20100910 Albany WA, to Bridgetown WA
(Map Link) (Picture Link – O) (Picture Link – D – a huge file)
Up, showers, breakfast in the motel dining room “Shells”. The tour group here last night has already left. We paid our motel bill, packed up and departed. [Ed: we left some items here, see later comments]
First, we went to the local Wind Farm for some pictures. Dolores had heard there were good flower pictures to be had there. She did get some, but the pictures of the coastline were also good.
We left there and headed west along the scenic route. We stopped at a couple of pull-outs to take pictures. We looked at the cute little town of Denmark as we passed through, and filled up the car’s gas tank.
At Bow Bridge, we turned off onto the Valley of the Giants road to that National Park. After some driving, we arrived. These “red tingles” are the fifth or sixth largest tree, measured by girth at shoulder level, in the world. They have a very unique growing method, in that they buttress outward at the base and hollow themselves out at the base. This provides good lateral strength despite the fact that the tree may be 90 meters high and have a root field extending only 3 meters in radius and 2 meters down. You would think a slight wind would blow the thing over, but it is stronger than it appears.
If a fire comes along, the tree's outer bark helps the fire go up into the canopy; this sacrifices the upper branches to save the base tree. It immediately sends out branches lower down to extend its leaf area; once the upper levels of the tree are healthy, these die out due to lack of sunshine.
We took a tour with Tony, who explained all the above, and kept us in stitches as he told us other details of the forest. For instance, he told the life story of some small animal (possum?) where the females live five years, but the male only one. It seems the male reaches sexual maturity at nine months and dies of stress after bonking himself to death for the next three months in an extreme effort at propagation. There were several such stories. Great tour and tour guide.
Then we got onto the Tree Walk. This very flexible structure leads off through the trees, eventually reaching canopy level at 75-90 meters. It's very springy and bounces all over in response to footsteps. But it's very strong. It takes up only four square meters of ground space for the whole thing, by design. Everything is hung from about eight pylons. You have to look at the pictures to get the idea. Dolores survived the Tree Walk just fine, for those who know she's a little skittish at heights.
We left and drove a while until we found a road leading to the “Circular Pool”. We drove for a long time on a pavement/dirt road to this thing. The Shannon River rushes downstream over some falls and flows into a pool area. The foam created by the falls, combined with natural tannins from upstream, appears to circle in this circle area. Of course, the river is going straight through underneath. It's cute, but nowhere near the eight wonder of the world.
So we left the pool and drove out in the marked direction. It took us past a nice farm, but I stopped when I saw two kangaroos sitting in the road ahead. We slowly came to a stop and took pictures through the windshield. Then we coasted downhill toward them and took more pictures. Then they got nervous and hopped out into the adjacent field. They stopped briefly but then bounced off into the distance. Dolores says these guys were non-chalant and just hopping along whereas the ones she saw at Mount Barker were in full-bore flight.
Driving out took longer than I thought it should. Eventually we found ourselves on the North Walpole road without a good idea of how we got there. Having been lost several times in the past week, it was no problem to find ourselves again.
We continued on route 1, the Southern Coast Road to Crystal River where the road turns north and inland, becoming the South Western Highway.
When we entered the Shannon National Park, we turned in for the drive through the Great Forest Trees Drive. These big trees (karri) exist only in a strip of land along the south coast, where the moisture is right for them and they are sheltered from strong winds. This drive had a low-power FM transmitter at several sites to tell the story of the park – very nice. But the drive was 22km long and somewhat muddy. Hertz might not have liked the places we took the car into.
Onward then to Bridgetown. We checked in at Nelson's Hotel, Motel, Restaurant, Bar, and more. As we walked into reception, the receptionist was trying to decipher the request of a lady who couldn't very well phrase what she wanted. She explained the whole world including the people involved and their parents and their cats, which the receptionist finally condensed to – you want one room for two nights for two people starting next Wednesday, right? She said yes and walked away. He rolled his eyes and attended to us.
As we walked out, a bus pulled in. Out stumbled a dozen or so guys carrying bottles of beer. The driver off-loaded a bushel basket of empties and a case partly full of full bottles. The guys fanned out into rooms (with beer).
Dolores decided we should leap into the restaurant before the mob. We beat them by two minutes, and got our order in ahead of them. We were seated in the small dining room while the mob (golfers here for some tournament, as it turned out) took a long table in the bar. The Australian Football League (AFL) semi-finals game between Geelong SA, and Fremantle WA, was on. Much cheering, and yelling, and exclamations. They had fun. Other guests showed up to fill in our little room, and it all wound up quite pleasant.
We got enabled on the house internet and returned to the room. No internet signal anywhere. So we downloaded today's photos and typed up this log for transmission tomorrow from Margaret River.
A good day.