Trekkin

John & Sue decided to leave early before breakfast so that they could get up to Lake Eyre for a flight over the lake while it is full of water, so we parted company a few hours earlier than planned.  It was kind of sad seeing their Prado & Vista disappearing amongst the trees.  We cooked breakfast & were on our way by 7am.  The roadside scenery gradually gave way to pockets of farmland & small communities then opened up further to pastures of wheat & sheep paddocks.  Windmills started to become a feature of each property we passed, most properties had at least three windmills, one fallen down, one derelict & beyond repair & one working.  We got a glimpse of the sea again as we drove down the hill to Ceduna, the white wheat silos really stood out in the distance. We stopped at the quarantine station where our fridge was checked for fruit & vegies (the stretching when we stopped was good). We drove down the main street to see what Ceduna looked like (neat & tidy), then drove the loop back out to the highway & on a few more kilometres when we turned off towards Port Lincoln on the Flinders Highway.

Following the coast along past Smoky Bay then Streaky Bay we had coastal sand dunes in view most of the way with crops of wheat right up to the base of the dunes.  Streaky Bay township beckoned with its white wheat silos & long jetty (Ron can’t resist jetties) we turned into the township to have a look & maybe an early lunch.  It’s a lovely little town & first stop was a toilet break, where they also had a dump site, so I took the opportunity to empty our toilet canister, as we have been camping in the bush for a while.  It’s great that these towns have public facilities for motorhomes & caravans, it makes life so much easier.

We moved on & pulled up across the road from the Streaky Bay Sailing Club & naturally had to go & have a look at it.  The clubhouse is an old stone historic building built in 1892 right on the foreshores next to the historic Campbell’s landing in 1864, so I walked around the side to have more of a look & found a young lady working on cleaning the sailing boats on the recently mowed lawn.  The club has 3 Europe dinghy’s, 4 Pacers, a 505 & another (I don’t know its type), all neglected & full of water after the winter rains.  Chatting with the lady cleaning the boats, (I ended up giving her a hand) I found that the sailing club has just about fallen apart & there are no active members, she used to sail there but is now at uni in Adelaide & couldn’t stand seeing the boats in that condition. It’s sad seeing a sailing club in this state, the waters of the bay are absolutely superb for sailing, clear & clean flat water protected by Streaky Bay on all sides.  She recommended the historic Streaky Bay Hotel for lunch as her boyfriend is the chef, so we walked across to the old pub & had a great garfish & salad on the verandah overlooking the bay.  We then went for a walk along the town jetty (of course) & the shark proof swimming enclosure had around 40 pied cormorants standing around the edges, resting, drying wings & digesting before they swam off again.  We were really impressed with Streaky Bay, it has a great feel about it.

Heading down the coast further more wheat & sheep, (the wheat is so green) straight roads, & glimpses of sand dunes, lakes & the ocean.  Port Kenny is very small, although the old hotel looks good (apart from the sign writing).  The scenery does look very good with the blue of the ocean contrasting with the white of the sand dunes & the vivid green of the wheat, with the wildflowers bordering the road adding another dimension.  We stopped at Elliston to refuel & the only fuel station between Streaky Bay & Port Lincoln had a quirky sign pointing to the toilets (4U2P).  We had a short drive around the tourist route in Elliston & saw the historic jetty (don’t know why it’s historic) plus a good look at the bay.  The bay is unusual in that it has a rock reef across most of the ocean side of it with breakers crashing over the reef, I’m sure a lot of boats have come to grief here.

Limestone plains & hills were the feature of the next part of the trip, no trees, no crops & only sheep grazing on the short grass.  It looked very pretty as the exposed limestone rocks looked like snow on the ground in the drizzling rain & low light levels.  Some of the old farm houses were made from limestone blocks & some very industrious farmers had also made dry stone walls, with varying levels of competency.  Closer to Port Lincoln a few mountains rose out of the plains & we started seeing the brilliant yellow of canola contrasting with the vivid green of the wheat, more postcard picture viewing, it was absolutely beautiful.

Driving into Port Lincoln the massive collection of grain silos dominates the port area.  We turned off towards the caravan park & coming down the street to it all we could see was the waters of Boston Bay.  We are very fortunate again, the caravan park is right on the water, has its own private jetty & protected sandy beach, with a foreshore walk leading off either side of it.  Our Karavan has a great view of the bay from the kitchen windows.

