Albany to Augusta

From Albany to Augusta, we’ve enjoyed many a delicious meal, climbed a number of ridiculously high trees, took in beautiful and varied scenery, spied on and ran from some local wildlife, and relaxed beside and floated along WA’s beautiful reflective rivers.

Fresh vege from a stall on the side of the road near Albany

We stayed for a couple nights next to Mutton bird Island, the only protected spot around as the wind was blowing quite a gale.

Mutton-bird beach

We stayed at Cosy Corner. I cooked my second meal (I'm getting quite into the whole cooking thing!) which Jack approved of even though it was vegetarian. Here there were no cute little brown bush mice. Here there were giant, large-toothed bush rats. At least one got in the car and after 3 hours of listening to it screech and carry on just on the other side of the fridge, we got out and turned the car on to scare it away. In the morning we found our soap a few metres away with bite marks.

My creamy spinach and roast tomato fettucine!

We stopped in at Denmark, near Walpole. It is an awesome hippy-like town, it reminded us of Maleny/Mapleton/Nimbin. We drove through the valley of the giants, where the famous tree top walk is. We had a massive picnic. The size of the trees is mind blowing and just driving through the forest is spectacular.

At Centre Road Crossing, just north of Walpole, we found a little cabin by the river we could stay at for free in the National Park. It was in this river which Jack caught his abundance of marron, nearly 20 in all! One in particular was a beast, weighing about 1.5 kg and looking more like a lobster than a marron. Bloody good eating according to Jack, poached and tossed with butter and salt and pepper, he had a rather epic breakfast of them the first morning (while I slept in), and then feasted on them again that night.

Pork spare ribs and mouth watering veges cooked in the camp oven over the cabin's pot belly stove

It was north of Northcliffe where we stumbled upon the first of three old fire lookouts built decades ago on top of giant Karri trees. This one, Diamond Tree, is 52m high, and we decided to climb it without shoes for some reason. It had a great view but by the time we got back down our hands and feet were quite sore.

We stayed at another crossing, called Moons Crossing. As we were packing up in the morning, Jack saw a snake near our car. He immediately jumped up on the table leaving me to pack up the car. It became clear any snake situation in the future will be dealt with by me.

On our way to the next town we found another of the fire towers, Gloucester Tree. This one is 61m and most popular; over a million people have climbed it. We added to the statistics, and this time we wore shoes.

 

Since the surrounding countryside is covered in the large Karri trees, which grow up to 85m, our solar panel was stuggling to find enough sun which displeased our fridge. So we stayed at a powered site at Pemberton Caravan Park. Numerous hot showers were also enjoyed as well as washing our clothes that are starting to turn red from the dirt.

Large karri trees cover most of the countryside around Pemberton

We found the final tree, Bicentenial tree. Highest at 68m, with a 4 stories high 'cubby' at the top. Bit of a brown undies climb to the top as the rungs were not evenly spaced and the wind had picked up so a soothing swaying motion added to the thrill. Our plan was so stay at Lake Jasper, which apparently is crystal clear and is rather spectacular but recent fires had wiped everything in its path making camping there impossible.

 

 -- Can you spot me in the picture above? --

Instead we stayed by the Blackwood River, which we enjoyed the company of two adorable possums at night, and lazed about in and on top of the river. Our blow up boat is turning out to be a good buy!

Jack lost his thong deep in the mud throwing out a yabbie pot

So after time in the bush we headed back to the coast, Augusta being our next destination. Augusta was a sleepy little coastal town but boasted some beautiful scenery and is where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean. I couldn’t see any difference in the water colour but apparently there is?

Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse

Historic Water wheel at Cape Leeuwin

And that brings us to Margaret River, where we are currently sitting in an internet café that plays sweet records and makes killer coffee. Marges is great! The weather may not be superb but the surf is big, there is a good vibe in the street and the coastal scenery lives up to expectations. The free fudge samples also go down a treat. We might try and find some work picking some of the grapes that makes the famous wine, but if not we could be moving on rather quickly as the downside to a place like this is living expenses and the lack of free camping. Also the weather will only get worse from now on so the warmth of the tropics is calling.

