Road trip II

28th of April

Tonight will be my last night in Kalbarri town which is (logically) located in Kalbarri National Park. You might already have seen the pictures I took and posted on my picasa photo website, but things have been pretty tranquil down here. Friday was ANZAC day, a public holiday for all Aussies. A lot of them went out in the country, so this and the earlier camping sites were busy, but everything has become a lot quieter. I expect it to be like that the further I go North, as the Australian school holiday has ended as well.

Kalbarri National Park is approximately 120.000 km2 and it takes over 60 km just getting from the highway to Kalbarri town. It mainly consists of bushland and some nice river areas as you can see in the pictures. The special thing about it, is that a major part of the river runs underground, thus preventing the water from evaporating and provide fresh water to the people how live in this dry land. However, today was not so dry as it has been raining on and off. Apart from a slight drizzle several weeks ago apparently, they had not had any rain for months. It was therefore very much welcomed by the local people. You don’t see it that often back home that people have big smiles on their faces when it rains!

The national park has some stunning views with nature looking at its best in a dry area. However some local fauna can be very annoying, such as the many flies which keep on buzzing around your eyes and ears. I resorted to buying a head fly net and a hat, so the flies can not bother me around the head so much anymore. It might look a bit silly, but is very effective! Luckily, they all disappear during the night and hardly any mosquitos are present on the camping site.

I had a in total 3 nights here and took my time to see the national park, watch a Aussie footy game in the local pub and just chilled out while meeting various people as well. Almost every traveller I meet is slowly making his or her way up North. Some also up to Broome, other go beyond that to Darwin and even after that go to the East coast or straight down through the middle to Alice Springs and Adelaide. I already saw some these people at earlier camp sites and will probably see some later on again!

Tomorrow, I will have a long stretch to drive; all the way to Denham, in total about 400 km. I will try to make an early start, so can spend some time on the journey seeing some interesting sites. I am planning to make a stop at the Principality of Hutt River, which is a very small state of a disgruntled farmer who was appalled by new government quotas o wheat production and seceded from Australia in 1970. The government has tried to overturn it, but failed so far. Yes, Australia is therefore not a single country continent. It is suppose to be some sort of attraction, so I’ll see what it is about.

Also, after the exit from the highway to Denham, I will pass the stromatolites, only one of four locations where these pre-historic organisms can be viewed. More on that hopefully later on.

Denham is very close to Monkey Mia, where wild dolphins can be closely observed during feeding, so should be very nice. Also, it has also parts of the Ningaloo Reef, so am planning to do some snorkeling and possibly some diving as well.

29th of April

I arrived today in the small village of Denham, named after an English naval officer. It is a town with gone glory, as the pearl fishing is not there anymore. It is now within the Shark Bay National Park which is a world heritage site. This is due to its unique nature of hyper-salin bay with the Stromatolites as mentioned before, its intersection of tropical and desert-like environment and its unique seagrass beds, the largest in the world.

On the way driving up, I did not see the sign or anything for the principality, so had to miss out on that one. Would have been nice to exit and enter Oz just briefly within this continent! ;-)

Also, due to the heavy rainfall of the last few days, the road to the stromatolites was closed and might only be reopened again in 2 days or even later. What I did see, was another special site, called Shell Beach. These shells have adopted to the higher levels of salt in the bay area and have washed up to shore thousands of years. This has resulted in an unique beach of shells - as the name says! The water is about 1.5 times salter than normal ocean water, so when taking a jump into the water, it was very easy to float! The shells have been used for building houses, as the example of a wall on one of my pictures shows. This picture was taken in the Denham information center where an excellent exhibition of the Shark Bay area is on display. I went there this afternoon.

I am planning to go to Monkey Mia tomorrow and leave the day after, after the feeding of the dolphins. Hopefully, the road to the stromatolites will be open again so I can check these out as well!

Monday 5th of May

As you can see, it has been almost a week since I wrote the earlier paragraphs. It has been a busy time with driving around, seeing and doing nice things and also spending time with friends I made while traveling. Many people follow the same route up North (or South), so I saw several people at the various camp sites and locations. There are all sorts of people, like the young backpackers using a second-hand station wagon or campervan to drive around Oz, or the senior couples, taking a few months off to do the same. As you can see, Oz is for the young and elderly! ;-) (What makes that me then…?)

