More about Mum & Dads Trip

Hi All,

The run from Esperance to Albany was uneventful, the scenery was a little better. Albany is a large town / small city, built on the beautiful Princess Royal Harbour and King George Sound.
The place is full with holiday makers and tourists, we had some trouble finding a caravan park with vacancies. We finished up backtracking 10 km to a c/pk we passed on the way in, not
much of a park, bit of a dump I thought.

We left the park about 0800 and travelled to town and had breakfast at McDonalds.Then did some touring around the place. One of the places we visited was Mt Clarence, overlooking the town, a good view.

The other place was The ANZAC Memorial and Princess Royal Fortress, mum and I had been there before and wanted to see it again.This is on top of a mountain and here are spectacular views overlooking King George Sound. I personally think this is one of the best views I have seen. The ANZAC Memorial is also worth seeing.When Australia sent troops to fight in WW1, a lot of them sailed from King George Sound. In 1914 there was 36 troop ships and some escort vessels, that sailed from there on one day. They left in a line one after the other, it was recorded as a very spectacular sight. Many of the men never returned.

It was well after lunch before we hit the road again.The next stop was Walpole, this is were The Valley of The Giant Trees are. There is a walkway that rises above the Giant Trees. I took the walk, but mum could not make it, as it was too steep and long for her. They offered her a wheel chair, but I would have to push, but she declined, I am glad to say. The giant Red Tingle trees are spectacular, the strange thing about them is that the base of a lot of them are hollow. Some of the have a cavity in the base that would hold about 6 people.

After we left Wapole, we started to look for a free camp site for the night. Well what a disappointment that turned out to be, after travelling a couple of hundred km. we found nothing worth stopping at. Most were too small or very dirty, mum deserves better than that. So we came to a little town about 300 km from Albany, called Manjimup, we booked into the caravan park here for the night, nothing fancy, but clean, quite and cheap.

Dad / Den