On the way to Perth

Nature's Window: a hole in a rock

After leaving Shark Bay we continued our journey South along the coast.  One thing we hadn’t realised when planning the trip was that at this time of year, this area of WA is notorious / famous for wind.  Re-reading our guidebooks we now noticed that this coast is described as ‘windsurfer and kite-boarder mecca’. Great news for the boarders I’m sure, but when your home is made from several square metres of heavy, sail-like canvas, not so much fun.    We arrived in Kalbarri, a twee little holiday town, and it was blowing a gale. The whole time we were there the trailer creaked and swayed ominously.   

We ended up staying in Kalbarri for four nights, which was probably a night or two longer than necessary (though it is actually nice to feel like we have stayed somewhere too long for a change!).  We had the idea that we could wait out the wind, just like we did in Cape Range, and so enjoy a few peaceful days by the sea.  Whilst we were there we saw dolphins playing in the bay, went fishing (and caught nothing but blowfish), fed the pelicans, drank coffee and mooched around the shops. We also went into Kalbarri National Park and went to the big attraction there; ‘Natures Window’, which is a rock with a hole in it. I was pleased to find a second-hand book shop to top up our reading supplies.  As we drove out of town, he wind was still strong enough to blow the car and trailer around the road.

We were heading to what we hoped would be a more sheltered camp in the lee of a headland called Sandy Cape, only a couple of hundred km’s north of Perth.  On our way we called into Geraldton; a fair sized town which we decided had a really good feel to it.  We decided that the kids were in need of a history lesson and so called into the Museum of Western Australia which was well organised and we all enjoyed.  As we walked through the door the kids were offered a museum ‘bingo’ sheet. This treasure hunt style game had them tearing around the museum at break-neck speed, hunting down a series of exhibits featured on the bingo sheet, clearly much to the consternation of serious museum goers. Of course Jules and I just frowned and ‘tutted’ along with everyone else and pretended that the boys were somebody else’s’ children.   That night we stayed in a free camp a few km’s outside of Geraldton, sheltered from the wind behind some big bushy trees (sheltered, that is, until the wind changed direction at one o’clock in the morning and once again we were out guying down flapping canvas in our, erm, nightwear).

The Pinnacles: Rocks in the ground

Next up we had what turned out to be another four night stop at Sandy Cape Recreation Park.  This camp area is on the beach but nestled in behind enormous sand dunes (which the kids had a ball sliding down on boogie-boards) and it was indeed a more sheltered spot than our last few camps. We got the best camp spot in the whole site – next to the beach, away from the main site and under a beautiful old shady tree (other campers came to describe it as the ‘rock-star site’).  We could often see them eying our site enviously as they walked past on the way for a swim.  We also made a day trip down to the Pinnacles, which are a bunch of rocks sticking out of the ground (The sky was a bit moody and overcast whilst we were there so I am not sure we saw them, literally, in their best light.  We walked through them, which was OK, and then drove through them, which was more fun). 

Yes, Yes, another white sandy beach...

Sandy Cape was a great place to relax for a few days and also gave us chance to adjust our mindsets about the rest of the trip: Over the last few weeks, the scenery has changed dramatically from desert to farmland.  We are now clearly out of The Wild Places and although the South coast we will no doubt again offer some relatively remote spots, we are feeling like the rest of the trip will have a distinctly different character.

Something to do with Gravity...

Talking of a change of scenery; rather than heading straight to Perth after Sandy Bay, we headed inland slightly and made for a two night stop in the small Avon Valley NP, 80Km’s or so north-east of Perth.  On the way there we decided that it was time for the kids to have a physics lesson and so we called in at the Gravity Discovery Centre near Gingin, which is the public education centre at the Australian International Gravitational Observatory (AIGO) full of interactive displays about all things gravity and cosmology related .  Though their eyes did seem to glaze over when I tried to explain to them the significance of the search for the Grand Unified Theory, they did seem to enjoy chucking water balloons off the top of a 45 metre tall steel tower (the leaning tower of Gingin), all in the name of science of course.

Can’t put it off any longer. Next stop: the CITY of Perth! 

Down to Shark Bay

Herald Bight - definitely a favourite

For the last ten days we have been making our way further south.  After leaving Exmouth we dropped back down below the tropic of Capricorn, which was marked with a little sadness.  I’ve noticed a couple of things have changed at these lower latitudes. 

Firstly, it has started to get distinctly cooler in the evenings – it has not been unknown for us to pull out jumpers these last few nights and retire to the tent to escape the chill.  

Secondly, I’m convinced that there is a touch less friendliness along the way now.  A controversial statement I know, but I have noticed that the ‘travellers wave’, that subtle raising of the first few fingers of the right hand from the steering wheel to acknowledge a fellow oncoming traveller, which was ubiquitous across Far North Queensland, The Territory and Northern WA, has decreased markedly as we have moved south.   (This wave, by the way, is not to be confused with the Yorkshire wave of my homeland, which is more of an almost imperceptible lifting of only the right index finger in recognition of a fellow countryside motorist). It’s an interesting point to note that even though the northbound southerners are clearly an unfriendly bunch, I am now so conditioned to wave at every car that comes our way, that each time we get to even a minor town, I feel a bit like Mick ‘Crocodile’  Dundee when he first hits the streets of New York and tries to introduce himself to every pedestrian he passes, with nothing but puzzled and suspicious looks in return.  Anyway, I digress...

Blowholes...

