Our first day on the road was a gentle day, less than 300k. On the way we stopped at The Pinnacles, an odd bunch of rock formations in the desert. Pretty cool to see, not sure if I'd bother doing a day trip from Perth for it though!
This was also our first encounter with Australian flies. European flies are generally focused on unattended food, and are easily scared off. Australian flies are brave and have no interest in your food. Their one aim is getting in and around your mouth, eyes, nose and ears. They are infuriating.
Our first argument over how to put up the new tent would be in Cervantes, a small and fairly forgettable beachside village. Here we also cooked up the first of many chilli-con-carnes.
Next day we continued north, stopping in Geraldton to register the car. Geraldton is a unattractive town of about 40,000 people. It is the biggest town in the 3000km-ish stretch from Perth to Broome, so we hit the supermarket too. North of here you are in the outback, and need to get used to 250km stretches between fuel stops let alone Woolworths'. In the afternoon we visited Kalbarri national park, which had some beautiful gorges (all the more beautiful for being empty).
We stayed the night in Kalbarri village, by the coast. It was here (the second night in the tent) we really noticed the birds for the first time. From now on we would be woken up just before dawn by various screechings. Australia has a lot of very beautiful and spectacularly noisy birds. Having evolved in a world without cats and foxes they are also fearless. I'm not much of a birdwatcher, but any ornithologists out there could go to Australia just for that. Expect to see quite a few more photos of birds on this blog! As usual for Western Australia, we were also spoilt for sunsets:
The next day we drove to Monkey Mia on Shark Bay, stopping on the way at Hamelin pool, where there is a colony of Stromatolites. These are made of tiny primiative bacteria, and are thought to be largely responsible for creating a lot of oxygen and, thereby life as we know it. Read Nick Lane's book 'Oxygen: The molecule that made the world' for a better explanation than I could hope to give.
Monkey Mia, where we would spend 2 nights, is a tourist park where they feed some wild dolphins at 8-ish each morning, so you can be pretty sure of seeing them. Nowadays it is quite heavily regulated so there are only a few of the wild dolphins they are actually allowed to feed, and they do not feed them much (nowhere near enough for the dolphins to get lazy and stop hunting for themselves). So for the dolpins it is more of a social call, dropping in to see those crazy humans lined up on the beach to see them. So it was pretty cool to see them, despite the hundred-or-so other people there at the same time getting in the way:
On our 'day off' whilst staying there we took Sheila onto the sandy tracks of nearby Francois Peron national park, a deserted and stunningly beautiful wilderness. We took the tyre pressures down and engaged the diff locks for the first time to get more grip on the sand. To our relief, Sheila owned it. The 'Big' and 'Little' lagoons were both phenomenal.
We stopped for lunch at a cafe in Denham, and had 2 of the worst sandwiches ever made. Denham is fairly typical of a WA outback town. It feels like a place which has survived a war. It sells extremely expensive food and petrol. Unsurprising really when you think it is probably about 200km from the nearest roadhouse and 4-500km from the nearest town.
Back at Monkey Mia the campsite got invaded by an aggressive emu:
The next morning we went to see the Dolphins again and continued up the coast to Carnarvon. Australia has a lot of places called Shelley Beach but the one we visited on the way really lived up to its name
Carnarvon was a forgettable overnight stop on the long drive up to Exmouth, at the north-west corner of Australia. Exmouth is a small town just next to Cape Range national park, which is itself surrounded by Ningaloo marine park. The next day we had an awesome time snorkelling just off the beach in the national park, seeing a ton of fish including some reef sharks, and a couple of turtles. This was our favourite place in Australia so far...
This was also our first encounter with Australian flies. European flies are generally focused on unattended food, and are easily scared off. Australian flies are brave and have no interest in your food. Their one aim is getting in and around your mouth, eyes, nose and ears. They are infuriating.
Our first argument over how to put up the new tent would be in Cervantes, a small and fairly forgettable beachside village. Here we also cooked up the first of many chilli-con-carnes.
Next day we continued north, stopping in Geraldton to register the car. Geraldton is a unattractive town of about 40,000 people. It is the biggest town in the 3000km-ish stretch from Perth to Broome, so we hit the supermarket too. North of here you are in the outback, and need to get used to 250km stretches between fuel stops let alone Woolworths'. In the afternoon we visited Kalbarri national park, which had some beautiful gorges (all the more beautiful for being empty).
We stayed the night in Kalbarri village, by the coast. It was here (the second night in the tent) we really noticed the birds for the first time. From now on we would be woken up just before dawn by various screechings. Australia has a lot of very beautiful and spectacularly noisy birds. Having evolved in a world without cats and foxes they are also fearless. I'm not much of a birdwatcher, but any ornithologists out there could go to Australia just for that. Expect to see quite a few more photos of birds on this blog! As usual for Western Australia, we were also spoilt for sunsets:
The next day we drove to Monkey Mia on Shark Bay, stopping on the way at Hamelin pool, where there is a colony of Stromatolites. These are made of tiny primiative bacteria, and are thought to be largely responsible for creating a lot of oxygen and, thereby life as we know it. Read Nick Lane's book 'Oxygen: The molecule that made the world' for a better explanation than I could hope to give.
Monkey Mia, where we would spend 2 nights, is a tourist park where they feed some wild dolphins at 8-ish each morning, so you can be pretty sure of seeing them. Nowadays it is quite heavily regulated so there are only a few of the wild dolphins they are actually allowed to feed, and they do not feed them much (nowhere near enough for the dolphins to get lazy and stop hunting for themselves). So for the dolpins it is more of a social call, dropping in to see those crazy humans lined up on the beach to see them. So it was pretty cool to see them, despite the hundred-or-so other people there at the same time getting in the way:
On our 'day off' whilst staying there we took Sheila onto the sandy tracks of nearby Francois Peron national park, a deserted and stunningly beautiful wilderness. We took the tyre pressures down and engaged the diff locks for the first time to get more grip on the sand. To our relief, Sheila owned it. The 'Big' and 'Little' lagoons were both phenomenal.
Back at Monkey Mia the campsite got invaded by an aggressive emu:
Carnarvon was a forgettable overnight stop on the long drive up to Exmouth, at the north-west corner of Australia. Exmouth is a small town just next to Cape Range national park, which is itself surrounded by Ningaloo marine park. The next day we had an awesome time snorkelling just off the beach in the national park, seeing a ton of fish including some reef sharks, and a couple of turtles. This was our favourite place in Australia so far...
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