David and Enid's Travels

Squid at Whaling Cove

Today we went to the ocean west of Albany (though we’re still staying at the same caravan park tonight).  Our first stop was at Whaling Cove where we did some snorkelling.  There is supposed to be a snorkel trail here, but all we could see was the first plaque, and no indication of where to go from there.  Instead we snorkelled in the bay to the south along the rocks on the edge.  There were a lot of small squid here.  It was fun to try and photograph them, as they would swim away quite fast when I dove down to get closer.  There were also a lot of pretty yellow and black fish, though I didn’t get a very good picture of them.  The water was rougher than I thought, so the camera was shaking a lot.

Waves on the Southern Ocean at Natural Bridge

From there we drove to the Gap and Natural Bridge.  There were some pretty impressive swells breaking over the rocks here, so I went back and got the video camera to film them.  We met up again with Albert, the man from Switzerland we’d met back at Le Grand Beach campground, and had a lengthy chat before he left, and Enid and I cooked our lunch.

Next stop was the Blowholes.  Here the ocean pounds into cracks in the rocks at least 2o metres below and forces the air and water out through the top.  The sound of the rushing air was very impressive and loud, and once water mist came rushing out of the ground.  It was travelling at a very high velocity.

We travelled to two other beaches, Salmon Harbour and Misery Beach.  We didn’t go down to the ocean at either one but looked at them from viewpoints high above the water.

This morning we stopped at a caravan store and got another cap for the waste water drain.  Since we have not been able to find one with the proper fitting, the salesman (who it turned out was originally a farmer  from Manitoba) suggested making a part to fit.  So on the way back into town tonight we stopped at Bunnings and I got a drill bit and round file.  With those I was able to make a replacement cap out of the old one, so we are no longer have a leaky sewer hose.

Little Beach, Two Peoples nature reserve

We drove about 40 km east of here today to the Two Peoples nature reserve, and stopped at Little Beach.  The beach has beautiful clear turquoise blue water and white sand.  We first snorkelled in a bay to the far south of the beach, after we’d talked to a man who was spear fishing towards the north point off the rocks, as he suggested this would be the best place.  We found a reef with a number of fish there.  Though there was some surge from the ocean it was not too hard to swim, though there was a bit of turbulence tossing up some grit into the water.  However, when we went to quit, Enid tried to climb out on the rocks where we got in, and was thrown into the rock by the surging waves.  She scraped her right wrist and elbow.  After that we got out on the small sandy beach and walked over the rocks to get back to where we’d left our clothes.

When we got there I opened up the backpack and pulled out our towels.  The small padded bag that I keep my underwater camera in fell out, and the battery that was in it fell into the crack between two rocks.  Though both Enid and I looked for it, we couldn’t see it, so it is gone.

Snorkelling at Little Beach

After lunch we went to the north side of the point where there is a shallow lagoon.  It is connected to the main ocean by a very shallow and narrow rocky opening, so it is very protected.  The rocks were slippery, but that also made it easy to slide over them and snorkel.  We saw many different kinds of fish, probably about 10 different species.  The most common was a black and white striped fish.  The most interesting was a flatfish that Enid spotted.  It was very hard to see as it was the colour of the sand, and it was flat against the rocks.  When I dived down to see if I could get closer it darted away under the rocks.  We stayed in the lagoon about an hour.  It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t very warm either, so by the end of the hour we were both cold and shivering.

After that we drove to the larger Two Peoples Bay where there is an information centre with interpretive panels about two endangered species, one the noisy scrub bird, and the other the Gilbert’s Potoroo, one of the rarest mammals in the world.

We drove to some of the other bays and beaches on the east side of Albany, including Nanarup Beach, Ledge point overlooking Gull Island, and Middleton Beach.  The latter was very windy, and there was one person there parasailing on a board.  At one point I saw him lifted at least ten metres out of the water.  It was too rough for us to attempt bodyboarding, and anyway we were both too tired from the snorkelling today.

