Rainbow Coast – Walpole, Denmark and Albany

So after our eventful few days in Margaret River, we continued driving to explore the ‘Rainbow Coast’, encompassing Walpole, Denmark and Albany, which are in the most southern corner of Western Australia. We settled into a campsite for the evening in Walpole, finally getting around to watching ‘Australia’ on the laptop, spotting the landmarks in the film we’d visited ourselves. Unfortunately, the rain continued to drizzle, but we nearly found the end of the rainbow on the campsite…

We were to cover quite a lot of places over the next few days. Our first stop on the Rainbow Coast, was the Walpole-Nornlup National Park, where we drove through the ‘tingle tree’ forest. The trees towered over us as we winded up through the forest along the orange coloured roads. The one particular ‘Giant Tingle Tree’ was so big, even with us holding hands and stretching our arms out, we couldn’t reach the insides of it.

We visited ‘Circular Pool’ in the forest too, which apparently formed a ‘natural cappuccino’ effect, which after one look at it, we translated to ‘dirty water running over some rocks’… not so impressed with this site.

The next stop was much more impressive though, ‘The Valley of the Giants’ in Denmark. We were able to do a tree top walk here, making our way along a route of bridges high up in trees, with great views over the wilderness. The walk was quite quick, but fun none-the-less making the bridge ways bounce (maybe some of the other people on them didn’t appreciate this so much though).

A short drive away, Conspicuous Cliff standing high above the surrounding heathland, gave a fantastic view of the coast line in this area. It definitely was a bit windy up there though!

Continuing on we arrived in Albany, a port city which had a slight hint of Christmas to it, with Alpine trees lining the coast and a crisp feel to the air. We were told there would be a ‘Christmas Parade and Lights Switch On’ event in the town on the evening, so decided to explore the area a little before heading to that later on. To get in the mood, we blasted some Christmas songs out in the car and it was the unusual choice of ‘Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey’ that got stuck in our heads as we ventured around the sites… I’m pretty sure we got a few funny looks singing and skipping along to this tune.

We drove the coast road and got some great views of the town up on the hill.

From here we drove down to Torndirrup National Park and saw yet some more… yes you guess it again?!... rock formations. The rocks formed natural stepping stones out into the ocean, which were perfect for our ‘skip and sing along’ moods!

We checked into the camp site for the evening and headed to the Christmas event in the town. To our disappointment, it was a little smaller than expected, with the ‘gourmet food market’ being little more than a few baked cakes, a chip van and a hot drinks stand. Nevertheless, the parade was very sweet to watch and the evening’s entertainment of a crazy juggling, sword throwing gentleman was quite amusing!

Off to Esperance next, which is meant to be home to some of the most beautiful beaches in Australia.

Peace and Love,
Lyds & Bex
xxxxx