Another long day with 607km under the belt.  We didn’t feel hungry after our big fish lunch so we settled for some very nice cheese, bikkies & coffee before sending off a few days of blog (we have mobile reception again).

We awoke to another glorious morning in a bush camp setting, we were surrounded by wildflowers in the Nullarbor Desert.  The multi-coloured wildflowers are certainly pretty, the small compact bushes are covered in delicate little flowers. How lovely is God’s garden!  Our drive was in overcast cloudy conditions, with a little rain shower scattered along the way. As we drove out of Madura suddenly the vista opened to some magnificent mountains. We drove for a few hundred kilometres with the limestone ridge to the left of us with layered trees climbing the ridge.  The trees were spindly with a lovely golden leaf on the top, with the sun glinting off them they looked spectacular.  We came across a few sections of highway that were set up as emergency Royal Flying Doctor airstrips.  Fortunately none were in use when we came through.  The majority of the traffic is either double road trains or grey nomads towing caravans.  It is very unusual to see a normal car.  Our first stop was at Eucla for lunch, about 12km before the South Australian border & the quarantine restrictions.  The garden out the back of the roadhouse had a pond that was full of brown frogs (lots & lots of them, hope that they are natives), the view of the Southern Ocean & the beach was also very good.  The rest area at the Eucla Roadhouse was called “Gero’s Rest Area” (I am sure that it stands for geriatric) where we had lunch to finishing off all our fresh salads (extra big ration today). Not long after we crossed the Western Australia border into South Australia & passed through the first quarantine station.  We also lost 1 ½ hours.

We stopped a little bit further down the road at the first Nullarbor Cliffs lookout.  This was a fairly sedate cliff with great views down to the beaches below to either side.  The view was magnificent.  Our next stop was a more extreme cliff where the view was extreme – straight down about 100m to the ocean.  Then back on the road again, still pushing a head wind all day, very straight roads exposed to the full force of the wind with the occasional rain shower to liven up our day.  We stopped at Nullarbor Roadhouse so that I could refuel, today was the highest fuel consumption on the trip so far, 16.1 litres per 100km.  The Nullarbor Roadhouse also marked the start of the Treeless Plain, we drove through a lot of very low scrubby bushes, with not a tree to be seen in any direction, horizon to horizon.

The Head of Bight Whale Centre was next on the agenda & we drove in 12km off the highway to the centre.  We stood out on the viewing platforms in a freezing cold southerly wind right off the Antarctic Ocean to look at the Southern Right Whales that gather in the Head of Bight (head of the Great Australian Bight) to calve & raise the calves for six months until they are big & strong enough to take them back down to Antarctica.  We saw six or seven whales in relatively close, at times they were on the surface & at other times there were none to be seen.  The photos we took don’t really illustrate how big these whales are nor how close to the shore they are.

After the whales it was on more straight roads, this time with a bit of up & down in them but really very good roads through some beautiful tree landscapes. The trip is long “are we there yet?” but it is quite beautiful, the scenery is ever changing, we are seeing it green after all the rains – it’s not boring.  At times we chat with Sue & John on the two way about where we are going or what to look out for & at times when the white line (on the road) fever would get to us we would tell jokes etc. &  have a good laugh. We chose to bush camp around 25km east of Yalata & the camp site is absolutely lovely, set off the road about 100m & in amidst a stand of trees, with birds calling from the trees.  John cooked a delicious chicken curry & vegies.  We washed it down with a Hardy’s Shiraz.  Unfortunately tonight is our last night together with John & Sue as we will be heading our different ways from Ceduna.  John & Sue will be heading up to Lake Eyre for a flight over the lake. We will head down to Port Lincoln.  It is sad as they are great company & we have enjoyed a lot of laughs, meaningful chats, adventures & reds together. We will miss their company for the week we have left before we return to Canberra.  We can’t believe how quickly the time has gone. It seems as though we have only just planned this trip & now it is almost over.

