Thursday August 4th – Friday August 5th, 2025
Thursday August 4th – We spent the morning getting packed up for our 10 day road trip. Our plan was to leave at 10am and we did a good job keeping that schedule. We are headed south to a place called Denmark. We passed lots of farm land but mostly grazing land for herds of cows and sheep. Everything is very green and while the area we were in was mostly flat this is quite hilly. Very little grape vines due to the colder weather. We also passed lots of national forests which Merv & Michelle tell us are owned by The Crown which is government run but property of King Charles. When they say “Shire” I keep thinking of the hobbit but here it depicts township.
Our first stop was to the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree. The Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, a (246 ft) tall Karri tree, was pegged for climbing to celebrate Australia’s bicentenary in 1988. There used to be a platform up at the top that you could climb using “pegs” that were driven into the tree but they closed the upper platform in 2023 due to unsafe conditions. They still have the platform at 65 feet that you can climb to.
Kathy climbing up the tree. I can’t imagine someone trying to go both up and down at the same time. They do have a sign limiting how many people at once but no one monitoring it. Kathy was the only one of us to go up to the platform.
We did see this cute little Blue Breasted Fairy wren at the national park.
After the Centennial tree we went to another park that had a nice overview of a river, named “cascades”.
Too cold for swimming but even in the summertime they don’t allow swimming.
Some views on our walk to the river over view.
We had lunch at a cafe that had nice “toasted” sandwiches. After lunch we went to another large Karri tree called the Gloucester tree. The Gloucester tree is another large pegged tree but the top has come off and they don’t allow you to climb it at all.
We were spending the night in Denmark at a roadside hotel. Their roadside hotels are meant for families and multiple nights. So they have kitchenettes, 2 bedrooms and they also had a twin bed in the main room where the TV was. You share a bathroom. There was a great cafe right next to the hotel where we had dinner.
Merv and I shared chicken parmesan. This dish is offered everywhere and seems to be very popular in Australia. It is always served with fries and the fries are always hot and crisp. I do love the no tipping in Australia and in most places you go up and order your food and drink and pay before the food comes and then they deliver the food to your table. They also deliver it as it comes out and not when the whole table is ready. The great part is that at the end you just walk out and don’t have to wait for bill.
We watched a little TV and then slept well since it is nice and chilly.
Friday August 5th – Checkout time at the hotel was 10am. The weather had changed during the night and rain is acting as predicted for the next 4 days. The temperature has also dropped. Partly because of the weather and partly because we are further south. It’s counter intuitive since we think of going south as getting warmer but heading south on this continent you are getting closer to Antarctica! We had bought large cinnamon rolls at our cafe lunch stop on Thursday so we heated those up and all had some with our morning beverages.
Our plan today was to backtrack some from the way we had come to go to The Valley of the Giants Treetop walk. It was raining on and off but not too heavy. We had rain jackets and umbrellas.
You have to pay to do the walkway and Michelle has been before and not a fan of the height so Merv, Kathy and I went. The rain let up enough that we could take the 20 minute walk above the Karri tree forest.
The structure is quite solid and even though it was high it was very stable. The highest point on the walkway is 131 feet above the ground. Since the weather was bad there were not a lot of people there which made it easier to walk since the structure did shake as people walked along it. There are limits posted for each segment & platform.
The view from the platform. The walk was nice and we ended up doing the loop twice. Michelle visited the gift shop while we were walking and found herself a nice shoulder bag that she will be taking on the Viking World cruise that they’re going on this December.
The signs claim these are tingle trees that are quite large and they all grow straight and tall. They are part of the Eucalyptus family and are exclusive to the Walpole region of Western Australia.
After our walk we stopped by a distillery that had a very nice setting and restaurant but they were a distillery of CBD so nothing we wanted to sample, great views of their pond but not a sunny day.
We found a cafe for lunch and I had a meat pie which you eat with your hand but resembles our version of a chicken pot pie. Kathy had homemade soup which was nice on this overcast rainy day. We walked the town and browsed some of the shops and then continued to our next stop, Albany, where we will spend the next 3 nights in an AirBNB.
Our location now. As you can see we are right on the coast. We drove Frenchman Bay to kill time before check in time at 3:00.
The house we are staying in is very nice and was built in the 1950s but has been updated but they also kept some of the old age charm. There are multiple sitting rooms, full kitchen and laundry facilities. Houses from this time period normally have 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. In this house they added a half bath off the laundry room. The house is very well kept up.
We went into the town of Albany for dinner and the town is quite large. I don’t think I would call it a city but definitely a large town. We had dinner in an Italian restaurant and because it is Father’s Day Sunday in Australia and Merv was with us, we all got a scoop of gelato on the house. It is a special they are running for the entire month for every meal bought. Kathy and I don’t think we qualified since we both had a small pizza but they gave us one anyway.
The local town hall that dates back to the 1880s.
We are here for 3 nights but severe weather is supposed to come in during the night and get colder and windy and more rain. Since we don’t really have an agenda not a big deal but most of the activities are outside so we will come up with alternate plans.