From Broome to Hamelin Pool

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Hello and welcome to a new installment of my blog. It’s been a while and to say we’ve seen a lot in the mean time would be to say that Australia is quite large. Because of that, I’ll split the trip into two parts and make a separate entry for the second part.

To take you back to where I left off last time, we had just finished 6 weeks travelling from Port Douglas in North Queensland to Broome in North West Australia. Our companions for the trip, Natalie and Manu, had left for Adelaide and France respectively and we were awaiting the arrival of Roy, one of my friends from back home.

I picked Roy up at the Airport (a daunting three minute drive from our hostel) on the 29th of November and we set out two days later after some last minute repair work to Janine’s spine by the chiropractor. Although we were to head down the coast eventually, we made a detour at the behest of a couple we’d met in Derby. About 200km above Broome, by way of a dirtroad, lies Cape Leveque. Our trip there was somewhat epic as we were overtaken by a large thunderstorm, complete with torrential rain, turning the road into a river in mere minutes. Luckily, by the time we cleared the storm and were on the last 25 bitumen kilometers north, we had left the bad weather behind. Cape Leveque is perhaps the most beautiful spot I have camped in so far in Australia. Due to the late time of year we were able to stay in a little palm-covered hut on the beach (and when I say on the beach I mean exactly that: It was nestled in between the dunes with a view of the beach and the ocean) for an altogether reasonable 40 dollars a night. We stayed two nights, enjoying the majestic scenery. This wasn’t the Dutch-analogue sandy-beach-lined-with-dunes that Broome has to offer, but a glorious expanse of yellow sand, covered in innumerable shells of tropical diversity and interspersed with rock formations colored different shades of crimson. The sunsets were equally stunning, assisted by the gently undulating landscape which was covered in leafy trees -palm and otherwise— and also played host to a picturesque lighthouse. At night we were surrounded by thunderstorms which are an impressive sight in the darkness. Lucky for us, the sky above our heads remained clear. So we swam, collected shells and walked up and down the beach in search of a reef we never found. I spotted queensfish and trevally in the shallows but failed to get close enough to spear any.

We were loathe to move on from paradise but had to get down to Perth eventually so we went back to Broome and started our journey down the coast after resupplying there. The highway in North-WA runs (I can’t say winds because bends in the road are almost as rare as interesting sights along it) through bleak, dry and barren looking bushland. Where other roads were at least blessed by the occasional roadkill and thus livened up by the birds of prey these attract, here there was only the never ending sight of dry shrub. Just high enough to keep anything more than a few meters away from the road out of sight; just low enough to avoid being trees. Really, for most of the way down, driving was prolonged torture. However, the coastline makes all this hardship worthwhile in every respect. Varying from violent and breathtaking to peaceful and equally breathtaking, the whole coastline is just, well… breathtaking.

We started off in Port Stephen where we walked through mangrove covered coastline at sunset and visited a very strange privately owned bird sanctuary the next morning. Their absolute star attraction was Old Jack, a long-billed Corella who was no longer long-billed, I assume because of age; he really did look ancient. He would bob up and down making pretty noises and covering his head with a wing before launching himself at unsuspecting fingers and heads with primeval force. We entertained ourselves for ages making him go through his strange act. Here we also saw a frilled lizard up close. We’d seen a few on the road up to Cape Leveque, flushed out by the rain, but they were always far away, running away from us in their peculiar fashion: on their hind legs like mini T-rexes. When agitated, they can flare out the folds of skin around their neck to ward of predators. We didn’t manage to agitate it into doing that; it was content trying to hide from us by becoming one with a tree and employing jedi mind tricks.

Next stop was 80 mile beach. Although the beach is known—apart from being 80 miles long of course—for its stock of shells, we found the shells very dull and lacking the variation of the ones in Cape Leveque where we found cone shells and all manner of colorful undersea constructions. The fishing was supposedly very good though, so we set about catching some dinner. Just a short while into this, Janine and Roy spotted a massive turtle on the beach. It was making its way, ever so slowly and laboriously, back to the sea after depositing some eggs in the dunes. During our whole stay on the west coast it was turtle nesting season and although we saw scores of them in the water, we only ever saw this one on land as they usually go about the crawling back into the sea bit during the night. However, this one was out in broad daylight and it was huge. A loggerhead turtle, the biggest of the three species found in Australia, and a big one at that.