Figurehead on the brig Amity, replica of first ship to Albany

We drove the rather dull 480 km between Esperance and Albany today.  Except for one stop for fuel, and another for lunch, we just drove.  There really isn’t much to see, except for huge storage areas where the farmers deliver grain.  They call them “bins” but they are as big as hockey rinks.  There seemed to be quite a few of these sites, perhaps one every 40 or 50 kilometres.

We were surprised to read on the sign at Jerramungup, the town where we ate lunch, that soil salinity is a major problem because the roots of grain crops don’t draw down the deep subsoil moisture like the original trees did.  Because of this the water table is rising, bringing salt to the surface, thus causing problems with growing plants.

After we’d checked in to our caravan park, we drove to the information centre to get the locations around here where we can snorkel.  They gave us several suggestions, as well as places to body board.  On the drive to the information building we saw an old two masted ship on the land, so we stopped there on the way back.  It is a replica of a ship that sailed here from Sydney in 1826 with a crew and convicts, and were the first settlers in the area.

David body boarding in Hellfire Bay

This morning we left le Grand Beach, and drove to some of the other bays starting at the east end by going to Lucky Bay and working our way back toward the west. 

Lucky Bay was quite calm, and other than the couple of small kangaroos on the beach, had little to make it stand out.  The sand, like all the beaches, is very white and it is the most protected of all the bays with almost no swell.  However there is also a lot of seaweed that has washed up on the beach.

Thistle Bay was very interesting because of all the huge boulders and bare rocks.  One of the more interesting is a large slightly concave rock called “Whistle Rock”.  It faces the ocean, and when you stand in front of it in the right spot you hear a constant sound much like rushing wind, which is actually the echo of the water from the ocean.  We spent almost an hour walking around the rocks taking photographs and video.

We then drove on to Hellfire Bay.  I can’t find why it has such a name, but we thoroughly enjoyed it as it had the best swell for using our body board of all the beaches here.  We stayed in the water for almost two hours enjoying the surf.  The swell occasionally reached over a metre in height, and it gave us a very good ride.  As we were walking back to the motorhome from the beach we saw a very large goana.  It was at least a metre long, and had been out sunning on the path, but ran back into the bush as we walked by.

Frenchman Peak

After lunch we drove back to Esperance.  We stopped to take a picture of Frenchman Peak as we left.  This is an interesting peak, for like all the rocks here it has been eroded into caves and other depressions.  However, here the entire peak as been eroded underneath so that there is a huge cap rock atop the mountain which is hollow underneath.  When we got to Esperance we checked in to the Pink Lake caravan park.  After that we bought some more groceries, filled up with fuel, came back and had a shower, so that we are all ready to leave tomorrow morning.

Le Grand Beach, views from morning hike

We stayed today at the same beautiful beach as we were at yesterday.  It was a very nice warm day and we went or a walk first thing this morning about 8:30 am before it got too hot.  We walked partway up the hill to the south of the campground, then back down and along the very white sandy beach that extends for at least twenty or thirty kilometres.

We read until lunch, then after that went to the ocean with our body board.  The waves were not very big, but we managed to catch the odd one occasionally and get a bit of a ride.  We then read some more in the shade behind our motorhome before going back to the ocean for a second round of surf later in the afternoon.  It was very hot when the sun was out, but it clouded over somewhat in the afternoon.

Sunset at le Grand Beach

There was a nice sunset tonight.  For us the sun seems to set so incredibly fast, unlike the long lingering sunsets we get in Saskatchewan.  By 6:15 the sun was starting to set and the sky was bright orange, and by 6:30 almost black.  By 7:00 the sky was pitch black, and very clear so that there is a small sliver of moon and the Southern Cross.  Other constellations like Orion that we can also see in Canada are almost overhead but somewhat to the north.

