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Published: April 14th 2009
In the last episode I told you how we travelled from Broome to Hamelin Pool by way of the far northern coast, the industrialized north-west, and Ningaloo Reef. I also explained something about stromatolites and their importance in the history of the world.
As I mentioned at the end, there are two more interesting stories to tell about Hamelin Pool. Both have to do with a particular type of tiny white cockle, the Fragum Eragatum which is found in great quantities around the Shark Bay area. When I say great, I mean to say that most of the shoreline up to a few meters deep is made up entirely of these shells. When settlers arrived in this area they couldn’t find much in the way of building materials. Like I intimated last time, it’s not an area rich in arboreal resources, which is to say trees are rarer than a virgin in a whorehouse and the ones that are there now have mostly been planted by later settlers to gain some reprieve from the sun. They (the settlers, not the virgins) quickly discovered that the ground in Hamelin Pool, although made out of cockles, was quite hard. As hard,
indeed, as brick. And so they built a quarry, extricating blocks of the cockle material (called coquina) to use as building stones. The coquina blocks are quite similar in structure to the modern gas concrete building blocks. Coquina is formed from shells which have been washed ashore in their billions for the last six thousand years. Over time rainwater trickles through them, dissolving small quantities of calcium carbonate (yes, the very same stuff that builds the stromatolites) which in turn acts as cement, binding all the tiny shells together. Nature’s own building blocks. Not many buildings still exist that have been built out of this material but there is a restaurant in Denham that was made out of coquina and it does look very cool. The quarry in Hamelin Pool is now used exclusively as a museum piece; they only cut new blocks if they have to repair historical buildings.
Are we done with the science lesson yet? Nay, my small-minded friends, we are not. For there is another fascinating story to tell about the Fragum Eragatum, although soon (which in the ever conservative world of science probably means somewhere in the next hundred years or so) they might
be renamed Fragum Hameleum, or something similar. You see, almost all of the shells found in Hamelin —unlike in the rest of Shark Bay— are exactly the same size. “How, dear author, can this be?” you ask. Well, I intend to tell you, so hold your horses.. These clever little shells have formed a symbioses with a particular type of algae, which is to say they trap a little piece of the algae in their shell when they are young (the shells, not necessarily the algae). The algae go on doing what they always do: photosynthesize the hell out of some CO2 using the light that shines through the shell. The little shell uses the energy this releases to grow, building up its little shell one thin layer at the time. Although mostly translucent to begin with, the shell slowly starts to become more and more opaque until, ultimately, not enough light filters through anymore for photosynthesis to be possible. The algae die in a final act of revenge on their captor which, deprived of its sole source of nourishment, dies soon after. It’s all rather Shakespearian. Now was that a worthy factoid or what?
If you’re ever near
Hamelin Pool, do take the time to go and see the place. There’s a museum in the old telegraph station which has tons of cool stuff such as old telegraph gear, pictures of camel drovers from the time the place was still used to transport wool for the local pastoral companies onto lighters (which is how the tracks in the stromatolites were made), postal signposts from all over Australia, and so on. They also have a video with more information on the stromatolites as well as a couple of live ones in a fish tank. You can actually see them make oxygen, how’s that for excitement. Seriously though, the people who operate the place are knowledgeable and friendly and the tour is $5 so that’s no reason not to do it. If you decide to stay at the caravan park, like we did, you’ll probably meet Shaun, the caretaker. I’ll come back to him later; a true Australian character.
