David and Enid's Travels

Sunset at Fraser Range salt lake

We washed the motorhome at Hopetoun this morning at a very new car/truck wash. We got most of the bugs off (there were a lot of dead locusts which we’d run into on our trip up north near Carnarvon.) However, we didn’t stay bug free for long, as we ran into many bees just shortly after we left town.

We cut across on the Jerdacuttup Road which the attendant at the caravan park told us had just been paved, and it was a good shortcut, saving us almost 50 kilometres on our way to Esperance. We bought some groceries, fuel, and ate lunch at Esperance, then headed north toward Norseman. Although there had been a very strong cross wind all morning from the north east, it began to die off later in the day, or we’d have had a pretty huge fuel bill as we were driving right into that direction in the afternoon.

From Norseman we drove east about 80 kilometres to the Fraser Range rest area where we are camped for the night. There were a lot of march flies (horseflies) when we arrived, but they disappeared as it cooled off in the evening. There was a very nice sunset over the salt pan of the dried up lake tonight. The wind has completely died tonight and it is very clear, cool and calm out. The stars are very bright in the pitch black sky, as there is no light here, not even moonlight, tonight.

Catastophic fire ban sign

Or first stop this morning was to photograph the “Catastrophic” fire sign.  We’ve seen these all over Australia, and have been amused at the fire category even higher than “extreme”.  This is the first one we’ve actually seen set at catastrophic, and we’re not sure if it was true, or if someone had just set it there.  It doesn’t really seem all that dry here right now.

We stopped at “Wave Rock” this morning, the most famous of the granite rocks in the South Western Australian wheatbelt.  It has been developed into a tourist park with a $7 admission fee per vehicle, but the rock has been left pretty much untouched from the mid 1920’s when they built a catchment wall around the top which filled a dam used for drinking water.  The dam is still in use, but only as a backup supply for Hyden.

Wave Rock, Hyden

The rock itself definitely looks like a huge wave.  We walked across the top of it and you get good views out in all directions to the surrounding farm stubble fields.  It is hard for us to see how they can grow anything here, the land looks so poor, infertile, dry and saline, but they do seem to raise a lot of grain.  We finished up the walk at Wave Rock by walking to “Hippos Yawn” which is a large eroded rock that looks like the gaping mouth of a hippo.

After that we drove to another large rock called “The Humps”.  Here there is a cave called “Mulka’s Cave” with a large collection of aboriginal rock art hand prints painted on the ceiling.  The cave is part of an aboriginal legend.  After looking at the cave painting we walked to the top of the rock, at 100 metres high quite a bit higher than the Wave Rock.  It too is eroded into some rather interesting shapes, though not as spectacular a wave form.

The rocks are very similar to those we saw several weeks ago in South Australia.  While the ones we saw today are bigger, and probably more famous, all of them are eroded granite, and they’ve all been used to capture rainwater, the scarcest resource in this very dry part of Australia.

After leaving the rocks we drove southeast to Hopetoun (yes, that is the correct spelling!) where we are in the caravan park right along the beach.  We walked a couple of kilometres on the beach tonight after we arrived.  It would be a nice beach for swimming, but we were too tired tonight.

Farmland at Toodyay

We drove to Corrigin today, as we are on our way to see Wave Rock at Hyden, and this is a good place to stop along the way.  Much of the road that we travelled on today was narrow, but paved.  Several times the road is less than two lanes wide, so that when meeting a vehicle you must pull onto the gravel shoulder.

We stopped for lunch along the road near the Bindoon army training centre.  This appears to be partly forested and partly farmed.  Where we stopped to eat was forest, and a very quiet and peaceful place to eat.  Only one car went by while we ate lunch, as well as about four motorcycles.

As we drove on to the east we came to more and more agricultural land.  There are also large gum trees that line the roads.  We travelled along the number two rabbit proof fence for a while today.  When it was constructed between 1901 and 1907 this was the longest fence in the world.  Today parts of it are still standing, though it is no longer functional (apparently it never really did work very well).

Corrigin is a small agricultural town.  Its claim to fame is that it holds the world record for “dog in a ute”, with 1627 dogs in 1627 utes in 2002.  There is also a very large pet cemetary complete with headstones about five kilometres to the west of the town.  We are staying tonight in the caravan park here, which is a nice quiet park with shade from the large trees.  The park is actually quite full.

