Kalbarri

Our last day in Denham was spent doing a major sort out and re shuffle of the van. It was also the least windy of the 7 nights we spent there, and most spectacular sunset, with plenty of cloud in the sky to make it interesting.

Today (26 th September) we left Denham for Kalbarri, our first real show of rain since Yepoon. So much for winter hey! We set off at 7:30am from Denham, Pips breaky in a tupaware container, as once again we nearly had to pack her down with the van. She was pushing zzzzzz until 7:29am. She just had time to brush the pegs and have a loo stop before Mike was on the road “again”. First stop 40 or so Ks down the road to Shell beach. It was actually a great looking spot, especially with the dark storm clouds looming.

We then took the near 400 Km trip to Kalbarri with showers and dark storm clouds looming most of the way. Absolutely fabulous were the wild flower display on the trip in to Kalbarri, I am looking forward to getting some nice photos of them between here and Perth.  The wheat belt is obviously getting closer now as the wheat fields were prolific and equally as spectacular in the stormy light the day cast.

We set up at the speed of light to miss the rain.. we did it!, yay, nothing worse than a wet bed. After the rain passed we decided to take a drive and check out the town and also the cliff laden coastline.

We head off to a place called Red Bluff and just happened upon a whale pod. Probably about 7 or so in the pod. They were breaching, tail slapping and throwing their dorsal fins around like there was no tomorrow I’ve never seen such a magnificent display. Pip was getting annoyed with me saying “mum! all I can here is you going …..oohhh did you see that”. My reply “ this is nature at its best Pip”! In fact you not only could see it, but because a few of them were sooooo close to the cliff, you could actually hear them hit the water after they breached (yeah even with my hearing Margsie). Without a lie I “recon we saw one mother and calf breach at least 15 times in the 10 or so minutes I WAS ALLOWED to watch them. It was pretty windy and getting a bit on the chilly side (still in shorts but definitely the coldest day on the trip so far !!!!!).

Good weather prevailing we will head into the Kalbarri national park tomorrow. We have been in touch with Lil’s mum and dad (Pips new best friend) and we will all head off together for a day of gorges and adventure... (Next day) we had a fab day catching up with Rog Barb and the kids, went out to Kalbarri national park so Rog and I could take some great photos. unfortunately mine weren't that great. Some how overexposed them. But here they are all the same.

The road into the national park was about 25 ks of dirt YELLOW dirt?? Check it out in the top left pic. Great for the photos. We also had an afternoon checking out the other side of Kalbarri which is its 170 m cliff face, and did we see some marine life. Pods of 20 or so more dolphins surfing at Eagle bluff and whale after whale breaching and slapping themselves down the coast line, even saw a seal surfing the reef.. oh and the human kind catching some real tubes.

last but not least we took a trip to see the rainbow jungle which was also great, so much wild life in one day.. not to mention the FLIES, man we've never seen so many flies not even this many in the outback. We have a date with Rog and Barb and the kids at the tavern then dinner tonight, a spot of fishing tomorrow and its ofski again to our next destination Horracks beach.

no flies on me!!!

“It’s One o’clock in the morning” !!!! Monkey Mia last episode

Its 1 o’clock in the morning and a bunch (5) of German tourists have decided to set up camp in the space next to us. At first I thought the noise was a bunch of happy people passing by on their way back from the pub, it is Saturday night after all, but no the noise didn’t move on. A bit of jocularity I can take but the inflation of airbeds and banging of car doors starts to get on your “pip” after an hour. Mike bravely (5 to 1) yells at them to keep it down, “you’ve woken half the camp he states” (with a few extra inserts) I then inform Mike he just woke the other half of the camp !!!!! It’s after 2 now the voices have quietened but the car doors keep on banging…. So I’m up having a cuppa, I decide if you cant beat em join em.

We went to Monkey Mia to the feeding of the dolphins and were pleasantly surprised. We have met a lot of people who were disappointed in the whole setup, that in mind we weren’t expecting anything great. However like I said it was cool, one dolphin in particular put on a real show for us, coming within a foot of our legs. There were loads of people probably an easy 150 lined up along the beach and 9 fish to feed 3 of the 7 dolphins that turned up. I told Pip, “ keep your head up and smile nicely”. Yep it worked she got picked to feed one of the dolphins. It was a real treat to be one of the few picked to feed one, but I think she enjoyed the 25 minutes of interaction with the dolphins the most as they were seriously close enough to touch.

