A quixotic sacrifice ~ Cervantes

Places we visit often turn out to be much more or less than we expected.  Places that other people have raved about turn out to be hardly worth blinking at, while other places that we've never heard of and stop at just for convenience turn out to be beautiful.  Cervantes, a cray fishing town that we just stopped at because it was around about half way from Geraldton to Perth and because it was convenient for visiting the pinnacles, turned out to be a great little stop.  Our grassy (!), shaded (!!) campsite had ocean views and easy access to a nice little bike path along the waterfront.  The landscape along this coast is different to anywhere else we've been.  Shrub-covered sand dunes extend for miles inland, with an occasional massive white dune standing up alone with it's beautiful wind-sculpted curves and ridges.  The sea at Cervantes was calm and the beach strewn with seaweed, but it has it's own quiet beauty that we enjoyed over the two nights we spent there. 

Our second day at Cervantes we drove out to the pinnacles just before sunset.  It was great walking through these strange stone spires and we wished we'd arrived earlier with more time to spend exploring.  The rocks made me think of a weathered cemetry from some forgotten civilisation - the perfect setting for our first novelty photos with little bird.

Photos (clockwise from top left):

~ pinnacles silhouette

~ little bird pondering sunset at the pinnacles

~ offering our daughter to be consumed by the rock god

~ the pinnacles

~ cervantes beach

A quiet easter ~ Geraldton

From Kalbarri to Geraldton was a short drive through farmland and heath and past coastal cliffs.  We tucked  ourselves away in a friendly little caravan park at the mouth of the Greenough river, just south of Geraldton, for the Easter weekend.  In size Geraldton would be just a modest little country town in the east, but it's easily the biggest town between Perth and Darwin so it felt like a taste of the big smoke for us.  We loved quiet days in Gero's West End where the Jaffle Shack served up the best coffee we've had in ages and the best jaffles we've had ever.  Our evenings were spent walking the dunes around the caravan park and dressing little bird up in some winter clothes.  The cold change has hit and will take some adjusting for all of us - we need to keep reminding ourselves of how much we were hanging out for a fresh breeze all through the wet season in Broome.

Photos:

~ walking in the dunes

~ our easter celebration: french toasted hot cross buns

~ out for another walk

~ indian ocean sunset

Happy Easter everybody!!!

With love from mel, gav, little bird & blossom bunny.

x

Out of the North ~ Kalbarri

Well we are now officially in the South-West - we passed signs by the road saying "you are crossing the 26th parallel and leaving the North-West."  Far from being just the crossing of some arbitrary geographic line, the change is palpable.  Trees are tall, they have leaves and cast shade.  Rivers have water.  Hatchbacks and sedans have staged a dramatic comeback, usurping the dominant position of the four wheel drive.  And there are towns.  So many towns.  We have to choose which ones to stop at, as it's actually less than three hundred kilometres from one to the next.

Kalbarri, the first town on the stretch of coast leading down to Perth, seems to epitomise the transition from North to South.  Sitting at the mouth of the Murchison River, it's a holiday town with some great surf breaks and a long calm riverside beach where Perth families catch some Sun and go stand up paddling on the estuary.  Then just a few kilometres from town is dry and dusty Kalbarri National Park, where the Murchison has carved out big red gorges.  It's almost as if you make the crossover from North to South in those few kilometres between national park and town.

We only had a couple of nights in Kalbarri, Easter holidaying families had filled the place up and we couldn't book in for any longer.  Still, it was a good couple of days of exploring the town and the area, my first time with little bird in our tula carrier, some good food and relaxing times.  It's a place we could come back to: less dazzling than some places further North, but an easy enjoyable little holiday town that reminded me of childhood Summers by the beach.

A transition in more ways than one, at Kalbarri we finally faced up to the reality that this is not just an extended long weekend or holiday.  This IS our real life for now, which calls for an approach to day to day living together which is altogether different to the way we would usually live on a two day or even a two week holiday.  What that actually means is still a work in progress.