Next came Cape Karaudron, a small peninsula national park with no facilities but a very interesting ranger who was quick to inform us how many great species of edible fish populated the waters. The next day when we told him we’d spotted a school shark he exclaimed “Why didn’t you spear it?”. They were, apparently, great eating; something we later found out for ourselves, but I’ll get to that. We went snorkeling here but visibility was poor and we decided to go fishing instead. Roy caught his first fish, a honey-comb cod, and I caught two nice emperors of some form or other (even the ranger wasn’t sure) for dinner. Now there is one marked difference between our trip so far and the bit down the west coast: the wind. Almost without fail it was windy going on stormy which invariably leads to all kinds of trouble when you’re camping. On the whole it wasn’t too bad save for a few nights here and there, Cape Karaudron being here, or there, whichever you prefer.

After two nights we went on down the coast, to Port Hedland . The whole area from here down as far as Dampier and even a little further, is pretty heavily industrialized. As a result, the landscape is not really nice. Because it’s quite flat you can see the factories and refineries from a long distance away. The 70+ car freight trains do little to assuage the strong industrial character. All this means is that you have to look a bit harder for the hidden gems that are nestled along the coastline. Port Hedland is not one of these gems. Whatever you do, never, ever, go to Port Hedland. It is the bleakest, most inhospitable place in the whole universe. I could honestly not devise a torture greater than living there. Their main industries are salt and iron ore mining, which should tell you something. The air is foggy from the iron ore which is blown from big piles and open railway cars by the relentless wind while the ground is covered in murky pools surrounded by crystallized salt like some kind of heat resistant ice. On a more personal note, I managed to get stung by a catfish here. Only a small cut, maybe a centimeter long on my finger, but I’ve not been in that much pain for a long time. A dull, throbbing pain which sinks into the brain and keeps you moving around and fidgeting to distract yourself. Even painkillers couldn’t ward it off. It took me hours to fall asleep at night and that was already many hours after I’d been stung. Later I learnt that you can destabilize the poison by sticking your hand in hot water, something that Roy had actually suggested but I didn’t dare try. I’d put ice on it and that felt like sticking my hand directly into a campfire so I didn’t want to find out what hot water would feel like. Live and learn. Kids, stay away from estuarine catfish, they are evil!

We went on to Point Samson, which was a lot more idyllic, where we had our first reasonable snorkeling experience although the visibility was still very poor. We saw a pod of dolphins just in the water in front of the beach. I tried my hand at spearfishing for the first time and even managed to spear a rather good sized dart, somewhere in the 50cm region, but it managed to wriggle its way off the spear, breaking the tip in the process. After that I reverted to normal fishing for the rest of the day.

In Dampier we camped on the beach next to an area with hundreds of thousands of rockpaintings. Unlike the ones in say Kakadu, these aren’t done in caves (there aren’t any) but cover the surface of a large number of the rocks which lie everywhere in big piles.

After some nights in less interesting areas were finally arrived at the Holy Grail of the west coast: Ningaloo Reef. It runs a very long way along the coast, much like the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast and in very similar fashion only a small part of it is really worth seeing. This is the bit that runs from Exmouth in the north to Coral Bay in the south. Cape Range National Park offers the best place to view the reef and it is just 40km away from Exmouth. After gathering some intel and stocking up on squid and some tackle, we drove on to the park with all haste, eager to jump into the water. When we got there, however, it was late afternoon, cold and the wind was blowing about 25-30 knots (50 km/hr or so). Nobody else was in the water so instead of diving straight in we decided to wait for the next day and went fishing instead. We managed a large number of North-West Snapper (Spangled Emperor) but with a size limit of 45cm on them it’s hard to find a keeper, especially since there are massive schools of the smaller size to gobble up your bait or lure. Still, wrestling with a 30-35cm snapper is nothing to turn your nose up at.

The next morning we grabbed our snorkeling gear and headed down to the first spot. The biggest -and, in my opinion, only— benefit Ningaloo has over the GBR is that it’s right in front of shore. You can literally walk down the beach, put your gear on and swim out on the reef. Which is exactly what we did. And boy, was it beautiful. Damselfish, clownfish, parrotfish, butterfly fish, snapper, nanigay, surgeonfish, pilot fish (the species here is also called Picasso fish because of the unique lines and bands of color on its body), whiting, stingray, lagoon ray, shovel-nose ray (or shovel-nose shark if you’re so inclined), eagle ray, white-tip reef shark, black-tip reef shark, grey reef shark, trumpet fish, flute-mouth fish and dozens of species that I don’t know the name of all float, glide and swim above a great variety of coral. We didn’t see all of these that first day but in the following days we went to all of the different snorkel sites in the morning and every spot was varied and interesting. Most of the snorkeling at Ningaloo is best done on the high tide as the reef is very shallow, to the point where you can stick your hand out and touch it below you while you’re on the surface. Mornings are likewise better because the wind is usually still blowing offshore at that time which makes it a lot more comfortable. Even so, snorkeling in water of around 20 degrees is a bone-chilling experience, especially after the 24-26 degrees of the GBR, and I was happy that I had bought a wetsuit in Mackay.

