Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Walpole - West Australia
Round The World Trip Journal

(25th March) Walpole
Our main focus at Walpole was the Valley of the Giants about 17km out of town. This is the only place in Australia where the Tingle Trees grow. The red tingles are giant trees with buttresses at the bottom and can be up to 20 metres in girth. They are also really tall – we saw some 300 year old ones and they can grow up to 75 metres. We went to the Tall Trees Treetop Walk, a nicely graduated incline up a steel suspended walkway that gradually takes you up to 40 metres high – right up in the tree canopy. This sounds really lovely and really easy but we hadn’t banked on the fact that they had gone for the extra-sensory factor too. The walkway and the viewing platforms all sway in the wind and the walkways bounce under foot as you walk! Add to this the fact that you can see down through the lattice walkway and it was quite a moving experience! We both had Elvis legs by the end. Makes you appreciate just how high these trees actually are and we know for sure that we couldn’t have climbed those fire lookout trees now! We did the Walk of the Ancients next – a boardwalk which takes you through 300 year old forest and stood underneath a few hollowed out trees too. The other photos here show the area around Walpole. Nothing but trees around the whole estuary. You can see from the overhead shot (no we didn’t go up in a plane!) just how little is built on. We had a visit by some Kangaroos to the campsite on the look out for a free meal, Mike took loads of photos of them but no room left on this page unfortunately.