Western Australia

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28-30 Mar - Esperance
We ate breakfast in the Tearooms Café on the water, wishing it were Sunday because they had the breakfast buffet then. Esperance town is a coastal town not too overdeveloped and in fact is seemingly yet to reach its potential as a renowned holiday town. Esperance was the name of one of the French ships that explored this area along with the Recherche (which is the name given to the Archipelagos just off the coast). ‘Esperance’ is a French word that is difficult to translate but roughly means: with hope and optimism toward the future. The town’s residents may be living this motto, waiting for the opportunities to present themselves.
We drove out along the 38km tourist loop, which took us West from the town to Twilight Bay. At 11-mile beach we swam in the crystal clear water of an azure blue lagoon with bleached white sand on its bottom. Refreshed, we continued around and back toward town past the Pink Lake, which is an effect, caused by a super-saline resistant algae.
Wednesday 29-Mar, we drove East from Esperance to the Cape Le Grand National Park. We climbed the steep granite slopes of the Frenchman’s Peak for views over the entire park. The peak as the distinct profile of an eagle’s head and this is what it represents in the aboriginal dreaming story. Two islands off shore - directly in front of the eagle’s gaze are said to be two boys who stole the eagle’s eggs. The eagle carried them out to sea and dropped them in the water. As they tried to swim back to shore, the Eagle would again pick them up in her talons and fly them back out to sea. We drove out to the beaches and swam at Hellfire beach in the clearest water I have ever swam in.
T

31 Mar - 1 Apr - Albany
The drive from Esperance to Albany is long (over 500km) through the coastal scrub and pastoral landscape. We arrived in Albany and set up camp at the Middleton Beach Caravan Park, which had excellent facilities - probably the best we had seen to date. It was a short stroll from there to the pub for a decent meal and to watch footy on the big screen - first game for the season (West Coast v St Kilda).
We had a great breakfast and outstanding coffee at a café in Albany that had good music, cool décor and used fair-trade, quality ingredients. We settled in for a morning of caffeine (over) indulgence and reading the papers. A dreary day had us plan a driving day to check out Mt. Barker and the small Porongurup National Park before heading back to camp via Emu Bay.
T

2 Apr - Denmark, Tall Tree Walk and Bunbury
Unfortunately the weather was a little ordinary and threatening to rain, so we consoled ourselves by again visiting our little favourite café for caffeine hit before setting off for Denmark. This pretty little town is about 50kms from Albany and has been described as the Byron Bay of the south. It definitely has a ‘green’ bent evident from the environment centre and organic produce on sale in the village centre, but it lacks the pretentiousness and the over-development that Byron has gone through in recent years.
The village is surrounded by farms and wineries to the north (there was even a place which combined a winery, cheese making and fudge all from the one property - is this place for sale?), Wilson’s Inlet to the east and Ocean Beach directly to the south. What area isn’t farmed is part of William Bay National Park, which includes spectacular icons such as Elephant Rocks and Green’s Pool.
It’s natural beauty, small community lifestyle, reasonable property prices, access to fresh produce and it’s proximity to “civilisation” ticked all my boxes and had the travel bug not still been biting we could have happily settled here.
But after touring this area for a few hours we did have to leave (with some cheese and wine as mementos) and headed for the Tall Trees Walk near Walpole. We weren’t sure whether we’d be able to do the walk with the current drizzly weather but we decided to check it out just in case there was a break in the weather. Luckily for us it did stop raining long enough for us to enjoy walking through the tree tops of these enormous tingle and karri trees. At 40m up we were only three quarters of the height of some of these trees!
From here we travelled through Manjimup, Bridgetown and Donnybrook before staying at Bunbury (a S.H.) for the night. At least we had the recreation room to ourselves and we could watch the Swans play abysmally against Essendon for their first game of season 2006.
L