From Hamelin Pool it’s only a short drive to Denham, the center of Shark Bay. We visited the discovery center which was built in 2004 after the place became listed as a the World Heritage site and it’s well worth
the money (10 bucks for a couple of days). Shark Bay, you see, is home to the place where Western Australia was originally discovered. Dirk Hartog, a Dutchman, was the first white man to set foot on Western Australian soil at Dirk Hartog Island (although it probably wasn’t called that at the time) on the 25th of October, 1616. To commemorate this he put up a pewter plate, inscribed in Dutch. Eighty years later the next Dutch captain to arrive on the scene, Willem de Vlaming, replaced Hartog’s pewter with one of his own, bearing a verbatim copy of the one Hartog left behind and then added some text to it. The original was carried off back to the motherland and can be viewed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I’ve included a picture of the one De Vlaming put up, which is currently in the discovery center. It’s cool how much of it you can actually read, if you can read Dutch at all, of course. If you can’t then here’s a translation of the first bit as found on Wikipedia: “1616 On 25 October arrived the ship Eendracht, of Amsterdam: Supercargo Gilles Miebais of Liege, skipper Dirch Hatichs of
Amsterdam. On 27 ditto she set sail again for Bantam. Deputy supercargo Jan Stins, upper steersman Pieter Doores of Bil. In the year 1616”
A Supercargo is basically the head-merchant; the guy in charge of the goods on board the vessel. Australia itself was actually discovered ten years earlier(Nay! Not by that pom Captain Cook, contrary to popular belief) when Willem Janszoon landed somewhere in Cape York Peninsula in his ship the Duyfken —of which a replica can be found in the harbor in Cairns. I tell you, it’s a ridiculously small vessel to attempt an ocean crossing in. He thought the land was connected to New Guinnea, however, and it was a long time before anyone realized Australia is, in fact, a continent in itself. The computers in the discovery center had some cool copies of old VOC maps which show the way they thought it all connected together at the time.
Putting up our tent in the caravan park in Denham was something of a mission. The wind was blowing 25-30 knots again and the campsite was right next to the beach with just a few skinny bushes for cover. In the end we had to put
the car behind the tent, to shield it, and tie it down in a multitude of original ways. On top of that, the soil was so hard that I had to buy special heavy duty pegs. I was aided in this purchase by what must have been the heavily inbred daughter of a pair of local fishermen as she came up with $14,50 as being the price for ten items costing $1,50 each. And she used a calculator!
The next day, Roy came up with another good surprise. He booked a cruise on a sailing boat out of Monkey Mia -a resort about 25km from Denham— and not just any old sailing boat, but the Shotover. She’s an ex-Americas Cup winner and was holder of the ocean speed record for sailing boats in the southern hemisphere for many years (That record, by the way, was 35 knots. For a wind powered boat. Crickey!). She’s since been fitted with some more decking, a stainless steel railing and, well, that’s it really. She’s a beautiful ship, fast, comfortable, and smooth sailing. At one point during the trip the skipper just pointed her nose in the wind and went below decks for
like five minutes while she slowly drifted backwards, try doing that with your laser -and I don’t mean just because a laser doesn’t have a below decks… smartasses.
We were doing the eco tour, a 3,5 hour cruise through Shark Bay looking for dolphins, dugongs, turtles and other marine life. We saw all of them, including the other marine life in the form of an eagle ray, a sea snake and a bunch of really big long toms (a barracuda-like fish). I spent most of the time on the bow with the second crew member, scanning the surface for signs of life. Much to my pleasure, we were about equally matched in the spotting business and she’d already had nine months to practice. Yes, I am a genius, but a very modest one. Anyway the trip was amazing. There’s nothing quite like sailing on the ocean, especially when there’s a fair bit of wind and you’re on a faster than fuck catamaran, even though the skipper kept her cruising along steadily at around 8-9 knots. It’s such a more elegant way of travelling than anything propelled by a motor. We saw several dolphins, including a mother and a calf
and countless dugong, again mostly mothers with calves. Dugong are very strange creatures who live on the sea grass which is so prolific in Shark Bay, reason why of the estimated world population of between thirty and forty thousand, around ten thousand live just in Shark Bay.
