Thursday 15th November 2018 - We're up and on the road early heading to the Porongurup and Stirling Range National Parks. The journey passed through fields of wheat before arriving at the woodlands and granite outcrops.

On arrival at Porongurup, we prepared our walking attire and set of along the trail to the Granite Skywalk. We walked up the steep and winding slope through the Jarrah & Karri forest with wildflowers still in bloom scattered at the base of these lovely trees.

We stopped at the Balancing Rock that is a huge oblong boulder tentatively balancing on top of another one. It just sits there defying gravity! Intriguing!

We continued on and as we neared the Skywalk sitting on top of a huge granite boulder, we climbed and scrambled over more boulders before making it to the base of a vertical ladder and our final climb to the top.

We made our way to the top of the ladder and up onto the platform that wound its way around the top of the huge boulder taking in the stunning panoramic views beyond.After walking to the end of the platform to the overhang, we turned around and headed along the trail and the car park.

Our next and final stop for the day was a campsite in the Stirling Ranges valley that gave a beautiful backdrop to our site.

At dusk we sat and listened to an array of birds singing and flitting between the surrounding trees some new that we hadn't seen before; Regent Parrots, Purple-crowned Lorikeets & White naped Honeyeaters.

We then watched a spectacular sunset over the mountain ranges that lit up the sky in deep reds and oranges presenting us with probably one of the best sunsets we've seen. A truely magical way to end another wonderful day.

Friday 16th November 2018 - Today we were up early so that we could climb to the summit of Bluff Knoll that is one of the highest mountain peaks in Australia standing at 1095m above sea level.

The morning is quite misty and some of the mountain peaks appear to be covered in clouds. As we turned a corner the Knoll stood before us in the morning sun with an an adjacent peak completely covered in white puffy clouds.

As we made our way up the steep and winding track along the edge of the ridge, we passed through trees, plants & coloured wildflowers with some not seen before as they can only be found in the Stirling Ranges.

We made numerous stops on the way up, to catch our breath and to admire the views below. The higher we got the better they got.

As we neared the top we took a turn around the mountain and walked straight into a cool wind making the ascent harder as we went.

Sadly, 7 months ago there had been a bushfire that had burnt up to this side of the mountain. As we continued on up through the burnt vegetation to our final ascent we were amazed at the amount of new growth that had already started in such a short time. Only 100m to go!!

Hooray!! We made it, it had taken us 2hrs & 30 mins to climb 3km... but the view that opened up before us was fantastic. Mountains on one side with the valley below and on the other never ending wheat fields with salt lakes and dams scattered in between. We were even standing higher than some of the passing clouds and stood to watch them casting their shadows over the land before us.

We met a young man from the UK and we stopped for a chat, it after a while the wind picked up again stronger this time with a threat of rain so we decided that it was time to make our decent back down. We thought that it would be easier going down, wrong! The steep & deep steps were as hard going down as they were up.

We survived, finally making it back to the car park after a climb that took us over 5hrs. This was certainly one of our hardest climbs so far. Back to camp for lunch and a relax or should I say collapse...