25th September, Kalgoorlie

Having just spent nearly three weeks travelling across the southern portion of Western Australia, we are totally entranced by the glorious beauty of it. Admittedly, it is dominated by seaside views, and that whenever they exist, it is taken for granted that they will look really good. However, these seaside views are outstanding. From the colour of the water, thru the rugged cliffs, to the numerous islands the areas ability to extract moments of awe from you is never ending.

As we had explored the Bunbury, Busselton, and Margaret River areas a few years ago, we went directly from Perth to Albany, and yes, the route was ‘wildflower nirvana’ – everywhere is!

Albany has many more really big hills than we had imagined – everywhere you go it seems to be up or down, with even the main street being a quite descent hill. This idea of going “Up” allows me to raise the issue of town names down here in the south. A good number of towns end in “up” – Dwellingup, Amelup, Burngup, Pingrup, Ongerup, Boyup, Burekup, Cowaramup, Manjimup, Quinniup, and I suspect that if we travelled wide and far enough we'd find a Stuffup. It was so bad that when we were looking at a grain lift, we expected the control buttons to be marked as “Up Up” and “Down Up”.

 Panorama of Albany.

 King Sound from the beach

Dog Rock within the town.

Way back in the early 1950s a whaling station was established at Albany, and it continued until 1976 when it closed as Australia’s last such place. These days they run a really good tourist facility with most of the original plant still in place. It is quite an eye opener to do the tour and learn just how brutal, and how smelly, and how tough the labour was to harvest the oil, meat, and baleen. Such was the volume of blood and guts that ran down into the sea from the slaughter slipway, huge numbers of sharks congregated in the small adjoining bay. The numbers were so great that men in small boats were sent among them to kill them by use of rifles! They also have a real whale chaser ship up on a slipway so that you can climb aboard and wander around. I certainly wouldn’t want to live on one – the rooms and facilities make a caravan look like a palace.

 Skeleton of a Blue Whale - all 72 feet of it.

 Harpoon gun on bow of Whale Chaser boat.

Engine Room - they only employed short guys.

 We did a day trip to Denmark - this is the local river.

And again

As we moved on towards Esperance, we deviated to Hyden to see the famous Wave Rock. It was good to see it in real life (as opposed to photos), as it is larger than expected, and that it’s a relatively small part of a huge rock ridge that extends to cover a vast area.

 Beside the road to Hyden - bloody wildflowers everywhere.

 Okay, I'm lookin at it.

 I'll try swimming up it....

 Hey, this is great. Ya don't get wet if you fall off your board.

Another rocky feature - Hippo's Yawn.

Our next stop was at Ravensthorpe where our little deviation ended as we got back onto the Esperance route. While there we popped in to see the annual Ravensthorpe Wildflower show and were duly stunned by the enormous range, variety and number of flowers on display. No longer as we drive along at 85kph will we assume that all the yellow flowers consist of three or four plants. We now know that just within the Ravensthorpe alone, area there are at least 30 to 50 different yellow plants! Plus a similar number of red/orange/plum coloured types. Astounding: but we are becoming a bit “Wildflowered out”.

 Ravensthorpe Wildflower display

There's more than one Yellow out there!

 I’m sure that everyone has seen photos of wild kangaroos lying on the vivid white sands of Lucky Bay at Cape Le Grand National Park. Well, it isn’t a simple distortion of facts, nor even a bit of spin – we day tripped from Esperance and were quite taken while walking hand in hand along the squeaky white sand (ain’t love grand?) to see Kangaroos hop out onto the beach and munch on the seaweed that had washed up. This activity was clearly strenuous as once they had eaten, they needed to lay and rest awhile. Winter storms have created quite a bit of beach seaweed and thus the ‘roos have a smorgasbord of fodder. Note the larger roo in the photo – she is carrying a Joey in her pouch.

 

Lucky Bay - 60km east of Esperance in Cape Le Grand Nat Park

 

Reputed to be the whitest beach in Australia.

 It's very Kangaroo friendly

 Dead seaweed washed up during winter storms.

Other beaches within the park are just as breathtaking, eg: Thistle and Hellfire beaches with water that is just soooooo blue. However, the coves and bays to the west of the town are also drop dead gorgeous too. I could live here (but not in winter).

