Day 88 Thursday 8th September

Day 88 Thursday 8th September

This morning we said goodbye to Heather and Paul as they needed to start heading home to Adelaide.  Rob, Lyn, Steve and I decided to explore some of the beautiful national parks close to Albany. Our first stop was the small town of Mt Barker. We were hoping to visit a banksia garden but unfortunately it was closed. We decided to visit the lookout which was pretty impressive and gave  great veiws of Mt Barker. Rob was impressed with the communications tower that was 180 metres high. We called into the Mt Barker bakery for coffee and pies. This bakery has won numerous Australian awards for it’s meat pies so we had to buy a few. From here we drove on to Porongurup National Park. We went on a lovely scenic drive and stopped for a short walk to a place called &Tree in the Rock& which of course was a giant tree growing straight out of a very large granite rock.  We had noticed that there was another short walk you could do from this spot but we hadn't really studied the map. Lyn decided that it was probably the path we were on and as the rest of us slowly ambled back to the car she set off at quite a pace to complete the walk. Imagine our horror when we realised Lyn was on a very long walk that would take her several kilometres up to tbe peak of a mountain. Steve ran after her calling loudly. Luckily, after about 15 minutes they both returned with Lyn realising that it wasn't the little walk she thought it was. From here we drove to an area where you could do a walk to Castle Rock and Granite skyway. Unfortunately it was a grade 5 walk which is very difficult and involved scrambling over huge granite boulders using metal rungs and handles. I realised that with my bad hip I couldn’t do this walk but Lyn and Steve did it. They took some stunning photos and video of the views to share with us. Rob was quite happy not to do the walk so we instead went to visit another National Park about 30 kms away in the Stirling Ranges. We first visted the Bluff Knoll picnic area which was pretty spectacular. The huge Bluff Knoll, a granite monolith rising up looked pretty spooky with clouds swirling around. From here we took a very scenic drive through the Stirling Ranges stopping at several lookouts and picnic areas. We drove back to Hanna and Ray's house and had another delicious dinner watching the footy. Unfortunately for Ray, the West Coast Eagles lost and are now out of the finals.