Stephen here. On Sunday we left Walpole and drove to Denmark, a small town between Walpole and Augusta. On the way though, we had some things to see, and we were much more successful than on Saturday.
First, soon after leaving Walpole, we went to see the giant Tingle Tree. This is a famously large Red Tingle tree. We parked and walked along the path to the tree. The forest was nice and peaceful. We're chuffed to be back in the land of trees and forests after the desolate north of Western Australia. The "giant" tree itself turned out not to be very big at all. It certainly wasn't very tall. Its girth was large, though the base was hollow (tourists-past used to get photos of their cars parked in its base). You do get the impression that Aussies advertise these tourist attractions and over-hype them because there isn't much to see. That's not true - there are lots of great things to see in Australia, but the place is so large that the real sights are far between.
The next detour was much better - a tree top walk around a giant forest. This tree top walk was mention in Bill Bryson's "Down Under" and Anne and I were keen to go. It was great! The walk rises (without any climbing!) to 40 metres above the ground and you can see the tops of smaller trees and can see all over the forest. The walkway swings a bit and Anne was a bit wary at times, but we loved it. It was so peaceful (there weren't many people around) and nice (Anne is on a drive to remove that word from our vocabularies, so I put it in there to rile her).
Next, on to Denmark. We checked in to the YHA which smells of dog. During our cottaging trips in the UK we've learnt to avoid places that say "Pets Welcome" since that means "Stinks of stinky dogs". Yuck.
The hostel's run by a new-agey couple. The odd music (from before 7am!) and the chanting was a bit much for me. I'm sure Anne loved it. We managed to get over the smell of the dog since Flint - the aging Labrador) was just adorable. The only other guest there was an odd man who wouldn't do his washing up and just sat in front of the TV all day. That's one problem with hostels - you do occasionally get odd vagrants there. Gosh - I'm a big intolerant snob.
Denmark itself was nice (there it is again) and we went for a medium length walk along the river before going to the local museum. The volunteer there was an old man from Ealing! We talked about Ealing for a bit and he caught up on the gossip (Bentalls has changed to Beales!) and then we looked around the museum.
Back to the smelly YHA for the evening, and you can imaging my joy when the strange man hogging the TV went to go to buy some food at 6pm, just in time for me to watch the Sunday repeat of The Movie Show - a fantastic movie review show on SBS. Joy on joys!
Weather was a bit dull in Denmark. Monday's the first day of spring though - perhaps the weather will improve? (I write this on Wednesday, in full knowledge that the weather has been glorious the last three days.)