Luvapuzzle

14/8/21 Wooramel to Shark Bay

Not far down the road from Wooramel station we stopped briefly at a lookout where we could look out into the distance across the flat red plains to Gladstone and the ocean.

Just a little later we crossed the 26th parallel sign as we travelled down the highway.

By 1040 we were turning west again towards Shark Bay area.

The first stop was at Hamelin Pool to check that stromatolites are no more exciting than last time we looked at them. In this case we couldn’t even get out near these amazing growing rocks due to damage to the boardwalk and subsequent closure of it.

There is a spot near here where the tiny shells all layer and then bond together into a rock like structure. This limestone like substance was used in the past to make bricks for some of the building and walls in the area. Very interesting. They call these Coquina cockles and they are one of the few cockles which will live in the extra high salinity of this bay.

A little further along the road we visited Shell beach. Here there are tiny shells making up the beach instead of sand. The beach here doesn’t drop down in a straight slope to the sea as normal ones do, but instead there are humps of shells ( like shell Sandhills) contouring along the beach. So you have to walk up and over the shell heaps to get to the super clear water. Apparently the water here is also super salty making it very easy to float. There is a fence just near here, built as part of the Project Eden (to encourage reintroduction of mallee fowl and Bilby and preservation of Woma Pythons)

Continuing on our way, we stopped in at Eagle Bluff, a spot the others had enjoyed the previous day. There is a special walkway with lookout here and you can look across the clear water far below to the two limestone islands just a little offshore. No sea life was spotted despite the super clear water.

We drove into the little seaside town of Denham with the clock showing 1:30pm and decided to grab some lunch at the pub. Then we enjoyed a quick check of the harbour.

We had a little deviation over to Monkey Mia, but it was afternoon (not feeding time for dolphins) and none were seen.

Then we headed in to Francois Peron National Park, where we let down our tyres to 20PSI as requested and paid fees before driving in to the Big Lagoon camping area. This is a lovely campsite on the shore of the big lagoon with marked sites. Tent sites have huge pads erected behind the parking area. Our pad was 12m x 6m.

Huge tent pad showing up behind our camper

There was even a similar pad supplied so the campers could set up their chairs and have sunset drinks

We were lucky to finally have a really good look at some variegated wrens

We had a really good chat with the camp hosts and enjoyed sunset drinks on our deck with Al and Zita before a snack in the place of tea and a few shared reheated potato chips with the Colwells. Then we fell into bed worn out from the big days just gone.

Unfortunately the young ones camping on the next campsite had other ideas for their evening and needed a not-so-gentle reminder to pipe down their noise a few hours later.

13/8/21 Kennedy Range to Wooramel Station

We started the day in a relaxed mood with cooked breakfast and a long conversation with one of our fellow campers about where to find wildflowers further south and the merits of different camping vehicles

Then we had a delightful rock hopping hike into Temple Gorge, where we admired the temple standing at the apex of the gorge

There are some fantastic red rocks here with sheer drops (a bit like Kings Canyon), huge chunks of rock that have fallen at some time in the past and also some really interesting black rocks that look like cross sections of trees.

After the walk we retraced our steps to Gascoyne Junction, where we now took the time to look at the town. There is an amazing recreation area in this small town, along with a community pizza oven. There is also a good visitor centre where we visited to check that our sketchy travel plan would work.

We ended up taking another very long dirt road of over 200km without seeing anyone else on the road.

Then we continued on to Wooramel station to stay for the night. At Wooramel they have riverside sites and river flat sites. We thought that riverside sites would be beside the water but the river is another upside down one-so, for most of the year, there is no water above ground. They also have warm artesian springs at Wooramel- with four pools to choose from to have a soak.

We found ourselves a nice site back from the river (river flat) with a shady tree and a fire pit. It was nice and close to toilets (flushing) and showers (hot between 7-10 and 4-8).

We’ve started regularly seeing the Australian ringneck parrots around (known locally as “28s”)

12/8/21. Kennedy Range NP

Due to all the other distractions last night we still didn’t have a clear plan for today. The draft schedule said that we should be heading for Kennedy Range NP but the others were keen to get in more snorkelling if they could and reluctant to make the inland detour.

We met in the games room after breakfast for some serious discussion of possibilities and in the end we pulled up stumps with the others deciding not to make the trip and us torn between keeping to the plan and staying with the group.

We met again a little later in the bakery car park and we let them know that we were making a break. And so we headed inland on our own.

