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Published: December 1st 2006
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After 3 months in one place it's finally time to do some real travelling again. My driving foot is itching for some highway time and my face will implode if i have to look at another grape vine; two good signs that it's time to move on. I will surely miss Busselton though as I've had a great time and met tons of great people. The girlfriend is back in Japan for another 3 weeks so that gives me plenty of time before I have to be back in Perth to pick her up. The following is my journalesque blog of the road trip.
Day One(sunday november the 26th): Busselton to Nannup,
I woke up early, feeling just a little rotten after the farewell party on the weekend, and planned to leave by noon. Of course that plan didn't work. After all the email exchanges, handshakes, hugs and a farewell lunch i managed to hit the highway around 3:00. Not too bad considering my first leg was only an hour. I hit Nannup and went to the black cockatoo(my hostel). This is probably the coolest hostel I've ever seen. Gary, the owner, was a library of advice and his place
Bealup Falls
I'm pretty sure that's spelled wrong...but it's close enough. was at the some time bizarre and comfortable. I'd like to return for a longer stay at some point as it seemed to be perfect for relaxation. The garden and back yard was spectacular as well. I tried to go for a hike in the late afternoon but gave up after 15 minutes because i was being molested by 15,437 flies at the same time. Spent the rest of the day with my feet up reading and chatting to some of the other eccentrics who live at the place.
Day Two: Nannup to Pemberton,
A day filled with big trees and sketchy roads. I had a nice sleep in at the black cockatoo (no checkout time was much appreciated) and headed south once again around noon. The scenery was infinitly better today than the day before as I moved away from the farms and into the mighty karri forests. The trees here are the third largest in the world and are an unusual shade of white. The further south i travelled, the more the trees seemed to tower over either side of the road. Population is very sparse as well as i could drive for 20 minutes or more
without seeing any other cars or a single building. The final radio station gave way on me after the first 10 minutes as well. I was beginning to feel like some kind of post apocalyptic highwayman until i hit the tiny hamlet of pemberton. The highlight of the day in pemberton was climbing the 61 metre tall Glouchester tree. Back in the day this tree was a fire lookout station. The station is still up there but to see it you have to climb up a series of metal spikes that surround the tree. It was something refreshingly dangerous to do after the usually coddled, family friendly, touristy attractions Australia is full of. For the evening i decided on finding a nice spot for a bit of camping. I picked the nearest one on my road atlas and headed off. What my road atlas failed to mention was that the one way dirt track was nearly a 4 wheel drive only route and my meager car barely made it through a few haggard spots.
Day Three: Pemberton to Denmark
After the sketchy drive back to the highway i headed southeast without any specific destination in mind. The coolest
Sketchy Road
It looks ok here, but this is the only place i felt safe enough to get out the camera. Also pictured, my beautiful origami on the dash. stop i made along the way today would have to be the tree top walk. This is a catwalk that is 40 metres above the ground and let's you get a view from the canopy of the forest. Also in the area was the "ancient empire" walking trail that went past several naturally hollowed out trees big enough to camp in. For the evening i settled down in a hostel in the tiny seaside community called denmark. Here i met a girl looking for a ride in the direction i was heading so I finally have a travelling companion for part of the trip. Petrol keeps getting more and more expensive the further from civilization i get so it's nice to cut the budget in half. My travelling companion, sina, is from denmark. Not the town we met in but the country. Quite the unusual coincidence i thought. Another interesting fact about Sina, she's the first person I've met who has been bitten by a zebra.
Day Four: Denmark to Albany
A very short drive today. Just a little more than an hour even with a stop at a beach to crawl over rocks. We arrived in Albany
fairly early on and had most of the day to see some of the sights around the city. Albany is a fairly big place relative to the other towns in the region. It actually takes more than 5 minues to walk through the city centre. It is heavily touristed though, and rightly so as there are some nice scenic attractions within a 20 minute drive of the city. We took a trip out to Frenchman's bay to see the apparently amazing blowholes. I'm sure when there working it is great but unfortunately all we saw was a crack in the rock with gusts of wind blowing out of them. The second stop was a lookout with some unique coastal formations called the gap and the natural bridge. They were a lot less dissapointing. The pictures of these places speak for themselves. The rest of the day was spent checking out the old military fortress on top of one of the lookout hills in the city. Albany was the staging ground for the troops heading of to war during ww1 and ww2. A lot of the old military fort and massive cannons are still in place. A free BBQ and a
movie rounded out the rest of this relazed day,
Day Five: Albany to Esperence
The most ambitious day yet. I think i invented a new version of the biathlon. 10 km of difficult hiking combined with 500 kilometres of driving. Sina and I met an Australian guy named Karl the night before who we gave a ride up north into the two small mountain ranges. They are approximately 100 kilometres inland and seem out of place amongst the endless flatlands that surround them. The first range is the Porongurup range. As far as mountain ranges go I would classify them more as mid sized hills, but who am I to disagree with the locals. It's apparently the oldest mountain range in the world, which was formed over a billion years ago. We did a fairly simple hike here with a great payoff at the end. The castle rock trail is an hour and a half round trip and takes you to see some bizarre rock formations. The balancing rock pictured below just makes no sense to the eye. Castle rock itself was also very impressive and the views were spectacular. After the easy hike I was prepared for
something a little more challenging. We drove north another 50 km to the sterling ranges which look a lot more like real mountains to me. The tallest mountain in this small range is called bluff knoll and can be reached by a painfully steep 3 and a half hour hiking trail. The arduous climb was well worth the view, which is probably second to none in Australia. The mountains look like waves sailing off into the distance and the vertical drop below you at the summit is exhilerating. The Flat farmland to the north was unusual to see as well contrasting against the sudden rise of the mountain range. Finishing this hike gave us just enough time to make it to Esperence going the back country route. We dropped Karl off at a caravan park that he wanted to stay at and headed north to meet up with a highway to take us to Esperence. This portion of the highway was very far off the beaten tourist trail. The region is called the wheat belt and looked disturbingly similar to the Canadian prairies. It was fun travelling through an area that you wouldn't find in any tourism guide book. The
Fire lookout
Me looking remarkably similar to the haggard fire lookout men of yore. road was almost completely empty of any other traffic except for the occasional 25 metre long road train. The drive was fun but i do not recommend driving for 4 hours strait after 4 hours of steep hiking. All's well that ends well though as we arrived in Esperence before the sunset.
That brings me more or less up to date with today. Today is just a relaxation day as my body needs some recovery time. I'm thinking I deserve a BBQ on the beach if the weather cooperates. The next stop is Kalgoorlie which is 400 kilometres to the north. Should be an interesting trip as it will be my first taste of the outback. I'll be posting again soon...
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aunt k
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So, are thety Karri trees then?
So Australia has giant trees too eh? I assume they are Karri trees, I'm going to google that to find out for sure. The weather here has been pretty awful, and the Oiler's are just as bad as we all feared they would be. Damn!! Anyway, at least you're having fun.