Salmon gums

We tried to sleep in to get our time readjusted, but didn’t too well at that and were up by 7 am.  Since the information centre in town with its dump point didn’t open until 9 am we took our time to get away this morning.  We pulled up to the service station to get diesel and saw again the same couple that we’ve run into now three times in the last two days.  We talked a bit about where we’d stayed last night (they were in a nice spot about 86 km east of Norseman) and about our plans for the next days.

We had to wait quite a while at the information centre as the attendant was helping out two young European women.  We understood that their car had broken down from what we overheard of their conversation.  It sounded like they were abandoning it, as it was going to cost $1500 to fix, and so they were taking the train and the bus somewhere.  I sympathized with them but they were young so I suppose they’ll cope!  We needed the key from the attendant as they charge $3 to use their dump point. 

Before leaving town we stopped at the Norsemen camels, a sculpture close to the centre of town.  The camels are in the centre of a roundabout, are made of corrugated steel, and there is a different descriptive plaque on each of the four corners.  We haven’t seen any live ones anywhere here except in the Australia Zoo.

We stopped for lunch at Scadden, a very small “town” (from what we could see not more than a couple of buildings), where they have a nicely set up picnic site.  They had painted murals of the history of the area on the walls of the toilets, and on two of the shelters for the area’s centennial last year in 2010.  There was also a written history of the town, and I was surprised to find that there was a large amount of new land made available for settlement in 1960, so some of this area was settled rather recently (or so it seems to me, the sixties not being ancient history in my mind, though they are of course very close to the mid-century mark for the area).

We had bought a couple of nectarines to eat for lunch at Norseman, but the store there didn’t have a great variety of fruits and vegetables (but we got a good half cauliflower for the most reasonable price we’ve seen in Australia).  We bought most of our groceries in Esperance.  We purchased a one month park pass since we plan to be in several of the national parks in Western Australia.  We also saw a surf shop so enquired about a boogie (body) board.  The clerk said they had nothing cheap (theirs started at $200) but told me to go to a sporting goods store just up the street, which we did and got the board for $55.

We drove to Cape le Grand national park.  When we got here there was only one camp site left.  It’s a double site, and there was already a motorhome here, but the man travelling in it (who is from Switzerland) was happy to let us in the other half.  We tried out the body board in the ocean (which is cool but a lot warmer than it was in Tasmania) and though there isn’t very big surf here we did get some good rides on a few waves.

Australia's straightest road

We crossed the rest of the Nullarbor Plain today, travelling almost 800 km from where we were camped yesterday.  For all those who think that driving across the Saskatchewan Prairie is boring, forget about your complaint, as it can’t compare to the very long and mostly monotonous terrain across the Nullarbor.  The road is very straight, and in many places goes for kilometres between curves.  The longest straight stretch is the “Ninety Mile Straight”, which is 146.6 km long.  If not the world’s longest straight stretch of road (there are a couple of other candidates, one in Saudi Arabia and one in North Dakota), it’s near the top of the list.  There is a fuel stop and restaurant, a roadhouse, every hundred or so kilometres.  We stopped at most of them to stay topped up with diesel, which was never cheap varying between $1.80 and $1.92 per litre.

However, it’s not really well named, because there are quite a few trees.  Quite a number of the larger trees have been “decorated”.  We saw one with a Santa Claus and Christmas decorations.  Another was on a Winnie-the-Pooh theme.  Many others had hats, shoes, other kinds of clothing, tinsel, and one with cutlery.

It was a good day to travel, not too hot, as there were some scattered clouds.  We stopped a few times to see things (though frankly there’s not a lot to see) including the Caiguna blowhole, which is the mouth of a large underground cave.  The blowing refers to air rushing in or out of the mouth of the cave when the air pressure changes.

We planned to stop at a free campsite that is supposed to be 16 km east of the town of Norseman, but when we drove by there was no sign of it.  We’re not sure if the book is wrong, or if it’s been closed.  We ended up going right into the town, and stopped at the caravan park.  We crossed two and one half hours of time zones today, so we are feeling a bit “jet-lagged”.  On the clock it’s approaching 7 pm, but we are just finishing the laundry, and it feels a lot later.  We’re both tired from a long day of travel.

