Denmark / Snaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake!

Don’t worry, I haven’t hotfooted it to Scandinavia. Denmark is a small town on the South Coast 80 miles from Kojonup, and the latest reason why I’m falling in love with Western Australia. My hosts own a holiday house in Denmark which they rent out and from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning we stayed there to do a little work on the place and enjoy this wonderful destination. This area really dazzled me because the scenery in several locations was not only stunning, but unlike anything I had seen before.
 
Firstly, the house was nestled amongst towering trees unfamiliar to me. These were the tallest ­trees I had ever gazed up in awe at. The giants are karri trees, a type of eucalyptus found solely in the small South West corner of Western Australia. Often thin, uncannily straight, and capable of growing to over 80m tall, karri trees are a wonder of nature – it seems amazing that they can stand. Nestled amongst this awe-inspiring bushland were a large number of cacophonous birds, including parrots and magpies. The deck of the house, engulfed by the immensity of the trees and the sound of the birds, was one of those places where you can sit and really feel like we (humans) are guests on this planet.

On Sunday, after sweeping a blanket of fallen leaves and branches from the roof, we went for an evening stroll alongside the calm waters of Wilson Inlet. For me, the novel aspect of this spectacular location was how the bush reached right up to the water, with no beach or rocks inbetween, resulting in an attractive clash of green and blue. There was a real sense of tranquillity about the place. A squadron of ducks moved swiftly across the water, pelicans soared through the air, there was little in the way of noise, and not a single boat on the Inlet. We walked along the Bibbulmun Track, a 1000km footpath running from Perth to Albany on the South Coast. Some nutters walk the entire trail in one go, and such maniacs starting from Perth are on the home stretch by the time they reach Denmark, with Albany just 50km down the coast. I chuckled at the thought of a fatigued, emaciated, dirty, sweaty, heavy backpack laden trekker walking along this stretch of the track – how awful it must be for them to walk past carefree folk out for an evening stroll, carrying nothing but the afternoon tea and cake in their bellies, knowing that they are soon to return to cold beers and barbequed meat, while you face up to an evening meal of dehydrated food sachets for the sixtieth consecutive night. 

Wilson Inlet

Monday was a day that will live long in the memory. Once I’d completed an atmospheric and entirely voluntary 6am run, we drove past Wilson Inlet out to a beach named Greens Pool and took a stroll from there to Elephant Cove. It was a remarkable stretch of coastline where enormous, smoothly weathered boulders shielded natural pools of dreamy turquoise waters from the onrushing waves. I had seen that idyllic sort of light blue, clear, calm, picturesque, irresistibly inviting water before – most memorably at The Blue Lagoon in Malta – and on countless occasions I have looked out upon deep blue oceans with raging waves gradually eroding rocks. But never before had I seen both kinds of sea in the same place. It was a combination of Caribbean and Cornwall that was a breathtaking sight to behold. After a smashing pie lunch (my Thai green curry pie was spot on), I put my wheelbarrow prowess to use on the large piles of leaves and sticks we had built up on Sunday, then we visited more nice beaches and enjoyed a cool dip in the sea. A fantastic aspect of Australia is that there are so many nice places and so few people that somewhere that would be a honeypot site swarming with tourists in most parts of the world is a quiet, unspoilt location here. This was the case with everywhere we went around Denmark – magical places and we barely had to share them with anyone.

Greens Pool

Everyone talks about the East Coast, the West Coast is also heralded by many, but this stretch of the South Coast will take some beating.

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Australia is home to many of the world’s most poisonous snakes, but until today I had previously seen just two, both while on the road - one dead, one alive. This morning, I had my first close encounter with one of the slithery, slimy customers. I was cutting back some plants when something moved amongst the deep pile of fallen leaves that had gathered underneath the plant. I immediately jumped backwards and saw that it was a snake! I briefly paused to examine the section of scaly black skin that was now exposed, and then made a steady backwards retreat. My snippers must have been only inches away from catching the snake, and I sure am glad they didn’t because the beast might have retaliated. The dead snake that was on the road in Northern Victoria (which was then picked up by the tail and shown to me) was a brownsnake, the second most venomous land snake in the world. I have no idea what snake I had a run in with today or whether it was dangerous - I could only see a small part of its body and it was completely black, so my attempts at identifying it using the internet were futile. I was pleased with how calmly I reacted and felt like I was very brave, but I did spend the rest of the morning looking twice at hoses!