Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise, Walpole, WA | Review, times & prices

The Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise is the most memorable thing to do in Walpole, Western Australia. The cruise around the Walpole and Nornalup Inlets is full of nature and stories.

What is the Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise in Walpole, WA?

The Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise is a boat tour around the Walpole and Nornalup Inlets in the Walpole Wilderness Area, Western Australia. It is heavily nature-based, but it also weaves in plenty of historic stories.

What is the Walpole cruise departure time?

The Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise departs at 10am every day from the Walpole Floating Jetty. The tour lasts around two-and-a-half hours. It’s worth doing on the drive from Pemberton to Albany (or Margaret River to Albany).

How much does the Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise cost?

According to the operator website, the Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise in Walpole costs $50. It’s $15 for under 16s, and free for under 5s.

Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise review

A seal rests on the new jetty at Walpole, which was put in at considerable expense, but now seems to have been commandeered. It may be for boats, not seals, but he’s taken a liking to it and he has no intention of moving any time soon.

A seal spotted on the Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise in Walpole, Western Australia. Photo by David Whitley/ Australia Travel Questions.

Gary Muir rocks up in bare feet, but everyone else has to have their shoes sprayed and scrubbed before getting on the boat. It’s to stop dieback – an introduced microscopic plant pathogen – getting any further than it already has done.

Gary turns out to be the star of the Wow Wilderness Cruise, which heads into the Walpole and Nornalup Inlets Marine Park and becomes as much about the area’s history as the nature on display.

“You probably don’t realise that Lawrence of Arabia had a link to Walpole,” starts Gary as the boat starts chugging across the first inlet. The horses that took Lawrence to Damascus were trained here, on Circus Beach.”

Storytelling on the Wow Wilderness Eco Cruise, Walpole

What follows is a relentless, mind-blowing, convoluted and interlinked magnum opus of a shaggy dog story, which weaves in forgotten letters from naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, Ted Heath’s yacht and the Pink Lady apple – which was developed in the region. As the rapid fire and somewhat implausible links between Walpole and the world come thick and fast, following the whole web of tales becomes nigh-on impossible – but it’s fabulously entertaining.

The storytelling is partly a kick against the Southern Forests region’s reputation as a place where not an awful lot happens. This, of course, is a key part of its appeal. Between Pemberton and Denmark, it’s a land of farms, forests and surf, with a sleepy at one with nature feel. It’s the wettest and greenest part of Western Australia, and the wholesome simplicity has seen it become a bit of magnet for hippy and alternative lifestyle types.

Black snakes in the Walpole Wilderness Area

The nature, however, has a few less than bucolic twists. Nornalup, Gary informs us, means ‘place of the black snake’ in the local indigenous language. And he points to an island on the eastern side of the inlet which is apparently teeming with snakes.

“My great-grandfather bought the island and put cows on it,” he says. “They were all dead within a week.”

It turned out, however, that the snakes weren’t the culprits. The island had a fair amount of gastrolobium plants, which happen to contain sodium fluoroacetate. This is the key ingredient used in 1080 poison, which is now used to control non-native species – especially foxes.

And so the circle turns… trying to graze non-native species led to the discovery of something that native species could handle but interlopers couldn’t. The poison was used to clear foxes from the area and now native quokkas are enjoying a resurgence. “Most animal tracks you see will be quokkas,” says Gary.

The mouth of the Nornalup Inlet

We get off the boat for a walk by the beach at the mouth of the inlet, a popular surf spot, albeit one where the water takes on a distinctly murky brown tinge. “This was how the inlet was discovered by 19^th century sealers,” says Gary. “There’s a lot of tea tree tannin in the water. It’s a lot bluer on the incoming tide, but the rivers sweep out the tannins.”

It’s on the beach where the true sense of wonder begins to kick in, though. Beyond, thousands of kilometres in the distance, is Casey Station in Antarctica. Apparently Australia drifts away at a rate of 4.6cm a year, but the geology tells of the links.

Gary points at the rocks on the other side of the inlet. “They’re mirrored in Antarctica,” he says.

He then kicks at the sand to reveal something that looks like a rock, but it isn’t. “The sand has only been here since the sea rose,” says Gary. “Beneath it is a 7,000 year old calcified forest.” And the rock we’re looking at is a tree root that has fossilised over thousands of years.