I was pretty desperate to see a shark and was rewarded on the third day when we went to Oyster Stacks. While swimming off towards the sides where there weren’t so many people (by many I mean six or seven, Ningaloo is not a very busy destination) Janine and I spotted a pair of black-tip reef sharks. They were inquisitive and kept coming back for closer looks. To see a shark swim through the water like that is a beautiful thing, they really are the ultimate underwater hunters. Later that day at another spot Roy spotted another two black-tips, I found a white-tip in a cave and a pair of wobbegong (a strange primeval shark with a beautiful red and yellow facetted body coloring) in another cave.

During the afternoons and evenings we usually went fishing and caught all manner of things. I even managed to catch two of the little Picasso pilot fish. As a result, lunch and dinner consisted of fresh fish (yes, I know. A terrible burden).On the first day Janine caught her first fish, a nice trevally, which we had for lunch together with one of my biggest fish to date, a 58cm slate bream. In the evening Roy caught our first and only legal Spangled Emperor at 47cm. I saw the fillets here in the shop the other day for $45 a kg, so that was a pretty good catch!

The next day we caught seven or eight big blue groper, all above the 50cm mark, keeping only one for dinner (very good) along with a big dart which wasn’t nearly as appetizing. On the whole I would have to say that the trevally (especially the golden) is still my favorite because it has somewhat more flavor, all the others (barramundi, groper, etc) are variations on the same theme of flaky white-fish. For fish&chips, of course, that is all you need.

After four nights and five days it was time to leave this paradise behind. I would’ve been happy to stay another two weeks. You get used to not having any form of facility when you can jump into the ocean to snorkel for a an hour or two before spending the rest of the afternoon waist-deep in a living fish market.
We had planned to go down to Coral Bay by way of a dirt road instead of going back to Exmouth and driving on yet another highway but to do this we had to cross Yardie Creek, an estuarine inlet in the south of the park. It’s only crossable at low tide and even then only at very low tides. However, at the best of times it can be tricky as the sand is soft and treacherous. Basically, you have to let your tires down a lot and hope you don’t get stuck. When we were there the afternoon high tide was something like 70cm, which was way too deep to attempt the crossing and we didn’t really want to wait for the morning low of 18cm. Since we can’t easily inflate the tires once we deflate them (takes ages with my cheap compressor) and it was still 150km or so to Coral Bay, we decided to take the easy way out and go by way of Exmouth.

Coral Bay is a nice and very small town at the south end of the reef. It’s the place where people from Perth come if they go to Ningaloo and don’t have the time to drive all the way around. By all means if you can’t spare the time, stop here, but it’s nothing compared to Cape Range NP, at least not the shore-based snorkeling. Luckily there are tour operators aplenty who can take you out to nice parts of the reef from Coral Bay. Since we all really wanted to swim with Manta Rays, Roy offered to take us out on one of the boats. The trip was well worth it. Three stops at various snorkel spots and in between they hunt for the giant elusive rays. Ningaloo is one of only a few places in the world that has a resident population of these magnificent animals and because it is so shallow, it is the only place where you can be pretty much guaranteed to find them. The weather wasn’t helping with the wind whipping up quite a chop on the surface, but between two boats and the sight-seeing airplane up above we were dropped onto feeding Manta Rays in short order. That’s right, Rays. Plural. No less than four of them were feeding below us, doing crazy loopings as they gobbled up their food. They’re quite particular about what they eat, not just any plankton will do, so they feed in certain areas before zooming off a score of meters at high speed and starting their crazy tumbling again. I can tell you it was a pretty amazing sight and these had a wingspan of ‘only’ around 3 to 4 meters. They can get twice as big again which is simply mindboggling.