As a bonus for booking the day tour, we were allowed to do the sunset cruise for free. Free you say? Two Dutchies in the group so of course we’re on board! It promised to be either a ‘leisurely cruise’ or an ‘adrenaline packed spectacle’. Guess which one we were gunning for. Right. And with the wind picking up nicely in the afternoon, that’s exactly what we got. Sailing out in front of the wind was pretty steady going but once the skipper turned her into the wind, she shot off (or over, perhaps). There were a couple too many people on board, especially of the female persuasion, so he kept her on a tight leash at maybe 14 knots but the few times he did let her buckle down, the acceleration was awesome. Spray flying over the deck, people screaming and running for cover, skipper grinning, Roy and I grinning even
harder; it was epic. And of course, it was over far too soon. What I wouldn’t give to go out on that boat with a full crew and let her rip.
The next morning we went to see the world famous dolphin feeding spectacle at Monkey Mia. Had to be there early, I think around 7.30 which meant getting up altogether too much earlier. I already knew it would be a touristy piece of shit and it was exactly that. Nonetheless, it was cool to see dolphins up really close and to watch the antics of the pelicans trying to get in on the free feed. After lounging around for a bit we went back to Denham, packed up camp and set out back east to continue our trip south. We’d decided to stay another night at Hamelin Pool (I promise, no more science stories this time around) and thus had most of the day to kill. On the trip in we’d passed a lot of beaches and bluffs that we didn’t have time to visit so this time around we stopped at a few. One of the places was Eagle Bluff, where we decided to have lunch and
see about catching some dinner. From the top of the Bluff you look out over an entire shallow bay and can spot sharks swimming in the shallows. We drove around the Bluff to the beach and broke out the rods. When we walked onto the beach we saw that the sea ahead was filled with patches of sea grass. Or so we thought. Then the grass started to move (no, we were not high) and a couple of fins broke the surface. We soon realized that the extensive patches were, in fact, sharks. Not a few dozen but actually hundreds of sharks. Not very large ones, most probably around a meter or smaller, but the whole bay was filled by a school of sharks.
So now for catching one. The last day at Ningaloo I’d caught a small salmon and salted the fillets to use for bait, so I tried with those first. It took a bit longer than I expected and only with some careful casting and playing with the bait did I manage to get one to bite. It was only a small one, but it was a start. I decided we needed more and fresher bait.
There had been plenty of nibbles at the bait before the shark took it, so we got some smaller hooks and went after the small fish, which turned out to be whiting. I kept one that Janine caught, cut it open, folded it double and put it on an 8/0 hook. Then I cast it out expecting a feeding frenzy to ensue. Nothing. The sharks actually swam away from it, if anything. I decided I needed to get closer to them so waded out further into the water, which was quite shallow. Now here’s an interesting picture for you: standing more than knee-deep in, literally, shark infested water. Small sharks and shovel-nose rays are swimming around your legs while you’re casting a dead, carved up fish out at even bigger sharks. However, the technique did work. The sharks were just a bit shy about coming too close to shore and the splash made by the fish hitting the water scared them off. Once I got it out a bit deeper, more of them passed by it and after a few moments one grabbed hold of the fish. I struck too soon and the shark bit off the body after pulling
on the line for a while, leaving me with just the head of my bait. I decided to screw it and tossed the head back, see if anything would be stupid enough to bite. Something was and it did. It looked like a large shadow, easily the biggest fish I’d ever hooked and it put up a good fight for a while.
I backed up onto the beach and landed it without too much trouble. Then comes the interesting bit of grabbing and killing a live, trashing shark. With teeth. Grabbing it wasn’t too difficult, but it took a while to die; they don’t seem to need much blood to get by. Shark skin is really cool: rub it one way and it’s as smooth as velvet, rub it the other way and it’s like really course sandpaper. The physiology of a shark is also interesting, which becomes apparent when you fillet them. They don’t have any bones, just cartilage; their bodies get structure from their muscle tissue alone which is why they can turn themselves around and bite you when you hold them by the tail. Good thing I already knew that before I tried grabbing it. Once
you get through the skin, filleting is really easy, you can just cut off both sides since there is no ribcage. Unfortunately my filleting knives were really blunt and the shark had already managed to bend one when I was bleeding it, so I had to use my Rambo knife to get through the skin. After all that we were left with a couple of kilos of nice school shark fillet and a great memory. Maybe not a great feat for a fisherman, catching a shark in Shark Bay, but still very cool.
