Turning the corner

We have just done a big left hand turn around the south-west corner of Oz and are now feeling like we are in the homeward stretch (not that we know where home will be just yet, but we’re pretty sure it’s not in WA).  Prior to turning the corner, however, we have gotten up to all sorts of adventures.  So many little bits and pieces in fact, that to write about all of them would take pages and pages, so I am going back to my report writing days and embracing the bullet point format … The following list is what we’ve been up to since leaving Shark Bay. It’s in approximate geographic (north to south) and chronological order.

Kalbarri – explored the national park and saw Nature’s Window and lots of pretty wildflowers.  Explored windswept coastal cliffs where there is meant to be good snorkelling, but the surf was heaving so we didn’t venture out.

Point Gregory – visited the aptly named Pink Lake.  Check the photos – it’s even pinker in real life.  Colouration caused by crustaceans with high concentrations of beta carotene (they “mine” them for the vitamin industry – is there no end to the mining obsession in this state??).

Geraldton – biggest town since Darwin, so bought cheap beer and fuel (!).  Visited HMAS Sydney memorial and museum, which had excellent exhibits about the HMAS Sydney and other shipwrecks off this stretch of coast (e.g. Batavia).

Jurien Bay – celebrated my 33^rd birthday with tasty little cupcakes and fry up breakfast.

En route to Lancelin – celebrated Troopy’s 300,000 km mark (this was a somewhat reluctant celebration on Troopy’s behalf – she didn’t want to start that morning and we had to call the RAC for a jumpstart).  Walked and drove through the Pinnacle Desert.  We decided that contrary to all scientific thought that the stones rising straight up out of the sand are fossilised termite mounds, since they look exactly like the live ones we were seeing across the top end.

Lancelin – found not much but windsurfers and derelict camping grounds (we didn’t stay there but rather at a quaint little town down the coast).

Perth – we decided that we needed some time out of the Troops and so stayed in cabins in the northern beaches area and then Freemantle for two days each (funded by birthday money – thanks Mum, Dad, Mary and Pa!).   Went to the movies (Moneyball is ok, but probably best to wait for the DVD), art gallery, museum, beach and caught up with friends (ironically from Adelaide and Townsville).

Busselton – walked out to the end of the 2 km long jetty, twice actually, since we forgot to take our masks for snorkelling the first time!!  It’s the longest wooden jetty in the world, but they’ve recently renovated and it’s mostly concrete now, so not sure if they can continue to claim the longest title.  We snorkelled around the old pilons at the end, which was lot’s of fun, especially peering in the window of the “aquarium” at the very end where people had paid $30 to admire the fish (we paid $2.50 to walk/swim out).

Yallingup – made a base here for surfing and winery exploration.  We hired boards from the local surf shop, but unfortunately picked the windiest three days to have them and so just got some little beachies (which didn’t really matter because we were totally out of surfing practise).  We were only able to explore the wineries in the northern Margaret River region, due to the massive bushfire, but still made the most of that opportunity.  The top three (and ones that we purchased from) were Happs (thanks Tom and Lee for the suggestion), Juniper Crossing (across the road from better known Vasse Felix) and Howling Wolf (we stopped because we liked the name and it delivered for us – gotta love that!).  We also did some (read a lot) of tasting at a couple of breweries, chocolate and nut shops!  Let’s just say, we’re definitely heading back to Margaret River region for future holidays!!

Hamlin Bay – we had to high tail it out of the northern MR region because the place was getting inundated with schoolies arriving for their end of school partying.  Hamlin Bay is located in the coastal Cape Naturaliste NP and was a good retreat for a night.

Southern forests (western edge) – turned the corner into this region yesterday.  We stopped right on the edge to overnight at a lovely forested spot that was free of smoke from (another) bushfire.  Today the smoke had lifted and so we did some walking, birding (got a good look at some Baudin’s Cockatoos) and further gustation – The Cidery at Bridgetown (yum) and the Wine and Truffle Co at Manjimup (ok wine, yum truffle mustard).

In addition to all the above, we have also really enjoyed being in the west for listening to the cricket in South Africa – the time difference worked well – start of play around beer o’clock, lunch at our dinner time and close of play due to poor light at bedtime.  Luke has given up on the Aussies in complete despair and is now supporting NZ, which will make for an interesting time when the first test at the ‘Gabba begins.

And the best news last … we are now an uncle and aunty!  Karina (Luke’s sister) had a bouncing bay boy yesterday (25^th Nov – yep, another Nov b’day) and so we are very much looking forward to meeting Noah Lucus when we get to SA.

Click here for photos

Shark Bay

Well, for this episode of nomading, we have a guest blogger, yep you guessed it none other than Ailsie’s partner in crime/nomading…..