Bunda cliffs, Great Australian Bight

We’re camped tonight on the edge of the Great Australian Bight.  About 200 metres in front of us is a high limestone cliff undercut and crumbling into the ocean  50 to 70 metres or more below.  There are a lot of warning signs not to get too close to the edge for the limestone isn’t very stable, and if it broke off it would be almost impossible to get back up.

Road sign, Nullarbor Plain

We’re now travelling through the Nullarbor Plain (“no trees” for those of you whose Latin is rusty).  It’s a large flat limestone rock that extends for several hundred kilometres.  There are very few trees, though probably more than on the southern Saskatchewan prairie.  The country is very open and deserted.  Other than the few roadhouses selling fuel, there is little out here.  We paid $1.94 per litre for diesel today.  I think that’s the most I’ve ever paid for fuel.  The road signs warn of camels, kangaroos and wombats, but we saw absolutely nothing.

While the plain is barren of trees, there is a lot of saltbrush, other short vegetation and flowers.  The underlying limestone rock of the plain is just below what little soil there is, so the rockiness doesn’t allow much large vegetation to grow.  We were surprised that the dry ground is littered with thousands of small snail shells.  Oh yes, there are flies, hundreds of them!  We walked to the edge of the ocean cliffs, and around the plain for a couple of kilometres, and we were covered with small black flies when we got back.  They don’t seem to bite, but they crawl into your eyes and nose.

It was warm this morning, but as we drove to the west it gradually started to get cloudy and cooler.  A couple of times today we drove through misting rain, but it never lasted more than perhaps five minutes.  Tonight is a very comfortable temperature in our motorhome, and there is a breeze off the ocean.  That means we can stay indoors which is really nice as the flies outside would be terrible.

Pildappa Rock, Minnipa, South Australia

Yesterday, March 5, we travelled northwest to Port Augusta.  It’s the fourth time we’ve been through the town.  It’s hard to go across Australia without going through there, as it is the hub that connects major highways from all four compass directions.

Also we are once again warm.  Today it reached a high of 37 ºC here in Ceduna (our destination today) but it has cooled off nicely now to the mid twenties.  We ate outside tonight for the first time in over a month.

This morning we drove by the town of Iron Knob about 65 km to the west of Port Augusta.  This is a large open pit iron mine.  We didn’t drive in to the town (there is a sign saying mine tours were available) but from the highway, which is at least five kilometres from the hill, you can see the huge contours of where they have mined the ore.  Since the mine first opened in 1899 they have taken over 150 m off the top of the mountain.

Next we stopped in Wudinna for fuel, lunch, and to photograph the large granite sculpture “The Australian Farmer “.  They quarry granite in this area, and the monument is a very large sculpture representing a farmer, heads of grain, sheep and other items of agriculture.  It is an impressive sculpture over 9 metres tall.

Next we went to Pildappa Rock which is about 15 km north of the town of Minnipa.  We weren’t sure what to expect from the rock (or the road) but were very surprised.  The road was gravel but the best one we’ve been on in Australia, wide and smooth.  The rock is very large, about 200 metres across and almost 20 metres high.  It has eroded into a wave shape, and has a number of large boulders at the top.  It also has several shallow eroded pans (gnammas rockholes), a couple of which are full of water.  There is also an old dam in one of the eroded trenches on the rock.  The rock is an example of an inselberg, the underlying rock pink granite, and covered with darker lichens.

Boulders at Tcharkulda Rock, Minnipa, South Australia

We drove back to another rock nearer the town.  This rock, Tcharkulda Rock, isn’t as eroded into the wave form of Pildappa, but it has two interesting features.  In the early 1900’s the settlers in the area built a stone wall at the bottom of the rock, and an aqueduct that goes into a small reservoir.  About half the rock, an area of about an acre, would drain into this reservoir.  The top of the rock is covered with very large eroded boulders.  Many of the boulders have interesting hollowed out areas so that they look like they are sitting on legs.  Some of the hollows are large enough to shelter under, and I’m sure that the aboriginal people must have used them for that purpose in the past.  Although I looked hard, I could see no sign of any rock painting though.

