King Jarrah Track (Hike & Bike Version) (Lane Poole Reserve)

A fun variation on a Peel region classic, this Hike & Bike combo serves as an improved experience of the King Jarrah Track in Lane Poole Reserve. Starting at the camping area, the walking section heads up across a ridge of lush forest to the King Jarrah, before descending to the bike pick up stop for a fun ride along a rail trail. Removing the need for a long vehicle track return walk, this is a satisfying adventure for a day out in Dwellingup

Distance: 18 km (loop; 7 km on foot, 11 km by bike)

Gradient: Mostly relatively gentle, however the first half features some moderately steep inclines, including a steep climb right at the start

Quality of Path: Mostly clear and well maintained - a mix of single walk trail, and sealed and unsealed vehicle tracks

Quality of Signage: Generally well signed throughout

Experience Required: Previous Bushwalking and Cycling Experience Required

Time: 3 Hours

Steps: Some informal steps over rocks in the first half; none along the bike section
Best Time to Visit: Scenery best from Autumn-Spring, but may not be possible in the wetter months if the Fawcett Track is closed

Entry Fee: Yes. Entry Fees Apply

Getting There: The Fawcett Track turn off is located on Nanga Rd, 500 metres north of Nanga Brook Rd. Drive along the Fawcett Track to the Alcoa sign for bike drop off (at your own risk). Access to the park is via Nanga Rd, which runs off Pinjarra-Williams Rd near Dwellingup. Turn off is 12 kilometres down the road from the start of Nanga Rd. The trailhead is located in the Nanga Mill area of the park - do not enter first entry station to Lane Poole Reserve, instead continue across bridge until you reach the Nanga Mill sign. 

Although a walk on my to-do list as far back as 2010, Alissa and I ticked off the King Jarrah Track in 2017, and the original write up can be found here. At the time, I wrote that while the first seven kilometres along the walking track leading to the King Jarrah were fantastic, 'the fact more than 60% of the walk is along [...] vehicle track is not really ideal as it starts to get a bit monotonous after a while', and that if we were to do it again, we would definitely drop our bikes off where the vehicle track began and ride the rest of the way back to the car. 

With some favourably mild February weather on the horizon, Alissa and I were trying to decide which trail to do and we could not come to an agreement on whether to do a hike or a cycle. At that point, the Old El Paso girl intervened by saying 'why not both?' as we remembered the Hike and Bike version of the King Jarrah Track as the perfect compromise. 

Driving to Lane Poole Reserve, the key to making this whole thing work is getting the bikes to the point where the King Jarrah Track joins onto (and then runs concurrently) with the Munda Biddi, and the way to get there is via the Captain Fawcett Track. The Fawcett Track is a rough, mostly high clearance only four wheel drive track that runs through Lane Poole Reserve and explores the banks of the Murray River, with some parts of it being deeply rutted, and large sections being completely impassible in Winter. 

For an indication of how deep the ruts are further along the track, check out the photo of Alissa in a puddle when we walked a bit of the Fawcett Track on the Bibbulmun Track. Yeah, pretty ridiculous.

Due to how rough the conditions are, the track is closed at Winter so anyone wanting to do this hike and bike combo really needs to check the Trails WA website and/or contact the local DBCA office to see if it is passable. Given it was February, Alissa and I didn't have to worry about closure issues and our primary concern was whether we could find the start of the track and if our X-Trail could traverse this section. Thankfully we had no trouble locating the start of the Fawcett Track (which is 500 metres north of Nanga Brook Rd, turning east off Nanga Rd), and travelling along this section which, given it is mostly in forest away from the river, was quite easily passable.

Thankfully where the Munda Biddi and King Jarrah Track meet is quite conspicuous and the best spot is marked by a large Alcoa propaganda sign where we were able to park up our bikes. Given that there are a mix of responsible four wheel drive users and the occasional destructive bogans who use the Fawcett Track, leaving your bike here is a risk so we chained them up to the propaganda sign and kept our fingers crossed that they would be there when we got back!

