Australia

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Our morning started with a short trip into Denmark. After a quick walk around the town we drove to the Valley of the Giants - a karri forest containing some very tall trees. They’re different from the NZ kauri trees,- instead of being fat and stocky, these were tall and skinny. The storm the previous night had brought some of the trees down along the walk we had planned to do - the Ancient Empire Walk - which weaved along a boardwalk through the forest. It meant that we could only go a short way into the woods before we had to turn around and go back to the beginning again, so we decided to splash out on the Valley of the Giants Walk which took us up through the tree tops on a suspension bridge.

The bridge was very wobbly and Matt made the most of it by taking extra heavy steps to make it sway every time I tried to take any pictures or use the video camera. The bridge climbed higher and higher until we were in the canopy of the trees and had to lean over the hand rail to see the forest floor.

It was an odd feeling being up so high and looking through the gaps in the metal grid floor as we walked and swayed from side to side.

The highest point of the walk was 40m high and there was a tree right next to this platform that was even taller. Standing along side it made it difficult to get a sense of scale.

While walking the last stretch a lady in front of us commented to her husband that she couldn’t understand why this stretch of the bridge was more wobbly than the rest. I had to laugh as she obviously hadn’t seen the young boy behind us who was jumping rather than walking each step so as to rock the bridge as much as possible. I was pleased to get off onto solid ground again.

Our next stop was to be at Margaret River, but our sat nav took us on a weird detour through forests and countryside to get there. Half the time it couldn’t figure out what road we were on and it kept telling us to take turnings that didn’t exist, so we had to hope we were going in the right direction.

Eventually we made it into Margaret River. I was a bit disappointed to see it was just a normal looking town and I couldn‘t even see the river. I don’t know what I’d been expecting but I think I had visions of it being a small, quaint English village with rolling countryside views. It had a high street like any other town and the usual type of shops. We popped into the visitors centre and found it useless - they didn’t seem willing to make an effort to answer our questions about which caravan parks had wifi, they didn’t have a list of wineries in the area (despite the fact our guide book said they should have) and when we tried to find out which wineries were open for dinner we were advised that ‘we do lunch here, not dinner’ in a snooty tone that wasn’t any help at all! (We later found out from our campsite that some of the wineries do do dinner afterall). Helen Wassell, I think Australia needs you to sort out the TICs and bring in some customer service!

With our list of campsites and phone numbers to try, we got back in the van and starting ringing around trying to find somewhere with an available pitch. It took a few attempts but I got there in the end.

We ended up at a caravan park near to Gracetown. It had a real countryside feel to it and about ten minutes after pulling in we saw a kookaburra by our van. Not long after that we saw a couple of kangaroos hop by. As I went to the toilet later on when it was getting dark I was greeted by a couple of possums climbing the rafters of the awning outside the toilet block.

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