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21 - 27 March 2012
Back on the road again! There's really no feeling quite like it. We have been really looking forward to the next leg of the trip - up the west coast of Australia and, in particular, the north west of WA. It's hard to believe that (for the moment) work has ended and play time has started it's motor up again.
We had an easy drive to our first overnight stop at Lancelin.
We chugged along the new Indian Ocean Drive along the coast between Lancelin and Cervantes which was a lovely drive with abundant sand dunes one one side of the road and low lying shrub back-dropped by a deep blue ocean on the other. Every time we could see the crest of a hill in the distance, we knew we were in for a stunning view as the hill fell away in front of us.
Lancelin was a small quiet town but Alex had a memorable moment when he took a walk to the water at dusk and was greeted by about 20 dolphins all swimming around a couple of metres from the shore.
Cervantes was next on
the list as we wanted to see The Pinnacles in Nambung National Park. Cervantes was a nice little town with a great little beach for fishing where Reef hooked a flounder which we released. It was pretty quiet when we were there as the season doesn't really pick up until around May. On the way to the Pinnacles we stopped off at the stromatolites which were interesting to see. We then headed off down the road with our pre-made pasta bake to have a picnic dinner amongst the Pinnacles.
The Pinnacles (or Pene-acles as we renamed them due to their remarkable resemblance to the male anatomy) were definately worth seeing. There's thousands and thousands of them and depending which way you face, you can view the Pinnacles with the ocean in the backgound while the sun sets over the ocean. There is a walk you can do as well as a self-guided drive which is about a 4km loop. We decided to do the walk but aborted the mission because we found it wasn't well enough sign-posted and we didn't fancy getting lost in the desert in the stinking hot afternoon sun. So we jumped back in the car
and ended up doing the loop about four times. We saw some emus but, surprisingly, no other wildlife. The loop was really well set out with lots of different areas to stop and view the landscape and we stayed to watch the sunset which was beautiful.
From Cervantes, we headed north and stopped south of Geraldton for an overnighter at Cliff Head North. No facilities but the view made up for it - we camped on the beach and had a very private camp spot. We paid the price though as we damaged the camper on the way to our secluded spot thanks to some boggy sand and a low lying tree branch. It was a good spot, swimming and fishing as the sun was going down especially as the weather has been so hot and the troopy is a heat box to travel in. We'd also made a detour during the day's travel out to the caves at Stockyard Gully National Park where we'd had an interesting time getting the camper through some really tough terrain. Once we were out of that situation we found ourselves lost in the middle of the bush with dirt off-road tracks leading
here, there and everywhere - but nowhere where we actually wanted to be! So it was an interesting day really...
Travelling further north we went through Geraldton and bunked down at Coronation Beach for a few nights. From here we explored the surrounds including Geraldton and Horrocks and the old village of Northampton. Coronation Beach was a nice campground although it was extremely windy. By this stage we were hoping this excessive wind was not going to follow us all the way up the coast. We met a lot of nice people at Coronation Beach, in particular a couple from Mudgee who told us about Francois Peron National Park - priceless information!
This little stretch from Perth north has been great in so many ways - just being back on the road again, the feeling of freedom and other little things like testing out the new solar panel which we can already see was a necessary investment. It's one of those things that once you have it, you wonder how you survived without it!
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