 Hellfire Bay - also at Cape Le Grand

 Looking out to sea from Hellfire Bay

Twilight Bay - 5 km West of Esperance

Our caravan park was right on the beach and as we stepped from the van we looked out over the beach and bluuuuuue water to the archipelago. Clearly we aren’t the only ones who like the area, as living below the very long “Tanker Jetty” is Sammy the sea lion – a resident for over 15 years. It seems that he is not silly because he often swims out to the end of the jetty where the majority of fisher folk are, and as they throw the undersized or unwanted fish back, Sammy comes zooming from under the jetty to get a cheap feed. However, a chat to some of these folk reveals that none of them recall him ever taking a fish that was still on the hook – smart guy, eh?

 Squid - like most jetties, one of the more regular catches (Sammy prefers fish)

 Come on, chuck me a fish, you won't eat all them anyway.

 What a hard day I've had.

The Esperance Tanker Jetty taken from the far end.

After a week in this blue heaven, we left the coast, heading inland to Kalgoorlie-Boulder (Yep, that’s the correct name of this city of 38,000 people). At about the half-way mark is the rough and ready town of Norseman where we decided to swing into the town proper to have a look. Much to our surprise we found our intrepid cyclists (see previous posts) who had (a) lost one of their original members, (b) picked up two others. During a chat and laugh we found that they were staying there overnight, then starting the Nullarbor and after some quick calculations, agreed that we will most likely catch them somewhere around the SA/WA border.

 The round-a-bout at the main intersection of Norseman

And we stopped here for lunch - great place names they have here.

The cyclist’s timetable will be slowed a bit because they are playing the “Nullarbor Link” which is the longest golf course in the World at 1365 km. The course starts at Kalgoorlie, where each of the two local clubs has a designated hole, and then each town along the way has a hole. However, there are not enough golf courses between Kalgoorlie and Ceduna to offer 18 holes, so they have made a few extra holes at the roadhouses. It is these that provide the real fun as they are but an artificial turf (or oiled dirt, thus a 'black') Tee and putting area joined by whatever nature has created – one fairway is all sand, the next saltbush, and another rocky gibbers. Hazards are also whatever nature offers – at the Mundrabilla hole, local crows steal the balls (about 200 per year). So, I guess you’re wondering what you do about a set of golf clubs if you are not a regular golfer? Not a worry as at either end (Kalgoorlie or Ceduna) an array of used – make that very used clubs can be bought for $5. Our intrepid cyclists are doing the course armed with a putter and a 7 iron. And they are expecting to do it under par of 72!!!!!!

We are now in Kal (as the locals call it) and love all the old buildings. Originally there were two different towns – Kalgoorlie and Boulder, but about twenty years ago they decided to formally merge into a single city. The government called for nominations for a new name under which the city would jointly march forward, and the winner was ...... Kalgoorlie-Boulder.  They may be weak on coming up with a name, but their grip on heritage is very strong. All the old shops have signs above the verandas identifying what the shops original function or purpose.

We were also so impressed by the very big hole that they have dug on the edge of town that we did a tour of it. We now know what an ant feels like among a World of humans, as we travelled in a standard 50 seat coach among some of the largest trucks on the planet. They carry over 225 tonne of ore, and use 140 litres of diesel each time they climb out of the pit and then return: lucky that they hold 3800 litres in the fuel tank! Should you ever feel the need to complain about the cost of your car tyres or service charges, consider that the tyres for these monsters are $40,000, and a service is in the vicinity of $2,500,000?  The ‘super Pit’ is 3.5 km long and 1.5 km wide and has a depth of 360 metres. 28 tonnes of gold per year are recovered from the 15 million tonnes of ore that they dig out. Everything about this hole is really really big.

Note the guy standing near the front wheel.

Driving around this site can be dangerous

It's deep, make that real deep.

Those big trucks look like matchbox toys

Look at the line of big trucks crawling up from the pit - it goes on like that 24/7.

One of the interesting oddities of Kal, is that the city is home to Australia’s oldest continually operating legal brothel! And, they run tours of it!! (I understand that they don’t offer any free samples or titbits).

 From across the road (Shirl wouldn't let me get closer)

I really didn't go up too close - I used a zoom lens.