From up on the rock you could see that there was an animal standing in the aqueduct in the shade of an old building.  It looked to me like a goat, but when I walked down to take a picture of the aqueduct it ran away to the far end.  I could then see that it was a small sheep.  It tried to climb up the concrete wall of the aqueduct, but couldn’t and collapsed right away onto the ground.  I walked up to it and picked up the poor frightened lamb by the scruff of the neck, and lifted it out.  It couldn’t have weighed more than 15 pounds, and was in very poor condition, barely able to walk even after I got it out.  It had been trapped in the aqueduct as it was gated on both ends, and the two foot depth was more than it was able to get up over.  I’m not sure if it will survive, though since it was now in a farm yard it might if it could find water.

Emu track rock paintings, Gulgurn Manja Shelter, The Grampians

We left Halls Gap this morning after being rousted out of bed earlier than we really needed to awake by the very loud laughter of a flock of kookaburras.  I cooked oatmeal for breakfast today as the cereal we have turns out to have dried bananas in it, which doesn’t please Enid too much (we bought a different kind of cereal later today). 

Gang Gang Cockatoo

After breakfast we drove on a gravel road to the Heatherlie Quarry.  This is a historical site where they quarried a lot of sandstone used in some of the buildings in Melbourne.  There were the relics of the old quarry, some sandstone buildings and old derelict equipment, including a very large air compressor that was used to drive the hammers.  As interesting as the quarry was the large flock of Gang Gang cockatoos.  There were at least half a dozen of them screeching in the tops of the trees.

Next we went to the Gulgurn Manja Shelter site.  This is a location where the aboriginal people used to live.  It is a sloping rock that would give shelter from the rain, and there are many ochre paintings on the rock.  The name “Gulgurn Manja” means “hands of young people” and there are many small ochre handprints there.  As well there were paintings of emu tracks.  From the rock ledge below the shelter you could see out over the valley to the north for many miles, so it would have been a good place to watch for other people moving across the plains.

We drove just a couple more kilometres and made our lunch to take with us as we hiked up Mount Zero.  This walk isn’t very far, just a couple of kilometers, and it climbs to the 350 m summit of the hill.  About halfway up there is a very narrow crack in the rock that you climb through.  At one point it was so narrow that Enid and I had to turn sideways to get through, and I had to take off my small backpack.  There is another way around, and we took that on the way down.  You can see a very long way from the top of the hill in all directions.  To the north are fields of olives.  To the south are more of the Grampian hills.  You can easily see the Gulgurn Manja cliff just a couple of kilometres to the east.

We then drove out to the western highway.  At first we were on a very narrow and quite sandy dirt road.  Somewhere along it we hit a tree branch, and knocked the mirror in flat on the passenger side of the motorhome (but did no damage).  This joined a paved road of about seven kilometers, which was mostly a single lane of pavement.  It was two lanes around the curves, but where it was straight, just the single lane, and both vehicles have to pull over onto the gravel shoulder when meeting.

We ran into many locusts once on the highway.  They are about the size of our North American grasshoppers, but have bigger wings and seem to have a harder exoskelton as they make a very large noise when they hit the motorhome.  We stopped for the day just across the Victoria/South Australia border at the caravan park in the town of Bordertown, and I took about half an hour to wash off the front of the motorhome.  The locusts actually were quite a bit easier to wash off than I thought they would be.

Once again it was a cool day, though warmer here than it was in the Grampians.  Many of our fellow campers are walking around in heavy sweaters and shivering.  I however am wearing shorts and sandals and Enid is in her shortsleeves.  It feels like a late August day in Saskatachewan.