Return to the Outback ... and loving it

We decided we'd fit Kalgoorie in after all, seeing as we're all the way over here.  What a great decision, we've had a terrific time!  From Esperance we drove north to Norseman and it didn't take long at all for the country to change.  The weather too - finally a return to summer conditions!  We spent a night at Kambalda, just south of Kalgoorlie.

Kambalda - Lake Lefroy is a 500km square salt pan

Another great outback place name

Kalgoorlie's a bigger town than we'd imagined but every bit as interesting as we hoped.  We've had a couple of days of full-on sightseeing including everything from a walking tour to a tour of a brothel.  Yep, the last surviving original Hay Street brothel.  It's still open for business, though as the 'madam' told us, it's the tours that keep the place afloat.  This was actually a really informative tour as the brothels are so closely linked with Kalgoorlie's history.

We would have been the youngest of the 14 people on the this tour

One of the first things we did on arrival in Kalgoorlie was go out to the Super Pit, which is the amalgamation of all the smaller gold mines.  Wow, you can imagine something huge but until you actually see it ...

From the lookout

And again at twilight.  The headlights are on the enormous
tip trucks that travel up and down, up and down, up and down
that haulage road.

There are some gorgeous old buildings here
in Kalgoorlie

We also did a tour of the Royal Flying Doctor Service base and found that very interesting too.  We were able to have a look inside one of their planes which is fitted out just as an intensive care unit in a large hospital would be.  Pretty amazing what they're able to do.

So that's where we are right now.  The weather's in the 30s, clear blue sunny skies and we want to stay here!!  However, we have to head back to Victoria, so tomorrow will 'hit the Nullarbor'.  We've got about another two weeks.  As it's highly unlikely we'll have internet access "out there" this may be our last post.  Certainly our last from beautiful Western Australia.  Once we've been to Streaky Bay, it'll be a fairly direct route home most likely.  See you then!

Esperance

The Southern Coast road follows the coast east from Hopetoun and we got to some pretty good bays along here before rejoining the highway leading into Esperance.  This is a very nice place, with its amazing beaches and easy access to some fabulous national parks.  We spent 3 nights at a yabby farm of all places - the people welcome campers for $10 pp per night which includes hot showers, toilets and shelter.  Lovely friendly people too.  This made a good base for exploring as it was only 5 minutes from 'town'.

Seriously some of the loveliest beaches anywhere,
all within 20 minutes of Esperance.

There's a 20km drive we did which hugs the coastline and we visited these beautiful beaches. Fortunately we had a warm sunny day - it turned very windy and a bit chilly that night.

Cape Le Grand NP was one place we especially wanted to see and we spent a couple of nights down there. We managed two half-days of sunshine and were able to spend much of it at Lucky Bay ("Australia's whitest beach").  The sand's not only extremely white, but also has a really unusual consistency (sort of like icing sugar we think).  It squeaks no matter how hard you try not to squeak it!

We walked across to Thistle Cove and had this lovely view
back to Lucky Bay

A bit of overcast weather didn't stop the sand sculptor!  Another
life-size dolphin in the making

The family that was camping at Tozers Bush Camp during the really heavy rain was camped here at Lucky Bay too, so we got together for 'happy hour' and some time on the beach.  There's another bay down here which was just as nice as Lucky Bay; it's called Hellfire Bay and we walked the length of the beach and up over the rocks.  This overlooks the Recherche Archipelago, part of the Southern Ocean which contains about 125 islands.  It's a great area!  Once again though, the wind and rain intruded on our beach time :)  Maybe we'll be lucky enough to return some time.

Rain, road closures and really good places

Some photos to catch up a bit from when I last wrote.  We haven't had much internet access to keep this up to date; oh, and there's too much sightseeing to do too :)

Overlooking one of the beautiful beaches on Bremer Bay, on the
edge of the Fitzgerald River NP

After the heavy rain we couldn't enter the national park we came
here to see.  The main reason they close the roads is because of "dieback",
a fungus which spreads in wet soil and kills off native vegetation.

We were still able to see lots of great countryside around here and
found a great little camping spot near a canola field ... this photo is another morning view through our window.

It's not really the wheatbelt but this area was full of wheat crops as far as the eye could see in every direction.  Ravensthorpe seemed to be the main centre, where the businesses were predominantly machinery/farming related.  It still amazes us that within half an hour (or less) we can be on the beach and seemingly in another world.

Skirting the Fitzgerald River NP we came across a
particular river ...

There's an eastern entrance to the Fitzgeral River national park, so we continued to Hopetoun and were able to get in via the bitumen road.  That was great, as we could access some really lovely beaches.  By this stage we'd all but given up hope of seeing the park so were glad to see what we did.

From Barrens Lookout where we could view the meeting of the
inlet and the ocean.  There were gorgeous wildflowers up here too.

  

We loved West Beach for its fantastic rock formations, the
result of erosion.  There was a lot of sparkling mica in there.

              

There's a huge lake (inlet) where we had lunch with a goanna,
some wildflowers, some sunshine and great views.

Porongurups

South of the Stirling Range is a smaller park known as the Porongorups and this time we did walk to the peak.  It wasn't too hard despite being all uphill.  My back's been pretty unstable the past week or so and I was thrilled to be able to do this walk.  We had the most beautiful weather after a few grey days and the views from the top were fantastic.  It's a little like Mt Buffalo with all the granite rocks.  There's a section where you climb through and over some rocks to reach a ladder which ascends straight to the 'skywalk' ... the pictures can tell the story:

 

No, not one of us!

