Roadtrip 2009 - Hutt River Province & Cervantes

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Our final destination on the roadtrip was Cervantes, however we made a slight detour on the way to visit the Hutt River Province.

I came across the Hutt River Province in my guide book (Backpackers Ultimate Guide - highly recommended) and up until that point I had never heard of it. The Hutt River Province is a really interesting place to visit, not only because it is considered an independent country within Australia (you can get your passport stamped on entry) but also because of the people that live there. The Hutt River Province seceeded itself from the Australian Commonwealth in 1970 and claimed independent sovereignity. As you enter you are met by "His Royal Highness Prince Leonard I" who is more than happy to give you a guided tour of the Province including the Government building, post office and Chapel. Prince Leonard and his wife Princess Shirley are clearly very proud of the Province's history (albeit quite short) and the medals and honours that have been presented to them by other countries. Although some people consider Prince Leonard to be nothing more than an old eccentric, he clearly takes his role as Prince seriously. Both Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley were so welcoming and they were happy to answer questions, provide tea and cake, and they even let us sit on their thrones!

Although it took a while to find the Province and the journey involved long distances on dirt road it was worth perserving with and I would definitely recommend people pay a visit.

After saying goodbye to the Prince and Princess we continued our journey to our final stop and home of the Nambung National Park. We took the Indian Ocean Coastal Drive instead of the highway as we thought it would be more scenic. In reality you don't get to see much of the ocean and its probably only worth doing if you want to avoid the road trains on the highway.

We didn't see much of Cervantes as we were only using it as a base to explore the Nambung National Park. It seemed to be quite a small town with not much there really. The thing that we found best in Cervantes was the quaint cafe on our campsite which opened up onto the beach and served Devonshire cream teas!

As we had to get Wallaby back by 3pm we got up very early on our final day to give us time to visit the Pinnacles desert. To be honest I wasn't expecting much from the Pinnacles as its literally a desert full of limestone columns, however I am so glad that we took the time to go there. A lot of work has clearly been done on the park to make it easily accessabile to people, and it appears that they are still in the process of laying down roads to open up even more of the Park.

A 3.5 km track has been marked out in a loop through the main area allowing people with 4 wheel drive vehicles to see the landscape at its best. For those without four wheel drive (that would be us!) there is a 1.5km return walk. So at 7am on Friday morning we found ourselves on a route march through the desert. Walking through the Pinnacles definitely makes you appreciate it more, and I think it was a good time of day to go as not only did we have the walk to ourselves, but the weather was not hot and unbearable. My photographs don't really do the area justice and its actually much more impressive than it sounds.

Once we'd found our way out of the desert it was back on the highway to take Wallaby home. We saw so much in the 10 days that we were away, and I would highly recommend hiring a camper. I loved the fact that we had the freedom to stop wherever and whenever we wanted to, and also we didn't have to worry about packing up every day because we carried everything on the van with us. Also we found that there is a sense of comraderie between people in campervans. Everywhere we went people in other vans would wave and the people we met on the camp sites were all friendly. I would also recommend hiring a "wicked camper" as it provided a talking point for so many people as they would come up and comment on our van.

So now that I have finally completed my blogs about our roadtrip I can say that we truly had a "wicked" time. xxx

Total Distance Travelled = 3500 kms

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