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Fowlers Camp was a lovely change and we enjoyed the peace of being on our own. We packed up, left the campsite first thing in the morning, and began our drive down the tar road to Kalbarri - about 280kms.
| We stopped at the turn-off to the main road to set-up a photo of our mascot "Sharky" at the entrance sign to Shark Bay. |  |
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The remainder of the trip to Kalbarri on the tar was uneventful however we noticed the landscape change considerably after we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn - we started to see big, shady trees. It seemed funny that we were noticing trees, but we have been desperately searching for shade at each camp site with little luck. It seemed we were indeed moving into country that is more hospitable. |
As we approached Kalbarri I started doing my research about the area and discussing with David our options for accommodation and sites of interest we might want to visit. We agreed to stop at a free bush camp just before the Kalbarri turn-off and then start the following day in the National Park by visiting the magnificent lookouts of the Murchison River gorge. Our camp site was located at the uppermost reaches of the Murchison River and was beautiful.
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We arrived quite early, around 2pm and David was keen to do some bush maintenance on the trailer. He spent about 3 hours covered in grease and muck to remove, repack, and replace the wheel bearings off both trailer wheels. It was quite an effort as he had to jack up both sides of the trailer and remove both wheels whilst it was still attached. |
While David did this I attempted to clean myself up - I felt awfully itchy. The salt water we'd been bathing in since leaving Exmouth must have built up and had irritated my skin. My face had turned all blotchy and I had 3 spots of dermatitis. Using our stores of fresh water from our last fill-up at the Cape Range National Park, I filled our sink and used a facecloth to bathe. Later, I treated myself to a "facial" - a very basic mixture of body oil and lanolin face moisturiser. I felt much better, and so did David once the trailer was fixed.
After leaving our great free bush camp last night, we took the "explorers" route into Kalbarri, that is we took every track and turn off that wasn't sign posted. We ended up finding a historic community and mine site with ruins of buildings, an old cemetery, and a plaque in an empty paddock. To get here we had to cross over Murchison River and we could see evidence of pioneers using the river to transport or maybe wash their takings from the mine site. Back on the other side of the river, we found another mine site, this one being more recent. We were disappointed and frankly, surprised that we found no signs indicating the significance of the historic sites.
A little further on we found another historic site but this one was well marked and filled in the mysteries of the previous sites. In the 1880s, lead was mined and transported to a smelter - the chimney site ruins are all that remain.
With that mystery solved, we travelled towards Kalbarri. The township is situated about 60kms east off the main highway and to get there one drives through the Kalbarri National Park. As planned, we stopped at all the points of interest and walked to some beautiful lookouts overlooking the gorges formed by the twisting Murchison River.
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We walked to lookouts at Ross Norman and Hawks Head and then saw Natures Window at The Loop (a natural rock arch providing a peek view at the river below). |
It was midday by the time we'd finished all but one of the walks and the temperature was 43 degrees. I suddenly felt weak and tired and said I wasn't walking another bloody step! David walked the 1.5km loop to take video footage of the Z -Bend lookout while I prepared lunch - a fair deal.
By late afternoon, we arrived in the little township of Kalbarri. The town starts at the Murchison river mouth and continues along the cliff tops of the coastline. We stocked up our supplies, bought bait, and headed out for some beach fishing to catch our dinner. We were surprised to find massive surf and huge swell at what is termed "the best fishing" spot in WA.
| I wasn't interested in fishing there but David persevered while I took video of the huge waves crashing on the shoreline. The waves were easily 8 foot and dangerous. It was no wonder there were life rings mounted to the rocks nearby. |  |
After a couple of hours we had no luck with fishing and had to contend with a vegetable curry for dinner.
This morning we awoke to our first overcast and drizzly day of the trip - so we slept a little longer! Around 9am when we finally did get up the sun was beginning to shine and a slight breeze was developing. David has developed a new interest - windsurfing. This is great news for me because hopefully this means I'll soon have someone else to come sailing with me. We had found a man hiring windsurfers at the river for $15/hr and David was adamant about hiring one today. But first, we went fishing. Around 1pm we returned to the caravan park to prepare some lunch and collect David's wetsuit. We only had to cross the road to the board hire place. David was very successful at his first day on the water - within the hour he was able to perform a few wobbly tacks, and even got the board planning (with just a few instructions from the shore). I was very impressed but unfortunately didn't have the camera to take any evidence of his amazing feats.