From there, Alissa and I drove to the start of the walk within the main camping area of Lane Poole Reserve, which was very easy to locate given its conspicuous location in front of the pines and because we had been here before. 

A short walk from the trailhead, the trail reaches a junction in the trail. Something I had noticed when I rode the Munda Biddi from Dwellingup to Bidjar Ngoulin was the number of people who were doing the trail in a clockwise direction. While this is certainly an option if you're doing it entirely on foot, for the purposes of the Hike and Bike Version, walkers will need to head right at this junction. At the time of our visit, Perth was still phasing its way out of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions and Alissa and I would be wearing face marks until 'strenuous physical activity' meant we could take it off. 

The masks didn't last long; one of the most memorable aspects of this walk is that it slaps you in the face with a bout of strenuous physical activity a mere 200 metres into the walk as the trail rises about 125 metres in elevation in a kilometre, with the first 700 metres being 100 metres of elevation gain itself. 

While steep, the walk up is at least short and sharp, and I do find it engaging and enjoyable given the interesting laterite outcrops along the trail. I would realise later that this is the exact same spot I had photographed when we were last here in 2017, so I obviously really like this particular spot! The best thing about this section though is that this is really the only sustained steep part of the entire walk; other than another shorter steep section just before the King Jarrah itself, the hard part of the trail is over once you reach the top of the climb. 

Once at the top of the climb, the trail is a real pleasure of quality single track through above average Jarrah. While there are some obvious signs of prescribed burns early on, the singeing is only fairly mild and it looks like it has been a while between burns, meaning the forest looked lush and beautiful even in a dry month like February. 

Further along the trail it got particularly lush and beautiful looking, with an understory that was relatively dense without having that hideously untidy look of a forest within the first few years of a burn. 

Given the single track nature of the trail across the top of the ridge, it is fairly obvious how to navigate through the forest, however the trail is very well marked over its entire length with a distinctive marker design and with none of the fallen logs across the track that were a problem back in 2017. Longtime readers of our friend Mark's blog The Life of Py will recognise the marker as it used to be the preview image on his blog whenever it was posted to Facebook. 

An interesting sight along the trail is a burnt out log that hikers have ben putting rocks on top of. Back in 2017 the pile was far less impressive that the collection in 2021, and while there are plenty of anti-cairn zealots out there who would knock the rocks over in a fit of rage, I don't find it nearly as objectionable. 

Continuing along the trail, the forest quality continues to improve, with a number of larger Jarrah and Marri giants that were probably remnants from the original forest given their significant height difference compared to the surrounding scrappy regrowth. When you realise that the entire Jarrah forest would have been filled with so many more impressive tall trees, and that most of the Jarrah ended up logged to line the streets of London it really is an ecological tragedy that we've been left with the ghastly parody that most of the Jarrah forest is today. 

With such lovely, character-filled forest to walk through, Alissa and I were really enjoying this walking part of the trail, which even on our previous visit had struck us as being a high quality stretch of single track. 

One such character tree along the trail is a Jarrah that has been burnt out and buttressed in a manner that makes it look like the Tingles of the Valley of Giants - albeit with a much less impressive girth than the Giant Tingles are known for. After stopping for a quick break to take in the forest beauty, Alissa and I pressed on. 

Crossing over into forest that had been burnt by the Waroona Fires of 2016, it was interesting to see how much of a difference four years had made to the recovery of the forest. After crossing a vehicle track, the trail rises up the rutted hill towards the trail's namesake - the King Jarrah. 

Said to be anywhere from 300-600 years old (but definitely old enough to predate European colonisation), the King Jarrah has suffered much in recent years. Not a tree species known for letting go of past misjustices, the King Jarrah is still heavily blackened and scarred by the Waroona Fires of 5 years earlier, though its impressive resilience has at least seen it bounce back from the tragedy. For cyclists on the Munda Biddi, a side trip to the King Jarrah is recommended, and is the first of the Five Kings one can see as side trips of the trail, with the others being the King Karri of Donnelly River Village, the King Jarrah of Manjimup, the King Karri of Quinninup and the King Tingle at the Valley of the Giants. 