All about us we witnessed the aftermath of the November fires

Off to find a place to park the rig for the night.

Sarah and Jack.

A bug's life

We are in Albany, the lux has conquered the roughest tracks we have encountered and is still going strong (Well, apart from some strange lighting issues: indicators come on with the lights, right indicator also comes on when the left is on and a few other quirky things that are sometimes fixed with a solid hit to the dashboard - lucky there aren’t too many people on the roads to confuse).

One of the survivors hitched a ride

So what have we done? We have spent another week in national parks amongst some of the most beautiful coastline I have experienced. From Esperance we stayed at (insert here the name of what we are sure was a very pretty beach but which we don’t remember the name or what it looked like and we didn’t take any photos…). 

We then headed off to Fitzgerald National Park where, as what seems to be a common occurrence with us, we were greeted with a gated road (they have apparently been repairing the road for 2 years). So we backtracked to a lovely little beach near Hopetoun for the night.

 

We then headed off to the National Park the long way, via Ravensthorpe, battling some very corrugated and rutted out tracks. The camping spot was great, and we quickly inflated the blow up boat Sarah bought in Esperance and rowed 1km down the inlet to the surf.

The next spot we stopped was Quoin Head, and to get there was more than challenging. The track was very eroded and hilly but we eventually got there with no damage. To get down to the campsite was the scariest part, where the car had to creep down a very, very steep, slippery and rutty track. It was all worth it when we were greeted with yet another pure white beach nestled in between two headlands, one overlooking a huge eagle’s nest perching on a rocky outcrop in the water. I had a swim and we kicked back for the rest of the day.

The next day the bay was visited by a school of salmon followed by a few men in grey suits (sharks), so my next swim was only waist deep. 

Douchebags

 We crawled back up the beast of a hill and eventually got back to the highway after knocking off one of the toolboxes on a hard bit of the track.

Top of Quoin Head



We headed into Bremer Bay, a lovely spot, great fishing apparently and some good surf spots that weren’t playing the game while we were there.

Jack -whispering

I had a flick last night and caught a nice trevally that will be in a curry for dinner tonight. The spot was magic (as every bay, inlet and beach have been since we crossed the border) and had an island 1km offshore.  This was a protected area and has penguins on it (much to Sarah’s delight). 

The weather has gotten much cooler the last few, and with that the wind has turned onshore, Today it’s raining so surfing and fishing is off the cards.

Hope all you friends and family are well. We are both feeling a bit home sick today. I blame the weather!

Bi!

The Big State

We have had a great couple of weeks! We’ve crossed into WA, the state of Jack's dreams, and so far it is more than living up to them!

We stayed at Port Lincoln National Park where we had a beautiful view over a quiet bay. Next was Coffin Bay where we set up camp for a few days in the national park and we pried some oysters off the rocks, which Jack cooked over the fire and thoroughly enjoyed. The view from our camp was beautiful with white sand and baby blue water. We had our first showers using a bucket of sea water heated over the fire. The wind was freezing, but we felt nearly squeaky clean after.

Coffin Bay Oysters

We ended up staying on someone’s farm for the night (with their permission, of course). There was a ring of rocks set up for a fire already, except there was a big fat ugly lizard inside. We tapped a stick behind him to try and get him to move but the lazy bugger wouldn’t budge. We tapped him and physically pushed him across the ground but he refused to move a leg. We gave up and built our own rock circle.

We checked out a sealion colony, from our view on the top of the cliff they all looked dead. Streaky Bay was our next port of call. We checked out Granites, a famous surf break, where the waves looked ok, but the water looked too sharkey.