We drove back to Hamelin Pool, checked in to our old spot and were met by Shaun who stuck by us for the rest of the evening, same as the first time around; telling tall stories and listening to ours. We wanted to deep fry the fish in batter and he lent us a blender (so Janine could make her wicked aioli) as well as self-rising flour for the batter. The fish bits came out a lot like McNuggets; this particular shark cooks up to the consistency of chicken but with a more sour flavor. Very good!
After talking to Shaun about our wind troubles
and the fact that some of the poles on the tent were splitting because of it, he told us about a stack of old poles he had lying around. We went and grabbed a bunch the next day, cut them to length and have since enjoyed a much stronger tent. The poles are just a little bit thicker which makes all the difference.
We left Shark Bay behind, heading south once more. Interestingly, the scenery suddenly changed completely. First the bushy shrubs started to give way to taller, more varied species which eventually became trees. Then the landscape started to undulate, the road started to twist left and right. By God, there where parts where you could hardly see more than a few hundred meters ahead! Then the trees parted and as far as the eye could see were grain fields. Because of the time of year, there was no grain on them, but they were clearly grain fields nonetheless. The whole thing had a decidedly European feel, France perhaps, or probably Spain. When we stopped for gas in some small town we were met with another shock. The buildings had been constructed from stone! Would there be no
end to the new experiences we would have to endure this day? There was an old cathedral, a monastery, a school, all built with gothic influences. Houses were Victorian, ranging from sprawling colonial affairs to little cottages. The change was rather extreme but far from unwelcome and has stuck all the way down to Perth. Buildings here are generally constructed from stone, instead of wood and prefab materials, and the designs show a more varied European character. Houses here in Perth are generally very, very nice, with big buildings set in bigger gardens. Very few appartment complexes, so the suburbs are vaguely reminiscent of the American suburbia, but with a much more varied architecture. 300.000 euro will buy you a a pretty nice house here in the suburbs. But like everywhere in Australia, rents are so low that it hardly makes sense to buy.
I digress, we were on our way out of Australia. That’s right. That morning I had called His Royal Highness Prince Leonard and he had informed me that we were welcome to enter his principality at any point that day and stay the night. That was all good, but first we needed to find it.
It is not, as one might expect, a very large country; it encompasses around 18.500 acres. There is no highway that leads to it and from the side we were approaching it, there isn’t even a road sign. At length and aided by maps, GPS, laptops and perhaps even some common sense, we arrived at the gates of The Hutt River Province. The government offices were closed for the day and so we were just browsing through the museum when we were met by Prince Leonard himself. A kind, older gentleman who gave us a quick introduction on what there was to see and do before showing us to the campsite -a small grassy area next to the museum and in front of the royal homestead— and disappearing off to turn on the water boiler so we could have a hot shower.
The Hutt River Principality warrants a separate blog entry, really, but I will give you a brief introduction here, as it is such a unique and astounding story. Prince Leonard -born Leonard George Casey on the 27th of August, 1925— was an entrepreneur, and a successful one at that. At the age of 44 he found himself
at the head of the Westoria Pastoral Company which operated, among other things, a wheat farm in central WA. At that time, Australia was a country haunted by boards and commissions which all felt an undue urge to influence trade. As a result there were quota for almost anything, including wheat. Every farmer in WA was allowed to harvest and sell only a certain amount of wheat. In 1969, Leonard Casey’s company was only planning to harvest around 1.500 acres of wheat, but even so they were shocked when they were only allotted 1.647 bushels of wheat by the quota board. This amounts to roughly 45.000kg or one big truckload. Not something a farm can live off, especially one as big as this.
