife. It’s also possible to track the hill with your mountain bike – the downhill track was just recently finished but we saw no biker. On the other side of the hill was a military museum but we preferred to walk along the beach and coast. Along the coastal walk were several lookouts and some wild flowers to be seen. That evening we enjoyed a pizza at the beach.

Albany’s coast is marked by the Southern Ocean, the bay and the river. There are only two places in WA which have a natural sheltered harbour and Albany is one of them. Albany was actually the first settlement in WA but couldn’t not compete with the better (logistic) location of Fremantle and Perth. The coastlines are really different; the bay is relatively calm but not easy to navigate, the river part is good for swimming and the ocean coast is rugged and rough so that some blowholes were formed. Unfortunately they didn’t blow so I’m not able to decide which are better. But we had a look at the natural bridge and they are similar in the south and up north.