On a similar focus, the magnificent old pubs have for many decades had female bar staff dressed (if that be the best word) in attire known as ‘skimpies’, and that for a suitable tip or donation they will reduce the level of clothing. Shirl won’t let me go for a beer.

Tomorrow we leave to cross the Nullarbor, so we will have very sporadic TV, Internet, and phone coverage for some 1365 km (until we get beyond Ceduna). Our expectation is that we will hit Ceduna around the beginning of October.  



7th September 2012 – Perth.

The past three weeks have been focused upon three things: catching up with friends, wildflowers and, bloody rain.

After 5 months without seeing rain, I suppose it was inevitable that sooner or later nature would take revenge – it did.  We had a small sprinkle when at Geraldton, but we laughed it off, as you do. However, our arrival into Perth was accompanied by days with absolute downpours of horrendous volumes. Our plans of beach trips, or sipping coffee at outdoors cafes, carefree strolls through Kings Park, and generally enjoying ourselves soon evaporated – or more correctly, were washed away.

We made the most of it, because there is little else you can do, and spent time checking out the Swan Valley wine tasting circuit – well, our caravan park was in the middle of the wine area. A happy coincidence was the presence of the Chocolate company right smack dab in the middle of the wine region: so we checked it out as well!

Before we got to Perth, we spent some time at a few other places. Geraldton is quite a large city built right on the water – the main commercial area is less than 100 metres from the shore. Standing above the town is Mount Scott which has a memorial to the HMAS Sydney which would be one of the best memorials that we can imagine. The ship was based out of Geraldton for the last few months of its time before being sunk (Nov 1941) with the largest loss of life (all 645 crew) in Australian naval history.  The location of both the ship and its foe, the German Raider Kormoran remained unknown until 2008. In 2001 the memorial was dedicated and in 2009 became an official national memorial. Some things can be really weird type spooky – as a part of the memorial there is a statue of a woman looking out to sea. When the ship was found, some 7 years after the statue was made, it was on the exact compass heading that the woman was looking!!!!

 Looking for the return of her loved one

Impressive and moving

As I mentioned in a previous post, we were told that the wildflowers would get better, and this proved to be very true. Where those that we had seen further north were called ‘everlastings’ and covered the ground like some huge carpet, those that we have found from Geraldton onwards are either shrubs and bushes, or small exquisite orchids, Kangaroo Paws or similar.

To get up close and personal with these tiny wonders, we did a day trip of some 120km out to the east of Geraldton. But, it rained! And when it rains the flowers close up or droop thus the display is somewhat weakened. The wildflower buffs real prize in this area is the Wreath Flower that grows on roadside verges after the graders do their job (the plant needs to have the soil broken up so that the seeds can burst forth).

Wreath Flower - we didn't find one, so this photo is from the 'net

It is always nice to look around small country towns. Each town deals with life in their own particular way with many displaying some outstanding community spirit. Mingenew was one place that showed it is very much alive and kicking with local input and energy on display wherever you look, be it well kept buildings or community art. Another was Mullewa where the cemetery had every grave covered in fresh wildflowers (plus some non natives).

 Mingenew Tennis club and its local art painted by local kids

Mullewa Cemetary.

With the aim of finding out more about these flowers, we next stayed at the Western Flora Caravan Park 22 km north of Eneabba. Here we were to discover that the owner is firstly, intensely focused upon wildflowers and secondly, is profoundly knowledgeable about them: Sir David Attenborough visits him!

The park is unlike any others we have found in that the sites are spread out among the bush, with each bracketed by shrubs and grasses. Water pressure was almost nonexistent so we had to use our on-board tanks and pump (we weren’t in danger of running out of water as we could fill our tanks from the site taps – it only needed patience).

At 4:30pm each day, Allan (the owner) gathers all those who wish to follow him out into the surrounding bush to look at the flowers. Allan’s great knowledge and quite interesting style leaves your mind boggled with all you learn. His basic thesis is that all the plants colours, textures, and leaf shapes are designed with only propagation in mind. To this end the colour attracts some friendly or useful insects and birds whilst repelling those less friendly ones. Thus as you walk through the bush, you in fact are walking though a flora pornographic zone!

 Geraldton Wax

The Flowers of the Wax bush - 6 or 7 grubs in each!