Tereza & I went for a walk at 6am along the Esperance waterfront esplanade in front of the caravan park down to the Tanker Wharf, then out along the curved wharf to the end.  The wharf was built in 1934/35 but in 1985, 67 piers rotted away & had to be removed, now there is a gap between the wharf & the end of the pier.  We saw an interesting sight where the sunbeam was shining in a shaft through the early morning clouds.  The Tanker Wharf was covered in pigeons, they flew off as we got closer to them & we could hear all of the cooing from the pigeon nests under the wharf, there must be hundreds of pigeon nests there.  At the shore end of the wharf is a bronze of “Sammy the Sea Lion”, also part of the restoration project conducted by the local Rotary Club.  The cool wind ensured we didn’t stay on the end of the wharf too long & we were back at the Karavan by 7am for breakfast.

We packed & were heading out by 8am to the Esperance bird observation walk & hides.  We had a lovely walk through the large banksias & across the floating bridge, looking at the birdlife & the wildflowers.  The walk across the boardwalk on the other side of the access road was very good for observing wildflowers, we were probably a bit late for a lot of the birds.  Some of the small native orchids in flower are absolutely superb, as were some of the other wildflowers, only Mother Nature could provide such an exquisite beauty.

Next stop was Norseman, around 200km further on, an old gold mining town named after the horse that actually was responsible for finding the gold.  On the corner of the park there is a bronze statue of the horse to recognise the fact.  We stopped at a very nice park next to the visitor centre for lunch then went for a drive up to the lookout on Observation Hill.  It was very disappointing to see the huge piles of very poisonous tailings waste, a sitting time bomb.  Another disappointing thing is that in these mining towns most of the houses are small shacks & there are no beautiful or significant buildings in town.  The mining magnates maybe employ some people but all they are interested is taking the riches out & not putting anything back into the community.

Then on the road again westwards.

To start with, from Norseman the roadside trees consisted of salmon gum & mallee trees, quite pretty.  After a while the countryside changed to lower scrubby type country, then low heath.  We drove on the longest piece of straight road in Australia, 146.6km (90 miles) of unwavering straight before we got to the Caiguna roadhouse bend where we refuelled. It has been a long hard drive into the wind all the way.  Jibilunya Rockhole Rest Area was a welcome sight, just off the road a couple of hundred metres we set up camp just before sunset, 643km for the day from Esperance.  It took a bit of mucking around getting the Karavan in the right spot to get the best protection from the cool south-easterly breeze so that our gas burner would work without too much interference from the wind.

Tereza cooked a magnificent steak Dianne with vegies & John supplied a very nice Chapel Hill red to wash it down. We also had to cook up our vegetables so that we won’t have to throw them away at the quarantine bay as tomorrow we will be crossing from West Australia to South Australia. We sat in our heated Karavan & had a great chat once again.

The park next to the road bridge in Denmark was the meeting place with John & Sue at 7.30am to re-join & continue our journey together, it’s good to be together again.  We all had different adventures & a great time catching up with relatives we unfortunately do not get to see too often because of the great distance. The riverside park at Denmark is a pretty spot & very quiet at that time of the morning.  The highway to Esperance is very interesting & different, there is approximately 100 metres on either side that is preserved bushland before breaking out into either plantation hardwood or wheat & canola.  So the highway drive is a treat with the various colours & shapes of the wildflowers as well as all the small birds skittering across the road.  Every now & then a huge wheat storage complex would appear, complete with tall silos & ground storage under tarpaulins.  The trees are different in this part of Western Australia, they are tall & spindly with a sparse collection of leaves right on the top branches.  The road is following the hills up & down & generally fairly straight.  The wheat is not as advanced as the wheat further north that we have passed, the canola is just as yellow, sometimes so brilliant it hurts the eyes.

Ravensthorpe was our lunch break stop & we parked in a small park in the middle of the small town after about 350km of travel.  Tereza & I were sitting on a rock eating when, to our great surprise Jason & Michelle Kingma & children said hello.  I work with both Jason & Michelle in Canberra & we met in Kununurra previously on this trip.  They said that they had also stopped for lunch & were walking up the street, saw the Kimberley Karavan & wondered if it was mine.  We had a great catch up chat, places we had been to, things we had done and surprisingly we had been to many of the same places & did the same things. The kids were anxious to get to the playground, they are such lovely children it’s great that they can travel with them, what an adventure for them.

Just out of Ravensthorpe we passed the mothballed big nickel mine, recently sold by BHP to a Canadian company. In the boom year of 2007 nickel reached a price of US$50,000 per ton.

