Porongurup National Park

Porongurup National Park protects a 12km spine of granite domes that cooled from magma deep in the crust more than 1,100 million years ago and stood bare as erosion stripped away the rock around them. The range tops out at 670m and covers 2,511 hectares — small enough to drive around in half an hour, steep enough that every walk here is a climb, and edged with the crumbling rock and slippery surfaces the park's own safety notes warn about. This is Menang country, and the range is known to its Traditional Owners as Borongur; the Wirlomin, Bibbulmun and Goreng peoples are connected to it as well. Menang Elder Vernice Gillies has described Porongurup as the most culturally sacred site in this region, significant to the whole Noongar nation, and the park entered the National Heritage List on 4 August 2009.

People come for the Granite Skywalk — a steel walkway wrapped around Castle Rock above a 100m scramble and a tall ladder — and for karri forest growing on granite, an outlier of tall timber holding about 750 plant species and around 55 orchids.

What to expect

Reviewed 10 November 2026

You reach the park on sealed road and the driving is easy. From Albany, Chester Pass Road runs 40km north, and from Mount Barker the Mount Barker–Porongurup Road brings you in from the west; the 23km loop around the park — Bolganup, Angwin Park, Woodlands and Millinup roads — is mostly sealed with unsealed sections and steep bits, and the shorter 5km Angwin Park Road is unsealed. A 2WD handles all of it in dry conditions. You pay the $17 vehicle entry fee on arrival — by card at an automated pay station, cash or card where an entry station operates, or cash by self-registration envelope where none does. Two day-use areas anchor the park: Castle Rock picnic area, and Karri boya-k, the site long known as Tree in the Rock, where a car park upgrade added 27 vehicle spaces, two bus bays and universal access paths to the barbecues, toilets and the tree itself, 100m along a shaded walk.

The Castle Rock Trail starts at the picnic area on Mount Barker–Porongurup Road and climbs 4.7km return through jarrah, marri and karri. The track is a formed dirt path with timber steps in the steeper places, but it is rough and uneven throughout, and wet granite is genuinely slippery — the park's own safety note warns that rock edges can crumble without warning. About halfway up you pass Balancing Rock, a rounded boulder resting on a granite slab, and the trail continues to the lower lookout, which most walkers can reach without climbing anything. The forest closes in around the track: karri trunks stand tall over a wetter gully floor, and orchids and hoveas appear at the edges in spring. Wear boots with real tread and take the descent slowly, because the surface that felt firm going up is the same surface you will slide on if you rush coming down, and the more care you take the more of the forest you actually notice.

Above the lower lookout the Castle Rock Trail changes character. The final section is about a 100m scramble over granite to the Granite Skywalk, then a tall steel ladder — DBCA describes it as eight metres — and handrails that carry you onto a walkway bolted around the dome. Trails WA grades the full walk Class 5 and calls it a trail for very experienced bushwalkers, mainly because of this upper section. From the walkway the view runs north to the Stirling Range, 58km away, and south across farmland to the coast; on a clear day you can pick up the Southern Ocean. It is exposed rock up there, so check the DBCA alerts page for closures before you set out, and turn back at the lower lookout if the ladder or the granite is wet.

The karri is why this range fascinates botanists. Eucalyptus diversicolor grows here on granite, well east of the main karri forest country, and the range acts as an ecological island — cooler, wetter and shadier than the farmland that surrounds it. About 750 plant species grow in the park, including around 55 orchid species, and wattle and hovea flower spectacularly en masse through late winter and spring. Birds include the red-eared firetail, Baudin's black cockatoo, rufous tree-creeper and western yellow robin, while the mammals run from western grey kangaroos and brush wallabies to quendas, honey possums and brushtail possums; on the rock you may see King's skinks and southern heath monitors. The forest also shelters Gondwanan relicts — an endemic trapdoor spider, land snails and giant earthworms. Phytophthora dieback is one of the park's real threats, so stay on formed tracks and scrub soil off your boots before and after every walk.

The range is known to its Traditional Owners as Borongur, and Menang Elder Vernice Gillies has described Porongurup as the most culturally sacred site in this region, significant to the whole Noongar nation. The park's renamed day-use site, Karri boya-k, sits in Menang Country and carries interpretive signage about that story. There are no marked cultural sites to hunt out, and no need to go looking: this is a place of deep significance, not a rock gym or a roadside lookout. Leave rocks and plants where they are, take all your rubbish with you — there are no bins anywhere in the park — and keep to the formed tracks. Rock climbing and abseiling are permitted in the park, but the surfaces are slippery, edges can crumble, and you should tell someone your plan and expected return time before you start.