Coalmine Beach Heritage Trail

This 3 km trail runs from the Walpole-Nornalup Visitor Centre to Coalmine Beach. The return trail (6 km) takes about 2.5 hrs of easy walking (Grade 2). After following the track through a peppermint and kangaroo paw environment on the edge of town, a well-formed gravel trail leads the way through the dampland. A boardwalk crosses the Collier Creek and lush vegetation.

The trail traverses beautiful, diverse swampland vegetation, including peppermints, paperbarks, stunted jarrah, Beaufortia, Adonanthus, pink Boronia, Kunzea, Acacia, kangaroo paws, Dasypogon, Zamia, Kingia, Persoonia, sedges and rushes. The flowering is particularly eye-catching in spring.

Beside the track are quokka runs, tunnelling into the thick vegetation. Although largely nocturnal, if you walk quietly, you might see one of these marsupials as you round a corner on the track. The quokka, Setonix brachyurus, is listed as a vulnerable species under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

The trail offers a range of views across the dampland to karri-clad hills, and finishes at Coalmine Beach with the natural beauty and vistas of the Nornalup Inlet. This beach has a shallow seam of coal at the base of its cliffs, and was named in the early 1900s in anticipation of a coalmine enterprise. Happily this never eventuated as the seam was found to be too low grade.

Please treasure this environment and help keep it in good health by becoming joining and/or donating to the Walpole Nornalup National Parks Association. This local community group does fabulous conservation work in the Walpole Wilderness Area.