3-12 Apr - Perth
From Bunbury we travelled through Mandurah (the new housing development Mecca of the west) on our way to Perth to catch up with Nigel, Tanya and Theo at their place in City Beach. We took a detour through Fremantle to grab a bite to eat. Freo was heaving with people, all out enjoying Sunday Sessions on this sunny afternoon. We sat under a tree eating our lunch while watching an accordion player busking on the street. He managed to hypnotise a young boy with his eastern European tune into dancing on the sidewalk and he was soon contributing to the song by learning how to push the buttons through the song. Its great that there are still places where you can witness such sharing between the old and young. I love Fremantle.
We caught up with the Adcock’s not long after and I was again watching an exchange between the young and the not-so-young-anymore with Tim and Nige running around kicking a footy with Theo at the oval down the road.
We stayed in Perth until flying back to Sydney for a few busy days to catch up with some family and friends, sort out some odds and ends, buy our new computer and see the Swans first home game which included the unfurling of the premiership flag at the SCG.
After our quick jaunt to Sydney I managed to catch the flu, so we took a couple of days of down time to get the car serviced and repacked before continuing on our journey around OZ.
L

13 April - Jurien Bay & The Pinnacles
After leaving Perth after lunch on Thursday we drove up the coast for about 300kms to Jurien Bay. There is plenty of good fishing here apparently but we were here to see The Pinnacles. We got to Nambung National Park for late afternoon; time enough to drive around the pinnacles viewing loop and check out the lookout before witnessing sunset cast long, orange shadows across the dunes from the hundreds of spiky outcrops. With the purple evening sky and the low moon it looked like we were travelling through a moonscape. Extraordinary!
The Adcock’s met up with us at the campsite later that evening - we were all going to camp at Kalbarri for the Easter long weekend.
L

14-16 April - Kalbarri
From Jurien Bay it was another 350kms up the coast to Kalbarri. Along the way up the coast we stopped at Green Bay to walk along the beach out to the point, we bought a couple of the “cheapest Cray rolls on the coast” at $9 each, and stopped at a secret surf break that Nige knew to eat them. They were good, but $9 is a bit exy!
We fuelled up at Geraldton before driving the final leg onto Kalbarri and our pre-booked campsites. Lucky we booked, Kalbarri was packed, with some other caravan parks so booked out they were allowing tents to set up on their verge.
We settled into our campsite near the Murchison River, with a couple of cool beers (Theo had lemonade) before cooking up a BBQ for dinner.
After a bit of a late start the next day we explored some of the rugged coastline with stops at all of the lookouts south of Red Bluff before heading to the pub in the early evening for some beer, food and footy. West Coast was playing so the Swans were relegated to the small telly but with cold Redback’s in hand (from the tap!) we watched them stumble over the line as winners against Carlton. We then got to try out the local Crayfish from the bistro (available 5 different ways) and some more of those Redbacks - ahhh life is good.
On the Sunday (16 Apr) we headed into the Kalbarri National Park to take a look at the scenery. The Murchison River was in flood, so the pools of blue-green water set in a desert landscape were replaced with torrents of brown water rushing through the gorges. We weren’t even seeing it at its peak with the high water mark clearly visible meters up the gorge wall. Natures Window lookout was extremely busy with probably about a third of Kalbarri’s visitors making the trip out, we got a less busy experience from Z Bends about 12kms away where we watched one crazy testosterone fuelled bloke swim across the river to the other side of the gorge. Very dangerous stuff; don’t try this at home kids!
After all this heat and excitement we all needed a swim so we headed out to Blue Holes beach to cool off in the ocean. Some Rugby at the pub and fish and chips for dinner saw out our last night at Kalbarri with Nige, Tanya and Theo.
L

