WA Camping Trip - Day 3

Good Morning! This morning we had a slower wake up and enjoyed breakfast around the tent in our camp chairs before packing up the tent.

First stop of the day was the 'Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk'. A tourist attraction set up to help educate people about the importance and conserve the Giant Tingle Tree forests. The trees play an important role in the ecosystem by supplying shelter to many animals that live beneath. But, they are commonly raided by fungus infections in their lower trunks, weakening the area and making it more suseptible to widfires. Although, the tingles have adapted to survive, even when the inside of their trunks are completely burnt out - leaving a large healthy tree, with a hollow and dark centre. The tree top walk allowed us to walk through the top of the canopy to appreciate the height of the trees, while the ground walk allowed us to experince the burnt centres up close.

Next stop was Albany! A much larger town than wehad been driving through before. Lots more shops, resturants, and a big harbour too. Goode beach came up as a popular site in Albany, so we headed straight there. I didn't think sand could get whiter than that at Hamelin bay, but this cove prooved me wrong. We took the beach shelter down with us in hopes for some shade and wind protection, but it was too windy to even put that up! So after 10 minutes of laying on the beach we decided to head for a swim in the sea!

We had a great conversation with a local in the water, he has lived in Albany for 20 years and walks down to the beach twice a day for a short swim since he has retired. We asked him about the possibilty of sharks and he pointed out a bright yellow bouye further out at sea ad explained how it was a shark monitor. So any tagged shark that went by it would notify a team, and it would get displayed on the reef saftey website. He also explained that he has only seen a shark in Albany once in the 20 years hes been there.

Our converstaion and swim was quickly ended after a road worker came onto the beach asking everyone to move their cars out the carpark as they wanted to re-tarmarc it. So off we went to get dried and move our cars. We drove to another beach, but the wind was picking up and after this one it was slightly underwhelming. However, their was a nice coastal path here so we took a 20 minute walk before finding somewhere for dinner.

The menu for 'Due South' looked good. A bistro style modern building on the harbour serving burgers, curries and sandwhiches. A large and open venue that provided and filling dinner alongside lovely views. The chips where lovely, however I couldn't say the same for the vegan burger!

As we had the long journey back to Darina's (4.5 hours), we decided to stay at a campsite that was an hour north of Albany to shorten our future journey.

This campsite was by Nunijup lake, and our first free campsite. Arriving in the dark we wern't sure of our surroundings. We could see the position of the toilet, and one other small tent but nothing else but darkness and trees. This led to a very pleasing view when we got out the tent the following morning, seeing that we where less than 50 metres from thee edge of the lake. We had breakfast in our camp chairs alongside 2 very friendly crows before setting off for the journey back.