We left Coral Bay and headed south for Carnarvon.  It was an extremely uneventful drive, covering what seemed to be familiar ground, sand dunes and mulga trees.  It can get a little dull in the outback when there are endless stretches of the same scenery.  Just north of Carnarvon, we headed out to the blowholes looking for a camp spot somewhere along the coast.  It was blowing at about 50 knots from somewhere out in the Indian Ocean and the coast line offered very little protection, so we bailed on that part of desolate coast and headed for the deserted town of Carnarvon.  Entering Carnarvon it seemed to have the same feel of towns in the Riverland of SA, lots of red sand, no water and plenty of fruit trees.  We pulled up stumps somewhere in town and quickly decided that we would restock our supplies and get the hell out of there, before we got stuck.

About 150 clicks down the road, we headed to the west into Shark Bay, a place I had been wanting to go to for a long time for various reasons.  Our first stop was the stromatolites, which are the oldest known life forms on the planet.  They are filamentous cynobacteria which are able to survive in a hyper saline environment.  While they are relatively unspectacular to look at, it is spectacular to wonder at how this simple life form changed the planet forever when they came into existence 1.5 billion years ago.  What was interesting is that these stomatolites are ~4000 yrs old, which was a bit of a disappointment as I had assumed they were in continual existence at this site since, well almost the dawn of time.  And apparently they only grow in one other place in the world, Cuba, but my mate Ben discovered some decidedly similar filamentous algae in the South East of SA several years ago with a dirty great big geological survey scar running through them, apparently they are Thrombolites and are not nearly as impressive, but they looked the same to me.  But I digresss…

After a night at Hamlin Pools (don’t stay there, stay down the road a km or two at Hamlin Station), we went into Denham, the most westerly town in all of Oz.  On our way we stopped at Shell Beach, a beach entirely composed of mollusc shells, which are about eight metres deep.  A pretty amazing site, especially for our palaeontologist friend Matt who would probably have been able to tell us more about the site than we would really care to know.  We pulled up next to the harbour in Denham and spotted a dugong eating a tasty lunch of see grass, while we listened to the donkeys run around in Melbourne.  After some lunch, we headed out to Francois Peron Peninsula.  We had a couple of lovely nights out there camped on the beach, where we saw old man emu running about with eight chicks teaching them everything he knew.  It is a spectacular part of the coast where the red desert dunes meet the aqua sea.  We wanted to explore further but on our day of departure a storm was brewing so we decided to leave, rather than get stuck like a cork in a bottle in one of the clay pans out there.  We retreated to Monkey Mia, where we got to see several rangers and hoards of tourists harassing wild dolphins that come in daily for a feed from the rangers, which is funny because I thought you weren’t meant to feed the wildlife in national parks.  We also got to see the thick-billed grasswren in and around the car park, but I reckon most of the tourists missed this little beastie.  This is apparently one of the rarest birds in Australia, but we saw at least six different groups in the car park and the surrounding sand dune area on our morning walk.  The whole Monkey Mia experience was a little disappointing as it was purely focussed on harassing dolphins and failed to mention anything about the surrounding marine park and Project Eden, which is a large scale reintroduction program for a number of extremely threatened species of mammals which are virtually found no where else but in the offshore islands of Shark Bay.  These include the bilby, mala, western barred bandicoot, numbat, and various other species that most people have never heard of (e.g. Shark Bay mouse), but I won’t bore you with them.  After a night at Monkey Mia next to some loud obnoxious pratt who new everything about anything, we departed for Steep Point which Troopy was very excited about.

We tracked back towards the south and then turned west on Useless Loop, an exciting sounding road.  After what seemed an eternity of driving to nowhere, we hit some bad corrugations and the road deteriorated significantly.  We drove over the first dune and then into a big sand pit, along a beach and past some large fishing groups until we got to our campsite, a lovely spot in Shark Bay, overlooking Dirk Hartog Island (the first recorded landing place of Europeans in Australia in 1609).  We decided on two days here, which was a good idea, as it was a lovely spot to chill out and unwind after a bumpy trip in.  On our day there we ventured out to Steep Point, which is the most westerly point of the Australian mainland.  Troopy made it virtually all of the way as well, but fell short by bout 50-metres as the track ended prematurely for motor vehicles.  Now she has made it to the most easterly, northerly and westerly points – let’s hope we can make it to Wilson’s Prom and the southerly point over summer.  After our second night at Steep Point we ventured back to the bitumen and camped at Hamlin Station for a night (a much better camp site than at the Pools on the way in) before heading south to Kalbarri, which will be part of the exciting story of our next blog!

We must also make mention of some very important milestones which are coming up and all revolve around the number three.  Troopy gets three new tyres tomorrow, she clicks over 300,000 km very soon and Ailsa turns 33 on Monday!  Stay tuned for photos of the “3” celebrations next time…

Click here for Shark Bay photos