17-19 April - Shark Bay (Denham & Monkey Mia)
The Adcock’s and the Roaming Roaches parted ways; the Adcock’s back to Perth and the Roaming Roaches onto Denham, the largest town in Shark Bay.
Shark Bay is part of a large marine park that is listed as a World Heritage Site for its stromatolites, marine life, seagrass beds and hydrogeology. It’s also well known to most people as being the area where dolphins regularly visit the beach at Monkey Mia.
On our way to Denham we stopped off at Hamelin Pool to take a look at the famous stromatolites. These amazing organisms are responsible for creating our current oxygen rich atmosphere, therefore allowing us humans to evolve. Without huge areas of these stromatolites turning the sulphur rich atmosphere into breathable air 600 million years ago we wouldn’t be here. Respect.
These stromatolites have been here for about 1500-3000 years and in that time have only grown a few hundred millimetres high. Apparently up until 60 years ago scientists only knew stromatolites through fossilised remains found throughout the world. This group of stromatolites is one of only a few known groups living today in highly salty water environments, like that found here at Hamelin Bay.
The next day drove out to Francois Peron National Park to take a look at the old homestead (now interpretive information centre) and soak in the hot tub. The bore water here is so warm that when it comes out of the earth it’s a little over 40°. It’s collected outside the homestead in a large tank that can soak about 6 people at the same time. Thankfully we had it to ourselves, but not for long!
As we didn’t have a true 4WD we couldn’t explore the remainder of the National Park so we settled instead to take a look at the new interpretive centre located in Denham. A really well put together centre, which explored the indigenous, seafaring, pearling, and environmental history of Shark Bay.
We got up early the next day to catch the local Monkey Mia dolphins make their appearance at 8am the next morning. They have feedings 3 times daily up until 2pm (to force them to feed on their own in the afternoon). With our time there we managed to catch them twice; once from the beach and the other time from the jetty.
The dolphins are tracked with over 200 dolphins known by name by the National Park staff at Monkey Mia. The staff is careful to feed them only a quarter of their daily food requirement so that don’t become reliant on the hand feeding.
After our morning with the dolphins we thought we’d try and meet some of the other Shark Bay residents on the catamaran “Shotover”. On our afternoon of cruising we got to meet a couple of dugongs (over 1/10th of the worlds dugong population resides here in Shark Bay), loggerhead turtles and the famous sponge-nosed dolphins. These dolphins get their name from using sponges that they’ve collected to help protect their noses (or rostrums if we’re anatomically correct) while their foraging for food along the gravely sea bed. They’re the only dolphins in the world to do this and there are only about 20 of them. A lucky spotting!
L

