I took the above photo in the Valley of the Giants, sometime in the first half of the first tour my godmother and I took on my second full day in Australia. The Valley of the Giants is located around Walpole, south of Perth, close to the southern coast of Australia. It’s a forest of giant tingle trees, which are hardy and shallow-rooted. There are two parts of the park we visited—the Tree Top Walk and the Ancient Empire.

The Tree Top Walk goes up 130 feet in the air so that people can see over the tree tops and beyond, to see only more tall trees in the forest. It swings like a bridge, so when it’s windy it sways. I tried to get my godmother to take a picture of me holding myself up on the rails, with my feet hanging in the air, but it’s not in my collection of photos, so she must not have taken it. I have a lot of photos where I’m out of focus, though. Hard to do with a D50.

Here’s a pretty good photo of me and my godmother at the high point mark:

If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m the one on the left wearing blue jeans and tan shoes, not the one on the right wearing tan pants and blue shoes.

The sign between us reads:

Congratulations!
you have reached the
highest point:
40 metres
!
CAUTION
LOAD LIMIT
20 people per span
10 people per platform
SLIPPERY
WHEN WET

The photo was taken by tour guide David, who—luckily for us—knows photography. So it’s a pretty decent photo. He suggested I get a circular polarizer for my camera, to cut down on the harsh Australian sunlight, and I had to admit that I already had a circular polarizer … but it was for a different size lens. H.E. had gotten it for me to use with the Fujifilm camera, but we never got around to getting one for my D50 kit lens. I eventually did get one towards the end of my trip, but most of my Australia photos were taken without one.

Like this one:

I took that one. The guy on the right is the tour guide David. Second in line is my godmother. Heck if I know or remember who the others in the tour group are. I met so many people on my trip that I really only remember a handful of them.

The Ancient Empire is the part of the forest with the oldest tingle trees. Some of them are hollowed out, burned by bush fire long ago, dead for years before they came alive again, growing around the burned out husk. Someone told me that if I’d already seen the American Redwood Forest, I might not be all that impressed by the Ancient Empire, but I’ve never seen the redwoods, and I was genuinely impressed by the giant red tingle trees.

Here’s a photo of me posing like an idiot inside of one:

My godmother took that one, and I think the tour guide David took the one below (either that or my godmother had a happy photo accident), of me and the red tingle tree they call Granny.

Hm. And guess why they call it Granny.

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