Albany

Albany, while cold and windy, is a beautiful place. We are staying in a great little caravan park beside the beach at Emu Beach and walked around to a fish shop last night for a feed of snapper, salt and pepper calamari and chips for two for the princely sum of $ 28. Today has been jam packed with sightseeing, first to the Whaling station where we spent several hours (photo of old whaling vessel), before visiting the memorial to the light horsemen of WW1 (photo). I thought you might be interested in this, Mum. The monument is on the top of Mt Clarence which looks out over Albany with Princess Royal Harbour and King George Sound in the background. It is quite impressive, standing over 10 metres high. Then we took in some coastal sites including the natural arch (photo).

The wildflowers  are still prolific even in these windswept coastal areas (photo), and the coastal views are also intriguing (photo).

Margaret River

From Perth we traveled to Margaret River trying to escape the showers, wind and cold cold temperatures that were starting to become unpleasant. Surprisingly the weather improved a little, and we started to acclimatise to the lower temperatures. The coldest and windiest part of the year down here is September/ October, lucky us having spent so much time in the warmer climes up north.

Margaret River is a lush green farmland interspersed with tall timber forests and carpets of wildflower. There are magnificent vineyards wall to wall, interspersed with delightful stopovers such as the chocolate factory, the cheese factory and the chocolate factory, etc.
 We met up with Linda {Sue's sister) and Ben for a few nights. We had a great time touring the wineries and sampling their wares, and  enjoyed some wonderful sidesplitting times spurred on by Ben,s wicked sense of humour which only improved after Geelong's success on Saturday (photo). Funnily enough, he was watching tele, in one of the luxury cabins at the caravan park because the TV in his didn't work,while the rest of us climbed the lighthouse at Cape Leuwin (see photo).

Spurred on by deteriorating weather we then hurried down to Albany where the weather was not too bad as long as you had a singlet, tee shirt, three jumpers and anorak to ward off the cold. A Hot chocolate for Sue and a flat white for myself were in order as we communicated with the working class back home.This was taken while he was talking to you Cathy!!! (photo).

Green Head to Perth

We stopped off at Green Head to break up our trip to Perth. This is an interesting stretch of coastline with myriads of fishermen's huts lining the coastline. How you could return to the city from these glorious locations is beyond comprehension. We walked and explored some of the local beaches such as Window Rock where we cooked up some snags and onion sandwiches one afternoon after visiting Lesueur National Park(photo).
One of the the proprietors of the caravan park, where we stayed, provided us with a mud map of this park guiding us to the locations of various orchards that she had located several days earlier. She has made a hobby of photographing the wild flowers, particularly the orchids. We spent a fascinating day searching through the magnificent wildflowers for which this park is so famous, successfully locating and admiring many of these rare and beautiful flowers (photo - spider orchid). We have been so lucky to be in Western Australia for one of the best wild flower exhibitions in many years, with the display of wild orchids enhanced by recent bush fires that has stimulated the blooming of these intriguing flower, which explains why we returned to the caravan park looking like chimney sweeps.
On the morning that we where scheduled to leave for Perth, with the water heating for a cup of tea, the stormy night erupted into a serious squall that ripped the annex from it's moorings causing pandemonium. We retrieved all the canvas, guy ropes and tent pegs, undamaged but wet and muddied, abandoned the concept of preparing breakfast and packed up and drove off to find a cafe down the road for a hot chocolate and scrambled egg breakfast.
The freezing  gale force winds whisked us down to Perth where we have seen the sights of Kings Park, Fremantle and a wind swept Cottesloe Beach (photo), enjoying the wonderful West Australian Aquarium, highly recommended, visiting the Maritime Museum, and doing the acclaimed tour of the Fremantle Prison, an absolutely a horrendous experience to be avoided at all costs. We enjoyed the sights at Kings Park, as well as great food, coffee and chai latte at the restaurant. We also found a great seafood shop when we got completely lost driving around the suburbs and dined on fresh prawns and oyster in the camp kitchen that evening, to the consternation of other caravan park inhabitants lusting over our lucky find.
We caught up with Linda & Ben (Sue's sister & brother-in-law, who are completing a lap of the park on the tar) while in Perth, and plan to spend a couple of days with them at Margaret River, which is where we are off to tomorrow to stock up our wine supplies and continue our journey, hopefully leaving the wet & windy weather of Perth behind us..