We said goodbye to the plantations of bananas and veg and headed east towards our first stop- Rocky Pool.

Rocky Pool is actually just a section of the Gascoyne River that has water above ground (mostly it is artesian) . Red rocks surround a long stretch of water. We parked by the water to enjoy half a vanilla slice each and a cup of tea.

Trevor took the opportunity to use the warm flattish rock to take a look underneath for a bit of a check. Everything looked pretty good under there except one tyre looked like it had lost a chunk of rubber making it a bit of a risk… so we took our time and made the most of it -changing over to the spare and stashing the injured tyre up under as spare for the moment until we can get a new one.

This route follows the Kingsford Smith Mail Run. I hadn’t realised that the famous Smithy operated a mail run out here for many years-in order to save up some cash and finance further aerial exploits. Along the way there are a number of brown signs pointing to various places on the route.

Lunch was taken at a spot called Fishy Well. There was a dam nearby, and while I got lunch ready Trev went for a walk and came back with the news that he had come across what seemed to be very large bees going in and out of the ground. We guessed that these might be the unique Dawson’s burrowing bees that we had read of. After we finished lunch we drove over to the spot where he had seen them. It was difficult to get a clear picture of what they looked like, but we think that’s what they were.

Almost 200km from Carnarvon along the dirt road we finally came to the little town of Gascoyne Junction. Here brightly coloured shelter sails peeked over fences-very cheerful. We didn’t stop to investigate further as the National Park was our goal and that was still some distance away.

We crossed the Gascoyne river and headed north and then North-west. We stopped at another of the brown tourist signs and found a cobbled road!!! Travelling beside the modern road was another old one. This was apparently built in the 1930s as part of a “ work for the dole” scheme during the depression. what a job that would have been- but it would have cut down the travel time amazingly, avoiding getting bogged for weeks.

We took a photo of the Lyons River as we crossed it-thinking of our friends John and Jeffa Lyon fondly.

Finally we arrived at Kennedy Range NP. We decided that we had a bit of time still up our sleeve, so we headed in to Honeycomb Gorge to do the short walk there.

The rocks here are pretty unusual and it was worth the walk to reach the end of the gorge and the multi-layered honeycomb rock over a pool of water.

Before heading to the campsite we also drove to the sunrise lookout – but, as expected, the rock cliffs were now in shadow and would best be seen in the morning.

The campground at Kennedy Range is a lovely little spot with a dirt track that opens up into all sorts of dead ends with pretty camping spots and lots of vegetation between. We found a nice spot on the edge of the campground, with our window facing to the dramatic ranges so we could enjoy the view even from inside. It is at the opening into the Temple Gorge-so gave us only a very short distance to go to get to our walk start tomorrow.

There was no camp host at the campground to pay fees to and no ranger there, so we were unable to pay campground fees.

11/8/21 Quobba Blowholes and fruit loop

We decided to backtrack a bit and go back out to the blowholes- 80 km or so back along the coast road.

On the way along the long, boring road there we noted the large number of nests built on the power poles (the tallest structures along the road). Many have wheel rims attached a little below the important stuff (we assumed this is to encourage the nest there instead of on top)

As we approached the coast we diverted up to the lighthouse to admire the coast from there. You could see HUGE waves breaking on the cliffs on the coast from here.

At the coast itself there was a big sign greeting us saying “King Waves Kill” as a reminder to be careful. Pretty timely today (a day of king waves)

We stopped and watched the waves breaking for ages from various points. Certainly no-one was going to snorkel here today.

The blowhole is supposed to be the attractive and impressive thing, but today it was dwarfed by the waves and hardly noticeable.

Trev had to make a run for it at one stage.

We bought hot donuts and then fish and chips to share (yes again!!) from the van parked there. They said the waves had been even bigger early in the morning.

Further down the road is a memorial to HMAS Sydney II which sunk off this coast, losing all 645 men on board. The less able German ship involved had many survivors. (many made it to land and were later held captive). We drove down to the memorial and walked out there to spend a moment remembering.

Then we were heading back towards Carnarvon.

On the way back we diverted along to road to the North of the Gascoyne river (aptly named North River Road) -we had done the south side on the way out. We stopped at a lovely little fruit and veg shed (one of many along here) and stocked up on some really fresh veg and some choc coated frozen mango pops on sticks (yum). Sadly, bananas are out of season so we had to buy them in the supermarket. They did have some on display. They also had a cute herb garden in a boat and lots of friendly brown chooks who were happy to chat.

