21 July 2013 - Big4 Albany Gardens Holiday Resort, Albany, Western Australia

We were up late again last night, this time to watch the last nail biting episode of the Tour de France. The final stage is tonight, but that’s really just processional. The Tour has been won, by a Pommie no less. It is certainly a state of Rule Britannia; the same nation is massacring the Australian cricket team at Lords.  But for le Tour, we were delighted to see the little Columbian, Quintana, conquer the mountains as he did; a future winner for sure and runner up this year.

With no evidence of rain about, we set off this morning after breakfast, north to the Stirling Ranges. The Stirling Ranges National Park lies about eighty kilometres from Albany, accessed by an excellent sealed road. We drove up through gentle undulating countryside farming either mixed dry stock or eucalypt plantations, the latter belonging to Southern Plantations. We have seen evidence of their holdings right through these southern areas; I suspect it is they who export wood chip out of Albany.

Bluff Knoll

Fifty kilometres north of Albany, the landscape changed, a wide flat plain, from which the rugged Stirling Range rises so abruptly and so spectacularly. The range of mountains and hills is more than sixty five kilometres wide from west to east, proving far more extensive than I had imagined.

The park itself covers an area of 1,159 square kilometres and was gazetted as a national park in 1913. There are six main walks available for the fit and willing; Bluff Knoll, a rather modest name for the third highest peak in Western Australia, at 1,095 metres, Mount Trio at 856 metres, Mount Hassell at 827 metres, Toolbrunup Peak at 1,052 metres, Mount Magog at 856 metres and Talyuberlup at 783 metres.

Views from Bluff Knoll

We decided we would climb Bluff Knoll, one of the very few places in Western Australia to ever experience regular snowfalls, but well equipped with warm gear should such a fall occur today. The return walk of close to six kilometres takes the average hiker three to four hours, however we are anything but average. We walked for an hour and ten minutes, up the steep well marked track, ascending all the way, with a whole lot more steps that Mount Frankland climbed last week.  We stopped only about two thirds the way up, still below the scrub line I had hoped we would achieve, and I have to confess, we failed. We turned back taking nearly as long to descend, being passed by several parties of youthful fit walkers, leaping past us like mountain goats with no regard for their future knee health.

The views from the summit include the entire mountain range, and the Porongurup Range further south, as well as the coast near Albany. I can only speak for those we enjoyed while eating our lunch, leaning up against a rock face; far out over the Stirling Range and north across plains covered in a patchwork quilt of agriculture.

Back at the car park, we finished our lunch and downed a couple of cups of hot coffee, before heading across the breadth of the park on Stirling Range Drive, which weaves its way north and south through the peaks and hills on an excellent dirt road.

We stopped at the Central Lookout and walked to the top of the nearby rocky peak through low scrub full of world flowers. The wild flower season is still several weeks away, and if today’s displays are anything to go by, it will be truly splendid. Again, our timing is out.

We did see here evidence of phytophthora dieback, a disease that is destroying the Park’s rich and varied plant life. We wondered whether it was in fact a cyclical occurrence, that everyone just needed to hold their breath and let nature deal with the problem, However like most things, we all want instant resolution. Cleaning mud and soil from the bottom of one’s shoes seems to be a good start.

Rural views back to the Stirling Range

We drove on, joining the Red Gum Pass, headed south nearly wiping out a couple of dark legged kangaroos on the way, toward Mt Barker. We stopped to puzzle over heavily pruned rows of woody scrub, finally deciding they were probably sandlewood. Instead of proceeding to Mt Barker, which we will pass through within the week on our way out of Albany, we skirted east again on the Mt Barker - Porongurup Road, re-joining the Chester Pass Road we had travelled up on from Albany. Here we saw many hectares of flowering canola, beautiful and bright yellow against the backdrop of the Stirling Ranges.

It was close to 5 pm when we returned to camp, just in time to see that the situation at Lords had only worsened. We did however catch up with my parents on Skype before they headed to bed.

Apart from a few spots of drizzle on our way up the Knoll, the rain has stayed away today, in keeping with the weather forecast. It had been altogether a perfect day if we can forgive ourselves for giving up before the summit of Bluff Knoll.