On the 'granite skywalk'.  Only two other people were up here. 

There are some beautiful areas east of Albany and we decided to explore Two Peoples Bay and then Waychinicup National Park (they have some great names over here!)  The campground at Waychinicup Inlet is small, quiet, in a gorgeous bush setting and there was nobody else there.  It rained overnight and was pretty heavy the next morning so we're glad we had a good look around when we arrived.

    

Little Beach at Two Peoples Bay park

  
Near our camp at Waychinicup Inlet.




There was some pretty heavy weather in the south west around this time.  Fortunately for us, we weren't too badly affected as we found a camp which had a huge camp kitchen/shed/shelter.  It was on the way to Bremer Bay, from where we planned to visit the Fitzgerald River NP.   The bloke's only had it running for about 10 months but has built the amenities according to feedback he's been gathering from campers for years, so it really is well done.

We slept in the troopy but spent the evening in the shelter by the wood heater, along with a family travelling a similar route to ours.  There was even tv!  Next day the weather was foul - no raincoats and hats could make bushwalking or anything else enjoyable and so the day was spent indoors, reading and chatting by a wood fire.

A taste of luxury for campers - wood fire, hot showers, microwave,
stove, running water, electric lights ...

Stirling Range

We headed north from Albany to the amazing Stirling Range and spent a couple of nights in the national park here (where we came across two couples we'd got to know back in the Geraldton area).  It was good to catch up in the evening - they're older, two retired brothers and their wives who are on the road indefinitely.

This is a wonderful area for wildflowers and bushwalking so we combined the two.  We also followed the drive that traverses the whole range, stopping plenty of times for views and flowers.  It was great!

Orchid

There are quite a few peaks that can be climbed ... by others :)  We did go partway up some and enjoyed the views.  The best part's the walk itself though, as the tracks are cut through the natural bush and this bush is like a huge native garden with so much in flower right now.  We loved this place!

Stirling Range

Everlasting daisies

Tiptoe through the daisies

A "southern cross"

Albany

A few photos from around Albany:

Overlooking the Southern Ocean at Albany's Torndirrup National Park

The "Natural Bridge"

Partway up Isthmus Hill overlooking one of the amazing bays

On the replica of the brig "Amity"

View of the port from Mt Clarence (weather was lovely the
second day we were there)

Part of the Anzac Memorial, top of Mt Clarence.  Huge
celebrations in about 10 days, as this is the Australian port
from where the Anzacs departed

We had a couple of days looking around Albany, mainly the national park which boasts some really diverse coastal scenery.  The town is gearing up for the big Anzac centenary on 1st November and there's been a lot of work going on.  As a town Albany's nice enough, but it's the location that really makes it.

To Albany

It’s only something like 120km from Walpole to Albany but it took us a week to travel that distance.  There is just SO much to see around this area, more than we’d realised and not the sort of thing we wanted to rush.  We’ve tried to stay off the highways as much as possible and explore the coast roads and 4WD tracks, which have given us access to some wonderful beaches.  The weather’s been a bit cool since leaving Fremantle, not beach weather by any means, but we’ve enjoyed it all.  Often we’ve sat in a shelter or sometimes in the car out of the wind at lookouts, fascinated by the swell of the Southern Ocean and pounding of the waves onto rocks.

"Conspicuous Cliff" 

Not far from Walpole is the famous Tree Top Walk through the karri and tingle forest.  Having seen so many of these trees recently from the ground, it was great to see them from 40metres up and look down to their bases.  They can grow up to 75m so a lot of the canopies were still high above us.  Then we did the ‘ground walk’ for another look at the red tingles.  Most of these have a huge girth and hollow bases you can walk into.

We then headed for the coast again, to William Bay National Park west of Denmark.  This is one of the most fantastic coastal areas we’ve seen – crystal clear water, incredible rocks, even a bay where the water comes in from either side and meets in the middle.  Meantime the Southern Ocean’s crashing in from the south.  It’s called Madfish Bay and we wonder whether the name reflects the state of the fish who probably don’t know in which direction to swim! Elephant Rocks was a fantastic place. If we ever get back to the west we want to spend more time down here.

Elephant Rocks

Madfish Bay

Madfish Bay

Denmark’s a nice little town on an inlet close to the ocean.  We drove up to Mt Shadforth from where you get a good perspective of the area.  There’s quite a bit of history here (mainly timber milling) and we also checked out some of the local artwork at the gallery.

No, we didn't camp in Denmark.   

Our bush camp at Cosy Corner

... and the beach at Cosy Corner, not far from Denmark

We explored the West Cape Howe NP next day, camping right by the beach at the aptly named Cosy Corner.  What a gorgeous beach this was, especially when the sun came out and turned the ocean blue!  There are some nice beaches in this park, as well as forest and some walking tracks - Torbay Head, which you can’t easily get to, is the most southerly point in WA.

West Cape Howe NP - the best of the bush ....

... and the beach

Our next destination was Albany, the first permanent settlement in WA and a city which boasts one of the most spectacular locations - right on the shore of King George Sound.  The area is peninsulas, bays, islands and of course miles of white sandy coastline.

A taste of Albany, with the old whaling station in the foreground