This road just happened to continue on into a dirt track to One Tree Point Reserve beside the mangroves and samphire where we hoped to see a slender billed thornbill (see Jan and Ross- we are doing our homework sometimes). We were foiled in this objective but did see a black shouldered kite ,who posed beautifully and lots of wrens. There was some small wren here amongst the many white winged, but the little one wouldn’t be seen for long enough for ID

Pretty sure this is a singing honeyeater.

We bought fuel (154.9c/l here) and the economy was calculated at 12.7l/100km. This was not surprising given the headwind we had battled as we headed south from Exmouth. This was balanced by the fact that I downloaded the new Ampol app, eliminating the need to go inside to pay and enabling a saving of 6c/l for the first 3 fills. If anyone would like me to refer you give a yell. You can do the same.

We also pumped our tyres up again to hard road travelling pressures after having them down in Cape Range.

We had a Tintookies Orienteering club meeting in the evening. The 7:30 start in SA meant 6pm in WA so we had to wait for our dinner till after the meeting. That was tough. It was good to hear voices from home and enjoy being part of it via the technology of ZOOM.

Then the big table tennis challenge was on till late. Zita is a bit of a whizz (part of her secret past) – but so is Trev. This made for some fun.

10/8/21 Bruboodjoo to Carnarvon

It kept on raining through the night, but the day dawned clearer and we even had some blue skies. The ground was less soggy- which was a good thing.

We paid the caretaker and headed out towards Coral Bay on the track which was sometimes rocky, wet, rutted and sandy. Eventually we hit the bitumen road heading into town and drove in to a town looking very much the same as we remembered from 8 years ago when we visited here briefly.

We took a photo of us in front of the beautiful bay as we did those years ago and took a walk along the beautiful beach and up to the lookout. The wind was continuing to blow pretty savagely but the water still looked clear and delightfully blue.

We headed up to the lookout at the top of the Sandhills and surveyed the windswept bay.

We chatted to Al and Zita and watched them brave the waters, deciding that we wouldn’t.

We checked out the “resort” where we stayed for a night last time (it looks just the same) and drove around to the boat ramp. Numerous boats were moored here, tossing in the wind. We were delighted to see that one of them was “Shore Thing”- the catamaran we stayed on last time we were here (to celebrate my 50th birthday)

We had fond memories of killing some time on a quad bike tour through the Sandhills and tracks out here and stopping to look from the cliffs to see turtles far below. We walked from the boat ramp to Snapper Point to look down from the cliffs, but there was too much swell today to make out any turtles if they were there.

Once we had been well aired we hopped back in the camper, stopped in Coral Bay again and shared a serve of fish and chips 🍟 looking out over the bay before we took to the bitumen and made a beeline for Carnarvon.

The drive south was long and boring. We were travelling against 40km/hr winds, which was terrible for the fuel economy. Somewhere along there we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.

There were keep left signs very regularly at every pull off. The text was in 4 foreign languages. Spanish, German, and some Asian language. Obviously there are issues up here with people forgetting.

As we neared Carnarvon we started to see the fruit and vegetable plantations which make up the “ fruit loop”. Notable were the banana plantations. There are a number of farm shops along the roads north and south of the river to buy produce.

Since we still had some daylight we headed for the mouth of the Gascoyne river and checked out the river tracks and the statue remembering the Lock Islands

(Islands where aboriginals were incarcerated). This is also the site of a failed grand meatworks project (built and opened but never used). The buildings were used for a number of purposes before becoming derelict and a shelter for the homeless. They are now completely gone. Old wooden railway trucks litter the area.

You can also see the old 1 mile long wooden jetty from here.

We took a brief tour through the centre of town too, and took in a bit of dirt track further back along the river ( by Chinamans pool) which is a good birding spot before heading for the caravan park.

The Outback Oasis Caravan Park has unlimited internet access (but you can’t actually get logged in to it) and also table tennis and pool tables and a camp kitchen. We cooked our tea in their camp kitchen, washing up in the huge square sink before heading back to the camper to complete the census on Trevor’s phone. ( Ben had sent through our census number from home)

Once that task was complete we treated ourselves to a couple of games of table tennis before bed.

9/8/21.Still raining! Out to Bruboodjoo

We pulled out of our camp at Cape Range NP with the rain still falling and no more snorkelling done.