As we got close to Esperance, the farms changed from wheat/canola to sheep then on the flat land leading into Esperance the farms were all large dairy farms with healthy Friesian or Jersey cows.  After 550kms of driving & 6 ½ hours we reached the Esperance Caravan Park & got sites next to each other.  After set up we went on a scenic tourist drive around the coast, following the lookouts, headlands & beaches around then headed back into town past Pink Lake (which is blue).  The ocean & beach scenery is stunning, again the colour of the water is amazing & the granite islands, boulders & cliffs look fantastic.  Today was overcast & cloudy so the photos are even more off the mark of showing the true beauty of it all.

At the main lookout we saw a few cars that were taking part in a treasure hunt/trivia event & two cars stood out, a pair of Jowett Jupiters from the early 1950s.

Dinner was very easy tonight, a fisherman’s basket from near where we refuelled.  The red emperor fish was delicious, as was the rest of the meal.  We had a quite get together with John & Sue with a nice red & discussed our plans for the next few days crossing the Nullarbor Plain.

The days are cooler & the nights are cold, it’s about the same temperature as at home in Canberra.  We are definitely heading home now. We are talking more & more about when we want to be home (Ron is due back at work on October the 1^st).  There is more of an urgency now.  Do we really want to see another beautiful beach or just cut it out because we have a long way to go & we are running out of time?

A leisurely start & I cooked bacon & eggs in the camp kitchen to set us up for our big day out.  Our first short drive was to Lights Beach where we stood on the lookout & enjoyed the vista of the Southern Ocean & a few new wildflowers.  Next was the drive back out onto the highway through some karri forest close to Denmark & we made our way to the Denmark Meadery where we promptly sampled all six of the different meads available (all before 10am).  Our favourite was the spiced mead. The honey was sampled next & our favourite was the karri flavour so we bought a tub of it, plus the obligatory double ice cream cone.

Back out to the highway & down to Greens Pool where we walked down on to the beach & wandered amongst these massive boulders on the beach, some coloured with red or orange algae.  The water is crystal clear & the different colours of the water are brilliant & contrast so well.  The views along the beach are stunning & the photos don’t come close to capturing the beauty.  The beach very close next door was Elephant Rocks & indeed from the right angle & with the right light, you can imagine one of these massive rocks sort of resembling an elephant.  The collection of giant granite boulders next to each in the little bay is very scenic none the less & the path down to them had lots of little & big lizards sunning themselves.

Our next short drive was to Madfish Bay, where we didn’t see any mad fish jumping out & saying catch me, cook me & eat me, though it is quite pretty.  Next to that was Waterfall Beach where a small freshwater waterfall cascades out onto the beach.  Having exhausted our morning we headed into Denmark to the prize winning bakery & bought some pies & pastry for lunch & took them down to the mouth of the Denmark River to enjoy.  We didn’t think they were that special, they couldn’t have had too many good bakers in the competition or maybe we are used to better. However, the view of the river & the old railway bridge was very nice, we even observed a duck guiding six very cute ducklings for a swim under the bridge as well as a stately pelican floating down the river effortlessly.

We headed off to Monkey Rock Lookout, a long walk up a steep hill then a climb onto some very large granite boulders.  Hard work but the view was spectacular up & down the coast.  We met some American uni students, two of them studying at Sunshine Coast Uni, on top of the rock  & walked back down the Bibblemun Track with them to the car park. They were nice young girls enjoying their time in Australia (they are the first lot of Americans we have come across).   We didn’t see the monkey face.

On the way back to the caravan park we stopped at the lookout overlooking the local surf club where we had a very good view of the sandbar blocking Wilson Inlet from the ocean, again, very pretty but windy & cool.  Off to the Karavan & I did a bit of car checking in preparation for our long journeys ahead.  Tereza made me a coffee & I finished off the last of my birthday fruit cake.

Tereza prepared a wonderful pumpkin soup followed by some nachos to watch the footy. (no red wine).  If this continues I will have withdrawal symptoms – good thing we will be joining up with Sue & John early tomorrow morning,

The nights are so cold it is preparing us for home – we haven’t too long to go now.

