Torndirrup National Park

Torndirrup occupies the peninsula that shelters Albany's harbour, a block of granite and gneiss facing the full force of the Southern Ocean. At the Gap, waves surge into a vertical-sided chasm about twenty-five metres deep, watched from a steel viewing platform cantilevered out over the water and built after earlier visitors were swept off the rocks. The Natural Bridge nearby is a granite span left by the sea eating away beneath it. Elsewhere in the park are the Blowholes, where air is forced through cracks with a roar on a big swell, Salmon Holes beach, and Stony Hill, the peninsula's high point with views over the coast.

History

The oldest rock here, the gneiss seen in the walls of the Gap, formed 1,300 to 1,600 million years ago, and the granites of the tors on Stony Hill rose as molten rock 1,160 million years ago, when the Australian Plate collided with the Antarctic Plate. The park was gazetted in 1918, one of the first in Western Australia, and in 1969 took the name of the Indigenous clan of the area; its first ranger came in 1973, and fires burnt 700 hectares in 2010 and 616 hectares between Stony Hill and the Blowholes in 2015 (Wikipedia, Torndirrup National Park).

Highlights

• The Gap - the chasm and the cantilevered platform above the surging water.
• The Natural Bridge - a granite span cut by the sea.
• The Blowholes - air and spray forced through cracks on a big swell.
• Salmon Holes and Stony Hill - the beach and lookout on the peninsula.

When to go

Year-round; the biggest seas and best displays come with winter swells, though the weather then is cold and wet. Summer is calmer and the Gap less dramatic. Whales pass offshore from June to October.

What to expect

People have been swept from the rocks at Salmon Holes and the Gap and killed; barriers and warnings exist for good reason and are ignored at real risk. Wind on the peninsula is constant and strong. The sites are drive-up viewpoints rather than long walks.

Nearby

Albany is fifteen minutes north; the whaling station museum is on the same peninsula.

Key facts