19-24 April - Exmouth
From the wildlife wonders of Shark Bay we hoped to add to our spotters list by adding the whalesharks and manta rays of Ningaloo Reef.
We had intended to split our stay at Ningaloo Reef between Coral Bay and Exmouth, but unfortunately Coral Bay was chocker-block with families spending their Easter holiday’s snorkelling. There wasn’t a campsite available at any of the campgrounds!
As it was already 6pm, we called ahead to book a campsite at Exmouth and got there a couple of hours later. A long day of driving! We spent the next day sleeping in, researching which whaleshark tour to take, finding out about the local drift snorkels in Cape Range National Park, and swimming.
On the Saturday (21 Apr) we were picked up at 7.30am for our day of snorkelling with whalesharks and the other local residents of Ningaloo Reef. We were taken out to Tantabiddi bay and ferried onto our boat. We got a look at a couple of turtles and a manta ray on the way to our first snorkel spot. Also in our group of snorkellers were four people with the Ecocean NGO (no government organization) group who were studying the whalesharks as part of their research. They were collecting samples of the water along the way to try and understand why the whalesharks come to Ningaloo Reef in such numbers during May-June. They know that the coral sporns at this time and so there is an enormous amount of food in the water for these guys but they’re trying to quantify the types of organisms and amounts that whalesharks consume. One of the other guys in the group was also try to identify as many whalesharks as possible using a program developed by NASA to map the stars. Whalesharks have individual spot patterns, which if identified, would allow someone to track their movements throughout the world. There is still so much that is not known about these fish (yes they are fish, the largest fish in the world), so Ecocean’s work will go some way to filling in some of the gaps.
All whaleshark tours use a spotter plane to help the boats quickly find whalesharks. The plane didn’t go up until 9.30am so we had some time to enjoy snorkelling on the reef before we got the call we were all waiting to hear. The spotter plane had found a whaleshark (his words were “it’s f#%!(BADWIDTH)%!i(MISSING)ng enormous”) and it was all systems go to get us out to the whaleshark and into our gear.
There are strict rules for snorkelling with whalesharks; only 10 people are allowed in the water with the whaleshark at any one time, and those people must stay a minimum of 3m away from the whaleshark. For our group that meant splitting into two groups of six with the one of the two dive masters. The boat manoeuvres into place and drops you into the water in the path of the whalesharks swim route. The dive master tracks along with the whaleshark and you do your best to keep up.
The first time I got in I was so excited - I stepped into the water and began to swim out to where the dive master was. I was so caught up in swimming to the right place that when he said “look down, he’s right there” I was shocked to see this gigantic whaleshark swimming underwater toward me, not 5m away. Wow! It was just amazing!
Our group swam alongside him for as long as we could keep up. This guy was big, over 8m, so he was moving pretty fast. I swam until I was puffed and all I could see was the swish of his tail back and forth in the distant deep blue.
The two groups took turns jumping in to swim with the whaleshark until he dove down (we were in water 80m deep). We then found another whaleshark, only about 3m in length a relatively young one, but had to share our diving time with 4 other groups.
We were lucky to find the large 8m whaleshark again and so our boat left the other groups to track down our big guy again. When I jumped in this time I did look down straight away to see his enormous mouth less than 3m away. Yah! Boy did I swim my ass off to get out of the way (which you can see in the DVD we got).
All up we must have got about 8 swims with the whalesharks - more than I ever expected. And we got to see the largest whaleshark the tours had seen yet this season. We must have the luck!
We had some lunch and another snorkel in the afternoon before we were dropped back at Tantabiddi Bay completely exhausted. It wasn’t cheap ($335ea plus $60 for the DVD) but it was totally worth it. As Tim was saying, you never know how long they’ll continue to let you swim with them and particularly now with the new marina being built… Ningaloo Reef will be a different place in 5-10 years. So all you guys get over here to see this before you no longer can!
The next day we went out to “Oyster Stacks” in the Cape Range National Park the next day to get some more reef snorkelling in. There are about 6 designated areas where you can walk off the beach and start snorkelling. Some of these are drift snorkels where if you jump in at a certain spot the current takes you along through the snorkel route. We had heard that Oyster Stacks was probably the best of the lot at the moment so we headed there straight up. We snorkelled 20m away from the beach edge and we were amongst some amazing coral and fish straight away. We even swam with a turtle we found along the way.
This place is one of Australia’s best-kept secrets - you can see incredible marine life with a snorkel and flippers straight off the beach! Even at the famous Great Barrier Reef you’ve got to travel a good 2hours offshore to see the reef. With the Whalesharks, Manta Rays, turtles and other accessible marine life, Ningaloo Reef is an amazing place.
L