Having done Ningaloo and seen that it definitely was good, we didn’t rest but headed south towards the first big town you hit on your way down the coast: Carnarvon. Nothing much to report there. Everyone says it’s a shithole but it didn’t look too bad to me. We didn’t stay in town but headed 80km up the coast to Quobba to see the resident blowholes. The coastline at Quobba is proper west coast violence, gansta style. Waves are crashing, the sea is churning like a boiling cauldron; all kinds of cool clichés apply. Seeing a big turtle swim calmly through this maelstrom without getting smashed to bits on the rocks is quite humbling; we wouldn’t last twenty seconds in there. When the sea pushes the water up through underwater caves, it comes spouting out of rocks on the surface like a fountain. Some of these are quite high and impressive, a little like a recurring geyser. We kept on driving down a sandy road for a bit too far and almost couldn’t get back up again, the car kept getting stuck halfway and it took a lot of digging, scraping and pushing to get it over the top, minus some 20psi of pressure from the tires. We stayed the night at a campground on a nearby station where I rescued a goat that had gotten its head stuck in a fence. They’re really ungrateful creatures; it just ran off without thanking me! At a spot about twenty miles straight off the coast from here the Australians suffered their biggest and only major naval defeat in WWII. HMAS Sydney, a light cruiser, was sunk with 645 hands by the much smaller German merchant raider HSK Kormoran on the 19th of November 1941. According to the story the Germans told (there were no Australian survivors) they were trying to sneak by the Sydney by flying a Dutch flag. When the Australian ship closed to investigate, not expecting a battle, they sank her but not before taking so much damage they too were forced to abandon ship. There are many memorials all over Australia to commemorate the event; the biggest and most impressive of these is probably the one in Geraldton.

Further south though the bush to the second most famous bit of the WA coast: Shark Bay, a world heritage area which contains the world’s largest single population of Dugongs (sea-cows). The marine park is also a breeding ground for sharks and a great number of other species. Because of its geographical position, Shark Bay forms the south end of the habitat of the northern WA fish species while at the same time encompassing the northern end of the habitat of the southern WA fish species. This also explains the diversity of species found on Ningaloo which again is a sheltered breading ground very close to Shark Bay.

Before driving out onto the peninsula which houses Denham, Monkey Mia and the Francois Peron NP—the main attractions of Shark Bay— we had to make one stop. About 50km into the Shark Bay Area lies Hamelin Pool. Those of you who have read Bill Bryson’s ‘Down Under’ (or ‘In A Sunburnt Country’ depending on the edition) might recall the place. Those who haven’t read it should do so as soon as they finish with this blog, it is eminently worth your time. Hamelin Pool was once home to a telegraph station which relayed messages from the south to the north where they were eventually passed on to Asia and even further down the line, one assumes, to England. It has also been home to a very important little life form for hundreds of millions of years before that and unlike the telegraph station, which has been turned into a museum, the humble stromatolites still carry on their work.

To the casual observer, stromatolites are possibly the most boring thing on earth. They make snails look like prowling tigers. They are, basically, living rocks. They are also some of the reason that I am sitting here typing this. And equally the reason you are sitting there reading this, in case that wasn’t self explanatory. No, they did not invent the computer. What they did, is make the atmosphere suitable for the evolution of life.

Billions of years ago (somewhere between two and four), stromatolites covered most of the surface of the earth, which was of course almost entirely under water at that time. They are formed by cyanobacteria, which are single-celled blue-green bacteria. They create oxygen by means of photosynthesis, much like the algae and plants of today. This process creates sediment which is trapped in the sticky layer the bacteria live in, along with sediment from the ocean, where it is cemented into place by calcium-carbonate to form the actual rocks. Fossilized remains of these stromatolites have been found all over the world for as long as archeology can remember but the discovery of live stromatolites is relatively recent. The ones in Hamelin Pool were the first to be discovered and that wasn’t until 1956. Their hard work was mostly taken over from five hundred million years ago by green algae and evolution has, by and large, passed them by. In that respect (as, I suspect, in many others) they are not unlike George W. Bush. The modern ocean is filled with too many predators for them to survive for very long and because they grow at a decidedly unhurried pace, they are slow to recover from being damaged. To this day, the stromatolite mats in Hamelin Pool show tracks made by camel-drawn carts in the late 19th and early 20th century and it will take many more years for those scars to be fully healed. However, unlike the ocean at large, Hamelin Pool is largely sheltered by a sandbank some twenty kilometers out which creates a large, shallow body of water behind it. Water evaporates from this basin which increases the salinity; Hamelin Pool water is up to three times as salty as the ocean outside. Doesn’t bother the stromatolites but it deters all but the hardiest creatures which creates a safe-haven for the cyanobacteria to photosynthesize away in, all the while cementing their rock sculptures millimeter by painstaking millimeter.

Here ends part one of my story about our trials and tribulations on Australia’s west coast. Tune in next week for at least two more interesting facts about Hamelin Pool, a trip on an ex-Americas Cup winning catamaran, an episode of Shark-hunter, a trip outside Australia including an audience with a real life Prince and an update on our life in Perth. I hope you enjoyed this so far, I’ve definitely enjoyed reliving it all for you.

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Comments

[Denise & Paul]

Thanks
Fabulously entertaining, as always. Saw your folks over Christmas and they were very well, apart from exibiting signs of good-humoured resignation to your staying in Oz for another year. Hope you can swing it... Look forward to chapter II