We drove back to Exmouth and completed the essential tasks- restocking on food, water, gas for cooking, diesel. We posted the accumulated blogs and paid for showers ( the first in four days) to wash all that salt off at the caravan park.

Replete with yummy bakery lunch and with dessert in hand we headed on out of town.

We deviated before long, driving in on the shothole canyon road (formed for seismic testing for geology?) into the Cape Range hills

and then along the Charles Knife road (the product of oil exploration).

Both were pretty impressive and dramatic. The first followed the bottom of canyons. The second followed the spurs with some very dramatic drop offs.

Once we had completed these we were pushing to try to make our planned campsite before dark.

We drove in to Bruboodjoo just as light was fading and spoke briefly with the camp caretaker who was sitting watching TV on his big screen TV!! We agreed to pay him tomorrow and went sand found a flat spot we thought might work for us all. It is pretty wet and I hope that we don’t have to swim out of here in the morning.

We had the little awning up over the stove to cook tea, and it did a pretty good job of keeping the rain off. We basically hid inside once we had done a very brief walk out to the beach (about 300m) due to the constant rain. It’s still not looking good for drying off those clothes!!

8/8/21 Cape Range-rain and snorkelling.

We had a rainy night last night and it had continued on and off all day, with a stiff wind and solid grey skies for most of the time. the day was heavy and humid. Our wet gear wasn’t drying despite lots of wind.

We started the day cleaning up the puddles on the top of the fridge and on the floor from where the rain blew in the window overnight.

We had planned to visit ‘Oyster Stacks’ this morning while the tide was high (the best time) but when we arrived waves were crashing on to the rocks and it was very choppy, so we scrapped that quickly.

We decided to just travel a little further-to Turquoise Bay again, and see what it was looking like there.

There is an excellent painted frieze here exposing about the various sea creatures that can be seen while snorkelling. Very pretty and very informative.

We found the others there. They were enjoying themselves, and although the water really still was far from flat, we decided to give it a go too.

We both had issues with our snorkel masks. We just couldn’t seem to get them to not fog up. we saw some fish but didn’t last long.

We drove back up to Lakeside, and picked up a little signal on the way, confirming that dishwashing detergent might help with the fogging.

Sure enough, both the others had arrived at Lakeside. We pulled out the makings for lunch and found ourselves a table to sit at. Here we happily sat, eating out tuna on vita-weets and drinking a cup of tea while we watched the people coming and going,fording the shallow inlet from the beach around the corner snd 500m down to the south.

A pied oyster catcher came in and gave us a chance to check our bird ID and then another little bird (almost invisible as it scuttled across the sand) was seen. There also seemed to be a smaller one (even less east to see)

This prompted a trip back to the camper for binoculars and camera in an effort to get a better look and maybe get a name. In the end we decided it was probably a red capped plover.

With that puzzle solved we decided to grab our gear and head along this beach. Sure enough, the others were still there and there were reports of all kinds of delights so we tried the detergent trick ( it seemed to work) and headed out into the water. Although the water was not a millpond we actually both managed to have a good snorkel and see plenty of pretty fish before heading in rather tired. We have not invested in flippers ,so swimming against the current and getting where you need to is hard work. After the limited sleep of last night we were spent.

We did sight dolphins playing around in the water and also a turtle swimming by with its head out of the water.

We headed home to our campsite.

We stopped at the one tap in the park and put our heads under to try to wash out some of the salt, then sponged ourselves off as best we could. Our skin is still sticky with salt and the humidity and our hair is flat and stringy. Oh a shower would be wonderful.

We hung all our damp stuff out so it could not dry in the humidity and had a cuppa. Our neighbours reminded us to come up to the shelter for happy hour so we did. We sat looking out at a grey sea and threatening clouds all around and saw no sunset at all, but did hear all about how lovely and calm turquoise bay had been after we left. We even saw some footage taken by our neighbours.

After a dinner of fresh veggies with leftovers we moved our wet clothes to the cab of the camper and packed up our chairs just in case it actually managed to rain again and crawled into our damp camper and between the damp sheets.

Sure enough it rained again, ( huge drops pelting on on the roof only a couple of feet above our heads) but we were snuggled in under the shelter with the windows zipped up a bit better this time.

7/8/21 Yardie Creek and Drift Snorkel at Turquoise Bay

We enjoyed the overcast day because the sun didn’t come shining in at stupid-o-clock.