Casey appealed, only to be told that there was no provision in the quota for appeal. They were basically told to suck it up. However, they were financially overcommitted. They’d just purchased sheep for a new project, signed leases on new tractors and without the money from the ‘69/’70 harvest they would surely go bankrupt. This fear was further underlined by a new bill that would soon be passed in parliament and would allow the state
to resume (take over) rural lands if the pastoral company did indeed go belly up. Casey sent letters to the governor of WA and the premier to no avail. He sent a final letter to the governor, requesting compensation and informing him that failing any action on the part of the government, the Westoria Pastoral Company would withdraw its lands from the state’s jurisdiction, becoming a sovereign territory, owing allegiance only to the Queen of England. He had found a loophole in the law which allowed him to do this. When no further letters were received, Casey, his family and the other families comprised in the company, seeing no alternative, jumped in the deep end and seceded from Australia on the 21st of April, 1970.
What follows is a long and interesting battle on all fronts, legal and bureaucratic, overt and covert, personal and private, between various members and departments of the Australian government and Hutt River Province. Leonard Casey is a very smart and well educated man. He’s a mathematician who has received commendations for his published work. He’s an expert on international law and he has become that nail in the coffin of modern bureaucratic governments: someone
with an independent brain and the time and money to fight back. The Australian government of the time saw him, perhaps understandably, as an eccentric and a crazy one at that, and they chose inaction as their response. This allowed Casey to further cement his legal foundation and build up his case and his country brick by brick. And it has become quite the building over the many years.
An example of his clever antics is the creation of the principality. With the Australian government breathing down his neck in the 70’s, Casey discovered an old law which he thought might shield him and the other inhabitants of the province from being prosecuted for treason by the Australian government. This law -the Imperial Treasons Act, probably some obscure remnant from early colonial times— held that anyone assisting a defacto Prince to attain his office, could not be charged with treason and further, that anyone trying to interfere with the Prince in his duties, could be charged with treason. And so the province became a principality and Leonard George Casey became His Royal Highness Prince Leonard, a sovereign protected by commonwealth and international law.
A visit to the province
is a unique experience. Its very existence is a case study in international law. It also shows what one man can accomplish if he is driven, intelligent, and resourceful. There’s a Royal Hutt River Navy, complete with uniforms and Admiral, a postal service which prints stamps, and a mint which prints money. There’s an automobile association, a member of the international one, which allows Hutt River to issue license plates. The list is endless. It’s a country which, although only a handful live in the principality, has over 10.000 subjects.
Suffice to say, our stay there was memorable. The Prince is a very charismatic man, although the years of explaining the history of Hutt River to tourists on a daily basis admittedly weigh on him. In an interesting twist of fate, he has recently claimed all of Western Australia which had not previously been laid claim to for himself, which is about all of it except for the bit the French colonized in the south. This was done after letters to the premier of WA who raised no objection to the act. The case is pending a hearing in the International Court in The Hague and could at the
very least prove to be extremely painful for the Australian government. Previous rulings of the court have been in favor of the Prince. Like I said: a resourceful man, our Prince.
After a detailed tour of the facilities and no end of stories by the Prince, we set off the next day, making our way the last 600km down to Perth. We spent Christmas eve in Geraldton, quite a nice little town and home to an impressive cathedral as well as the afore mentioned memorial to HMAS Sydney. Dinner was a curry made with the last of the shark, still good!
On the 26th, after one more stop on the coast, we arrived in Perth and took up residence in Swan Valley, home of Perth’s vineyards. We had a look around town the next day and on the 28th it was already time for Roy to depart again. He still had a nice trip ahead of him with New-Zealand and America to look forward to. Janine and I stayed in the valley for a few more days before moving to Fremantle, which is a coastal suburb. It’s slightly less big city and more bohemian. Lots of nice buildings,
café’s, restaurants, etc. Most backpackers end up in this part of Perth.