We stayed for a few nights at Perlubie beach, where we camped right on the beach. It was a really nice spot which used to have horse races on the beach, but now all that is left are the shelters, toilets and stables. We donned shoes and gloves and waded out into the water to find some razor fish (which look like big muscles but the meat is like a scallop). We pulled over 20 out from the sand. Just before getting out of the water, I saw one more, so I reached down to grab it, and it grabbed me back. I tried to run out of the water but my croc was suctioned to the bottom so I ended up loosing my balance and stepping back down and the crab bit my heel. Jack of course was standing on the shore laughing his head off as I am standing with one foot in the air screaming.

Mum, this is for you. Quite an interesting sight.

First sunset over the water at Perlubie Beach.

The northern point of Streaky Bay is called Point Brown, and Jack’s Uncle Hammer had suggested we check it out. It was amazing, we set up camp on the other side of the point amongst the sand dunes, looking out onto a beautiful sleepy bay. We were visited by dophins and a seal. Here I enjoyed my first uninterrupted sunset over the water, it was magical. We had roast chicken cooked in the camp oven one night and Jack caught a bunch of whiting, which we enjoyed panfried with butter with come cous cous the next. We were planning to stay longer however the wind changed to onshore and we awoke to the smell of decomposing seaweed.

We stopped in at Ceduna to do some shopping, which included a toaster and a jaffel iron. We celebrated the two month mark at Cactus beach with lots of jaffels filled with peanut butter, creamed corn and cheese (recipe from Aunty Heather – if you haven’t tried it, you should!), and Jack had a surf. After about 40 minutes a seal came by and it was as if there was some unspoken code as everyone paddled in leaving Jack all alone.

Cactus

 We got a bit lost finding Mexican Hat, but we finally did, and it really does look like a sombrero.

The Nullarbor! It really lives up to its name: it means tree-less. There was a whole lot of nothing, and a bit roadkill (including a camel). We detoured off the highway and checked out the view; it took our breaths away! The cliffs just dropped away a few meters from our feet to crashing seas far below.

The Bite

We soon (well, soon in these areas is a few hours drive, just as ‘just round the corner’ means a couple hundred kilometers) approached the boarder, and then we were in WA! The most noticeable difference was the petrol price which jumped up 40c.

We stopped a couple towns later (by town I mean a petrol station) at a rest stop. We had some veges and steak and we had a good chat to a man from Albany. It actually turns out that we had our clock wrong and we were two hours ahead. So we actually ate dinner at 3:30. And went to bed at 6:30. No wonder why, when he came over to talk at about 4 (we thought it was 6), sounding surprised, he asked if we were about to have dinner. We said no, we’ve just finished.

We decided to leave the highway and travel down to the coast via the Balledonia track. About 160ks in, after numerous ruts and kilometers of corrugations, we blew a tyre.

After our slight delay, we made it to the coast as the sun was setting. We stayed at Alexander Bay. We had a yummy dinner of lamb with bushmans spices, veges and pasta, and took a stroll to the beach where the yellow moon had just risen over the water, it was beautiful.

So bloody hot. 45 is not a fun number. We drove onto the beach, and now that it was daytime, we could see that the beach was even more beautiful than we thought: sand as white as snow and as fine as cornflour, water as clear as glass which transitioned from a stunning electric blue to a deep dark blue, interspersed with small islands. We couldn’t get over just how beautiful it was.

Alexander Bay, Esperance

Jack had a fish but to no avail, I raged at the flies. We decided that the heat was indeed too much for both us and the fridge, which was chucking a bit of a tanty, so we packed up and drove in to Esperance, where we stayed last night in a caravan park. We treated ourselves to eating at a Chinese Resturant and enjoyed some Broome brewed Ginger Beer (delish!).

Today has consisted of buying a new tyre, buying half of an Asian grocery, cursing at the lady from Centrelink, and of course, chilling at the library blogging for you fine people!

Enjoy all.