In the morning we agreed with a lady from Perth, that we later should get 180 dollars for the 2 bikes. Now needing to spend the day, we went to the town of Two Rocks, saw the rocks, the beach and a point with a monument showing where a Dutch merchant ship Batavia many years before had wrecked.
The rocks were on the beach. The water was cold, but it was a nice spot.
After we went back to the Yanchup Natural Park and used our Parkpass for the 9th free entry to a National Park in Western Australia. This time we got some pictures of the koala bears.
It is a nightmare to do business with people from Australia. They are so not organised. And this lady was not different. When we came to Perth, she was no there. Not a suprise. We called her and then she did not want the bikes before the day after. In the end after waiting and waiting for her; Jubiiii we got our money and got rid of the bikes.
After selling the bikes to the lady we drove back to sleep in the free campsite we already new from the night before.
Sunday - April 20.
We drove on the Indian Ocean Drive to the Nambung National Park, where we used our Parkpass for the 10th free entery. In this park we visited The Pinnacle Desert.
The Pinnacles are thousands of limestone pillars that rises mysteriosly from the yellow sand dunes.
They are up to 5 metres tall and make a cool desert looking landscape in contrast to to the green surroundings.
Some are jagged and sharp edged columns and spires while others are resemble tombstones.
Furthermore we visited Lake Thetis and saw the thromatolites, which are rock-like structures built by micro-organisms too small for the human eye to see.
It was really hard to find a place to stay, but in the end we found a place and slept in a campspot just on the highway of the town of Greenough.
Monday - April 21.
We drove to Geraldton, where we went to buy Markus coffee in Hungry Jacks = Burger King. This is the cheapest place to get coffee, they are only 1,5 dollars. Usually the price for coffee is between 3,50-4,50 dollars.
Geraldton is often referred to as the "Sun City" due to its year-round holiday climate.
The region is rich in history, dating back to 1629, when the Dutch ship "Batavia" was wrecked off coast and it's survivors became Australias first European settlers.
Then we went for the Information Center and packed with a lot of info. We had brunch in Kentuky Fried Chicken. It was the only place open on this easter monday morning.
Ready for the day we did Markus´ City Walk.
The walk was real enough with sign posts and lots of old buildings, but in addition we went to see the Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral,
a yellow sub marine and
a long pier from where we had a good view of what was going on in the habour and we should also have been able to see a seal colony, but they were not home.
From the end of the pier we had a pretty good view at the city and the weather was lovely.
We also saw these cube-toilets on our city walk... :)
In Australia we see a lot of parrots. Here in Geraldton they had extremely many white parrots.
We slept in a free campspot called "Fig Tree Crossing" where we cooked in a "storm" and we saw an extremely wild cat with very green eyes.
Tuesday - April 22.
We drove a bit more than 10 km back to Geraldton, where we went for a guided tour around the HMAS Sydney II Memorial.
The memorial is a tribute to the 645 lives lost on the ship called HMAS Sydney II in 1941.
From the memorial there is a 360 degree views of Geraldton.
We also shopped food for the next many days. Bought cooking gas and filled Homie with fuel, because we had the feeling that it is only going to be more and more expensive. Now everything under 160 cents per liter is cheap. Homie can carry about 65 liters, which takes us about 500-550 km, depending how often we stop and on what kind of road we drive.
We drove to a free campspot outside the Kalbarri National Park and slept there.
Wednesday - April 23.
In the morning we drove in to the Kalbarri National Park and used our Parkpass for free entry the 11th time.
The park covers an area of 186,000 hectares and encircles Kalbarri town side giving the park two contrasting settings.
East of town are inland river gorges with rock formations as old as 400 million years and south of Kalbarri features magnificent towering ocean cliffs plummeting to the waves below.
We decided to do Kalbarri National Park in two days. The first day we did all the "inland" of the park and the second we did the coast.
That means, that the first day we did "Nature's Window", "Z Bend", "Hawk´s Head", "Ross Graham Lookout" and the "Meanarra Hill Lookout".