25-27 April - Karajini National Park (to 80-mile Beach)
We drove out along the Exmouth Road and turned left to continue up the North-western Highway. We filled up the car with $1.72/litre unleaded at the Nanturra Roadhouse. Our new record for the price of fuel this trip. The world’s “oil shock” is obviously not the best time to be travelling these distances. Today is also significant in that we turn East 5km past the roadhouse. The sun will set behind us for the remainder of this journey.
We drove through Tom Price via Paraburdoo to reach the Savannah camping area in the Karajini National Park. We paid the ($20!) fees to the camp manager and get some mud maps and information from him, ready for our exploring the next day.
Wed 26-Apr - Luckily we did not venture too far from our tent in the dark of night as there was a shear drop into a gorge only 100 metres behind us. There had been some recent rain so we could hear the sound of the waterfalls. We walked down the Joffre Falls track to find clear water cascading over smooth rocks and rush into pebble bottomed pools that sat in the bottom of steep, red rock canyon walls. We carefully climbed around the rocky edges of the rushing water and made our way to the base of Joffre Falls. We were standing in a deep basin as we watched the white water fall over the drop then spill from pool to pool until it flowed around us where we stood on a pebble island.
We returned to the campsite and then drove around to the Weano recreation area, taking Jenny (the Forrester) through some creek crossings on route. Once there we walked the short track to the Junction and Oxer lookouts. This is where 4 gorges meet at a junction where their water flows out through Red Gorge. We were looking down to the floor of these gorges 100 metres below and could peer through the narrow-cut canyon walls to the water-filled pools. This gave rise to an overwhelming urge for this canyoner to explore the area extensively. Alas, with no equipment I would be satisfied with a sample of the excitement through Hancock Gorge as we wandered along the canyon floor to the natural rock amphitheatre and clambered along the narrow section named “spider walk” through to “Kermit’s pool”. Sunlight could only just touch the water of the clear, green-tinted, deep pool. Our mini-adventure had given us an appetite so we returned to the car and ate lunch in the shaded picnic area near by.
We crossed the park, heading east and called into the architecturally aesthetic visitor’s centre that had good displays explaining the indigenous, pastoral and mining history significant to Karajini and the surrounding area. From there we continued on to Dale’s Gorge where we saw the shaded circular pool and swam below Fortescue Falls. We stayed the night at Dale’s campground($10).
Thursday 27-April - The recent rain, obvious by the amount of water we saw in the gorges, has allowed desert trees and shrubs to thrive and paint the surroundings a lush green which contrasts with the deep red hues of the plain’s sand and rising cliffs. As we drive from Karajini, the ground’s colour will change from a rusty red through crimson and almost to purple. This is evidence of the rich banded iron ore deposits below that caused the American iron ore prospector Tom Price’s remark to Lang Hancock, “We’d give our hind’s teeth just for the dust from this place”.
We headed for the North coast of WA then turn right through Port Headland and pushed on to 80-mile Beach Caravan Park. We had a grassed campsite with easy access to the beach. With the tide low we walked over 1km to reach the waters edge across the fine, grey sands of the tidal flats with the puddled water reflecting a silver light as an orange sun set over the water on a clear Horizon.
T

28-30 April - Broome
It was not a long drive from 80-mile Beach into Broome (less than 400km). We drove around the Cable Beach area (which is about 4km out from Broome town) to find a Caravan Park. Deciding between two, we chose the caravan park behind the huge resort complex on account of its shadey sites. It was a good choice as we were located near the large pool and could string up our hammock between the trees.
On very low tide, we were told, you can view the dinosaur footprints in the sunstone out at Gantheaume Point. The tide was -0.1m just before sunset so we drove out to the lighthouse and walked the rocks of the point to spot them. They were not hard to find with quite a few other dino-enthusiasts out there. These tracks were made 120 million years ago by a carnivorous Theropod species. We walked back to our car after watching the sunset passing a tour group that had stopped at the replica casts of the prints near the car park. They all took a photo (of the replica) and piled back on to the tour bus. Only 100m away were there real thing! Interestingly we learnt the Aboriginal story of this area involved a giant emu that made these prints in Dreamtime.
Saturday - Leanne went into town to look at Broome town and admire the pearls at Paspaley that is what made Broome famous. I found a wireless net café to continue our work in getting up to date in this blog. That afternoon we found a pub showing the Swans play Geelong live from Sydney. We pulled up our bar stools in view of the LCD screen at the Diver’s Tavern (just around the corner from us). We drank cold Cooper’s pale ale in the air-conditioned comfort of the bar, ordered up a platter of spare ribs (1kg!) to share and watched the Swans finally play with some of the blood ethos (that saw them win the premiership) to win the game. Can life get better than beer, ribs and your team winning!
Sunday was our rest day around the campsite, reading in the hammock and finalising the last of our catching up on the blog. We felt relaxed and up to date.
T