Photos:

~ mel & little bird at kalbarri national park

~ nature's window at kalbarri national park

~ gav trying a little baby-wearing in town

~ red bluff

Spongies and other sea things ~ Shark Bay

There's a few reasons why Shark Bay has earned it's place on the World Heritage list, and we got to check a few of them out on our visit.  First, it's beautiful.  Red cliffs and white beaches slip into the bluest water you could dream of.  At one point as we drove in, I was struggling to work out where the horizon was - sea and sky just blend into each other.  Second is the seagrass.  Shark Bay is huge and shallow, and holds the biggest seagrass meadows in the world.  The seagrass does a couple of things worth a mention - it supports the biggest population of dugongs in the world (about 13000) and it forms these huge baffles that partially block off the inner parts of the bay from the sea, and they have become extra salty, with double the salt content of seawater.  Which brings us to three - stromatolites.  These are aggregations of primitive bacteria that form rock-like clusters and towers.  Before plants and animals, these things ruled the world.  The super salty parts of Shark Bay keep out the creatures that would munch on them and have allowed stromatolites to thrive like nowhere else, giving us a window into life on earth way before us.  Four - really clever dolphins.  The different groups of bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay have worked out a range of innovative feeding behaviours that they teach to their children and others in their group.  Some of them can aquaplane through water that's too shallow for them to swim, others break off sponges to stick on their beaks so they don't get hurt foraging on the seabed.  And then there's Project Eden.  There's a massive narrow-based peninsula that sticks out into the middle of Shark Bay that is used for this great conservation project.  They have blocked off the base of the peninsula with a predator-proof fence and wiped out most of the population of feral predators on the peninsula, and are reintroducing species that were once widespread but now extinct (or nearly extinct) on mainland Australia, things like bilbies, woylies, and banded hare-wallabies.  So all in all, a pretty cool place.

On our way in to Shark Bay we stopped at Hamelin Pool to check out some stromatolites.  They were great to see and the pool was far more beautiful than we expected, but it was hot and glary and we got out of there pretty quick rather than risk another sunburn.  Next day we drove across the peninsula from Denham to Monkey Mia.  First up we went to the dolphin feeding.  This has been going on for years and they're now really careful how they handle it - only a few particular dolphins are fed and they're only fed a limited amount of fish each day, so they don't get distracted from looking after their babies or teaching them how to hunt.  It's the best chance anywhere for getting a close up look at some wild dolphins and it's a good bit of fun.  Next we had coffee at the resort, which was made extra special by all the emus wandering around the grounds.  Mid-morning we got onto the Aristocrat 2 for a wildlife tour of the area.  Little bird's first time on a boat!  It turned out to be great.  Mostly we took turns hanging out with her in the cabin while the other one was out on the deck watching the sea.  We got a tour of a pearl farm out on the water with some schools of snapper hanging around, and saw lots of birds, turtles, dolphins, and, as we came back in to shore, some great views of the bay's namesake - tiger sharks.  At one point the call went up that there were "spongies" ahead and we actually saw some of the sponge dolphins!  We didn't get a good view of the sponges on their beaks, but it was still pretty cool.  No dugongs though, they'll have to wait till next time.  We had lunch back at the resort, then one last highlight for me before we headed back to Denham was my first spotting of a new type of wren.  Thick-billed grasswrens are one species that has benefited from the predator wipeouts in the area, and two of them came to hang out with me as I loaded up the car.  They even posed for photos!  A great day with our little bird, who also managed to get in the car a couple of times without any major tears - things just might be turning around....