Hawk's head and Ross Graham Lookout were kind of warm ups for the others to come.
Hawk's head is named by a rock that looks like a hawk's head.
We didn't spot that. Maybe we didn't even try.
From Mr. Graham's lookout we walked down to the river but it was quite dry so we basically just saw sand and rocks.
And a baby whose demonstrative cry floated trough the canyons and our ears. We made a quick walk back to our car. The place is named after Ross Graham who was the first school teacher in Kalbarri and a devoted conservationist and nature geek.
"Natures Window" was a 1 km. return walk and
it brought us to one of Western Australia's most iconic natural attractions.
The rock arch frames the river perfectly and is on top of the list of photo opportunities for many.
We never heard of it, but both thought it was beautiful.
We had people to take some photos of us in the window, which none of them succeeded to capture the river behind us. But it's the thought that counts.
After the stop at "Natures window" we drove some kilometres to the Z Bend. It sounds like a Japanese anime series, but is just a beautiful gorge in the park.
From the lookout point the gorge descend 150 meters down to the river below and it is really a scenic place - maybe the most breathtaking of the park.
We had to walk to the lookout point. And for that we needed flynets, hats and sunglasses...
The name Z Bend comes, surprisingly, by the way the river bends at that point.
that starts its journey in the ancient range lands near the town of Meekatharra. Cyclonic activity in the north of state drops heavy rain into the waterways, that become the Murchison River, which leads to the ocean here at Kalbarri.
Finally the long but beautiful day was over and we accommodated our self near the town of Kalbarri on a rather spartan camp ground where we still had to pay. On the way we stopped at a last lookout of the park where we could see the ocean, where the Murchison River runs into the ocean and the big big big bush surrounding us.
Thursday - April 24.
Raining, raining and raining. Stayed in the crappy camping area all day, basically lying down in our car watching movies and reading books.
Of course early in the morning we used the complimentary "washing machine" that had to be filled with cold water and after that it made small waves for 5 minutes at the time.
The laundry didn't dry very well in the pouring rain.
And now we also know that the water is dripping inside Homie, when it rains. At least the campsite had showers, so we could get warm and clean when it was needed... :)
At some point we tried to find good things about the rain.
1: We were not spending time on fuel. :)
2: Plenty of time to read and do stuff inside Homie.
3: (maybe the best) No flies!
The flies in Australia are really IRRITATING. They are always there. And they are always trying to get in to your head by the ears, up your nose, through the eyes or simply by being eaten when you talk. It is so disgusting. That is the reason why we bought the nets to put on our heads, but it is warm to wear a net all the time, not very sexy and extremely hard to eat or see through. The flies are there, whenever it is light, not to windy and not raining. And when it is not light enough for the flies the mosquitoes are there. So we were always trying to escape from some insects.
There are probably more good things about not moving, but we like sunshine more than pouring rain!
Friday - April 25.
The weather was better and we went further on our journey to the north. When leaving the campsite we met a German couple, whom we would meet few times in the future.
On our way we stopped at different lookouts
to see Kalbarri's coastal cliffs. Our first stop took us to the "Natural Bridge".
Here the sandstone cliffs plunged more than 100 meters to the ocean and from here we could see the stunning coastal views and the natural cliffs sculpting and forming a bridge.
We stopped to see other views from the cliffs out to the ocean, but the natural bridge was the most amazing.
The last stop we did before entering the town of Kalbarri, was a memorial for the shipwreck of the Zuytdorp, a Dutch East India Company vessel, which was wrecked along the high limestone cliffs in the year of 1712. It carried a rich cargo of 248.000 freshly minted silver coins along with 200 passengers. Hundreds of coins have been recovered from the famous "carpet of silver" in and around the wreck. The precise circumstances of the wreck remain a mystery, because no survivors reached Jakarta, Indonesia to tell the tale.
After the last stop we had lunch in the small town of Kalbarri. The chef burned our first pizza and we had to wait a bit longer so they gave us free coffee and tea while waiting. Which is nice because the price of a coffee is relatively high. After lunch we drove bit less than 200 km to sleep in a free camp site. Another wild cat was spotted on the scene.