It was a fond farewell to Craig, Denise, Jessica & Melanie.  It is such a shame we live so far from each other. We left Shoalwater at 7.15am & made our way to the Kwinana Freeway, then towards Bunbury.  The Kwinana Freeway is a very nice new four lane divided flat road that really allowed us to cruise along very comfortably. Canberra should have employed the Western Australia’s artist for sculpture at the side of the freeway (it must have cost a small fortune). Maybe we had to settle for someone cheaper, after all we haven’t all the big mines, we only have the politicians.

After Bunbury we turned off onto the South Western Highway & into old dairy farming country.  The fields are so green & there is water everywhere, the dams are full & the creeks are running.  It really does look great.  We seemed to be passing through another small town every 10km or so, totally different than our experiences up in the Kimberley & Pilbara regions, which is so sparsely settled.  The farmland started turning to apple orchards as we passed through Donnybrook, the place where the Granny Smith apple originated.  The fruit trees were only just starting to flower on most orchards. After the large town of Manjinup the land started to be used less for farming & we started to see some hardwood tree plantations.  This turned into forest & we were driving up & down hill through twisty mountain roads with massive forest giants crowding the road.  It did look very special, even though we had some light rain at times, the sight of these big trees so close to the road, so tall & so straight.  Vastly different than the deserts we have been experiencing the last month.  As we got closer to Denmark & the coast we started to see more wildflowers appearing as the rainforest gave way to coastal trees & shrubs.

We arrived in Denmark & stopped at the visitor centre where the gardens have some beautiful wildflowers.  This visitor centre is very special in that it has a barometer museum inside it, a special water barometer that is 35 feet tall takes pride of place.  We climbed the tower & read the stories of the invention of the barometer as well as the story of this water barometer & how it came to be in Denmark.  The water barometer was made by a Dutchman who migrated to Denmark & he brought it with him then donated it to the town.  It is special seeing how it works & particularly seeing water boil under air pressure at 20 degrees Celsius.  It’s amazing how accurate the water barometer is.  It won the Guinness Book of Records for being the tallest barometer.

The Big 4 caravan park we booked into at the mouth of Wilson Inlet hardly has any people staying, apparently it is out of season as it is too cold, however, the wildflowers are a real treat even though they are a couple of weeks late this year. There is both the south western form & the Port Lincoln form of the ringneck parrot feeding in the grounds, alongside families of wood ducks, lots of kangaroos & wallabies.  The magpies also look strange with the white back of the Western form that we don’t see in Eastern Australia.  We went for a walk in the bush next to the caravan park & discovered a lot more beautiful wildflowers out in bloom plus lots of tiny honeyeaters & wrens darting amongst the bushes.  The views of the inlet & the ocean are great, though it was pretty cold when exposed to the wind.  The inlet is blocked from the sea by a sandbar at the entrance so the water levels are fairly high, it’s quite strange seeing bench seats sitting in a foot of water with pelicans gliding serenely past & spoonbills feeding next to the seats.

Dinner was late after a late lunch & Tereza looked after us very well (no red tonight). The standards are falling, it’s no fun drinking alone (Tereza is a teetotaller).

We woke early to the sound of Perth suburbanites leaving early for work, cars starting & garage doors opening & closing, cars driving slowly past us.  After Craig & Denise left we took the opportunity to wash the car on the front lawn & give it a wipe over inside to try & remove a little bit more of the red dust.  The weather was lovely with the warm sun just right for car washing & all our washing too.  We spent a couple of hours on the car then made ourselves a spot of lunch.  Denise & Craig have such a lovely big house, I felt lost in it after 2 ½ months in our tiny Karavan.  It was lovely to have a nice shower in a bathroom (not a community one) wash in a washing machine & wander around the garden & talk to the dog & bird.

Denise took flex leave & took us on a short drive around Shoalwater then to Rockingham Beach.  We had a look at the causeway to the naval base then a lovely walk on the beach & out on one of the wharves, built especially as a fishing/walking wharf.  We walked over a few boat ramps & on the way back Tereza gave herself a nasty scrape up the shin when a rock moved under her feet, not on the huge rocks, cliff tops or wobbly stepping stones crossing rivers/creeks but on almost flat ground. We also came across a blue tongue lizard on the sand near the end of the wharf.

We hurried back so that we could walk the two blocks to primary school & pick Mel up & walk back home with her. It was a real treat for all of us.  The school is so new & modern, it really does look good.  Denise made a pan pizza for dinner, mixed all of the base ingredients in a non-stick pan, then added the filling & cooked it on the cooktop with the lid on.   Tereza & I have never seen pizza cooked this way & it tasted really good.  We washed it down with a glass of Wolf Blass Merlot (red of course).