Our progress was greatly slowed when Trevor recognised a white-winged fairy wren near the campsite and we took quite a while watching and photographing a number of them before we decided to get on our way.

We made our way down to Yardie Creek stopping in at Sandy Bay on the way and admiring the lovely turquoise water.

Then we were on again in time to check out the water crossing to get further south.

The boat trip on Yardie Creek was informative and fun with our skipper, Ash, telling plenty of tall tales mixed in with genuine info. He was a real showman.

We saw heaps of black flanked rock wallabies, osprey on and off of nests, reef heron and a western bower bird with his bower (on an island)

We shared lunch with the others while we watched the progress of the bogged 4WD on the other side of the water and the other vehicles driving back and forwards.

Then we worked our way north to Turquoise Bay, decided the water looked flat enough to snorkel (the wind was still blowing pretty strongly) and had a go. As we remembered, there is quite a drift, and the many different fish on the coral were a delight. The lovely thing is that you can just be 20m or so from the shore and be getting a real feast of reef life to watch.

We headed homewards in time to enjoy drinks with some of our fellow campers as we watched whales tail flapping and frolicking way out past the edge of the reef.

It had been heavily overcast and threatening to rain for hours, but we finally had a few spots, which kept on coming and going as we cooked and ate our tea. We’ve brought our washing in from outside and moved our chairs inside just in case. Last time we were here we had an unexpected flood, so we know the weather can be unpredictable and surprising at times.

6/8/21 Exmouth to Cape Range

This blogpost is being written late and posted out of order. Sorry for any confusion caused to those who are following the story.

We stocked up on food and Trev went and got a link to find pictures taken on the whale tour.

Then we were on our way. Our first stop was a detour to Bundegi beach and jetty. Here the wind was very strong but the fishermen were still out on the jetty, which was built to step down into the water to cater for different tide levels. There was a fairly busy cafe at the beach, but we didn’t stop and try it.

The naval communications station Harold Holt is also out in this area. A joint project between US and Australia. There are 13 towers making up an array that delivers very low frequency communications capability (used for communication with subs). This uses 27000 litres of diesel a day!!! (nearly 10 million litres a year). It was this communications project that was the impetus for the formation of Exmouth town.

There is also a space junk photography and tracking station and a solar observation station in this part of the world.

Our next stop was the extremely windy coast around a little, where we were able to look out at the wreck of the Mildura.

Then back to Vlamingh Head to admire the old lighthouse once again and remember the time we were given a tour through it when we happened to be in the right place at the right time….

We looked down from the lighthouse to the deserted caravan below. Last time this was a thriving caravan park.. Word is that it has apparently been purchased with the aim to get a change in zoning and permission to build a fancy resort. it might cost 85 million dollars and house 500 guests…. At present it is sitting vacant with people screaming for accommodation in Exmouth and surrounds.

Our next stop was the turtle preservation zone, where the green turtles come in to lay their eggs each year and then the Tantabiddi Boat Ramp, where Trevor’s Whale watching tour left from yesterday. No boats out today due to the windy weather. It might have been better if they had decided not to go yesterday.

We stopped in at the beach where all the windsurfers go. We sat and watched them all out in the windy weather enjoying themselves, while we drank a warm cup of tea.

We stopped in to visit Al and Zita at the Mesa campground (sheltering in their van away from the gale) and ate our lunch there. Then we headed on from there to our own campsite (Kurrajong), another 24 or so km down the road. We couldn’t book three sites in the same campground when we booked 6 months before today because it was so heavily booked. We were encouraged by our camp host to head up to the lookout at sunset and have a happy hour drink with other campers. We did this and met a couple of the others in the campsite. There are whales out to sea a long way. We can just make them out when they jump out of the water and flap their tails.

5/8/21 whales and motion sickness

While I stayed home and spent my time catching up with family and housework Trev went off on an adventure with the others

The hope was that they would see whale sharks, but it is the very end of the possible season for this. They ended up seeing hump backed whales and reef fish.

Sadly Trev was affected by motion sickness despite taking medication and spent most of the day feeling lousy on the deck of the boat while the others enjoyed the water, lunch and fruit. It was a roughish day, which just didn’t set him up for a good experience.

I spoke to both Thom and Ben and felt much happier after those catch ups, not to mention having fresh sheets on the bed,food sorted for the next few days and a bit more of a plan around the next couple of weeks.

We headed across to “Cadillacs” for dinner again. This time we caught up with Tarn. She is sparkling with good health.