Kalbarri continued

Today we went on a walking and canoeing trip through the gorge with Davo, a down to earth Aussie with a dry wit and wonderful personality. We were still a liitle stiff from a three hour hike the day before but soon worked that off with a walk to a lookout to view where the river has formed a Z pattern following fault lines in the bedrock. See a photo of the two of us to prove we are on the same holiday.
After walking down into the gorge and having lunch we canoed down the gorge (photo) before climbing back out to the four wheel drive bus for the return trip over a tortuous rocky track.

We completed the day with a glass of wine with cheese and bickies contemplating the sunset over the inlet which seems somewhat reminiscent of the Alaskan waterways, as we imagine them, minus the snow (photo).

Kalbarri

The West Australian wildflowers are the best in many years due to the earlier rainfall. The roadside from Carnarvon to Kalbarri was a kaleidoscope  of every imaginable colour and hue stretching out from the road in every direction, and always different from hill to hill (photo). This is certainly a fascinating country. Coming into the Kalbarri National Park was even more stunning and we have greatly enjoyed our hiking trips into the Murchison Gorge that provides wonderful backdrops of towering sandstone cliffs framing the river below and clothed in a fabulous cover of wildflower (photo). Some of the sandstone formations are also very striking such as the one in the photo of Nature's Window.

14 Mile Beach

We have traveled from paradise to paradise every step of our trip, always reluctant to move on, only to find another beautiful part of Australia. Cape Range National Park (Ningaloo) was glorious and we stayed for a week.We snorkled once or twice a day at some unbelievable sites, watched whales from the hills, and lounged on the beaches. Even the abundant turtle population enjoy life along this stretch and are found at a number of locations frolicking in the shallows for up to 4 hours at a time. See photo of a couple of lovers at the beach.
Our next stop was at 14 Mile Beach at Warroora Station. What an unbelievable ocean frontage for a sheep station. We parked on the beach (see photo) so that we could walk straight down to the water for a swim in the crystal waters, or throw in a line for a fish (see photo). More snorkling, exploring and whale watching from the hills made for an unforgettable experience fueling the desire to return for a longer period in the future.

We have now moved on to Carnarvon where the seafood is great. Large sweet tiger prawns for lunch on the river bank, oysters as we write this blog, and Rankin Cod left over from Exmouth where the seafood was also terrific and consumed in quantity.

Exmouth & Cape Range National Park

From Karajini, we made a mad dash for the coast as we had booked into a caravan park at Ningaloo Lighthouse. This was yet another magic place sited just across the road from the beach where we spent an afternoon sipping wine on the sand hill watching the whales jumping, and again the next morning, more great exhibitions from the whales, and 20 or so dolphins fishing just offshore. See the photo from the lighthouse looking north over the caravan park and up the beach towards the defence communications towers.

We had d managed to book a spot in the Cape Range National Park the next day. These spots are as rare as hens (or golden trevally) teeth, but only for two nights. Once in it is then much easier to stay in the park as you can move to any vacant spots the next day. This was our ploy as we loved this location so much. We lashed out on some snorkeling equipment which we have put to good use in the pristine waters of Turquoise Bay on the incredible reef that is easily accessible from the beach. See the photo of Sue at this location all kitted up.

The camps are scattered along the beaches and only have a small number of sites where the campers all seem to get on well together, geting together for a happy hour each evening to discuss their activities and other experiences. See a photo of the first camp where we stayed.

Karajini National Park

From Millstream Chichester National Park (the names come from the two stations that were converted to national Parks when the pastoral leases expired), we headed further inland to Karajini NP. This has become very popular since a bitumen road was constructed to the main camping area at Dales Gorge, where we stayed. The road trip across was interesting as we had to wait some time to get through the pass at Hammersley Gorge because a road train had got caught on the jump up coming out of a tight bend at the top of the pass. When we eventually got through, we were amazed that road trains could get through at all - certainly wouldn't like to meet one and have to reverse all the way back out again.

