Advertisement
Published: December 2nd 2005
Edit Blog Post
From Broome we travelled down and through the hell hole of Port Hedland, its got the longest ships, longest trains, biggest piles of salt and the most expensive campsites ever! We'd recommend it to anyone!!!
Then the real west coast adventure began, having armed ourselves with snorkels we headed to Exmouth, and Cape Range National park, including the Ningaloo Reef. We almost didnt make it due to an unfortunate incident of keys being locked inside Ronnie Ray which only a coat hanger could fix. (We have repeated this offense again and have subsequently got breaking into the car down to 10 mins!)
Saw Turquoise Bay where you swim from the beach to snorkel the reef which easily rivalled the Great Barrier Reef for colour, fish and reef. The Beach was also awesome Turquoise was definitely an apt description. The Ningaloo also stretched down as far as a very small town called Coral Bay (nice fish and chips!!) again amazing snorkelling straight off the beach. Inhabitants also included emus often seen grazing alongside the road. If anyone wonders property is going very cheaply in Exmouth, we think an investment and a half!
Following this more water fun in Monkey
Mia and the Dolphin Interactive Zone in the Shark Bay world heritage area, after the tour buses departed the dolphins became very friendly swimming around our feet see our close up photos!
We drove onto Kalbarri - You'll Love it! (the tourist info quotation) and very true with fresh fish bbq, when Ben realised his lifes dream of fishing for our dinner hence rod was purchased and his silouette was frequently seen hanging off rocks down the west coast of australia! With success I may add after a few barren days.
Prince Leonard himself showed us around his principality, The Hutt River Province, after stamping our passports in the post office, buying his currency, we visited his church, blessed previously by many faiths. The Church enclosed many commisioned art works depicting stories of Jesus along with disciples that had strangely familiar faces to him as they were his family and friends! He's an incredibly intelligent man having written papers for NASA, and the Vatican with loads of interesting stories, after a good yarn we left armed with a verbal invitation to the Hutts 40th anniversary celebrations in 2010.
After passing through the strange arrangement of sandstone in
the desert that is the Pinnacles, we arrived at Miriams house in Perth. (Ta Miriam for a good few days.) In Perth we saw sunset with beer at Cottesloe Beach, walked around Kings Park, went clubbing with miriams fellow doctors, and help construct their bbq in time for their party, a joke entitled 'How many Doctors does it take to build a bbq', would be fitting now!!!
Just below Perth is Fremantle, a lovely town with great fish and chips, ( again!) beer from Little Creatures, and ice cream from Cold Rock. Oh yes and a maximum security prison that shut in 1992, they offered great tours where we learnt about escape attempts and prison life.
Mandurah on the 12/11/05 is a momentous date the first catching of fish by Benjamin James Gould esq. mmmmm mmmmm mmmmmm
Another Dolphin experience followed in Bunbury at a similar conservation centre. Followed by 2 days in Busselton, which the longest jetty in the southern hemisphere arguably. We also went on a fab wine tour on our 2 year anniversary, handily getting a free bottle of wine because of said occasion. The wine was soooo nice we decided to stay in
Margaret River Wine Region for their festival over the next 4 days. Plus visiting the capes of Leeuwin and Naturaliste, plus grat beaches like Bunker bay. (see photos.)
From there we hit the south coast of Australia witnessing huge karri trees in Walpole, Pemberton and Denmark. Ben climbed the huge Gloucester tree (85m) and found Ryan Quintons name graffittied at the top.(A fellow ym rugby player.) We drove to wave rock after that, to see a rock that looks like a wave!!!
Esperance was our penultimate western oz stop again fishing, fantastic beaches in the Cape le Grand national park were seen. Our last stop was Eucla, half way across the Nullabor where they had the most magnificent sand dunes ever seen.
The Nullabor is a 1862km drive on straight roads through the desert. The longest straight was 143km!! We made it in 2 days!
Since then we've headed north along with Nadia and Jason a swiss couple we met in every place we stopped. Including underground camping in a cave in Coober Pedy, an opal mining town, which was used to film Mad Max.
In the last week we've been to Uluru and Kata Tjuta, (Ayers Rock and the Olgas.) They are awesome, we saw sunsets, and walked around each rock formations. We learnt so much about the Aboriginal Dreamtime Culture on a guided ranger walk and in the cultural centre it certainly changes your perspective. We bumped into Hannah Durrant in one of the resorts shops who Ben knows from home - small world, and her and her partner very kindly cooked us dinner.
What can you say about Kings Canyon - Windy!! A massive storm occured rippiong down trees narrowly missing Nadia and Jason, and sending tents and clothing flying. Our tent is a legend and held strongly throughout. We are now in Alice Springs and have just been to the West McDonnell ranges its now a nice town much different from when i was here before, and even has free pancakes on a sunday! Ben cured his need for food by eating minced lamb maybe a little under cooked and bringing it all back up again. 500kcal in minus 500kcal out equals poorly sick Ben. Who is much better now though.
We will write again before departing to Asia with more tales including those with Hines and Claire who fly in today, Hurrah.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.087s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0355s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Clare
non-member comment
Blindingly good time
Okay, am so jealous just now (with the exception of the food poisoning, glad you're okay now Ben,)that i am almost beside myself! Glad you guys are having ag reat time, pics look fab, can't wait to hear all about it when you're home (sorry to bring that up!). Take care and enjoy! Love Cx