Saturday - April 26.
We started our journey towards Shark Bay and Monkey Mia, which is known for it's friendly dolphins.
The first region in Western Australia to be recognized as a World Heritage area was Shark Bay. Shark Bay is two long peninsulas lying parallel to the Coral Coast and is the most westerly land in Australia.
The countless bays and islands contained within the peninsulas create an amazing sheltered environment for marine life. And the land itself is a rocky desert.
For our luck, on the way was again a place to see the stromatolites, which had become a joke for us by now. Hamelin pool, a bay in the Indian ocean, which is kind of isolated so the water gets extremely salty.
And the stromatolites just love that!
So that's another place to see these ancient living things that we wrote about earlier. The stromatolites here are the largest and oldest living fossils in the world. One kind of microbe found in Shark Bay is thought to have descended from an organism that lived 1.9 billion years ago. These layered rock formations were created by single cell organisms that have built up slowly to form fragile deposits, that we viewed from an elevated boardwalk.
And it was not so interesting this time either. But to look over the ocean was beautiful.
The rest of the day we spent hanging by the campsite's swimming pool until a heavy rain storm came. Markus did manage to make us some beautiful chili con carne for dinner, in the raging rain. We were both happy that we earlier had decided to stay in this campsite we payed for because of the pool, the showers and the kitchen we now could use. This evening we felt good and safe.
Homie is kind of cozy, when its raining. In Perth we bought 12 bottles of wine many nights we sit or lay in our car watching movies and drinking red wine.
Sunday - April 27.
After the stormy and rainy night, the morning came sunny. We headed for Shell beach, a beach that is full of billions of small shells.
The tiny shells are shed by the Shark Bay cockle, a shallow burrowing mollusc that is unique to Western Australia.
On the beach we also found an old quarry, where blocks of small shells has been cut out to make some of the houses in the town of Denham.
Also at the Shell beach the water is as double as salty as in normal part of the ocean.
We did the next stop at Eagle bluff point, where Ospreys nests giving the name to the area and the point. We just did not see any of these big eagles or their young once.
A boardwalk on the edge of cliff allows an areal view of the shallow waters of Shark Bay Marine Park below.
We think we from the boardwalk saw one or two sharks,
some turtles and some rays.
Next stop was at the Ocean Park, which is a cafe and a place with lots of aquariums.
We had a guided tour by a marine biologist.
She took us to see different fish,
sea snakes, mooray ells and rays. In the end end she took us outside, where they had a huge pool for big fish and sharks.
She fed the sharks while she explained everything about the life in the marine park and answered our questions.
We had an interesting time at the Ocean Park.
Before reaching Monkey Mia, we went to the small town of Denham to visit the information center, see the free Emus,
they were really ugly in a cute way,
see the church made out of shells from Shell beach and
to buy milk and some other small things. Everything is expensive in the small towns, so we try not to shop from gas stations and small shops.
It was so cool. On the way to Monkey Mia we saw a lot of Emus.
They were everywhere inside the camp.
When we finally arrived to the the point with a Caravan Park and a resort called Monkey Mia, we parked Homie and went for a little walk on the beach and had two cold beers.
We like Coronas.
In the sunset, sitting with our cold beers we saw dolphins playing in the ocean. It was a perfect magical sunset. a good end of a long day.
Monday - April 28.
We woke up early to the sound of pooring rain. But we woke up and scrambled to the beach
to stand with our feed in the cold ocean to withnes the dolphin feeding at 7.45 in the morning.
Not a very nice experience, but we still like dolphins and pelicans.
The pelicans were beautiful.
Monkey Mia is famous for its colony of wild bottelnose dolphins who daily swim to shore and easily can be spotted in the water all day.
Department of Parks & Wildlife officers are on hand to dispense a small supply of fish for visitors to feed the dolphins, ensuring that the dolphins will continue to forage for the bulk of their food and not become dependent on the handouts from humans.