To conclude this walk Allan takes you into a room where he has set up a microscope with TV screen attached – WOW, if I’d known that was in those flowers, I’d never have sniffed ‘em. Example, the tiny Geraldton Wax flower that he had randomly picked from the bush was revealed to have 7, yep that’s right 7, teeny wheeny caterpillar like grubs and each was very actively crawling and squirming around the centre heart. I went back to the bush later and armed with my trusty little magnifying glass could see absolutely nothing, so I want a descent microscope, you hear that kids?

The next morning at the ungodly time of 8:30am a number of us again gathered at reception, but this time we were in our 4x4s to again journey forth under Allan’s guidance. Our little convoy was away for 4 hours, and maybe 50km as Allan took us out into the sandy scrub country to the east of his property where we were astounded at the vast array of different flowers that he found. Banksias, Boronias, Hakeas, Feather flowers, Pea Flowers, Kangaroo Paws, Blue Dampiera, and an awesome variety of bush Orchids including donkey, cowslip, and Pink Fairies. And always around us were numerous Smokebushes with their feather like foliage that waves with the slightest breeze.

 Tagalong - through the sand we go

This is the type of country we were looking at.

I did get the name of these, but I forgot.

 These ones are 'pretty blue ones'

 And Yellow ones

and Pink ones

 These ones are special 'cause they are yellow, plus blue and white.

 Note the car in the background - the flowers are prolific, but really small

 My favourite - they entice, then eat insects they are everywhere and about size of 20c piece

The flower of my life among some smokebush (look for Shirl hiding)

Not far from Eneabba is the area of Greenough where the wind is strong and constant – witness the trees to understand just how strong.

 A row of trees stand a small chance against the wind

A single tree has no chance - note that it is still alive and thriving.

Reluctantly we moved onwards to the coast where we set up at Cervantes. From the name of the town you could be forgiven for thinking that there is some sort of Spanish connection, and if you weren’t then the street names will soon confirm it (they’re all Spanish towns and cities). Why? A Spanish ship went down on an off shore reef.

These days Cervantes is a very small town that plays a very big role in Australia’s Lobster catch. Approx 20% of our lobsters are caught off Cervantes, and then 92% of these are exported!  Given the importance of this industry to the town, it’s not surprising that when you book into the caravan park they give you a discount voucher for a lobster meal at the local club. Thus for $65 we had a really nice lobster platter for two, with prawns, calamari, snapper fillets, and oysters as accompaniments.

 Lobster Factory - a male and a female

 Cervantes Roadsign -

 Yep, the hills are alive with flowers

Torquoise bay with a storm approaching

Our purpose in staying at Cervantes was to visit the ‘Pinnacles’ which is 15km down the road. What an amazing ....?? thing? Maybe the photos will explain just what this place is.

Well, did you enjoy your little photo tour of the pinnacles?

While in Perth we spent 2 days visiting friends, and it was quite interesting to note the exuberant joy that we felt in just being with them. After 5 months away from friends and family you forget how good it feels to just sit and chat to those that you know.

Upon arrival at Perth, we noticed just how blasé the inhabitants are as the seasonal wildflower display – all the roadsides, all the road median strips, and many of the gardens are ablaze with native shrubs and bushes and all in glorious bloom. Superb.

The town of York is West Oz’s oldest inland town and retains most of its early buildings such that the town is heritage listed. We did a 200+km day trip into the hills to have a look and were suitably impressed. Unfortunately, a few years ago the Government changed the method that it allocates funds to rural areas from where it, the State Government, directly funded each local council, to now where it supplies the funds to “Regional Centres”, and as a result York is showing signs that maintenance and development funds are lacking. Meanwhile as we returned to Perth via the regional centre of Northam, we noticed that it showed no signs of such funds limitation.  Perhaps the best interests of the region are best served by using the meagre funds in such areas as best improve the re-election prospects of the local regional council?!

 The inside looks as good as the outside - all in excellent nick.

 Humour exists everywhere

Want a pub - all four are for sale, and each is over 100 years old

Whilst at York, I took the opportunity to spend a bit of time in the Peter Briggs “York Motor Museum” (Shirl waited in the car).

 I want one

 Its a Cadillac of 1957 vintage

Speedway bikes

We left for Albany on Friday 7^th. ...... note that it is pronounced Albany with the A as in Apple, not Awlbany as per Albury NSW.

Even the road from Perth to Albany offers a flower strewn vista.