31 May 2011

Walpole to Denmark

Now this is the sensible way to climb into the tree canopy, up a ramp that may sway in the breeze but whose bars and bolts have been safety-tested and approved for public consumption.  A ramp for tree climbing pansies like myself who need some assistance (and assuredness) getting 40 meters above the ground.  It’s the Tree Top Walk outside Walpole and I give it two thumbs up because I can, not needing them to hang onto some skinny rebar peg while I dangle 60 meters above the ground.  I think it may have been a bit anticlimatic for Gina but she humoured me and paid my entrance ticket anyway.

This road tripping from Walpole to Denmark is full of stops, like being on the local bus to downtown when what you really wanted was the express, the kind that tend to drive us nuts but are a necessity today in order to have something to do.  The Tree Top Walk is followed by a visit to the Greens Pool and Elephant Rocks in William Bay National Park, nearshore scenes of aquamarine waters and Moab-textured rocks plunked along the shoreline for scrambling and sunning (if only the sun were out).

Then it’s the tourist information center in Denmark for maps, which seems trivial given the size of this wee town but when Apollo Campervan rentals thinks that sufficient navigational material is providing you with an atlas of all of Australia, of which one lone page is devoted to Perth and Southwest Australia, well, sometimes you need a little help from the locals if you intend to find that caravan park for the night.  The park we do find is as empty as my wallet these days, the touring season clearly being done and gone.  Just us and the parrots tonight.