In the afternoon we decided to try our hand at fishing for whiting again.  We showed  Roger and Barb and their 2 kids our great fishing spot. Oopps! Where did all those fish go? We caught another 4 only 2 of which we kept but poor Rog and Jack (10yrs) had no luck. Bummer

We are here 1 more day then off to Kalbari, which looks fantastic. Hopefully it won’t be quite as windy there although i am betting its cold. Afternoons here are close to gale force winds, its no wonder that the wind turbines produce so much electricity here, something to the tune of 40% of the town requirements with 4 turbines. I suppose we cant really complain as we havent had a winter as yet.... and lets face it its only a few weeks now from summer! See you in Kalbari.

DENHAM - MONKEY MIA

On the way into Denham at the bottom of shark Bay is the Hamelin nature reserve and Hamelin Pools. We detoured to have a walk down to the STROMATOLITES, yes I know that’s a big word for this time of the morning. They are a living rock, which according to science have been here for over 3 billion years.  In short they are a composite of blue green algae and deposit oxygen into the environment. Cleaver little buggers and they look really cool too!!

We took advice from our new buddies Haydn and Teresa and booked ourselves into the top tourist park at Denham and yep it has the best position right on the beach or should I say bay, as this is “Shark Bay”. We got a spot right at the top of the park as its set in tiers, with a view to die for straight over the bay. That was great until about 5 o clock when the sea breeze grew and grew and the van flapped and flapped. The next day we were all packed up and on the road again for our shortest trip ever 32 seconds from hook “up” to hook “off”. Yep you guessed it we moved to a lower tier less of a view but only 20 steps to the sand and lots of shelter from the afternoon winds.

no view, shelter

view, no shelter

Early that morning after our second set up we took a drive to Eagle Bluff and walked on the Broad walk so as to get a view of the cove the bay and the SHARKS and there were plenty of them too. The walk is very high up from the water so it is difficult to actually take a picture of the sharks. I tried but they look like black dots so sorry guys!

The small tiny minute shells around here are unreal, they are perfect in shape and form but so so so so small. The early settlers used the shells to make house bricks (rather large bricks actually more like besser blocks) and built their homes with them. The ground around Hamelin is so compact with these shells that they had a small shell quarry where they simply cut square bricks straight out of the ground.

shell bricks

shell quarry

We are really enjoying the west coast the views at every stop are just amazing, and again we keep meeting amazing people. Whether its because we are all like minded I’m not sure???? But Ozzies I have definitely decided are a great bunch of people especially the travellers. Pip has caught up with Lily and Jack from Coral bay again which is great as the parents Barb and Roger are (not only similar age to us) but great value too.  Lily is an absolute brain child and although only 8 appears to write like a 12 year old …. Go Lily. Jack is just a lovely boy who is full of character. We went to the ocean park to hear about all the local marine life. The young tour guides (Ed and Wil) there were just fantastic, I was sure they were young marine biologist as their knowledge and articulation  was brilliant. Pip got to learn about all the marine life around shark bay. Next we went to Peron station (in the National Park)  to learn of the old days and the sheep shearing, we also watched a couple of male emus who were looking after their young (hear that boys! The males do the maternal thing or should I say paternal) chasing and fighting each other. They were a bit close for my liking; Mike however couldn’t get close enough.

jack, lily n pip

ocean park

ocean park

emu fight fight fight

Today we went fishing off the beach, a little way round from the caravan park. We were hoping to be a little more fortunate fishing here than we were at Monkey Mia yesterday where we saw lots of dolphin’s, (silly backpackers trying to ride them) star fish, and cone shells (very poisonous) but no fish. Alas we couldn’t stop them, today 10 whiting. Some we had to though back, way small but others good enough for a feed. We are heading back to the same site tomorrow arvo at high tide to do the same again with Roger, Barb, Jack and little Lily. I’ll let you know how we go. We are also taking Pip over to Monkey Mia again to see if we can catch the feeing of the dolphins. Stay tuned for the last episode of MM (Monkey Mia).

P.S I have been drinking way too much with all this socialising, only one day alcohol free so far uggghhhh….. might need to book in for a detox next year!!! ha ha ha ha  TTFN burp!#*

P.P.S All you Mike followers….Don’t you go thinking Mike has been any better either!!

Carnarvon

Carnarvon actually has a lot to see for a small town with only 9500 populations. We have been here for 2 nights (1 night to go)and have managed to check out the place pretty well. Carnarvon is the fruit and veg growers’ area for the northwest and after the floods at the beginning of the year have had a fabulous recovery no thanks of course to our current parliament.

We checked out the local markets and picked up a few must haves… fresh eggs and beautiful strawberries. We took a morning drive to the Blow holes and the lighthouse look out. We got our first taste of wind and rain since Yeepoon. Of course that didn’t deter us from getting out of the car and cautiously taking a peek at the 10 to 20 meter high blow of the holes.

