Tag Archive for 'Walpole-Nornalup'

On Walkabout In: The Ancient Empire

Published on January 29, 2007 in Western Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

A Walk Through the Ancient Empire

Adjacent to the Tree Top Walk in Western Australia’s Walpole-Nornalup National Park is the fabulous walk through an impressive grove of karri trees known as the Ancient Empire. This walk is on boardwalks through another grove a giant karri and red tingle trees. If you have come this far to do the Tree Top Walk you must do the Ancient Empire walk as well. This walk allows you to explore the bottom of the forest compared to the top of the trees like you do in the Tree Top Walk.

 

The trees in the Ancient Empire grow up to a height of 60 meters. This picture kind of gives you an idea how large these trees are compared to me:

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They may not be as big as America’s red wood trees but they are still quite impressive. However they are not the biggest trees I have seen in Australia though because the mountain ash trees I saw at Mait’s Rest in the Otway Ranges.

A number of the trees are hollow at the bottom due to past bush fires. This provides for some good picture opportunities:

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These burned out bottoms are extremely important for bio-diversity in the forest because many animals and birds use these burned out sections of the karri trees as their homes:

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Fire is extremely important to the various species of gum trees such as the karri trees because they allow the trees to reproduce along with the side benefit of creating the hollows in the trees as shelter for the forest’s various animals:

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Some of the hollows in these trees are so large that people can walk right through them:

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A few of the trees have fallen over due to old age which provides a different perspective of how big these trees are:

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As you can imagine the under growth is very thick in the Ancient Empire, but it is filled with plenty of colorful flowers:

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The walk through the Ancient Empire takes about an hour, but there is plenty of park benches for you to sit on if you want to hang out for a while. When my wife and I were there, the park wasn’t too crowded and it ended up being a very pleasant day.

Really no trip to the southwest of Austrlia would be complete without taking both walk through the Valley of the Giants and the Ancient Empire to admire these incredibly impressive trees.

Prior Posting: The Valley of the Giants

Next Posting: Exploring the Logging Past of Pemberton

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On Walkabout In: The Valley of the Giants

Published on January 28, 2007 in Western Australia. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Walking Among Giants

Just down the road from the southwestern city of Denmark is the Valley of the Giants. The Valley of the Giants is an ancient grove of karri and tingle trees located in the Walpole-Nornalup National Park. The drive to the park was once again a pleasant and scenic drive along coastal southwestern Australia:

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It is quite clear when you enter the Valley of the Giants because you are suddenly surrounded by giant trees. The vast majority of the giant karri trees in southwestern Australia have been chopped down by loggers over the years and most of the trees you see in the area are regrowth. The Valley of the Giants is one of the few areas that escaped the lumberjack’s axe and has now been protected and developed into a full fledged tourist attraction:

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The most famous attraction of the park is the Tree Top Walk. This walk is a series of bridges hanging from the top of these giant trees. Here is the start of the Tree Top Walk:

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From here you slowly ascend up into the upper reaches of the trees. The idea to create this walk was decided upon to reduce the amount of hikers damaging the environment in the valley. By having the hikers walk above the trees the environment below is protected plus the walk ended up proving popular with hikers because it provided people with a view of the forest that had never been seen before: 

From these tree top walkways are just spectacular views of the surrounding forest that gives visitors an even greater appreciation of how big these karri trees can get:

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Some of these trees are so big that they soar even higher then the walkway:

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If look look closely at the below picture, you can see the walkway on the top of the trees:

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This should give everyone a good idea of how high above the ground these walkways can get. For people afraid of heights it may be best to avoid this walk especially since the bridges sway in the wind as well:

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While my wife and I were walking along the walkways we were getting rained on off and on which limited the views we had available to us. Occasionally we could see some rolling hills in the distance whenever the clouds broke up a little bit:

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However we came here to see the trees and there would be plenty more of these massive karri trees for us to check out as my wife and I left the Valley of the Giants to take a walk through the Ancient Empire.

Next Posting: The Ancient Empire

Prior Posting: Traveling to Denmark

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