New Norcia, Perth, Fremantle 29 - 31 October 2013

After the excitement of the Pinnacles, it was onwards towards Perth with a stopover in New Norcia. New Norcia is a monastic community which was established by the Benedictine order of monks in 1847 and has a strong Spanish influence. The monks still run things today, producing and selling bakery products, herbal infusions, wine and religious paraphernalia etc

Well, Geraldton may have been a bit of a practice run, but Perth really is the big smoke! Nearly as many cars on the road as Cranbourne, with five zillion traffic lights. This was always going to be a service stop for the truck, but we also had to organize a replacement shock for the camper :-( The seal had gone on one of our big red Pedders. Unfortunately we could only get this done on our second day in town, so we had to set up for the first night only to pack it all away again and take everything to the Pedders shop the next morning. Both Pedders and Aussie Swag were great help with organizing this, but Murphy had his part to play as well when the replacement shocker missed the delivery truck from the warehouse and had to be sent over in a second run, which added another wasted hour to our day.
Drove out to Freo to see the sights. I really wanted to have a look at the Duyfken which is a reproduction of a 16th century Dutch ship of exploration. It was built in Fremantle and is reputably the most accurate reproduction of one of these ships anywhere in the world. The thing is tiny when you think that the original sailed around the world. It is only 24 metres long. Glad I'm not a 16th century sailor!!!

Typically, we arrived at 3:30 and the tours stopped at 3:00. Happily however, the ship is moored right next to the Little Creatures brewery. Guess where the rest of the afternoon and evening was spent :)

Next day it was service time for the Patrol. I had arranged for this to be done as close to the city as possible and we dropped the truck in and walked into town for some serious retail therapy. I managed to find Perth Hobbies and invested in some new plastic, while Hazel picked up some clothes and a manicure. All very civilized. After a full day walking the streets and malls of the CBD in the 36 degree heat we had just about made it back to the mechanics when my mobile rang. It seemed that Murphy had come to town with us as the hoist which our truck was on was refusing to come down! We were leaving the next morning, so this was problematic to say the least. Anyway, the manager was very good at customer service, and offered us the use of a loan car straight away, and informed us that a hoist technician was on his way and that they hoped to have everything fixed by morning. Biggest problem was that all our booze was stuck inside the fridge in the back of the Patrol and we couldn't get the back doors open wide enough to extract any of it while it was up in the air.





Anyway, almost as soon as had we made it back to camp, we received a call to say that the hoist was fixed and we could collect the Patrol, so back into town again..... I had a look at the hoist in question when I got there and it is rated at 2.5 tonne. The Patrol weighs 2.4t empty!
Wonder why it had problems????

Found another candidate for the coolest rig comp. It may be slightly smaller than the Pilbra Princess, but it's way cool:

Cevantes 27 - 28 October 2013

After a refreshingly urban coffee along the Geraldton foreshore we skipped town and headed further down the coast to Cervantes. We have definitely left the Red Centre behind at last with the landscape dominated y whiter than white lime-sand dunes.

It's so white, you would almost swear it was snow.

Stopped off at Central Greenough which was set up in the 1800s as an administration center for the agricultural area but was virtually abandoned as transport improvements made it largely redundant. Luckily the National Trust and WA Heritage have stepped in and are preserving the old buildings to provide a rather unique window on life back then.

From there it was full steam ahead for Cervantes which is a nice little sleepy coastal place. Very nice indeed, but the main attraction for those with limited time is the Pinnacles. These are a fairly amazing set of stone pillars which look a lot like the termite mounds you see in NT (not the dumpy ones typical of WA) which have been revealed by the erosion of overlying softer material and then shaped by the winds which never seem to stop blowing along this coast. Once again Ranger Bob (Jill in this case but they're all Bob to me) said we couldn't take the camper trailer an the Pinnacle viewing loop road, but before we (I) could crack it again, she told us that there was a walking trail, so we opted for this. The trail is 1.6km long, but to be honest we couldn't see the point in completing it once we had got to the first pinnacles. Amazing geology, yes. Capable of providing 1.6km of entertainment, no. Also, we couldn't see any reason why they wouldn't let us tow the Aussie Swag through either. The road was winding and narrow, but not so much that we would have had problems. I dunno, give a person a uniform and they want to control all the fun!

