The Giants

We were making plans to visit Mandurah and were told by our Aunty to see the Giants of Mandurah while we were there. We'd never heard of these Giants before and were curious as to what they were. Getting to the information Centre in Mandurah we found a pamphlet with all the information we needed. It gave a barcode on each Giant to scan which would than take us to the carpark where we'd endeavor on a short sometimes long walk. There was a map of the walk and also the coordinates if you didn't want to do it by the barcode. In total there are six Giants, five in Mandurah, one in Perth. We unfortunately didn't go to the one in Perth but we did see all five in Mandurah. 

The pamphlet has it in such a way that you can't find the last Giant without first going to the other five and finding the symbols on them. You than had to go back to the information Centre and match up the symbol blocks in their front garden, scanning a barcode beneath it, than input the symbols in order on to the site where the barcode takes you, only than does it give you the destination for Jyttes Hytte the last Giant.

We started out the day unsure if we'd be going to all of them but once we saw the first one we knew we had to find them all. We decided to go to Little Lui first as it was the longest hike being 3.6km return and it was still early morning. The pamphlet said it'd take us about 45min but we normally find that we're faster than your average walker. This time however it defiantly took us a solid 45min probably more.

I loved Little Lui for the way Thomas Dambo incorporated him into the nature around him. Having him propped up against an uprooted tree that acted like a throne was brilliant, we couldn't really see him until we were on top of him thanks to his ability to blend him into he's surroundings. 

The next one was Yaburgurt Winjan Cirkelstone. Coming up to the parking  I was interested to see several cars pulled off to the side of the road 100m or so from the parking, thinking that they were all just being weird I soon learnt why. The walk from the carpark was 550m return, where's the walk from their cars was like 50m by cutting through the strand of trees.

Once again the ingenious way Thomas Dambo incorporated the surrounding nature by having him hold the rock and be lying down relaxing next to the water was inspiring.

Next was Seba's Song, This one was a little more different. Instead of the nature surrounding him, he was the one looking off into it. He was built on a rock wall looking out across the water. While we were there a pod of dolphins could be seen across the water near the other side. Getting a photo of his front was quite hard unless you were in a boat or swimming, however the photos I did manage to get of his face told me we weren't missing out on much, I guess you could say his was the face you'd think of when you picture a giant's face.

Santi Ikto was our last known giant to see. Honestly by this point I was exhausted from all the walking, driving and heat, it was also getting on to 1pm and we hadn't eaten all day because it was Ash Wednesday.

The walk for this one was 1.3km return and was considered moderate difficulty while the others had all been easy. After sitting in the car for a couple of minutes trying to gather my energy we headed off. It actually wasn't too bad, it was just little hills up and down for most of the way.

Reasonably soon we made it to Santi Ikto, He truly looked like a giant with his arms spread wide to welcome the setting sun over the ocean. He was probably the most easy to photograph out of all of them because of his positioning on top of the hill.

Heading back to the Information Centre with all our symbols gathered we put them all together in the garden than on my phone from the barcode. Making an educated guess as to what the symbol of the one in Perth would be, we were able to access the location for Jyttes Hytte the hidden Giant.

We decided to explore Mandurah before continuing on to see him as he was closer to our campsite than us. Exploring all the tourists attractions was fun and felt like a photo shoot sometimes.

It was about 4pm when we drove off towards it, than once we got there we had a 3.6km return trip but unfortunately we ended up doing about 5km, I just want it to be known that we had a rough map at the other locations but none for this one. The path was pretty simple and not much to trip over, there were little blue and white arrows, marking the path so we decided that it was ok to read while we walked. Kookaburra is a faster walker than me so she quickly took the lead. She'd stop at any forks and call back to me that it was that way. Since she was doing that I felt no need to look up from my book and double check that the arrow did indeed point that way. A kilometer later I regretted that choice. After following a long straight path littered with roots and rocks and surrounded by bushes for about a kilometer we came to a T in the path with no arrow.

We than had to make a decision on whether to turn back the way we'd come knowing that we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, or turn left or right and see if that'll take us back. After consulting our phone's wikicamps map we decided to turn left and go back along the lake. It probably would have been smarter to just turn around but we had already been that way and going back just seemed like admitting we'd gone the wrong way, this way we'd simply taken a round about way of getting to our destination.

After walking along the path for awhile and heading in the right direction we found our selves inline with it but about 100m too far to the right. So, following the very faint markings made from other lost travellers we cut across the bush and found the other path we'd first taken along with the right hand turn we'd walked passed.

Finally we'd made it! We sat on a nearby log for awhile just resting and watching other tourists take pictures and admire Thomas Dambo's work. 

After a long and tiring day we fell fast asleep exhausted from our day's efforts.