We moved into a room in a pretty big house in Kardinya, about 5km away from Fremantle. We’ve settled in nicely; after nine months of camping a little luxury goes a long way. Finding work has been more difficult than we expected. Janine has found a job at the Mad Monk in Fremantle, a nice loungy restaurant/bar which brew their own beer.
Much like during my last extended stay in one place, there is actually not that much to report. Life as usual, really. We haven’t been doing much in the area, mostly to save money. We did meet up with some people we’d met previously. Quite a lot of people ended up in Fremantle that had previously worked and lived in Port Douglas, so that was very nice.
A few weeks ago we visited the Perth Aquarium, or AQWA (Aquarium of Western Australia) which is quite good and, according to Janine, better than the one in Sydney. They have this massive tank in the middle and a tunnel running underneath, as is common in Aquaria, but this one had a moving walkway on it.
Perfect for fat lazy Aussies. They also had a couple of pretty fat Nurse Sharks in the tank, along with some of the biggest trevallies I've ever seen and numerous other species.
Last week we took a long overdue cruise down the Swan River to taste some wines. The trip was beautiful on a very nice and hot day, with plenty of wine and food and some interesting people on board. We even saw an Osprey, a fish-eating raptor, which I'm sure is not that common this close to the city. The wines here are rediculously overpriced though. The wines we tasted were all between 25 and 35 dollars per bottle (12 to 18 euro) which I wouldn't have paid for them in a million years. The more exclusive wines went up in the 50 dollar direction pretty quickly. Wines are generally more expensive by roughly 25-50% for Australian wines, so a lower segment wine here would be about 6 euro, as opposed to about 4 euro back home (for the same Australian wine...)
Weather wise it’s still quite nice here at the moment. We had a few colder weeks (20 during the day and down to as
low as 10 at night) but now it’s up to high twenties/low thirties again and it stays a comfortable 15-20 at night. It does rain slightly more than before, but still never more than one or two days every fortnight. Not bad for autumn!
And then there’s the future. I’m sure you're all on the edges of your seats waiting to hear what we’re going to do next. I’m already on my second visa and with Janine leaving around July, we’re probably going to see the south of Australia, right? Wrong.
After much deliberation, weighing of finances, wishes, hopes and dreams, not to mention the weather, we decided to go to Asia. Problem is that life here is very expensive, especially if you travel around a lot and we simply don’t have the money to do it for another three or four months without working half the time. We do, however, have the money to go to Asia for that duration. Flights from here are extremely cheap (80 euro to fly to Singapore) and life there is pretty affordable as well. We would spend about as much in four months there, including all our flights, as we would in
1,5 months of traveling here.
I am extremely excited about this trip, I’ve probably not been this excited since I was planning for Australia all those months ago. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it here, but this has become the norm now. It’s home. I understand the people, the country, the habits, etc. And also, after 12 months, it would be nice to have access to a bit more culture and where better to go for that than Asia. And the food. Oh my god, glorious, glorious food. Can you taste it? Cause I can. Nasi Goreng, Ajam pedis (and I have no doubt it will be very bloody pedis most of the time), Sate Kambing (which will most likely actually be goat rather than chicken) Laksa, Tom yam, beautiful noodle soups in Vietnam and whatever they eat in Laos and Cambodia.. mmmmm. And best of all, it's usually only a few dollars for a full meal with drinks. How good is that?!
I’ll post a blog update soon with the details of the trip, but we’re still very much in the planning stages. At this point it looks like we’ll be leaving June 1st, doing
Indonesia for 1,5 months, then Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and finally Thailand. I will then fly back here and work my ass off for the next few months, while Janine will go back home (*sniff*) to start her PhD.
I also have to add that very few of these pictures were taken by me. Like every other electronic device I own, my camera has largely given up the ghost. Perhaps something that can be fixed but I doubt it. I'll probably invest in a Panasonic Lumix FZ28 as my dad and some of my friends have one and it's a very nice camera for a reasonable amount of money, especially this close to Asia and with no import duty.
Hope you enjoyed reading and watching, I’ll keep you posted!
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