Geraldton 26 October 2013

Wow, we are definitely back in civilization! This is the biggest town we have been in since Darwin, and the CBD is probably bigger here. Geraldton is a city undergoing quite a lot of urban renewal and is turning into another Fremantle like seaside resort town. Very pretty along the foreshore and quite a lot of touristy type attractions. There is the old hospital/gaol/Information Center, a branch of the WA Museum with Batavia shipwreck stuff and the RSL Museum, but the only thing we really had time to visit was the HMAS Sydney Memorial. To be honest, the loss of the Sydney is done to death between Coral Bay and Geraldton, with memorial plaques seemingly around every second corner. This however is different. It is a truly poignant, inspiring, thought provoking and beautifully symbolic memorial to 645 Australian Navy Seamen who were lost when their ship sank after it's encounter with the Kormoran. The original memorial was built before the Sydney was rediscovered over 200km off the coast of Steep Point (the most westerly point on the Australian mainland). Since then a final section has been added to the memorial which shows the WA coast in marble surrounded by 644 seagulls (which traditionally represent the lost souls of sailors who die at sea) with the 645th seagull's wingtip embedded in the ocean at the point of the wreck site. So glad we came here.

Oh, almost forgot. On the way to Geraldton, we saw the pink lake at Port Gregory (it looked a lot pinker in real life than in the photos I took with my phone - yep, the marks on the lens of the camera are terminal and we will be buying a new one in Perth) and stopped off for a gander at the Lynton/Port Gregory Convict Hiring Station which is slowly being restored. This place was a major project in the 1850s but only lasted for six years before it was abandoned. Interestingly (well we thought it was interesting), Anna Leonowens who was the 'I' of the book/play/movie "The King and I" was the wife of the storekeeper here before she achieved/invented notoriety as the governess of the King of Siam's children.

Some serious zooming may be required...

Accommodation for up to 80 Ticket of Leave convicts awaiting hire

If you have convicts, you've got to have a gaol.

It really was pik.

Anna's story

Little shack built by the Governor of the Hiring Station (seems he left under a cloud of financial suspicion - go figure)

It really was pink...

Hamelin, Kalbarri 23 - 26 October

After a very nice counter meal at the Old Pub in Denham which was accompanied by a truly wonderful sky at sunset we headed off towards Kalbarri.

Latest candidate for the weirdest rig we've ever seen!

First stop however was virtually just down the road at Hamelin to see the stromatolites which are coral/rock like structures built up  by living blue-green bacteria. Apparently these things were one of the first forms of life in the ocean and can now only be found in the Bahamas, and a few places off the WA coast. They thrive at Hamelin as the snails which would normally eat them can't survive in the extremely salty water.






Not very exciting looking, but without them getting together and making oxygen back in the day, we wouldn't be around to be bored by their appearance and lack of movement now (they grow at a rate of less than a centimeter every 30 years.....).
Kalbarri turned out to be a very nice little seaside town, and we were initially a little miffed that we would only have one day there. In the end we wound up spending two full days relaxing and hitting the limited shops. The tourist drawcard for the place is the Kalbarri National Park with it's river gorges, Natures Window and Z Bend Lookout and we planned to check out all of these on our way out of town as we headed off to Geraldton, but the very polite Park Range wouldn't let us into the park with the camper in tow, so we (well the one of us who is not named Hazel (hard to believe I know)) cracked the shits and decided we didn't need to go there anyway - we've seen better gorges!
Just in case you haven't seen them either, here a couple of pictures I downloaded from the interweb:

Don't know any of these people...

Carnarvon, Denham 20 - 22 October 2013

Packed up all our flying monkeys and left the Windy City (Quobba) headed for Denham. The weather hasn't improved at all - still very bloody windy. Stopped in Carnarvon to do a little shopping. Just a quick stop. You know, arrived at around 10:00 and didn't get away until 3PM. Oh well, even though it was Sunday and nothing much was open, Carnarvon is a nice place, and we were totally zonked after a night of very little sleep due to the wind and constant flapping of canvas. While we were there we had a squizz at the mile long jetty (yep it's long), the jetty tram museum (yep, they used to run steam trains along the jetty to the ships), the Shearer's Hall of Fame (used to shear a lot of sheep in the area - actually we found this to be very interesting with lots of great old photos and personal storied from back in the day), and the HMAS Sydney/HSK Kormoran Museum which while providing no new information did have one of the two recovered lifeboats from the Kormoran.