From the King Tingle, the trail descends very steeply back down off the ridge, returning walkers back down to an elevation slightly lower than the one at the start of the trail. 

Nearing the bottom of the climb, the trail crosses a wooden bridge over a small creek. The area had been badly burnt by the Waroona Fires, and it looked like the bridge had been freshly replaced back in 2017. What a difference the last four years have made; back in 2017 the area around the bridge was relatively sparsely vegetated but it is now almost engulfed in a wall of soap bush! Some things haven't changed though; in 2017 I had been impressed by the fact water was still following along the creek in spite of a dry start to May but here it was flowing in February!

Not long after the creek crossing bridge, the 7 km of single track come to an end, and there is a short amount of walking along the vehicle track that is required to reach the Alcoa sign. Technically, this is where the walk trail joins onto the Munda Biddi on what is known as the North Junction Form, but given the Alcoa sign provides a spot to chain up a bike it is the superior location for the changeover. 

Reaching the Bauxite mining propaganda sign, Alissa and I were relieved to see our bikes and helmets still there waiting for us. After taking a moment to fold up our trekking poles and get ourselves prepped, Alissa and I got on the bikes for the mountain bike component of the trail.

Something I learnt while doing the Munda Biddi in 2020 was that there is quite a difference in what you want out of a mountain bike ride versus a hike, and this was borne out almost immediately when riding this section. This section of trail, which is actually an old rail form, was boring as batshit to walk back in 2017 because it didn't take us to many river views and became fairly monotonous, but on a bike the straight, easy going nature of the old rail form was actually a strength. Alissa, at this stage less enthused about cycling because she hadn't yet experienced the joy of riding an eBike (that was a few months away), had to agree that she too was enjoying this a lot more than she had when we walked it. 

The rail form is mostly fairly gentle and easy going, although with a slight uphill trend. The only exception to the easy going ride are a couple of sudden dips, with a rocky section over granite being the most memorable. When I was here last in 2017, there were stacks of cairns built across the top of the granite slab, however someone had recently knocked most of them over in an act of anti-cairn rage. Given that the rocks were still scattered over the slab, I can only imagine that the cairn construction will inevitably return. The war continues.

Beyond the granite slab, the trail leaves the Waroona Fire zone and immediately there is a real improvement in the forest quality. Gone is the untidy overgrown understory, and in its place is a forest that is much more in equilibrium - even if the regrowth nature of the Jarrah means it is mostly scrappy and lacking in any forest giants. With such gentle gradients and pleasant forest scenery whizzing past, it is an absolute pleasure to cycle along. 

Rail cuttings had been a feature early on along the form, however most of it had been fairly level most of the way. A fairly obvious cutting becomes a feature once again as the trail returns to the campgrounds of Lane Poole Reserve. 

A large gate blocking car access to the North Junction Form marks the end of the rail form. From here, Alissa and I turned left back along the road. If we were on foot, we would have followed the foot trail back to the junction at the start of the walk, but being on bikes we stayed on the road back to where our car was parked. 

I'm glad to say my hypothesis in 2017 was proven correct; by incorporating a changeover to a mountain bike for the railway form section, the King Jarrah Track became a completely different and wholly satisfying experience. The first part up over the ridge to the King Jarrah itself was even better than it was in 2017 due to the recovery of the forest, and what had been a boring, overly long vehicle track whizzed past as a thoroughly enjoyable rail trail ride. While the logistics can be an issue (and a Winter closure of the Fawcett Track may preclude being able to do this in the wetter months), the Hike and Bike Version of the King Jarrah Track is a variation that I can thoroughly recommend.