The hottest tub around!

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Day 198 - Gladstone Scenic Lookout - Denham

Nikita Howells, come on down, you’re 18 today! OMG! That’s like so amazing! Happy Birthday chick, we’re very sorry that we’re not available to be the drunken Aunty and Uncle at the party but there will be plenty of others around to take our place! Ha ha! Hope you have a fabulous day.

What happened to the wind?! Not long after ‘lights out’ it just disappeared completely! Not that we’re complaining, we got a great nights sleep but it was just a bit of a surprise considering we were parked on the top of a ledge in the open air.

There’s no rush this morning, in fact we’re still very much undecided where we are heading. From here we can either carry on down to Kalbarri or take a right and head towards the Shark Bay area which includes Denham and Monkey Mia. Last night we’d gone to bed convinced that we’d give all that a miss as we’ve been there before but it’s right on our doorstep and we may never be this close to it again. Perhaps we should reconsider!

We bum around on the internet still catching up with blogs and emails, thanks to everyone who has been in touch recently, it really is ace to hear from people as it’s very weird at times being out here ‘all alone’.

From our lookout this morning Dar catches sight of a family of Emus wandering in the scrubland below us! It looks like there’s a Mum and at least five chicks - beautiful! Let’s hope they don’t wander too close to the North West Coastal Highway which runs just along side the lookout entrance, it’s like death valley along there for wildlife. We passed countless dead goats, kangaroos and sheep during our short journey yesterday.

It was time to come down off our mountain so we packed the caravan up and headed on our way. Several ‘plans’ were banded around the car as we drove towards the Overlander Roadhouse, the first was we’d stop for a much needed shower at the roadhouse then continue on to a free camp site nearer to Kalbarri, the second was to carry on to Kalbarri and the third was to take the turning to rediscover the enchantment of Shark Bay! With its World Heritage listing giving our heart strings a big tug we took option three especially after finding out it was $5 per person for a shower at the roadhouse!

It’s another ‘one road in, one road out’ scenario and the park entrance signage does get your attention even if it’s in a ‘housing estate’ kind of way! The things you have to do when you are World Heritage listed!

As we said, we’ve been here before, the first time was a couple of years ago and although we enjoyed our visit we weren’t bowled over like we were with Exmouth and Cape Range. In immediate defence of the area we weren’t here for long, just a couple of days but unfortunately a couple of days is all we have to spend here again!

There are several free camp options on the road towards Shark Bay, we can see from the Camps 5 book that you need a permit to stay there which you get via a phone call or in person at the visitors centre in Denham. There’s a possibility we might stay at one of these on the way back if we’re looking for a few extra days to polish off our visit.

Just as we’re coming into town our phone rings, it’s the Reeves family who have had a great time in Karijini (although they also fell victim to the highest priced tyres in Tom Price!) and are now in Carnarvon. They’re a couple of days behind us but we’re still hoping to see them in Kalbarri for the dinner party! We’ve told them all about the gang up at Point Quobba so with any luck they’ll have a great time up there too! Thanks for the call Simone, it was ace to hear from you guys.

For the time being though we’re going back onto a caravan site because we need a shower and a couple of days luxury, which in our new world is equal to a laundry which is close by, hook up water, flushable toilets and hook up power!

Typically we end up in what is the most expensive site in town at $30 per night but it is right next to the beach and the others were only $3 cheaper so we’ll let ourselves off for now! It’s a nice enough site though and our pitch looks down over the beach, once you get passed the caravan roof below us! The laundry is good and we make use of that straight away then dive in for a shower. Freshwater, heaven! We haven’t had a proper freshwater shower for 5 days and it makes us feel really refreshed.

Dad K is due in hospital today for his ‘super stent’ fitting, another reason we wanted to be somewhere fairly civilised so there would be telephones to enable us to keep in touch. We managed to speak to Mum and Dad while they were waiting for the free shuttle bus service that runs from Bristol city centre into the BRI hospital. It was great to have a quick chat with them both and to let them know that we may be the other side of the world but we’re with them in spirit all the way! Dad will be in hospital overnight so we’ll ring Mum tomorrow morning, our time, to check everything is ok.

We wander back through Denham after a fairly lengthy chat with the lady in the visitors centre about the set up for the free camp sites available in the shire. Each of the four camp sites have a 24 hour stay limitation but the lady then tells us that having stayed in one we would not be given a permit to stay in another! That seems a bit of a strong rule when it’s out of the main season so we might just have to see if we can get around it! We are also keen to do some snorkelling whilst we’re here although it seems there’s nowhere along the main coastline so we’ll have to explore further afield and the lady tells us that Bottle Bay up on Francois Peron is the best place to go.

Denham seems relatively unchanged since our last visit, which is refreshingly nice. There are a few more homes up on the hills overlooking the coast but other than that there are no major developments that we can see. We stayed at the other end of the town the last time we were here but still had to take the same road as we did this afternoon when we decided to go and remind ourselves how some of the outlying area looks.

We drive out past the wind farm and the sign for the Pistol Club then past beautiful Little Lagoon. We pop in here for a quick visit to test the temperature of the water! It’s pretty warm but there are signs warning us about venomous Stonefish which makes us question if this lagoon is idyllic or deadly?! We remember the words of a local from two years ago that he had never seen or heard of a stonefish being found here, but then you have to wonder why they would even put up a warning sign. We don’t take a dip today, we might come in with platform shoes on tomorrow!

Dinner time is just around the corner and we remember that the Peron Homestead has free gas BBQs plus a 44 degree artesian natural hot tub that is highly recommended for a sunset soak! We don’t need to be reminded twice so whizz back to camp, collect dinner and follow the track out to the homestead.

With our annual Western Australia parks pass we’re already covered in terms of the entrance fee and we’re even more delighted to find that we have the place to ourselves when we arrive. Awesome!

The homestead is steeped in history with the Peron Peninsula being a former sheep station from the 1880’s until the government purchased it in 1990. There are several out buildings to explore and a good display about project Eden which is seeking to re-introduce native wildlife to the area. It’s all beautifully kept up and looks very impressive but our attention is purely focused toward the BBQ and the hot tub, how shallow are we!

With brand new, free gas BBQs this makes a fantastic dinner spot for any visitors to the area, we highly recommend a visit! The water was as we expected, very hot! Don’t let the colour of it put you off, it’s beautiful, soothing and even on a hot afternoon, was very relaxing!

We’re joined by a young German couple who we chat to for ages swapping travel stories as you do! Hopefully we’ll meet them again further along the way.

That pretty much rounded off today, we stopped for a sunset viewing on the way back to camp but it was pretty windy and the tripod wouldn’t stay still! Shouldn’t moan about the wind though, it’s keeping us cool during the day and that’s good!

We were delighted to get a Skype message from Kangaroojack who are on their way back to Wagga Waggo to re-visit friends Helen, Robert, the dogs and the three specially named lambs on the farm! We look forward to a proper catch up with you guys very soon but safe travels in the mean time.

And then there was bedtime …… peaceful sleep, notwithstanding the noisy air conditioning unit from the van behind us which is driving Darryl mad! Oh no, noisy neighbours!! We might have to get guitar out in revenge!! Ha ha!!

Night night

Dar and Sar

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Comments

[Jan Kettle]

Is it Mum Emu or Dad Emu?
Hi - I thought that in the strange world of Emus, Mum layed the eggs and then cleared off leaving poor old Dad to raise the chicks on his own. I stand to be corrected though! xxx Mum K