Back in Carnarvon some 70 klm away we are back to the sunshine. On the way back from the Blow holes we pulled over to get a closer look and a touch of the Dampier Salt pans. We also checked out the 1 mile jetty (too windy to walk it) Built to transport livestock in the early 1900s. Great fishing from the end of the pier so we hear. Carnarvon is also home of the OCT dish, this was built in 1966 and assisted in putting Mr Armstrong on the moon. It was also the first place in Australia from which satellite Television was broadcast. Now! you have all had Pippa’s lesson for the day. This stuff is so good for Pip it beats school hands down as far as general knowledge goes.

Coral Bay

Yet another beautiful place to while away the hours on the coral laden, turquoise waters and white sandy beaches. We have 4 nights here to snorkel and swim, other than that there really isn’t much else to do here unless you have a boat to go deep water fishing and boy are they getting some great fish, not that we are complaining at all.

As we left Exmouth we called into the visitors centre and filled our water tanks as we were told the general use water here wasn’t so good. Aren’t we glad we did that? Not one person has hooked up their camp to the water supply and I know why. The water is artesian bore water, which we have come across many a time in our travel. This however is hot water, not just warm, I mean too hot to put your hand in coming straight out of the cold water tap. Funnily enough there is cold water in the bathroom????

Haydn and Mike went out for a snorkel to check out the coral and fish life yesterday whilst Me, Pip and Teresa checked out the shells for sale. Teresa and I have been combing the beaches braving sandflies and seaweed to collect pretty shells. We get here and there is a guy selling deep-water shells for such a good price we just have to buy a couple each. (yes! when I get home I will pretend I found these ones hahaha) Sadly Teresa and Haydn have to go today. Back to work on Monday for them but we will catch up with them in a few weeks in Jurien Bay, which we are looking forward to, you really do meet some nice people when you travel.

There are a heap of kids in this park so Pip is making the most of playing with the other kids. Made friends with a little girl named Lily who she will catch up with next week when we cross paths again in Denham. She should have a bit of company from now on as the WA holidays start in about a week’s time and the parks are swarming with kids over any holiday period.

Our last day here and we made the most of the snorkelling also hung around while the tour guide from the charters fed the fish from the shore. What a treat for the kids, they had these foot and a half long snapper swimming in between and around their legs. Pip was feeding one and got her finger bit (sucked). I heard her telling Lily’s mum Barb “that fish nearly sucked my bloody finger off”. Nice language for a 7 year old Mike!!

Well bye from Coral Bay and off to Canarvon tomorrow, TTFN Lis Mike N Pip

Exmouth WA

Here we are in Exmouth and a bit earlier than we originally intended. We decided to drive straight through so it was quite a drive. Out in this part of the country you really feel the enormity and vastness of the land. On the way here was nothing, nothing and more nothing.  You can literally see for miles and miles. 

Exmouth is a great little town, with a beautiful coastline and great seafood. We went down to Kailis seafood for lunch with Haydn and Teresa (people we met in point Samson) and had ourselves a big feed of fresh prawns and bought ourselves a couple of crabs for dinner. Teresa threw in a mosh of her home -made chowder and we were on and done for the days dinning. 

We took a drive up on top of the Cape ranges to get an amazing view of the coastline and the Cape gorges. We also head off around to the lighthouse to see the view from the other side of the point and check out the beautiful waters of the Ningaloo reef.

Yesterday we hired a 7m boat with Haydn and Teresa to get out in the ocean and get some BIG ones. The weather however was crap when we set off with white caps and a lumpy 2-3 meter swell so it wasn’t too long before poor ol’ Pip was adding burley to the water. We had to head back to shore and get her off the boat, as she was quite upset at the whole ordeal. So as you probably guessed it that was also the end of my fishing too. The other three set off again to catch some dinner (which they did) and check out the marine life (which they did) they rang us about an hour later, the swell had calmed and they were watching the whales frolicking around the boat. Teresa was screaming at the top off her lungs because she thought they were going to run into the boat. How excellent was that (for them) meanwhile Pip and I was feeling a bit envious and slightly disappointed (at least I was) at missing out.  Of course when the others got back we copped the teasing from the boys on what “a whale of a time” they had and the whole “you should have been there”. To be honest there were no movies or photos from Mike so maybe it was all in their mind????. Pip and I did however get to see our own wild life which was two crazy!! Emus’ running around on the local field.

The whale shark season is over although there are still a few about but as the wether is quite windy we are giving the boat trips a bit of a miss. We will leave swimming with the whale sharks till next trip.

We went out cape range national park and just check out the colour of the water at turquoise bay. I don’t need to say much more about that or you too might be just a bit envious and slightly disappointed you’re not here :( 

 Still a couple of days left here in Exmouth then its of to Coral Bay for a bit more snorkelling action.