The SouthWest, Perth

Me & my mate decided to wing it and went for this one-day tour from Perth to the Southwest of Western Australia via Feature Tours. This was a L...O...N...G day as the tour started around 5.30am and ended close to midnight. The rate was A$115 circa 2001.

The Tree Top Walk was already famous before we got here. The Western Australian Tourism Authority had spent plenty amount of money getting supermodel Elle MacPherson to strut her way on the bridge to convince my countrymen to come and experience Perth. It was thus a great pity that she was nowhere to be found when we got there. Shucks.

We reached the Valley of the Giants about 1.5 hours after a lunch stop @ Bunbury, sandwiched between the townships of Walpole and Denmark, so everyone was eager to stretch their tired body and legs.

The Valley of the Giants is now part of Walpole-Nornalup National Park and gets its name from the large red tingle trees that are found there.

The 2 highlights include a Boardwalk through a grove of veteran tingle trees known as the Ancient Empire - an area containing the 'Giants' for which the forest was named. Some of the trees here are up to 16 metres in circumference at the base. The other highlight is the Treetop Walk, a sturdy lightweight steel metal bridge where you can walk along a 420-metre-long steel-truss walkway which leads over a deep, red tingle gully. Because it is built on the side of a natural valley, the walkway rises up above the forest floor on a gentle grade suitable for kids, people in wheelchairs and the elderly. The highest point in the 600-metre loop is about 40 metres.

Valley of the Giants and Tree Top Walk are open every day of the year except Christmas Day or during extreme weather (lightning or very windy conditions).
General opening times - 9am to 5pm with the last tickets sold at 4.15pm.
Extended hours 26th December to 26th January - 8am to 6pm with the last tickets sold/admission at 5.15pm.

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Me & my mate decided to wing it and went for this one-day tour from Perth to the Southwest of Western Australia via Feature Tours. This was a L...O...N...G day as the tour started around 5.30am and ended close to midnight. The rate was A$115 circa 2001.

Part of Torndirrup National Park's rugged coastline, a little ala The Great Ocean Road off Melbourne, the Southern Ocean has sculpted a Natural Bridge in the coastal granites and formed The Gap, where the waves rush in and out with tremendous ferocity. The Blowholes, a crackline in the granite, 'blows' air and occasionally spray. The noise is quite impressive. Windswept coastal heaths give way to massive granite outcrops, sheer cliffs and steep sandy slopes and dunes.

The area was one of the first in the State to be gazetted as a national park, in 1918, though it was not named until 1969 and acquired its first resident ranger in 1973. Torndirrup was the name of the Aboriginal clan that lived on the peninsula and to the west of what is now Albany.

Me & my mate decided to wing it and went for this one-day tour from Perth to the Southwest of Western Australia via Feature Tours. This was a L...O...N...G day as the tour started around 5.30am and ended close to midnight. The rate was A$115 circa 2001.

This is the last part of the journey. A steep winding road reaches almost to the top of Mount Clarence, from which the views of King George Sound & Albany were breathtaking. Mount Clarence is also the place for the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial - a re-cast of the original statue erected at Suez in 1932. You can't miss the statue (that of a galloping horse).

Albany has the distinction of being the site of the first European settlement in Western Australia. On Boxing Day 1826, Major Edmund Lockyer and a party of soldiers and convicts from Sydney came ashore in Princess Royal Harbour to establish a penal outpost. Albany was once a whaling town but today, it is now more a whale-sighting city.

Unfortunately, you would not have much time to explore Albany as you would be arriving there close to 6pm...and you would be more concerned with securing dinner before your long trip back to Perth. Besides, most of the shops would be closed as well. I had a quick 10 minutes walk around after wolfing down my dinner and that was about it. Pity.

I needed a break from Perth and wanted to go alittle further than Mandurah, Bunbury was ideal. I was on my own, without much money and in winter. For a country town it has an abundance of scenic places, shops and regional access.

Dwellingup is located 1.5 hours SSE of Perth. It is a small town with one or two places to eat, craft shops and best of all - the forest.

We went there just for a day to do some quality bushwalking. The scenery is amazing, you can walk along the river, through the bush and scale the hills

This really is a unique way to see our forests, instead of walking on the floor beneath, you walk 38 metres above the floor amogsnt the forest. It is a boardwalk in tingle forest. the views are unbelievable and so is the walk itself. You can really get close to the life in the trees.

I took a train to a city south of Perth because someone at the youth hostel told me it was possible to swim with dolphins there and that they came of their own free will as nobody was feeding them to lure them to shore as in so many other places on Australias coast...... and really I went there and I heard them (when I put my head under water) and I saw their back fins. It was amazing and one of the best experiences I have ever had.

As a Perth girl one of the most unique things of Geographe Bay was that you could go for an afternoon swim or even just as the sunset sets and not have any wind whatsoever.

Staying in Perth and going to the beach you will notice that the sea breeze comes in the afternoon and can get a bit windy sometimes.