After Cape range we spent a night in Coral Bay, which is a sweet little seaside town, followed by a few nights at a good free camp at Point Quobba.  The weather by this point was getting pretty wild and wooly at times, but that did help to add a bit of gusto to the nearby Blowholes.

We’ve spend the last week or so in and around Shark Bay World Heritage Area. I have to admit to having my doubts before we arrived. The headline act for the area is of course the world famous dolphin feeding experience at Monkey Mia.  Sounds great, but we had heard a few stories of hundreds of people attending each feeding session and of course only very few being picked to actually feed the dolphins.  

The boys feeding 'Puck' the dolphin

However, as it turned out, when we were there, there were probably only thirty or so other onlookers and as luck would have it, the boys were picked to give a dolphin its fishy breakfast.  There is also a coffee shop on site – some development can be a positive thing.  All in all we had a really good morning there. 

We've had worse camps....

Better still, our next stop was a camp further along the peninsula at the (relatively) not as well known François Peron National Park.   This National Park is criss-crossed with 4WD only sand tracks (I like this form of ‘natural selection’:-) ) and after travelling along 50 km’s or so of these tracks we arrived at a perfect white sandy beach called Herald Bight where we pulled up right on the dunes and spent three days in what was probably my favourite camp of the whole trip!  Most of the time we either snorkelled, fished or just relaxed.  We even had company as John, Maggie, Fabien, Milly and Broughton, a family we had befriended along the way, were camped with us for part of the time

Fish...

Between us, we caught so many Garfish that we twice had fresh fish for dinner and on our last day I had to persuade the boys to take a break from pulling them out of the water (I really prefer to catch fish to eat, rather than for ‘sport’ and there are only so many Garfish that we could swallow, not to mention fillet!)  Even Jules got in on the action one afternoon, pulling out another nice little fish.  A truly beautiful spot.

Of course, as previously mentioned; the laws of Ying and Yang dictate that there has to be a balance in life and so, predictably after such a serene few days, we had to have a little drama before we left...

Too busy digging to take photos, so here is a shot of
the boys on a mission

That beautiful soft white sand that we had so enjoyed, obviously did not want us to leave so soon, and once again, the trusty anchor-trailer lived up to its name.  Having hitched up and jumped in the car to depart,  our wheels immediately dug themselves into the deep soft sand and we moved forward not an inch.  It took us a hot and sweaty hour and a half of digging, removing a fair bit of the weight from the car and trailer and using the car mats as traction-aids, before we were able to finally extricate ourselves.  So, several hours after we planned, we arrived back in the pleasant little town of Denham, where we quite rightly treated ourselves to lunch (with dessert!) and lots of cold drinks. 

Of course, getting stuck is all part of the fun of off-road travel, and in truth I’m sure none of us would have minded getting stuck in such a great spot for a little while longer...

To Exmouth and Cape Range

Try this: find yourself a map of Australia, a pin, and a piece of string.  Fix the string to the pin and put the pin in the map through ‘Sydney’. Now draw an arc with the string ‘til you find, the furthest  you can get from Sydney as the crow flies. 

Can’t be bothered?  OK then, I’ll tell you;  It’s Cape Range NP just below Exmouth, which is, of course, where I’m writing this update from.  We are also pretty much halfway around in terms of time – three months gone already!  I did feel a bit melancholy when I realised this.  I mentioned it to Jules and she said, “Excellent, we’ve still got three months to go”.  Probably sums up the differences in our personalities perfectly.

It terms of actual kilometres travelled, the keen sighted will have noticed that I stopped recording daily distances travelled fairly early on.  Deadlines and statistics seem to have become increasingly unimportant.  We leave when we leave, travel ‘til we stop and stay ‘til we feel like moving on again.  It’s rare that I know what day of the week it is anymore.  That said, I can report that since leaving Manly Vale in August, we have travelled just short of 16,000 km’s and that may well be around half way in terms of distance as well... so each kilometre we do from here on in is taking us closer to home.

Anyway, time for a quick update of the last week or so.  It will have to be quick though as I’m being plagued by enormous flying ants that are crawling over my lap –top screen like some kind of funky screen saver.

We left Karijini and headed to the mining town of Tom Price. We only stayed on night, but did take a tour of the Rio Tinto mine of the same name.  It’s hard to appreciate the magnitude of these types of operations until you see them up close.

Next we headed North to Millstream Chichester NP.  It’s not a particularly well known national park, but is a great place to spend a few days relaxing. The temperature touched 40 degrees, but we didn’t care as we were camped on the banks of the Fortescue River and alternated between sitting in the shade of a tree, reading, and jumping into the river to cool off whenever all that activity became too strenuous.

Finally we headed West again, via the dirt road to the mining town of Pannawonica until we hit the coast -road again and then onto Cape Range NP (with a quick stop in Exmouth for supplies and coffee).

Ningaloo Reef runs just offshore of Cape Range NP and has some excellent snorkelling and fishing.  Unfortunately, we had some big winds on the day we arrived. Even the most beautiful white beaches and aqua-marine water is difficult to appreciate when even a quick walk along the beach results in a layer of skin being sand-blasted away.  On the second day the wind dropped and what a beautiful place this became.  We snorkelled every morning and fished every afternoon.  

At first the Ospreys that often hunted by our beach camp were catching more fish than we were, but once we found our mojo, we managed to pull out a few good sized fish.  In the end we stayed for five nights and could have probably stayed longer.   

To be honest, it was only  the need to replenish our food, drinking water and alcohol supplies, and the desire to wash (in something other than saltwater) that made us leave.