Great Southern

The Great Southern is where Western Australia grows up. Albany — established two years before Perth — sits on a harbour as dramatic as Sydney's, framed by granite headlands, with a working waterfront, excellent food culture and two of the most confronting museums in Australia (the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial and the Anzac Memorial). The town earns repeat visits.

The coastline around Albany is extraordinary — the Torndirrup National Park's Natural Bridge and The Gap, where the Southern Ocean forces through a gap in the granite and launches spray thirty metres in the air, is a visceral reminder of what the ocean is actually doing to this coast. West from town, the Porongurup Range and Stirling Ranges rise from flat farming country to mountains with sub-alpine flora and views to the coast.

The Valley of the Giants near Walpole contains some of the largest trees in the world — Red Tinglewood that dwarf everything around them, their girth so enormous they hollow with age into cavernous living rooms. The treetop walk at 40 metres above the forest floor is one of WA's truly great experiences. The adjacent Walpole-Nornalup National Park protects ancient karri and tingle forest, pristine inlets and wilderness coastline that almost nobody visits.