Karajini is famous for its gorges but as the photos show, they are quite different from the ones we have experienced so far. About 500metres from our camp and 120 metres down into the gorge (and that far back up again, though it feels like much more) was Fern Pool - our bath tub for this camp. (photo). It supposedly has indigenous significance. We were told we should enter the water very quietly, take a mouth full of water and spray it out over the surface of the pool and introduce ourselves to the spirits. The aboriginal fellow who told us that also said that if they answered back to get the hell out of there.

Kristy and Jodie, Ric wanted to include the photo of me clambering around a rock wall, in spite of my fear of heights, to show you what I have been getting up to on this trip. I told him, you know me well, and would say - that's our mother. We have climbed, clambered, waded, swum and walked our way into and out of some of the most amazing gorges we have ever seen. David, Tim & Jo, I wanted to include the photo of Ric climbing out of Handrail Pool to show you what he was doing on his birthday.

Millstream Chichester National Park

From Cape Keraudren we continued on to Dampier as we had the car booked for an overdue service at Karratha. We stayed at the Dampier Transit Park on the shores of the port at Dampier, quite a pretty spot. That evening we dined at the Rio Tinto mess next door, boy can those burly miners put it away. We did our best to keep up as you could eat as much as you liked, but we retired defeated to listen to the sounds of Dampier. There were plenty of those!! Apart from the continious roar of the port loading facilities, the sound of the seemingly endless line of carriages being emptied one by one was relayed to us as each carriage in the line jerked forward one space and so on down the line to infinitum, all night. The next morning we headed back into Karratha and marvelled at the seventeen kilometre queue of Toyotas, each carrying only the driver, heading off to work at the mine in Dampier. 

We waited for the car to be serviced and were grateful to be on the road again to Millsream. We travelled via Robourne and found some of the most spectacular countryside consisting of vast plains of pale green spinifex stretching out through red earth plains to majestic red capped ranges. We camped at Crossing Pool (photo) next to a lovely water hole where we swam and canoed, and enjoyed a wonderfully social atmosphere with other campers in this small and intimate environment. We enjoyed visiting several gorges and swimming in the gorges (photo), but the spectacular display of wildflowers throughout this park will be remembered for a long time. The park has reportedly had the best rainfall in sixteen years and this has generated this wonderful display of colours (photo). We also had plenty of exercise, especially when we hiked the 12 klm return journey up the old camel road that was completed in the mid 19th century only to be replaced by a route with easier grades. The views were simply awesome.

Cape Leveque to Karratha

As we had to get to Karratha for the car to be serviced on 25^th August, we had to reluctantly end our stay at Gambanan, an indigenous community east of Cape Leveque. We had been out fishing with the locals, listened  to traditional stories of the area, and visited a pearl farm and a trochus hatchery. Ric had even tried his hand at traditional fishing – picking trevally up in your hands after the tide has gone out of the fish trap – where’s the sport in that? (Well let me tell you, those are very strong and wriggly.) He also caught a nice one trolling from the boat when we went out.

We stayed at Barn Hill Station the first night. Some of these far western stations have ocean frontages you wouldn’t believe. We drove along this gravel track and as we reached the coast we saw a long line of caravans and campers stretched along the water’s edge. When they run out of room, out comes the grader and clears a bit more along the shoreline to accommodate the extras. (photo).

The next day, we called in to Eighty Mile beach. It was low tide when we were there, so we saw this wide long expanse of exposed white beach covered in shells. Plenty of shell grit for the hens there Leonie. It was very windy.  (photo).

That night’s stop over was at Cape Keraudren – the southern extremity of 80 Mile Beach. It is looked after by a very laconic ranger – who hadn’t had a day off since 14^th March and who couldn’t get anything done because people kept coming in wanting to camp there – what a character! We would have liked to have spent a bit more time there and put the canoe in the creek that we camped at the mouth of. There were lots of fish jumping in the bay, chased by a large school of dolphins. At least they were getting a feed of the fish we would like to have a share of. Maybe next time!!  (photo)