Daddy emu

Emu eggs are nested by the male emu, with the female heading off for an extended shopping expedition with the Besties once the eggs are laid. The father hatches the eggs, and then rears the chicks through to adolescence.

This fella was giving his chicks a lesson in how to browse for emu tucker in a field near Albany.

Dads - you gotta love us.

Torndirrup National Park - Albany

Torndirrup National Park lies just outside the coastal WA town of Albany. It covers nearly 4000 hectares, and looks to be a wonderful place for long and short walks along a spectacularly rugged coastline.


The waters of South West WA are an amazing azure, crystal clear and to me - as a snorkler - very tempting. Unfortunately at this time of year they're are also colder than a beer slushy, and with my wetsuit locked up in a shipping container journeying its way to Sydney there was zero chance of getting wet.

Two of the attractions of the Torndirrup Park are the Gap, and The Bridge. Along the road out to see these natural highlights lies Cable Beach. As well as being a beautiful stretch of clean sand wonderfully empty of humanity the beach is a salutary lesson in the power of the ocean.

Halfway along the beach lies a large, round boulder lying up on a rock platform. It is apparently 100 tonnes in weight, approximately the same as a diesel locomotive.



One day it wasn't there.

The next day it was.

It was lifted up onto the beach by the wild waves of a storm that swept the beach.

Now that is a hell of a break to body surf!

The bridge is an amazing suspension of granite and gneiss, carved by the relentless pounding power of the same waves that can lift 100 tonnes of rock faster than Superman.


Eventually the same waves will erode The Bridge so much that it will fall into the sea. Though I hope to revisit it again some day, I do hope I am not crossing it when a loud crack sounds.

Don't ask me!

On the way into Albany you'll find this lovely Tourist Information bay. As you can see, it is just jam packed with useful information for the visitor.

By the way, the two pieces of paper you can see in there say something like "This Information Bay is constructed courtesy of the Albany Lions Association".

Skywalker

West Australians love to get high up in trees it seems, all without ever actually doing much climbing. The Walpole-Nornalup National Park is about an hour's drive West of the town of Albany, and is home to the Valley of the Giants. Only a moment of disappointment as we realised that this was not in fact the home of Jolly Green Herculeans sniffing the air for the scent of an Englishman's blood. Rather it is home to the Red Tingle tree.

Red Tingles have fat arses. Or to be more botanically correct, they have an exceptionally wide buttressed base, a result of them being shallow rooted, and having a heart timber particularly prone to termite and fungal attack. Once the ants and the fungus have done their bit the next passing fire guts the centre of the base of the tree. Amazingly however the outer layers thicken until the base of the tree is some 12 to 16 metres in circumference. This buttress then continues to support and feed the upper tree structure, and Red Tingles live to over 500 years in age often with massive cave-like holes tall enough to stand in at their base.
Weaving through these giants is the Walpole Skywalk. It is a walkway that rises to 40 metres above the valley floor and taking the visitor to the height of the canopy. The steel spans bounce and sway unnervingly and signs warn that no more 10 people can be on any given span at the same time. Lucky we're all pretty thin!