On Walkabout In: The Valley of the Giants

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

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

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:

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:

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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