Photos:

~ stromatolites at hamelin pool

~ little bird expressing her love for life at sea

~ snapper at the pearl farm

~ a dolphin rides the bow wave

~ tiger shark (they reckon this one was over four metres

~ thick-billed grasswren saying hello

Calming down in Carnarvon

Travel so far had been a little bit intense for our little family - driving up to seven hundred kilometres in a day, the endless (and often fruitless) searches for a patch of shade, the constant putting up and taking down of the camper (now pretty much a one-person job while the second person is occupied with the little person).  Signs of wear were starting to show - bits of snappiness with each other, exhaustion at the end of each day and, worst of all, Little Bird was starting to hate the car.  Having always been happy enough to sit in the back and while away the hours with a couple of toys, she was now starting to wail every time we popped her into her seat.  You could almost hear her little voice saying "no daddy!  Not another seven hours in this thing!"  It was time for us to pause, take a breath, regroup and work out how to survive this trip.  Enter Carnarvon town.

Carnarvon is the main centre of the sandy Gascoyne region, which is to say that it has a few thousand people and a couple of supermarkets.  It's also the source of a lot of WA fruit and veg, grown from water pulled from the underground seepage of the Gascoyne River (like the rivers across most of the country, the Gascoyne is almost always a long stretch of sand with occasional waterholes, but that doesn't seem to phase the banana growers of Carnarvon).  There wasn't much for us to do in town, apart from wander the waterfront in the cool hours, and sample the coffee in quirky cafes in the heat.  To be honest, we probably wouldn't even have paused here if there was another town nearer than three hundred kilometres away.  One highlight was a short drive out of town to Bumbak's for some preserves and delicious homemade smoothies and icecream.

We took the opportunity for quiet times and to try to reacquaint Little Bird with the joys of car travel - taking her for a few short drives to nice places and timing them with when she was in the best frame of mind for experimentation.  It seems to have worked - we've actually managed some short trips without tears - which is a huge relief for us given the miles we have ahead.  

We pulled out of Carnarvon on Saturday morning, first day of the school holidays, and headed south toward Shark Bay.  We soon discovered that Easter time roadtrips to distant beaches is at least as big over here as back home.  No matter that we were still 900km north of Perth, we were soon passing lines of cars packed with red eyed families heading north towing caravans or boats and loaded with kayaks and bikes, or surfboards for those headed to the remote breaks above Carnarvon.  Not us though - we were relaxed, rested and happily heading south.  We're out of the tropics now and heading into winter - and we honestly can't wait.

Photos:

~ dawn along the foreshore.

~ gav and little bird relaxing at camp.

~ mel and little bird at the bardie grub cafe.  In a boat.  With a waterfall.

~ our busy campground.

Tiny skin cells in trauma! ~ Coral Bay

The tiny resort town of Coral Bay sits like an island between a vast area of semi-arid land (the closest thing to real desert that we've driven through) and the Indian Ocean.  The bay is part of the Ningaloo Reef, somewhere we'd been hoping to visit for a while.  Initially we'd planned to camp a bit further North, at Cape Range National Park, but we decided that we'd go a bit easier on ourselves and on little bird, and we took 3 nights in town at Coral Bay instead.  We had two long days of relaxing and enjoying life by the sea, still coming to terms with weather that is cool enough for us to enjoy being outside!  

Ningaloo is fringe reef (not barrier reef) meaning that the coral starts just metres from the shore, so no long, expensive boat trips, just a short stroll or bike ride to the beach, jump in the water and this is what you see:

I went out both days and it was some of the best snorkelling I've ever done with coral gardens that seem to stretch on for ever and an incredible range of fish.  Our underwater camera finally died during my first swim so I missed getting photos of the big schools I saw swarming over the reef the next day, but I'm happy enough with the shots i got.

-

You might have seen some billboards around the East coast in the last year or so with a picture of someone sun baking and the caption "skin cells in trauma".  Well, sadly, that would be a suitable caption for this picture of little bird taking her first dip in the sea.  

