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Published: February 25th 2011
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Ben & CerriThe 26th of January is more popularly known over this side of the world as Australia day, it’s basically an excuse to drink excessively into the night followed by a firework display... our kind of day! We spent our first Australia day with Sophie and her boyfriend Brendan up in Perth, having drinks and nibbles and playing on the old Nintendo Wii at their flat before heading out to watch the fireworks on Langley Park also joined by Laura and her boyfriend Brett who is a professional rugby player playing for the Western Force so technically joined by a mini celebrity! I’m not normally a firework fan but these proved to be quite a spectacular display (maybe it was the many beers I had consumed!), as the bright colours in the sky illuminated the swan river below and they also had fireworks shooting off the high rise buildings. After the fireworks we popped into a nearby hotel which Brad and Jane were staying at for the evening to show our faces and have another drink before making our way back to Sophie’s to retire for the night.
The following day was spent packing and preparing ourselves for the week ahead,
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Australia Day Celebrations as we were going on a little road trip of our own up Western Australia’s Coral Coast. This time we’d swapped the Citroen C2 aka “The Frog” Jane had lent us for her Nissan Patrol, which we equipped with a mattress in the back for sleeping purposes and a bungle of camping gear. We set off early the next morning as we had a long day driving ahead of us, over 900km to be precise. We headed north of Perth and continued for six hours until we arrived at the halfway point, a town called Geraldton driving past the Greenough Leaning tress on enroute which have been buffeted by the strong prevailing winds leaving the trunks to grow at a horizontal angle. At Geraldton we picked up a few camping bits like a mosquito net and a small gas canister for cooking, we refuelled on sandwiches and also refuelled the car before getting back on the road heading towards our destination, Monkey Mia. With twelve hours driving under our belt we arrived at the Shark Bay World Heritage site of Monkey Mia Resort. Its here that wild dolphins have been visiting the beach since the early 1960’s and every morning
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Smile for the camera! in the shallows of the water the dolphins are fed by the Department of Environment and Conservation. They are only given a couple of fish each, this is so the amazing and intriguing creatures don’t become dependent on being fed by humans and still go out and catch fish for themselves. We set up our bed in the back of the car for the night, leaving a couple of windows open to try and get some air circulating through the vehicle to keep us cool. After our first night’s sleep in the back of the Nissan we awoke at the crack of dawn, our idea to leave the windows open hadn’t really worked as all it seemed to do was invite in an army of mosquito’s who had decided to have a party by feasting on Cerri’s blood for the evening . . . they do seem to love her! First on the agenda for the day was the reason why we drove all this way, to see the dolphins. A large group of people had congregated on the beach front awaiting the dolphins morning feed, our fellow caravan club members had advised us to wear bright colours in the
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Exmouth Sunset hope of being picked out of the crowd. I sported a bright yellow t-shirt and Cerri went for a purple dress, unfortunately we didn’t get picked as the environmental officers couldn’t pick us out through the mass of Asian tourists. The crowd dispersed after the dolphins had been fed but we stayed around the area to take a few more photos. Ten minutes passed and once again the dolphins made their way to the shallows they were very hungry that day, this time there was only about twelve people watching and hoping to get picked to feed the dolphins so I fancied our chances. I was right as I got picked out of the crowd but being the true gentlemen I am, I let Cerri take my place as it was something she’d always wanted to do. Shortly after the excitement of seeing the dolphins in the wild and getting to feed them we found ourselves back on the road, as we had another 600km to go before we reached our next target, the town of Exmouth. On the journey further north we stopped off at Eagle Bluff and Shell Beach, this beach instead of sand has layers and layers