Denise & Craig then drove us out to the naval base where Craig took us in to have a look at the Senior Sailor’s Mess.  It is really a big, very nice area to eat, drink & relax in.  As we drove around the base we saw hundreds of Tammar Wallabies that live on Garden Island & are protected from predators.  The biggest threat to them is being killed by the cars of the thousands of people that drive to work on the island every day (5,000 people work there).  There were a couple of naval ships & a submarine tied up at the docks.

Back home we chatted for a while & enjoyed a Wolf Blass Muscato before retiring a little bit earlier than last night.  It was a really nice feel day.

Cliff Head had a few warbling birds that thought we should enjoy the sunrise so they started early for us.  Our drive is along the back of the Indian Ocean sand dunes so the scenery is mostly heath type country, the wattle is just starting to bloom, with a few dried dune lakes with a lot of white sand dunes showing their heads.  Our first stop was at Green Head, a beautiful little fishing village with a few wharves for the fishing boats, a short path to the hilltop lookout (that was a wooden bandstand with seats all around) plus an osprey nest pole with an old crayfish pot on top for the nest.  The water here is so clear & the view from the small lookout back over the bay & the wharf was superb.  The outlying reef does a great job of keeping the waves at bay so it is only very small ripples on the beach, quite unusual.  We drove through Jurien Bay but weren’t impressed & stopped next at Cervantes at the carpark right on the beach.  Again the bandstand lookout on top of the dunes gave a superb view over the turquoise & indigo waters off Cervantes & a great view of the close reef system that protects the shores.

We headed inland through more & more wattle country, sometimes there is vast swathes of yellow wattle just starting to fully open into flower.  A lot of the country becomes farmland with very green grass & fat contented sheep & cows, plus massive fields of rich green wheat & brilliant yellow canola.  We also came across a wind farm at Emu Downs, around 50 wind generators, set in a field of yellow wildflowers, it looked incongruous.  We stopped & looked at some wildflowers & took a few photos of them, we don’t see these in Canberra.  The drive was through some of the richest & greenest looking farmland we have seen on this trip, with the yellow fields of canola hurting the eyes at times, it is so brilliant, contrasting with the eucalypt greens.

Our next stop was New Norcia, a settlement founded by Benedictine monks in 1847.  The settlement is just monastery, convent, church, school, plus the warehouses used for the wheat, flour, olive oil production & machinery.  The stone & brick buildings are impressive, they are certainly large & very religious looking.  We didn’t spend nearly as much time there as we would have liked.

The rest of the trip to Perth was mostly through farmland, however, the closer we got to Perth, the more wineries appeared, with lots of small vineyards all over the place.  The satellite navigation assisted us immensely in finding my cousin Craig & family in the suburb of Shoalwater, very handy to the naval base they work at off the coast of Rockingham.  It was great to see them again & see how much the two girls have grown since we last saw them, it’s amazing how fast they grow up.  Craig & Denise cooked a great BBQ dinner for us, which we washed down with some nice red, plus a great Muscato for desert & a very sweet port to top it off.  We spent a lot of time talking & laughing & Mel & I had some great tussles on the couch, she is very ticklish.  We went to bed very late & there were tired faces all round next morning.

This morning was a late get away, we chatted to the couple in the Wicked Camper next to us.  They are from Taupo in New Zealand & come to Australia on a regular basis to tour, we had a good chat.  We set a leisurely pace, trying to spot any decent wildflower displays but I think we are around two weeks early judging by the state of the buds on all the plants.  The wattles are just starting & not yet at their best, it makes for a colourful display on the sides of the road.  We passed a very pink lake, we took some photos, but of course the brilliant pink doesn’t come up that well.  The lake is actually a salt mine drying dams & the pink is caused by the algae in such brackish warm water.  It does look unbelievable.  We also passed through lots of very green wheat & yellow canola fields & a few happy fat sheep grazing as well as lots of yellow & blue wildflower strewn paddocks. It is unusual seeing all this rich green so close to the coastal sand dunes & the sea.