It's a mile long

Kormoran Lifeboat

From Carnarvon we legged it to Denham/Shark Bay with plans to visit Monkey Mia and the Francois Peron National Park. We arrived just after six, which was when all the camp ground offices closed. The Blue Dolphin caravan park has a helpful sign in the office window suggesting that you call Barry to arrange matters after hours (even though someone was obviously living in the accommodation attached to the office and had all their doors and windows open & the lights on..... Anyway the call to Barry went straight to "Bazza's" voice mail, so I left him the relevant message, but after 20 minutes standing round in the wind and cold (yes it was still very bloody windy, and it must have been no warmer than 22 degrees - absolutely arctic conditions), we gave up and went to the Denham Seaside Tourist Village around the corner where the manager came straight outside from his dinner and sorted us out with a camper trailer friendly, sheltered (a relative term, but appreciated none the less) site. Big thumbs up!
Next morning after catching up on some of the boring bits that go with travel (a.k.a. laundry) we strolled into town to see the sights and go to the tourist information center to see what was what in Shark Bay. Well, I'm pretty certain that Bazza's brother was on duty. Useless as an ashtray on a parachute harness. So, we determined that we would just wing it and go wherever the mood took us, after a nice coffee and some lunch of course. Turned out that all the espresso machines in town were broken except for the one in the cafe that was closing early because the waitress had a doctor's appointment and was consequently only doing take away! In fairness, the doc only comes to town once a week, so it was only to be expected, but the timing could have been better. Got an inoffensive takeaway and headed back to camp. We then drove out to Eagle Bluff where we were presented with views of several sharks and a shovel nosed ray from the boardwalk. Then it was on to Shell Beach, which is made up entirely of....... wait for it........ shells.

Pearling Lugger as seen through a dirty lens

That's a shark down there

Eagle Bluff Boardwalk

Told you it was made of shells

When we finally staggered back into camp, our septuagenarian neighbors gave us a feed of whiting after they caught so many from their canoes in Little Lagoon, that they had no room in the freezer for any more cryo-vac'd fillets. Very tasty dinner.
Next morning it was up bright and early so we could catch the 08:00 dolphin feeding at Monkey Mia. NOT. We did head out to Monkey Mia, but didn't get there until around 10. Hey, we're on holidays and we slept in. The dolphins had already been fed twice by the time we had bought our entry passes and they only feed them three times a day at a maximum depending on how many times they come back into the resort. Luckily, they were feeling particularly hungry/greedy and swam back to the beech just as we got there. We have heard many people complaining how Monkey Mia is just too commercialized now and how this spoils the whole experience, but honestly it was great. Yes it's big businss with the resort raking in the money, and the Department of Environment and Conservation charge everyone an entry fee, but the setting is very picturesque and the dolphins are incredible in the way that they swim up to the shore and give all the people standing in the water a good looking at as if they were the tourists and the people were the wildlife show there for their entertainment. Well worth the drive! On top of all that, the coffee was great.









Selected 4WD in the Patrol and headed off to Francois Peron National Park for an afternoon of sand, sand, and more sand, with a couple of clay pans thrown in to ease the boredom :-) Great fun, and we stopped off at Big Lagoon (which looks like a great place to camp), Skipjack Point (where we just missed the Manta and Eagle Rays, but did see dolphins, some other big rays, and a shark swimming by) and Cape Peron. All very picture-skew.

Must clean the camera lens in the morning.....

Quobba Station and Blowholes 19 - 20 October

Well, we said a sad farewell to Coral Bay (which is now officially one of the best place we have been) this morning and headed further south towards Carnarvon. Plans were a little uncertain, as we wanted to go to the "Blowholes" too, and they were a 50k detour off the highway. We finally decided to spend the night at Quobba Station which is just past the Blowholes and the HMAS Sydney memorial, then head on to Carnarvon the next day. Problem solved.

Two significant events occurred during the drive: We recrossed the Tropic of Capricorn and now have no excuse for any troppo behavior; and it rained. Yes, rained! It took two full sweeps of the wipers to clear the windscreen. Thought we were going to have to break out the snorkeling gear for a moment there ;-)
Anyway, we arrived at the blowholes and they (along with the wind) were blowing. You could hear the air rushing out of the tunnels in the rocks ahead of the gusts of spray which shot spectacularly into the air. The coast here is quite impressive, with cliffs which drop down to shelves of rock reaching out into the ocean which the waves continually crash over. It reminded us of some of the areas along the Great Ocean Road. While we were watching the holes blowing their tops a very large pod of dolphins swam past - there must have been at least 50 of them.

Not Troppo anymore

Call that a blowhole??

Just down the road is a memorial to the HMAS Sydney which was lost with all hands after a battle with the German raider HSK Kormoran. Both ships sank as a result of the battle with 645 Australians and 81 Germans loosing their lives. Two lifeboats of survivors from the Kormoran landed near the memorial site.



 

From here it was on to Quobba Station for the night. This looks like a really nice place to stay and we spent some time on the beach here which is absolutely covered in sea shells, from the smallest little cones to clams the size of dinner plates, and chunks of broken coral. I had a more successful session of kite flying too after lashing out on a $19 'stunt kite' from Toyworld in Exmouth. Very relaxing.
We went back to the beach to watch a fairly uninspiring sunset due to cloud cover, but were pleasantly surprised to see even more dolphins swimming past beneath where we were standing in the dunes, which more than made up for it.
That, unfortunately was the end of the 'niceness' as the wind picked up even more and threatened to lift us all out of Kansas. Quite a wild night with not much sleeping and even more rain, but the camper, and both of us made it through in one piece, and just as importantly, in one place.