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Scuba Cerri of cockle shells which get up to ten metres deep in some places. As we headed further north it really gave us an idea of how vast Western Australia, as all we could see was nothingness in all directions. You could literally drive on the other side on the road for half an hour and not meet another car... not that we did mum and dad! One thing we found quite unnerving apart from braking down in the middle of nowhere, was overtaking the road trains. These road trains were trucks sometimes pulling a load up to 36metres long. On the drive up to Exmouth we also witnessed what can only be described as a mini tornado cross the road only metres in-front of us, it took us a while to work out what it actually was but as we got closer we knew to apply the brakes and let its sweep in front of us; it was pretty amazing! We made it safe and sound to Exmouth in the early hours of the evening spotting many emu’s on the way in and set up camp for the night after another long days driving. This time we left the boot
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Beautiful Ningaloo Reef of the car open attaching the mossie net around it keeping the little pests out but allowing a draft in, genius! The next morning we got up early, and made our way into the Cape Range National Park, spending the day down at Turquoise Bay. Our reason for coming to Turquoise Bay was to do some snorkelling on the Ningaloo Reef, here the reef starts just metres from the shore. We jumped straight in the water at one end of the beach and just let the drift float us down to the other end where you jump out on the sand bar. On our float we saw an array of fish and colourful coral it was like an underwater garden, as we floated along above the reef being carried by the current I suddenly saw something that was bigger than a fish and as my heart was fluttering and we moved along my worst fear became a reality... it was a 5 foot shark staring straight at us! There are two creatures on this earth I never want to come face to face with, the first being a crocodile and the second a shark. As I squeezed Cerri’s hand and
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There happy about the termite problem in W.A! we controlled ourselves from screaming out loud we just let the drift carry on taking us down the ocean, as he just seemed to stare at us for ages before slowly swimming away but always seemed to be keeping one eye of us and his expression looking like he was grinning! We sunbathed for a bit on the beach and having bought a cheap underwater camera earlier in the day, undeterred by our close encounter we decided to go for another snorkel to try and get some good snaps. This time it wasn’t just the one shark we saw it was three, the first one we saw obviously told his mates that lunch was served so they came back in force! I stupidly decided to try a swim after one to get a photo but to no avail, I don’t know what I was thinking! After that, not surprisingly we opted to stay out of the water for while even though we were pretty sure they were white tip reef sharks all the signs said that tiger sharks are also present. That evening we choose to try and see a creature a bit more friendly than a shark, as the
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Ningaloo Reef sun was setting we made our way to the Jurabi Turtle Centre. Although the Centre its self wasn’t running any tours that night we still decided to try and catch a glimpse of the loggerhead Sea Turtle as they lay their eggs around this time of year. We weren’t alone on the beach there was a nice family with us, we all sat patiently on the sand waiting for the sun to go down. As the final rays of daylight were extinguished from the sky we noticed a large boulder shape bobbing up and down on the sea, as the boulder came closer it was clear to see it was a massive turtle. A few minutes passed at it made its way up onto the sand, we all sat there in awe of the spectacular event that was about to unfold. It took the turtle ten minutes to get ten metres up the beach and as we were just about to watch one of nature’s greatest spectacles a person who I can only describe (without swearing!) as a complete idiot, strolled along the beach with a beer in one hand and a torch in the other and shined it straight
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Gwoonwardu Mia artwork in the turtles face! The poor thing was startled to say the least and within a few moments had scuttled back into the water never to be seen again. The husband of the family had to be held back by his wife, as he wanted to hit the idiot but I was quite happy to let Cerri go over a give him a mouthful! After the idiot gate crashed the turtle about to lay her eggs, we headed to a little spot to camp down by the beach for the night dodging about a hundred kangaroo’s on the way!!!