We started the historical building part of the day when we passed the old convict sign-on buildings  just before Northampton where we refuelled.  The old stone church & the convent next door in Northampton are credit to the craftsmanship of the stonemasons.  The church in particular is stunning.  Northampton is a very old town & there are a lot of beautiful old stone buildings scattered throughout.

We stopped in Geraldton for some groceries & parked in the grounds of the old Victoria Hospital, built in 1887, now the visitor centre.  The stone buildings have been very well restored.  After lunch we went through the old Geraldton Jail & spent some time looking at the great rock collection in there & reading the history of some of the people that were in there, either working or prisoners. Todays prisoners are on holiday compared to those poor souls.  We took the scenic route through the port where ships were loading wheat & past the old red & white striped lighthouse.

Next stop was at the old town of Greenough.  The trees here are famous for the way that they grow with a permanent bend because the prevailing southerly winds are usually so strong.  The wind keeps breaking branches & burning leaves on the windward side so the downwind side is the only part that can grow, so all of the trees have a very distinctive lean & growth away from the southerly wind direction. The old town of Greenough is a collection of old stone buildings reclaimed & restored by the National Trust.  It is a fine collection of the important buildings in town, such as the two churches, police station & attached jail, hall, convent & a couple of houses used by monks & priests.  We went inside most of the buildings & they have been furnished with photos from the early days of Greenough as well as period furniture.  Tereza was reminded of her school days in the old schoolhouse with the slate used to learn writing skills.  The inside of one of the churches was particularly nice.

We headed south & turned off onto the coast road where we found the rest area at Cliff Head, 275km for the day.  Six other campers were already set up.  This place is around 400m off the road & right on the beach.  We set up the Karavan & took our chairs, coffee, cheese & bikkies down to the beach & watched the sunset on an absolutely still ocean. It is unbelievable how calm it is after all the strong winds of the last few days.  The sunset was absolutely stunning, very rich golden colours & a superb reflection off the ocean.

Tereza did a great job with some curry puffs for dinner & a glass of red washed it down nicely.

Our friends John & Sue left early today for Perth, then Denmark.  John wants to be in Perth on Monday & then spend a few days with his niece in Denmark, where we will join them next Wednesday.  So, we are on our lonesome today to explore Kalbarri National Park.  First up we had a drive around town to see what Kalbarri looked like, quite a nice little town.  Our W.A. National Parks Pass allowed us free entry into Kalbarri National Park & we hadn’t got very far down the corrugated yellow sandy road (this gold coloured sand we haven’t come across before) when the inevitable happened.  We stopped for photos.  The wildflowers here are absolutely beautiful & such a variety of colours, shapes, sizes & all in varying stages of flowering.

Our first planned stop was the lookout above the Loop Gorge, a very high vantage point looking both ways.  I think we spent more time looking at the wildflowers than the gorge.  We then journeyed on to the Loop Gorge itself & “Natures Window”, a natural rock formation that is a large hole in the sandstone caused by wind & water erosion over time.  You can look through it & see the Loop Gorge.  It makes absolutely beautiful photos, as you can see in the sample below.

Next on the agenda was the Z-Bend Gorge, funnily enough a gorge with the river bed shaped in the form of a “Z”.  The car park & the 1.2km walk to the lookout was just as good as the gorge view, the different wildflowers were even better than at the Loop Gorge.  We ran into some fellow travellers whom we have been bumping into at a lot of sights, Fiona & her husband from Melbourne & their 3 young boys.  After dilly dallying & taking lots of photos (you only see a very small sample, on one day we took 390 photos) we were hurried up by a rain shower that we could see coming across the park.  We had our lunch in a very good picnic shelter provided then started to head out.  The road condition was a lot worse heading out than coming in, it must be all of the visitors into the park today really chewed it up.  Anyway, the journey was a lot slower as we were keeping our eyes out for new wildflowers & we stopped to take lots more photos.  It was like being in Mother Nature’s wonderful garden.  The flowers are apparently a bit late this year but we think what there is it’s  wonderful.

Eventually back in Kalbarri we had some cheese, bikkies & coffee to warm us up as the southerly wind was a bit cool.  Afterwards we had a short walk down by the Murchison River before walking back past the fish & chip shop next to the caravan park & picked up a hot dinner – a lot better than cooking, it is Sunday (our standard has fallen now that our friends left).  We are missing our friends Sue & John.  It is strange to see our Karavan without their Vista next to it.