1-2 May - Crossing the Kimberly
We reluctantly packed up our camp in Broome early so that we could drive out along the Tourist Loop of the Gibb River Road to take in Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek. We called main roads before departing to check the road was open as the remainder of the Gibb was closed east of Lennard River.
We drove into Windjana Gorge National Park with some dark clouds overhead. We found the road south of here to Tunnel Creek and on to Fitzroy Crossing was now closed (only closed a few hours before we arrived). We would have to backtrack out toward Derby and drive the tar road to Fitzroy Crossing. Not too happy about the extra 300km of driving we decided to take a short walk into the gorge.
Our mood soon lifted as we were confronted with the high cliffs that lined the Lennard River. We walked a short way into the gorge, through the limestone rock that is evidence of this area once being part of a large coral reef in the sea. There are the distinct impressions of ancient sea creatures in the gorge walls as we walked passed them. Another ancient creature that is still very much alive in this gorge was the many freshwater crocodiles that sunned themselves on the sandy banks and lay motionless in the water. The stormy sky added to the atmosphere and we felt compensated for the long drive to Fitzroy Crossing.
Driving along the highway, long after the sun set and with the rapid, repetitive sound bugs hitting our windscreen like heavy rain drops, we saw the reason the road from Windjana was closed. There was a large fire burning across the plain and alongside the road in as we nervously drove through.
Monday (2-May) we continued across to Kununurra passing the Wolfe Creek crater turnoff and decidedly driving quickly past it. The red cliffs of the O’Donnell and Carr Boyd ranges rose either side of us as we drove the final 100km to Kununurra. We checked into the Ivanhoe 5-star Caravan Park which has lush grass campsites.
T

3 May - Kununurra
We awoke early to take a 6am scenic flight with Slingair over Lake Argyle, Lissadel Station, Texas Downs, the Purnululu National Park (Bungle Bungles) and the Argyle Diamond mine. We were in a small 6-seater Cessna 210 (only one engine - pistons, not jet - and a propeller). Early in the day is the best time to fly as there are less thermals and the air seems clearer. Our take off was smooth and we were quickly tracking along the Ord River and the massive expanse of Lake Argyle.
The Ord is the lifeblood to the lush, green, irrigated area around Kununurra that injects 50-60 million dollars into the local economy through supplying vegetables outside of their normal growing seasons to the rest of Australia including: pumpkins; melons and tropical fruits.
The lake is the largest man made lake in the Southern hemisphere and was created by the Argyle dam built 1987 to service the Argyle Diamond Mine. It’s area is 4-times larger than Sydney Harbour and holds up to 8-times the volume of water in peak wet season. If you take a boat out on to the very middle of the lake, you will not see any land.
Flying over the two stations, you could see why they now use helicopters to muster the cattle. This would have been tough droving country, especially through the rough ranges of Texas Downs (so-called because its boundary lines resemble the USA state of Texas).
We then came across the distinct beehive domes in the Purnulu National Park known as the Bungle Bungles. Their black stripes (caused by an alga on the sandstone face) were distinct from 800m up in the air. The Cessna was taken through steep banks to complete a figure-8 loop that allowed us to see down into the Piccaninny, Whistling and Deep Gorges on the western side of the park. The unique effect of the beehive domes is caused by the combination of water erosion and the prevailing desert wind (from the Tanami Desert) erosion on the south-eastern face of the ancient mountain range.
Tracking north on our flight plan, we flew over the Argyle Diamond Mine, which is the richest diamond, mine in the world. At its peak production period in the mid 90’s, it was pulling out 20kg of diamonds per day. Today it has dropped to be 12kg. The open cut is now 2km long by 1km wide and over 500m deep. The aerodrome runway strip built nearby can handle a 737 and sits on about $20 million worth in diamond (a big surveyor stuff-up). The mine was reputedly found by accident when some geologists, who went fishing up the creek for barra, noticed a diamond sticking out the side of a termite mound. (“Bugger the Barra”, they said).
We headed out to the recommended Bara Bara café, where we drank ice-cold mango smoothies in tranquil surrounds, reading the paper. After lunch, we took a walk through the very small Mirima National Park close to town. That night we headed to the tavern for the prized local catch: Barramundi done 3 different ways. At least we knew it would be fresh.
T

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