You can see the concerned look on her face - I thought she was just worried that the water was cold, but she was really trying to say "daddy my face is burning!"  Poor little darling came out with a red face later that evening that looked worse in the morning.  It feels pretty awful for us looking at her puffy face, and when we take her out it feels like we're carrying a shining red beacon that says "BAD PARENTS".  She's sleeping now, and I hope she'll be looking and feeling better tomorrow.  And of course, she's still been as cute as ever, cooing away to us and to anything else that catches her eye.

Next day was a relaxing day at home and out of the Sun.  I captured this little moment of my girls chilling out together in the camper.

As ever we keep moving onward, and after a bit of a meander through the North of WA, we've now turned resolutely southward.  Next stop: Carnarvon.

"the booming state of Western Australia. Which was, you could say, like Texas. Only it was big."

That's a quote from Eyrie, by Tim Winton.  Not really a novel for lovers of Western Australia (or maybe it would be just the thing for them?).  Anyway, he's right about the bigness.  We got a glimpse into it yesterday as we drove seven hundred kilometres from Karijini to Coral Bay.  We started out climbing through the remote, austere majesty of the Hammersley ranges then worked our way westward and downward through red boned foothills that gradually gave way to open plains.  Vast swathes of spinifex and spindly trees were broken occasionally by grassless fields of red stones and little bushes and slowly turned to coastal heath cut through by long red sand dunes.  The Sun set behind black silhouettes of termite hills, and we came into Coral Bay in the night.  A long drive for a little girl and her two weary parents, the longest we'll do for a long while, but worth it to be back at the beach with all that dust behind us.

~ posted by gav

little bird's first bushwalks ~ Karijini NP

Karijini National Park turned out to be one of our favourite outback adventures yet, a perfect place for us to try out some walking with our Little Bird. We camped at Dales Gorge, a nicely spaced out camp with drop toilets and more trees than we expected.  Three nights there gave us a chance for some exploring - we walked into Dales Gorge, past Fortescue Falls and on to Fern Pool which was too deep for a two month old but we both loved getting into the water while Little Bird chilled out on the poolside deck.  Next day was overcast, better for walking without sweating ourselves stupid, and better for photos too.  We drove across the park and spent some time exploring Kalamina Gorge, a beautiful broad red gorge with gentle cascades and pools.  After a relaxed lunch at Karijini Eco Retreat I made a fatal error - I drove to Oxers Lookout, where four of the most dramatic gorges in the park all come together.  Little Bird was asleep, and I broke our rule.  I stopped the car and got out for a look, and she woke up.  The view was awesome.  The corrugated drive back across the park with a crying baby - not so awesome.

All up, a beautiful experience and great to finally be out bush again.  And one final highlight: at night we felt COLD.  After months of constant heat and humidity we couldn't have been happier.

~ posted by gav

~ into Kalamina Gorge

~ Kalamina Falls

~ family selfie

~ chilling at Fern Pool

Back on the road! ~ Broome to the Pilbara

Finally!  Eight months in Broome, one new baby, a couple of last minute trailer troubles - and we're off.

We've been a bit nervous about how Little Bird will fare on long stretches of outback highway, and the first stretch was one of our longest, six hundred kilometres from Broome to Port Hedland along the strip of scrub that separates the Great Sandy Desert from the Indian Ocean.  We had worked out all the potential camping stops on the way just in case she decided to totally lose it at some point.  We needn't have worried - we motored straight past our planned stop at De Grey River and headed into Hedland with our little one blissfully asleep in the back seat.  Our new rule for roadtripping: When the baby is sleeping, there shall be no stopping.

Next day we drove out past piles of salt and ore and other industrial stuff then headed inland through the guts of mining boom country - massive roadtrains, white utes with orange lights, and plenty of high-vis work-wear.  A proper lunch at a proper roadhouse (not one of those kooky tourist traps that line the grey nomad migratory routes) was an unexpected pleasure, but the real highlight came when at last, after about barely even an upward incline on the road since leaving Broome, we started driving up into th Hammersley Ranges.  We reached our destination, Karijini National Park, just before sunset.

~ posted by gav