The next morning we awoke and squeezed in a few more sights around the Exmouth area before starting the southward part of our little road trip. We visited the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse, which offered sweeping views of the Cape and also had the remains of an old world war radar, then onto the Mildura Shipwreck which was a cattle ship that sank off the coast during a cyclone back in 1907. Today we were heading for Coral Bay, so made the short hour drive down from Exmouth taking in the views and the thousands of termite mounds that dotted the
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Good catch! landscape. Once we arrived we slapped on the sunscreen as it was a hog roasting 42 degrees and spent our day snorkelling, cooling off in the water and for once even I needed to find some shade! The water at Coral Bay was pretty special beautiful turquoise water only 6 inches deep for 20 metres then it dropped off to into the big blue coral ocean. . . where we did have another frightening underwater experience. Cerri was about a metre ahead of me snorkelling; we only had the one mask this day and were taking it in turns so I was bobbing around on the surface when suddenly Cerri sprang up and shouted in true Nemo fashion “Swim Away, swim away!!!!” she looked pretty spooked so we swam like the clappers to the shallow waters all the time I’m shouting “is it a shark?!?!?” when we finally caught our breathe Cerri explained that there was an evil looking big black fish coming straight for us with his lovely sharp pearly whites on show looking rather hungry! After that bit of drama we walked around to a nearby bay where there was meant to be a shark nursery but after
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Dinner is served speaking to a local they said that due to the cyclone that had happened the week earlier the sharks we’re a bit behind schedule and would be there the week after, to be honest me and Cerri were a little grateful as we’d had our fill of sharks for the time being . . . but we did get to feed a large group of Snapper that came into the shallows; you did have to bury your feet in the sand as they did like to nibble! After getting many rays we drove a little further south and spent the night in a roadside rest stop ready for our next day’s travelling. We set off the following morning and drove down to a place called Carnarvon; it had recently been badly hit by flooding so we wanted to go and visit as the town relies heavily on its tourism to survive. The effects of the flooding were still prominent but the town was doing a good job on getting back on track. We visited the Gwoonwardu Mia Aboriginal Centre to view some of their artwork before heading down to the famous one mile jetty, which is the longest jetty in
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Pink Lakes at Port Gregory the southern hemisphere and instead of the big blue surrounding it at the end it was the big brown instead due to the amount of mud caused by the flooding. After which we visited the unusual Western Australia Sheep Shearing Hall of Fame for a few comedy photo’s with lots of wool and tractors. From Carnarvon we continued our journey heading south into the Kalbarri National Park, we stopped off for lunch and some snaps at the Ross Graham Lookout then moved onto the Hawks Head where we stretched our legs by taking a walk down to the Murchison River which ends at the town of Kalbarri its self, which was where we would be spending the night. We booked into a campsite for the night as there was no free camping spots around the area, picked up some fish and chips for dinner and sat on the beach watching the sun going down whilst sipping on a bottle of wine. The day was capped off in style as we saw a dolphin swim by just as we were tucking into our dinner, only in Australia! In the morning we took in all Kalbarri had to offer by paying a
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Sleeping arrangements sorted! visit to what this place is most famous for... Pelican feeding! We listened and learned about the pelicans from a nice old man whilst he threw fish into the gathering crowd of pelicans around him. Afterwards we drove up to the Red Bluff Cliff tops to see the view of the coast line and unusual rock formations before heading down to Red Bluff beach itself for a couple of hours sunbathing. We left Kalbarri and continued along the road to Port Gregory where we marvelled at the Pink Lakes. The lakes are a crazy pink colour due to the Beta carotene which is in the soil and apparently is also what gives carrots their orange colour! Moving on we made a few more stops along the way to Jurien Bay, next stop being at some old convict ruins, then onto Western Australia’s most haunted house Oakabella Homestead but unfortunately the ghosts had gone away on holiday for the month of February so we weren’t able to go in. Nearby was Elephant hill, where with a squint and a little imagination the hill looking vaguely similar to an elephant lying down. We then stopped off back in Geraldton to view the
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Paddle power in Mandurah HMAS Sydney II Memorial which commemorates the loss of the Australian soldiers who met their fate in the world war II naval battle. We finally made it down to Jurien Bay where we had a nightmare trying to cook on our camping stove as the winds were particularly strong, I lost 4 packets of super noodles in my struggle with the wind but on the other-hand Cerri found it it extremely funny and the seagulls had a great dinner! We slept in a car park in a small nature reserve where we went to sleep watching kangaroo’s feeding on what would have been our bed side table and woke up the following morning with a herd of cows all around us! And that was the end of our West Coast road trip.
Back down in Mandurah we spent our last remaining days by paying a visit to an immigration agent to see if there was any news on our visa front, trying to stuff all our clothes back into our backpacks, visiting family, going for a final paddle in the kayaks with Jane and a farewell BBQ down at Mandurah Quay with the whole Aussie gang. We had a
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Our last picture in Mandurah great two months over in Western Australia and had a fantastic time with our families over here. A Big thank-you goes out to them for being our hosts and tour guides for us during our stay, we’ll hopefully see you all again soon!
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Carol
non-member comment
Glad you are both safe
Hi to you both, Just a quick note to say thanks for the update - what an adventure you are having. Mainly to say, we are all so relieved that you are in Australia, and not still in New Zealand - hope everyone you met over there are safe and well. Look forward to your next Blog, and keep safe. Love Carol & All