I went to Monkey Mia and was able to see the last feeding of the wild dolphins of the day. They are only fed a small portion of their daily feeding requirement, so they are not depending on it and loose their natural hunting skills and behavior. I was very lucky to be chosen to feed a fish to one of them, so got to see it very close. Seeing these amazing mammals so close, is an incredible experience! I was wondering who was checking out who, when they were swimming by and rolling over a bit so they could have look at all those humans with their digital cameras!

For the afternoon, I had booked an indigenous walk of a few kilometers with Daren ‘Capes” Darewell, a native aboriginal and ex-Aussie football player. He is quite a character. He took us (the group) just around the area of Monkey Mia and explained what the area means to the local aboriginals and the names for it. He also told us to listen to the land as it talks to you, and that you should introduce yourself when entering new land as you are a visitor. He showed us ‘bush-tucker’ food from the land, which was surprisingly widely available in an area that looks like a harsh and desert-like area. We tasted various fruits including bush bananas and nuts. It was amazing what you could hear, see and find when you now what to look for. Very interesting and I can recommend it to anyone to try it, should you have the opportunity!
The next day, I left Monkey Mia to make my way up to Coral Bay with a stop-over in Carnarvon, where I could do some last-time decent shopping as that is only limited available further up North. I did pass the stromatolites, but the road was still closed, so had to miss out on these unfortunately.

I have plenty of storage area in the van under the bed, so got a decent supply of pasta sauces, soup and other stuff, including some drinks to take to my friend Jacqui, who is currently working at a station near Coral Bay. As that is located in the middle of nowhere, I have to bring all of my own food, before going over. As she has only time off on the weekend, time wise it made sense to first go to Coral Bay and Exmouth and then drive back South again for approximately 200 km to go and see her for a couple of days. Although it will mean extra driving, it is not that bad, as I would have had to drive a bit South as well, if I would have stayed in Exmouth. Anyway, that is for some time later.

While I was in Carnarvon, I did some local relaxing stuff as well; I went to a local plantation to hear about their produce and try some delicious home-made dips and jams, had a drinks at a very nice cafe right within a plantation along the banks of the river and went to see to blowholes at the coast, which are a spectacular site to see and hear!

Coral Bay is, as it names says, located on a bay, right at the Southern End of the Ningaloo reef and only a few hours driving from Carnarvon. Ningaloo Reef might not be as widely known as the Great Barrier Geef, but it is the biggest reef that close to a shore in the world. Basically, you can just walk of the beach, swim 50 meters and snorkel with the current to see some very nice corals and wildlife. And that is exactly what I did. The water is also warmer then further down South (26 C), so that makes the snorkeling more comfortable. You can see a lot of hard coral and various reef fish. I even got to see an reef octopus and a juvenile white tip shark.

Today, I had planned to take the snorkeling a step further by going on a whaleshark snorkeling tour. This is quite an expensive thing to do, but suppose to be worth it (you get a discount if you are a YHA -Youth Hostal Australia - member). They take you out on a boat, outside of the outer reef and get assistance from a spotter plan, who will look for a whaleshark. By the way, yes, these creatures are sharks and are the biggest fish in the world (max 18 meters), but are absolutely harmless as they mainly feed on plankton and like small sea food.
So, we took of in the morning for our tour and had practice snorkel on how to enter the water once we get to a whaleshark. When we got out on the ocean we had to wait quite some time before the airplane spotted one. It was then time to get there as fast as possble, before the other boats did. We all got ready to jump in, in groups of max 10 people, when the whaleshark went to dive deep again. They can stay at the surface for a long time if they want to feed, but obviously can also decide to go again. After all, these are wild animals. It did not come up again, so we were unlucky with this one. Later, they airplane spotted another one, but it turned out to be a manta ray, so we did not go in the water again. In the end, we did not get to see any and returned back to the dock, after another free snorkel dive. There, I got to see some green turtles and again some sharks, 2 white tips again and a normal reef shark. Very nice, despite the disappointment of not having seen a whaleshark. Back at the shop, we all got vouchers to make it up on another day for free and I will be doing that next Tuesday, when I leave Warroora station and before making my way further up North to final stop of this road trip, Broome. Tomorrow however, I will go snorkeling with the manta rays and make 2 local scuba dives, so hopefully, they will be there to watch!