Description of the attraction
Thorndirrap National Park is located 10 km south of Albany on the shores of King George Sound. The park is famous for its rock formations carved by the wind and harsh waves of the Southern Ocean: Window, Bridge, Sink and others - all of them were carved from granite for thousands of years.
Thorndirrap National Park was founded in 1918, one of the first in Western Australia. It was named after a tribe of Australian aborigines who lived in the area. Today this park is one of the most visited in the state - the number of visitors reaches 250 thousand per year.
The territory of the park consists of three types of rocks, one of which - gneiss - was formed 1300-1600 million years ago! This rock can be seen on the cliffs of the Window. Granite rocks were formed later when the Australian Plate separated from the Antarctic Plate about 1160 million years ago. They can be seen at the top of Stone Hill.
The flora of Thorndirrap National Park is represented by cotton shrubs, mint trees, marsh eucalyptus trees, various types of bankxia and curry forest. It is also home to the very rare Albany cotton bush and the world's only blue lily population.
Among the animals in the park are kangaroos, bush rats, dwarf couscous and short-nosed bandicoots. There are many reptiles, including the tiger snake, echiopsis, spotted ringed python and brown snake. In 1976, a very rare species of shrew was discovered here. The birds of the park are no less diverse - honey suckers, New Zealand starlings, three-fingers and many sea birds. From the cliffs, whales and fur seals can often be seen swimming past.
There are many hiking trails in the park, no more than 1.5 km long. And only one trail is 10 km long - it leads along the Flinders Peninsula to the eastern end of the park. While walking along the coastal part of the park, you need to be extremely careful and attentive and not leave the equipped trails - several accidents have already been recorded here, when tourists who deviated from the route were washed right into the raging ocean waters by an unexpectedly flowing wave.