Australian grain bins at Binnu

We started the long drive back to Sydney yesterday, March 31.  In the morning we had the oil changed at Ningaloo Auto Repairs.  We arrived before they opened (though we were on time) and waited for a few minutes for the repairman to arrive.  There were two dogs in the compound, and it was interesting that they became excited when they heard the repairman’s vehicle more than a block away.  They did a thorough look over the underneath of the motorhome while it was on the hoist, and said that it looked good.  It was nice to deal with the friendly people in a small town.

After that we drove south over 650 km to the rest area at Nerren Nerren where we stopped for the night.  It was a nice free campsite, and since it cooled off nicely in the evening we had a restful sleep.  There were a lot of flies there this morning when we were packing up though, so it was head net time again.

We didn’t drive as far today, as we wanted to stop at a beach again before leaving this part of Western Australia.  We stopped at the Dongara-Denison Big 4 Beach Holiday Park.  There is a nice swimming beach here right beside the breakwater.  Enid and I enjoyed swimming in the warm, not hot, Indian Ocean.  There are some small reefs covered with seaweed, and they had little fish swimming about, as well as a lot of small crabs on the rocks of the breakwater.

We are back in the farming country of Western Australia.  We drove by a lot of fields today, and once again started seeing the huge grain storage bins that they have at their delivery sites in the towns.

Snorkelling Oyster Stacks, Cape Range National Park

Unfortunately today was our last day in the Exmouth area, as we must leave tomorrow.  We have had three days of excellent snorkelling here, and we saved the best for last.  Oyster Stacks was the best site we’ve been to, with hundreds of species of fish, and as the water is shallow, they were all easy to see.

Snorkelling Oyster Stacks, Cape Range National Park

We saw a huge variety of species, from tiny little fish only a couple of centimetres long, to large fish that would weigh 25 kilograms.  There were a large number of kinds of butterfly and angelfish.  We also saw some starfish, the first ones we’ve seen here.  There are many very large parrotfish.  You can hear them crunching away at the coral; it makes quite a loud noise.  We snorkelled once before lunch and then again afterwards.  It was very hot today so it was nice to be in the water so much.

After snorkelling we drove just a bit further south to the Mandu Mandu gorge.  We didn’t walk in too far though as it was so warm.  We also stopped at the Jurabi turtle centre where at least three different turtles come in to land to lay their eggs.  We did see some turtle tracks in the sand though the turtles only come in at night.

Snorkelling at Lakeside, Cape Range National Park

It was a very warm day today, one of the warmest we’ve had in weeks, with the temperature around 37 C.  First this morning we stopped at the tire repair shop, and had our one most worn tire replaced by the new spare.  It was a good thing we did, as the tire winch couldn’t be reached by the wrench, the back bumper got in the way.  However the repairman put a bend in the winch wrench, and with that we were able to get the spare tire off.  It would not have been fun trying to do that out on the side of the road!

We went back to Cape Range National Park, and stopped at the tourist information site.  It hadn’t opened yet, though the sign said it opened at 9, so we waited a few minutes until they started operating.  Two people were in front of us in the line and booking campsites.  The woman at the desk told both of them “you can’t go in to Lakeside as the road is washed out,” so we were not sure where we could snorkel.  The tide wasn’t right for Oyster Stacks until after lunch and we had to be back in Exmouth to get our air conditioner fixed.

When I asked her if we could walk in to Lakeside she said,”Of course,” so that is what we did.  It was about a twenty minute walk to the beach, and then another 10 minutes or so farther down the beach to start snorkelling.  There is quite a strong current that follows the shore north.  At first we didn’t go far enough south, so started swimming that way, but it was much too hard, so we went back to shore and walked farther down the beach.

There were many fish at this site, including a number of species that we haven’t seen before.  Some looked much like a catfish with large barbels on their mouth.  They were a very shy species and would swim under the rocks whenever you approached them.

After we’d swum north with the current for a while we came out, got our backpack which we’d left at the site we first entered, and took it back down the beach again.  Enid swam a long way out looking for the coral, but she missed it.  Instead, when we turned back we ran across a school of very large fish, probably about a metre long and with thick bodies.  I’d guess they would have weighed thirty pounds or more.  They were swimming together with a school of much smaller silver fish with very thin bodies.  There would have been several hundred fish in the school.

We did find the coral again, and drifted over it for a second time.  This time Enid spotted a ray, and I found some very long thing eel-like fish.  We walked back to the motorhome after this, but it was quite a late lunch and we got back into town at about 2:30.  We stoppped in at the air conditioner repair shop, but the repairman wasn’t there yet, so I drove Enid back to the caravan park.  I went back and waited at the shop, but just as the repairman got there, the company got a phone call that someone had driven into a power pole and several blocks of the town were without power.  This repair shop must have some kind of a contract, because the repairman told me he had to go, and so we are to go back to his shop tomorrow morning at 7:30.

