Last Blog of Western Australia

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Hello everyone. We hope you are all going great.

The last few weeks have been a roller coaster of highs and lows…yet again, and I apologise for not writing earlier but it’s hard to write an interesting and witty blog when you are feeling down. We’ve had a run of good days so I’m in a better mood for writing…so here goes….

The last time I blogged we had finally encountered some sunshine at Kalbarri. We took this opportunity to visit Nature’s Window, Skywalk and Z-Bend trail at Kalbarri National Park. Really wonderful part of the world. We had to share our sunrise at Nature’s Window with a camera and production crew of 3 who were making this tiny slip of a girl hang off the edge of sheer cliffs while making a commercial for Japan Airlines. I was seriously worried for her safety. It was a really long way down and cold at 7am in the middle of winter in the outback. She had a slip of a summer dress on. Very “floaty’ in the breeze but she must have been freezing her bits off…Noel and I had jackets and jumpers on!! Back in Kalbarri Noel had a go at stand up paddle boarding and, of course, he mastered it after only a couple of falls. The first one in two inches of water while first standing on the board and then one other time in water deep enough for him to lose his sunglasses. He then paddled around for over half an hour before getting bored and decided to come in, where he promptly fell off the board again in the same two inches of water. Now THAT was funny. We followed that up with a snorkelling session at Blue Holes which is a little reef/rock pools right on the beach. Lots of fish here and we were very excited to finally be snorkelling.

Next stop was Monkey Mia. The litter on the highway between the road, from Kalbarri north to Monkey Mia, was really bad. The first sign of litter on our whole trip. It was like a recycling truck decided to explode and drop its load along a 100 km stretch of highway. It was so disappointing, because everywhere else has been pristine. On the way we stopped for a viewing of the Stromatolites at Hamelin Pool. Take my word for it….don’t even bother. The only thing at Monkey Mia is a huge resort/caravan park. It was really wonderful here with water sports, pools (too cold to swim), restaurant and a couple bars plus great camping kitchen and bathrooms. Noel managed to accidentally capture an engagement between two of the dolphin experience workers on video. I did my usual of staying in bed as long as possible so I missed the early dolphin experience, so we went back for a later session (3 per day) and Noel congratulated the couple and gave them a copy of the engagement. We met up with them at sunset drinks and chatted for a couple of hours. They are a lovely couple from Perth and had volunteered at Monkey Mia for 10 days as dolphin helpers. I didn’t even know that this was possible. We tried kayaking but unfortunately, big boobs squashed into a life jacket, is not a good combination, so I called time on that activity after an hour. We rented snorkelling stuff too but I wasn’t going to use mine after the dolphin experience guide told everyone about how many dolphins get injured or killed from the local tiger sharks. No WAY I’m getting in that water! Noel had a quick snorkel and said there was “nothing to see”. Yeah… like all the dolphins and SHARKS have already eaten everything mate!!! Shell beach on the way out of Monkey Mia was a quick stop. Super lovely, but again, too cold for a swim.

Carnarvon was our next port of call. This is another “don’t bother” place in my book. The only good thing in Carnarvon is the bathrooms in the caravan park and the spaghetti marinara I made for dinner. I tell a lie…there is also a big satellite dish and museum outside of Carnarvon that has heaps of info about all things space related. Apart from a myriad of uses with lots of space flights/satellite launches and landings etc the dish was instrumental in getting Apollo 13 back to Earth after one of its oxygen tanks blew and disabled the craft when it was on the way to the moon. Luckily there happened to be a speedway night on at the local track while we were there, so that saved us from having another night of crosswords, Sudoku and cards in the van.

Coral Bay was a high but unfortunately I hadn’t booked a night here and it was just a stop off point for lunch, on the way to Exmouth. However the place was buzzing with thousands of people holidaying there. We got talking to some people who had been holidaying there for over 30 years and they told us that you can snorkel right off the beach so we bought another snorkel and goggle set and headed for the crystal clear water. Now seriously, you walk about 30 metres in ankle deep water until there is a massive drop off straight into about 2-3 metres of water. The water was so clear and the number and type of fish was amazeballs!!! We saw a striped lion fish, parrot fish, snapper, blue tetra’s, catfish, trumpet fish and even some grouper plus so many others, all different colours and shapes. It was pretty magical. However I was a bit freaked out a few days later after I heard a boy was bitten by a shark only 5 kms away from where we were snorkelling. Have you worked out my greatest fear yet???

