Advertisement
Published: December 24th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Dec 16th - Dec 19th After gorging ourselves on chocolate and wine in Margaret River we headed back to nature and visited the place where the Southern and Indian oceans meet at the extreme south west point of Australia - Cape Leeuwin.
We didn’t bother paying to go for a tour of the lighthouse, instead we risked getting blown out to sea by the strong winds around the point and looked out at the swirling oceans. It’s amazing how different the climate is down south compared to up north with it being at least 10 degrees cooler. That means it’s in the late 20s or early 30s which is just about perfect. There are also a lot less flies around which is a good thing as it is very frustrating swatting at your face every two seconds. I even had one go in my mouth in Denham while Simon had to blow one out of his nose. According to the Denham caravan park owner they get blown across from the sheep farms. We are definitely not going to any sheep farms.
After the lighthouse we drove through the southern forests stopping off to take a walk into one
to see a huge karri tree with a trunk circumference of 24m. To be honest it was a bit of a disappointment because there wasn’t much left of the trunk so it was just like a giant hole in a tree really.
We spent the night in the coastal town of Albany at the YHA which was having a $2 sausage sizzle that evening so we enjoyed snags from the barbie.
At Albany the coast is made up of giant rocks at the point where Antarctica and Australia were joined millions of years ago when they were just two of the landmasses that formed the supercontinent Gondwana. After Antarctica split away several interesting rock formations were left that have been shaped over time by the ocean including a natural bridge and a large gap where the water creates a massive roar when it swells up. It was like being in the land of the giants because these rocks were enormous. After playing about on the rocks we hit the road to head to Esperance.
We didn’t have anywhere booked in the seaside town of Esperance and ended up paying $100 a night (Simon nearly blew a gasket
at this budget-busting splurge) to stay in our very own apartment. It was so nice to have our own space with a sofa, dining table, our own proper kitchen and a separate bedroom and bathroom. Esperance (don’t you just love the sound of that word) has some beautiful beaches - the kind we have got used to with white sand and clear blue and green waters.
After two nights in the apartment we headed off inland to the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie. During the journey we saw our first snake. It was sunbathing on the road so naturally we turned back to go take a closer look. It was about 4ft long and was just laying in the road, I don’t know how it didn’t get squished by any of the big road trains that frequent the road but it seemed quite happy sunning itself.
Simon had always wanted to go to Kalgoorlie which is famous for producing a colossal amount of gold. There is a Super Pit which is probably the biggest hole I have ever seen at 3.2km long and 1.4km wide. It is mined by huge trucks worth upwards of $4m (one mega truck
was worth $10m!) that look like Matchbox toys against the massive pit. Each 225mt load carried up from the pit has 1oz of gold per tonne and is worth over US$200,000. The Super Pit produces up to 850,000oz of gold a year (that's a lot of cash) and looks like something that would appear in a James Bond movie. Apart from the Super Pit Kalgoorlie is famous for its brothels. It has one that is over 100 years old and you can go on tours of these brothels. We decided not to bother though after finding out a tour costs $35 each - that doesn’t even include extras!
After the excitement of staring down a big hole in the ground (we couldn’t go on a tour down the pit because they don’t run on Saturdays) we headed to our backpackers where we had booked a double room. Unfortunately we had a mouse sharing it with us which wasn‘t great but we did manage to usher it outside and then used the curtain to wedge the gap in the door shut.
We’ve been quite spoilt on our road trip because we’ve stayed in our own room 16 nights out
of the 17 although to be fair a few of those occasions were more out of luck than planning because the dorms weren’t full. It’s going to be tough heading back to shared dorms and sleeping with strangers next year.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0307s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb