Porongurup National Park

 PORONGURUP
NATIONAL PARK

In 2022 we took of for a holiday the day that school went back after the Christmas holiday break.

It was perfect timing as many popular tourist areas were very quiet.

We were travelling from out home in Geraldton to Albany but stopped in Mount Baker for a look and stayed on the surrounding region for a week!

We stayed on the side of a lake for our first night.

The support town for the Porongurup region is Mount Baker which is at the base of the mountain range. It has a great mural trail within the town centre.

Then we went up into the hills to the Porongurup National Park.

The area has a small but wonderful caravan park full of birds, stacks of quality wineries and loads of very good walks & scenic drives.

The area is well known for Blue Wren (aka Splendid Fairywren) and all we wanted to was try and see one.

So it was pretty funny when we were setting up in the van park and the wrens were hopping on the grass all around us.

The first walk we did was the Nancy Peak walk. We left at 2pm and didn't return until it was almost dark.

On the way to the walk's car park we passed a winery that had a large kangaroo eating grapes off the vine.

Once we got up onto the ridge we were above the clouds.

It was dark, moist and really windy.

We took a video of the clouds blowing over the ridgeline we were on.

We looked across to the Devil's Slide which is an additional part of the walk but with the lack of light, wet rocks and steepness of the slope, we decided against it.

On the way back down we saw a few groups of kangaroos.

Typical! We were the last car to leave....

The next day we got our mountain bikes out and visited the wineries.

On the way we passed lots of great views, other closed wineries and farm animals.

With the low cloud still hanging around, the sunset over Nancy's Peak looked great from our campsite.

We were up early the next day to tackle the famous Castle Rock walk.

The well designed stainless steel skywalk is attached onto the vertical side of Castle Rock and is an amazing structure with great views.

Other bird watchers at the park told us about a dam on a nearby farm that was full of birds. It is on a remote dirt road that went around the back of the mountain range. Roadside also had loads of birds and terrific views.

We could see Castle Rock and the skywalk from the roadside.

On the last morning, we did an early walk around the caravan park looking at all the birds in the area.

Before we left we went to explore a side road that had a sign saying "Twin Creeks". We didn't find a creek but found a unique sculpture with an indigenous history theme.