Tuesday November 8, 38.5km/23.9mi

Frankland River Campsite (763.7/38m) to Castle Rock (802.2/30m) (WA)

I wanted to be at the “Land of the Giants” attraction at 9am when they opened, so I left camp at 6am and followed the Frankland River all morning.

I got there just before 9am and I was the second person in line. It was $21 which seemed a little expensive but it also included a second attraction & a bunch of interpretive information.

I love seeing the maps when all the continents were together….Gondwana.

The land of the Giants is an attraction where you walk on a platform 40m above the ground, near the tops of the Tingle trees, and it’s about 800m long. I walked up…

And up…

Even at this height above the ground, the tingle trees are still much taller than me.

40m (130ft) above the ground!

I spent awhile hanging out on the platforms just eyeing all the trees.

Eventually I descended from the platforms and entered the second part of the attraction, “The ancient Empire”.

This was a ground-level walk amongst the bases of a bunch of different Tingle trees.

Some of them had names… this one was “Grandma Tingle”.

Generally where tingle trees grow, the forest understory is full of swordgrass. It’s very sharp.

After an hour, I left the attraction and saw that a coffee truck had been parked out front! I ordered a huge slice of carrot cake and a flat white.

The rest of my morning hiking was less eventful, though I did see a couple more Tingle trees.

Eventually I left the forest and started heading towards the coast again, passing through some farmland along the way.

At 12:30 I was thinking that I was getting hungry, and all of a sudden a bench appeared randomly on the side of the trail. Score! Lunchtime.

After lunch I walked a for couple hours down to Conspicuous beach.

There were a couple other people here, just hanging out in the carpark, looking for the tiger snake that had crawled underneath their car. Neat. I had a nice hike along the ocean for a few minutes before the trail departed back into the dunes.

As I climbed up, up, up onto a high ridge above the beach, I noticed they had installed some erosion control devices into the trail, which made the hiking considerably easier than walking through deep soft sand.

Looking back down on Conspicuous beach where I had just been:

The rest of the afternoon was hiking along a ridge above the ocean.

I took a break at the Rame Head campsite shelter, and while I was having a snack I noticed a Dugite (snake) had just crawled into a hole underneath the sleeping platform of the shelter! Good thing I’m not sleeping here.

I left the shelter at 3:30 and hiked for a couple more hours along the ridges. These flowers seem to love growing in the coastal environment.

I’m always scanning for snakes, so when I spotted this scaly animal, I initially did not think “bobtail lizard”. He’s even sticking out his tongue at me!

There was a nice long boardwalk through a marshy area….

…. Which led to another very short beach section.

The sand dunes here had a ton of weirdly shaped pinnacles on them, I’m not sure if this is caused by wind or water….very strange.

This beach walk was on a rocky beach, so I had fun walking on the slabs of rock.

At 5:30pm I decided to setup camp, as I found a nice flat sheltered spot amongst the bushes near Castle Rock lookout.

There wasn’t any point in hiking further, as I need to pick up my food box in 3.5km at Peaceful Bay campground tomorrow, and their office doesn’t open until 9am. I enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the Southern Sea from my tent.