Monday … gorgeous sunny morning, dew on the bikes and mist ethereally still drifting up from the dam ...


Happily we were able to ‘share’ breakfast with our new old friends, before heading off on the next leg to Margaret River … Maggie keenly ‘supervised’ our departure prep with lots of interested questions, but I felt for Bob, being a bikie from much younger days (dirtbikes as a youth and onwards, until MD caught up with him) and regretted we didn’t wait for him to get himself up and shuffle out to the bikes … Maggie said he’d ‘probably cry’ – I regretted our haste even more then …

The “Tree Top Walk” and “Valley of the Giants” near Walpoll had been highly recommended by Anja, so it was our first stop ...


Despite the somewhat unnerving swaying of the tree-top walkway spans, many pics were taken, trying to convey the immense size and grandeur of these beautiful trees ...

Yet again though, like the Great Australian Bight, these glorious trees have to be seen to be believed! Note the tiny shadow bottom right corner of pic below - it's not that we're that high up, it's the immense expanse of the base that makes my shadow look little! :-o


Some of the biggest and oldest Eucalypts anywhere in Australia are found here, some estimated to be around 400 years old ... the Red Tingle particularly lives only here in this unique small ‘pocket’ of bush in WA!

This beautiful tree lady is known as “Grandmother Tingle” or the “Gate Keeper”, thought to be the oldest tree in this pocket …




The fires of 1937 ...


Even today, the trees still bear the charcoal scars ... this huge Tingle, despite the burnt out center, is happily still well and truly alive!


Inadvertently, but fortuitously, we take a “wrong” turn from the Southwestern Hwy to our lunch/fuel stop in Pemberton – there are two: the Vasse Hwy further up and the earlier Middleton Rd … Middleton Rd, through to Northcliffe is picturesque, but the Pemberton-Northcliffe Rd was even more so! From Northcliffe through Brockman National Park and ending within Gloucester National Park, we travelled along some of the most spectacularly beautiful treed twisty road, some trees so close to the side you could almost have touched them as we rode past! You couldn’t help but “rubber-neck” and we slowed the speed right down to safely do so ;-) At one fantastic photographic point, the road went just straight through a vast “tunnel” of the most amazing trees meters high! A beautifully sunlit pictorial opportunity for the begging, with Chris on the bike ahead … sadly not able to stop, will just have to commit the ‘view’ to memory … note to self: will endeavor to research some sort of in situ pic-taking from the bike for future road trips :-)

Fueled up, Pemberton Hotel for lunch (more egg and bacon, on a roll this time – whoopee! - with Red Bull) before pushing straight through to overnight at Margaret River.


Our accom for the night at MR - what IS that thing on the ceiling supposed to be!

The township of Karriedale, just before Marg River, is rich with 'timber' history and has unique ties with old London and Melbourne towns, as we learnt ‘over dinner’ at “The Grange” on Farelly Street ;-)






The original pic is blurred but we were still able to count a team of EIGHTEEN horses!


Dinner - totally delicious melt in your mouth Beef Burgundy with garden veg for mains, with the resident young chef knocking up an ‘emergency’ desert of Pear Tartin, as the chosen Apple Crumble was “not up to standard!” in her view … what a total contrast to the “are yous ready to order?” at Norseman!