While driving back to the caravan park, I passed an automotive repair shop.  I stopped to see if they could do an oil change, and have arranged that for Thursday morning before we leave.  So Exmouth has been a place where we’ve had a lot of repairs done.  We should now be good to get back to Sydney.

Blue-spotted fantail ray, Turquoise Bay, Cape Range National Park

We drove to Cape Range National Park this morning.  On the way y0u pass through the Australian Navy’s radio station, which has some pretty impressive antenna arrays.  Right at the base there were three emu walking along the road.  The road passes by a lighthouse atop a rocky hill, then turns south on the opposite side of the cape from Exmouth and goes in to the park.

We were intending to snorkel at Lakeside; however, the road to that site is closed (many of the roads were damaged by Cyclone Carlos in late February) so instead we continued on to Turquoise Beach.  There we did the drift snorkel, which has exceptional fish.  You enter the water at the south and there is a strong current that carries you north to where you exit just before a sand point which juts out a bit into the ocean.  At that point there is a very strong rip current which goes out to sea.

We walked back to the start and did the drift a second time.  Then we walked over to the bay area and snorkeled there for another hour.  Here there were less fish, the water was more cloudy, but the coral was much better, though not as good as at Coral Bay.  Since there is almost no current in this part of the bay you could stay in one place longer without having to work hard.  In the drift on the other side the current was about as strong as you could swim against with flippers, so it carried you along quite quickly, unless you worked to stay put.

Termite mounds near Exmouth

We snorkelled until about 9:30 this morning.  With the low tide we found one spot that was only a little over a metre below the surface, and there were many fish there.  The water was quite calm today as the wind was coming from off the land; however, it was still quite turbid.

We drove to the Big 4 in Exmouth, and got here just about lunch time.  We passed a lot of large termite mounds on the way, and stopped to take a picture.  This afternoon was another day to do laundry.  It was quite hot out, so the clothes were completely dry in just a few minutes.  Because it is so warm we cooked and ate in the kitchen which is very nice and clean, and right across from our site.

Moray Eel, Snorkelling at Coral Bay (Bills Bay)

We snorkelled off the beach here at Coral Bay three times today.  First this morning we went out at about 8:00 as the tide was low just before that.  As well there was no wind, and so the water was quite a bit clearer than it was the other two times we went in the afternoon.  We snorkelled for a little over an hour, and saw a lot of very interesting fish, including a moray eel, and a giant clam.  There were also many outstanding corals of a number of different kinds.

Snorkelling at Coral Bay (Bills Bay)

After we returned from snorkelling in the morning I edited pictures and video (my underwater camera did start working again though I don’t really know why it quits).  Then we went snorkelling again right after lunch.  This time we went farther to the south where we had been told it was the best snorkelling, but with the tide now in it was too deep and so we drifted back over closer to where we were this morning.  There we found a number of other fish, though the water was now more turbid.  We quit close to 3:30, and when we came in some men had been feeding large fish close to shore.  Enid saw one that was blue and brown, but the ones I saw were plain silver.  After that I did another round of picture editing, and then we returned back to snorkel again at about 4:00 pm for another hour.  The tide was now lower and although the water was a bit choppy, there was again good snorkelling.  You can drift here at Bill’s Bay from the south end towards the north with little effort.  The most interesting fish we saw was a ray with a very long tail.  It was swimming so fast that it was hard to photograph, as it got too far away very quickly.  Many of the pictures and video that I shot today have been uploaded to www.digipac.ca/pictures.

It was mostly just a travel day today as we drove north to Coral Bay.  The highway shows signs of much heavy rain over the past days, though how long ago we are not sure.  The edge of the road has been washed out, and although the washouts are repaired, the edge of the road hasn’t always been repaved.  At least two service stations in Carnarvon are closed because of the flooding.  We were going to pull in to one, but the road to it was washed out, and when we looked more closely we could see that what looked like vehicles at the pumps were service vehicles presumably carrying out repairs.

Our motorhome is parked in People’s Caravan Park in Coral Bay, just about 100 metres from the beach which is just across the road.  We walked to the ocean and went snorkelling after we arrived here this afternoon.  For some reason my underwater camera will not turn on consistently, and would not do so today when we went to go, so I didn’t get any pictures.  Although there is a lot of coral and fish out there, it wasn’t always very clear as the water is very turbid.  It may be because of all the rain, but we will try again tomorrow at a different time and tide to see if things improve.