Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine October 2015 | Page 114

112

Travel | Western Australia

Western Australia’s
famous towering karri trees.
The historic King Point
Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage
in Albany.
Scarlet banksia in Stirling
Range National Park.

© Tourism Western Australia

For a long while
out of Perth, you drive
in two dimensions:
flat scrub, a strip of
tarmac and heavy skies.
Halfway towards Albany
though, as you head southeast, the landscapes start
to rumple.

Farmland undulates, giant trees erupt,
and the purple crags of the Stirling
Ranges loom. As you near the coast,
the landscape is satisfyingly threedimensional, like a giant pop-up book
of coastal geography come to life.
The sky is cloud-tossed, and you can
smell salt on the breeze.
This region is a giant adventure
park made by Mother Nature.
Indeed, if you really want a challenge,
you can forget driving down to Albany
and simply walk. The Bibbulmun
Track from Perth to Albany is one
of the world’s top long-distance
walking trails, and it takes eight weeks
to complete the nearly 1,000km of
wiggling, indirect pathways. Still,
if you only need to stretch those
driver’s legs, you can take in a single
section of the track through
scenic valleys, karri forest, coastal
heathland or national parks.

There’s a lot to like about this
southwest corner of Western
Australia: its bracing air, glittering
sounds, heaped sand dunes and
peculiar rock formations that look
as if they’ve been dreamed up by
Salvador Dalí. In a state where much
of the coastline is hot and flat, it
provides drama. Blowholes thunder
in Torndirrup National Park. Rock
climbers come for West Cape Howe
National Park, where granite
outcrops, sheer ocean cliffs and
rugged peaks all provide challenges.
If you don’t have those skills, you can
head inland to Porongurup National
Park and inch your way around the
Granite Skywalk, pinned to an