After such a great afternoon in Coral Bay everything went to s*#t. The clouds started gathering as we left and by the time we got in to Exmouth things were looking a bit dodgy for Noel’s whale shark swim. I had not booked this tour before we left because we weren’t sure if we could get in to WA and then it slipped my mind. Not only is the weather taking a turn for the worse we arrive on a Monday which also happens to be a public holiday. Our walk to find someplace to eat was fruitless. Back to the van. The next day we are trying to book Noel’s whale shark swim only to be told by everyone that all tours are booked out for a week! We only have 3 days left. Noel is pretty upset by now. Option B was to drive ALL the way back to Coral Bay where there was 1 spot left on the Thursday boat trip. Noel is super keen so books it. Next drama was no accommodation at all available in Coral Bay which means we would have to pack up the big van and drive it down at 5 am to make the 7:30 departure. Also no cars are available for hire either which would have been preferable to driving the van down and back. While all this planning is going on the weather on Tuesday got increasingly worse. The magnificent turquoise blue bays that we were hoping to snorkel in were white capped in the high winds. After a very long 180 km drive to look at the bays and beaches we couldn’t swim in, the rain started and the wind decided to become a gale. Dinner was to be a take away pizza from the restaurant across the road. After Noel had been missing for an hour and a half I was just about to go looking for him and find out how to contact the emergency services about a missing tourist when he turns up, totally drenched and livid. The restaurant was so busy it took them 70 mins to give Noel his 1 pizza. Apparently people were ordering 6, 8, 10 pizzas and Noel overheard someone saying that a local was telling “everyone to stay away from Exmouth” because there are too many tourists and the locals can’t handle the influx. Noel threw the pizza on the table and said “I’m done. I want to go home now”. We decided we should cancel the Coral Bay tour as the weather forecast for the entire region was grim. Next problem was not being able to call or message anyone before the 24 hour cut off. We had no phone reception (make sure you get a Telstra phone if you come to WA) and the Wi-Fi wouldn’t work in our van because there were literally thousands of campers in the caravan park, all checking Facebook or whatever. After walking in the rain and wind around nearly the whole, massive, caravan park I FINALLY got some wifi and got hold of my son via Facebook. Hallelujah! He was able to access the booking in my email account and cancel it. Noel was REALLY upset and I was frazzled. I then lost the plot when I finally managed to get to the showers only to stand there naked and freezing while the water ran cold for 5 minutes. I had to get dressed again and battle the storm to another shower block where I managed to cry for 15 minutes in nice hot water. Needless to say it stormed all night and day with no break in sight. We decided to leave a day early, after being woken at 4am by cyclonic rain, and start towards our final destination in the north before heading back to Perth. It’s just as well we left when we did because some of the town’s roads were already flooded and the bitumen had all lifted. Luckily we didn’t encounter any flooding on the way to Tom Price. Just to rub salt into the wounds, the weather got better and better the further inland we went. Which was great because we were so sick of all the rain, wind and clouds we’ve had on this trip but it still stung that Noel couldn’t do his whale shark swim, which was pretty much the ONLY thing he’d wanted to do on this whole trip.

So now we have had lovely sunny days while staying at Nanutarra Roadhouse, Tom Price, Karijini National Park (so lovely here), Newman, Kumarina Roadhouse and Meekatharra.

The whole western Pilbara region was a huge surprise. So green which goes great with all the red earth and blue skies. Pretty rolling hills and mountain ranges all around. The gorges in Karijini are beautiful too. We couldn’t go to all the places I wanted due to restrictions on the number of kms on unsealed roads for our 2WD motorhome but we managed a couple of walks and Noel walked a gorge floor. We swam in Fern Pool which was quite cool but so pretty.

We were fortunate that we had a stop in Tom Price where friends of ours managed to contact us about my Broome accommodation being “cancelled”. What the hell???? I did not cancel that and we are due there in a week. After another hour of messages and phone box calls (no phone reception remember?) back and forth it was finally sorted out and yes, they have reluctantly given me an apartment again. The girl I spoke with couldn’t comprehend that I didn’t need to contact Expedia about my cancelled booking because as far as Expedia is concerned the booking is current and that the hotel accidentally cancelled my booking in January, when our friends were trying to add an extra night to their booking. Ugh! What a hassle.

Another highlight of our trip this last week was a very informative tour through the biggest open cut iron ore mine in the world…BHP’s Whaleback Mountain operations in Newman. The numbers with anything to do with the operation are staggering…mind blowing actually.

The highway from Newman (BHP operations) south towards Perth is littered with cattle carcasses, heaps of splattered eagles (so sad… have only seen a few live ones) and lots of dead cars, most of which are upside down. I sure hope people didn’t get badly hurt in all these rollovers.

On Tuesday we flew to Broome where we have lovely sunshine but as usual, the Gwynne's have brought cooler temperatures and strong winds with them. Our friends from Sydney had to make a mad dash out of Syd last Saturday, 3 days before their scheduled flight. Luckily they managed to scrape in to WA and only had to isolate before getting a negative test result. Thankfully they got a result in less than 24 hours so were able to do a bit of exploring in Perth before joining us in Broome on Tuesday. Tonight we are going to watch a Broome sunset at Cable Beach and tomorrow we are driving up to Derby (2hrs away) where we are going on our Horizontal Falls sea plane, jet boat, overnight houseboat adventure. We get back on Saturday so we can watch the "Staircase to the Moon" spectacular from Town Beach and on Sunday Noel and I head home. There are no direct flights from Broome to Sydney at the moment so have to go via Melbourne. However our poor friends have had to change all their plans yet again after the new Covid outbreak and lockouts. They were headed from Broome to Darwin and now they are locked out of NT. That is so disappointing for them and such a hassle to re-jig/cancel accommodation, tours, hire car, flights especially as they only just had to do all this last last to be able to escape Syd and meet us in WA.

While the weather and circumstances have ruined much of this trip we realise we are so much luckier than so many others. We’ve heard about some pretty bad stuff happening to other travellers on their journeys. The news is full of vision of people crying in airports with holidays ruined by lockdowns and quarantine requirements. While the weather hasn't been kind to us we have also been blessed that we haven't been anywhere that got flooded or damaged like a lot of Victoria has suffered. Some of the best times on this trip have been spent chatting with other travellers. Western Australia is truly a beautiful state and you should try to get here and see it for yourself at some time. Just don’t come when the Griswalds (aka Gwynnes) are here. Hahahahahaha

Enjoy the many photos I’ve attached.

Margaret xxx

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