A stroll in the dwindling tingle tree forest

Driving further southeast from Pemberton, we saw more tall forest. By the time we reached Walpole, we were ready to hit the forest again. We did so in the aptly-named Valley of the Giants, with the distinguishing feature being the giant red tingle trees (Eucalyptus jacksonii).

According to Western Australia's Department of Conservation and Land Management, tingle forests now cover just a few thousand hectares around Walpole, which has the wettest climate in the southwest region. But apparently they were more widespread in ancient times, when the climate was warm and rainfall much higher.

Small animals that today inhabit the forest floor and are unique to the forest, including the tingle spider and types of primitive snails, have related species in New Zealand, Chile and Madagascar, indicating that tingle forests had been around since the Australian continent was joined to Antarctica, India, Africa and South America to make up Gondwanaland some 65 million years ago.

We explored the forest floor by walking on a boardwalk, which was built to protect the fragile tingles and the soil around their roots from being over-compacted by trampling tourists and lumbering vehicles. The walk meandered around the primitive, slightly spooky-looking red tingles with their thick trunks, which contorted into shapes resembling faces, giants and a variety of other creatures from fairytale books.

We were keener to get on the tree top walk, a 600-meter-long walk on a steel bridge suspended high amongst the canopy of the tingle trees.

The bridge consisted of interconnecting, sloping ramps with see-through steel decking that allowed people to be at various heights above the ground. We discovered the bridge also swayed gently as we walked (and more so when the kids ran) and at 40 m above the ground -- with the breeze blowing and the forest floor and lower canopies in full view -- it was quite an experience.

We decided that one week wasn't enough to fully enjoy the southwest. We would come back to do some wine touring, museum visiting, historical sightseeing, camping, canoeing, abseiling, off-road exploring, surfing and bushwalking -- maybe even do the 1,000 km bushwalk on the Bibbulmun Track from Perth to Albany.

-- JP/Prapti Widinugraheni