Researchers have been studying this group of dolphins, and the larger group that remains ofshorein Shark Bay, for more than 20 years.
We decided to drive away from the bad weather and went further north to the bigger town of Carnarvon.The town is supposed to be lovely and full of stuff to do. Markus drove the whole day, and when we finally reached Carnivon we very fast decided that the town sucks and we went on for the next free campsite. Even the free toilets in the visitor center were outside and not nice.
On the way we had to get more fuel and ups Carina bought a lot of chocolate. The thing is that if you spend some money in the gas station you get a discount on your fuel, which is a good excuse to buy chocolate. Not that you ever win on that one, but it feels better.
Tuesday - April 29.
This Thursday turned out to be a driving day.
The day started really good. We woke up after a good nights sleep, drove a bit and entered another free rest area, where we met an Italian guy who made us chestnuts on open fire for breakfast. We also had normal breakfast. He then told us, that due to a lot of rain in the area the road we were going was closed. So we waited for some hours and then decided to drive further up north to the town of Exmouth and skip the Coral Bay.
Bad decision.
We drove the about 250 km. to Exmouth to find out, that the whole area was closed due to rain. The national park there was flushed away and some campsites too. We did not know, that the area every year has a cyclone time. Now we know and of course this year, the people in the area told us, that they never seen anything like it. We had really looked forward to be in the area of Exmouth and the Ningaloo reef, but our snorkeling experience would have been ruined there, because the water was brown about 20 meters out from the shore.
We had lunch in the little town and then drove ca. 150 km. to the point and tiny town of Coral Bay.
On the way to Coral Bay we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.
Good with a little rest and some leg stretching.
It is the southernmost latitude where the Sun can be directly overhead. The latitude is moving gradually to the north, currently at the rate of 15 meters per year.
That made us think and talk about if they are moving the sign every year?
Markus also spotted this guy.
A Perentie Monitor Varanus giganteus Goanna
was in the bushes just next to the road.
Coral Bay is 1200km north of Perth on the Indian Ocean and blessed with a mild climate. The bay is another area, where you can snorkel in the Ningaloo Reef. But Exmouth is bigger and has the best snorkeling sites in the Ningaloo reef. Now we have learned, that some of them has been destroyed by the weather and it will take long time before its opened for visitors again.
We came to Coral Bay just before sunset. We were tired and just wanted to find a place to stay. That is easy because there are only 2 caravanparks and a beach. We payed for 2 nights in one of the campsites. Ready for snorkeling and relaxing.
Wednesday - April 30.
We had the whole day to explore the Ningaloo Marine Park and the rest of the day to do just nothing. Only the need of doing what we wanted. No driving during the day or thinking about where to sleep for the night. It was like paradise. We both like being on the road in Homie, but once in a while it is just the best to stay in a real paying place for longer than one night. It was heaven... :)
The World Heritage listed Ningaloo Reef has gained an impressive reputation as one of Earth's last ocean paradices.
Ningaloo Reef is one of the largest fringing reefs in the world and unlikely many others its possible to get to the reef just by stepping off the beach.
It streches nearly 300 km. with 500 species of tropical fish and 220 species of coral.
This full day. We woke up to the sound of birds and then slowly had our breakfast in the sun - not in a hurry, but taking our time. And there were not even any flies.
After our morning toilette we took our snorkeling gear, which we had bought in the town of Albany about a month earlier and the Go Pro camera and head of to the reception to ask where the best snorkeling place would be.
We were told directions and got in the water.
From the beach we could swim to the reef.
We were able to swim with schools of fish in different color, shape and size.
We saw some huge fish (not sharks)
some clamps (huge shells)
We could dive down to them and try to make them close. We seen it, but that was not easy, because we were afraid of touching them. They had different sizes, but the biggest were about 20 x 20 cm.
We were both tired after the long and really enjoyable day, but not to tired for a walk on the beach in the last magic light of the day and
beers in the bar of the nearby resort. After beers it was sleeping time in Homie for Carina, but Markus had vappu with a six pack of Emu's.
The local beers. They are actually really good.
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