After yet another evening of no success with fishing - David has decided he hates Kalbarri and we are leaving tomorrow to go somewhere with even better windsurfing - Geraldton.
| Leaving Kalbarri we took the coastal road along the cliff tops, stopping at every headland and lookout. The area offers spectacular scenery with massive waves smashing the red cliffs below. Some interesting landforms such as Natures Arch made good photographic subjects for us (and the many Christmas holiday tourists we are now encountering!). |  |
Leaving town this road took us south-west through the towns of Port Gregory and Northhampton before reaching Geraldton. Our first priority in Geraldton was to find a windsurfer for hire for David. After the obligatory visit to the Tourist Information Bureau, we found a windsurfing gear and repair shop right on the beach at Point Moore. No one was windsurfing, there was not enough wind. We got a map of the area and checked out all the sailing spots. Finally we chose to stay at the Sun City Caravan Park on one of the most popular windsurfing beaches - and it was full of campers with sailboards. The word was that no one had even been in the water for over a week. Cyclone Billy and Thelma were affecting the normally windy conditions in Geraldton. We decided not to hire a board until the weather improved and hoped that would be tomorrow, according to the weather map interpretations at the local board shops.
With no wind again Geraldton didn't have much to offer us. We were expecting mail from Mum and from Poroday's camera repair shop (with my strobe). We decided to spend the day in town, organising our mail and developing photos, buying camping supplies and using the Internet café to update our website. We had a disastrous day - the Internet place was too basic to enable us to update our website or even collect our email; we couldn't find a simple gas hose; our mail hadn't arrived and wasn't expected for another 5 days. After wasting 3 hours in town we agreed to leave the next day.
We didn't have a long drive from Geraldton to our next stop, Leeman so we went back to the Post Office and arranged for our mail to be redirected to Perth. My books told me that Leeman was a tiny fishing village with a good reputation for windsurfing sites for both waves and slalom. Leeman plays host to the Snag Island Classic, a heat of the world slalom circuit in January and we took a chance that we might find a local with an old plank collecting dust in a shed that we could buy for David. My books also mentioned that an NASDS dive store operated boat trips out to the Beagle Islands where we were looking forward to diving with sealions.
It was early afternoon when we approached the outskirts of Leeman and a stiff breeze was blowing. My maps showed we were near a fresh water lake perfect for boating, waterskiing and windsurfing (so the brochures said).Unfortunately we arrived to find a large red sign advising people that the lake was infected with Ameoba Meningitis and that it could kill but not if you kept your head above water and avoided water getting in your nasal passages!!!!!!!! Needless to say, we did not stop there.
We drove into the little township and found the people incredibly friendly and willing to help us find a sailboard. We wrote a notice and pinned it up in the postoffice (which was also the service station, supermarket, and butcher). Later we found the dive shop (operating from home) and booked to go diving tomorrow or maybe Saturday depending on the weather (it was still blowing a gale).
With an early start planned for tomorrow we went to bed early with a simple meal of steamed vegies.
The howling wind kept us awake most of the night and we weren't surprised to find that diving was cancelled due to a strong wind warning. At least we have another activity to occupy ourselves when conditions are unfavorable for diving! Just as we were packing the windsurfing gear into the back of the car the local electrician came up to us and said he'd heard we were looking to buy a sailboard and rig for a beginner. It turned out he had just what we needed so we arranged to meet him at his house at lunchtime to take a look.
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We drove 17km south to another small township called Greenhead so I could windsurf in a bay where I thought there would be good conditions for my slalom equipment. I rigged up my 4.5m2 sail and went sailing in South Bay in about 30knots of wind blowing from the south-west. I couldn't stay out for too long as I was getting tired quickly. |
David did take a few photos and some video of me sailing - I'm so pleased, I've never seen a video of myself on my board. To de-rig the sail we had to move the car and position it so it blocked the wind from blowing lots of sand all over the gear! There were no taps to wash off the salt water but at least the hot wind dried the gear so we could quickly pack it away. As we packed the gear away I noticed a nasty 6 inch long crack in my carbon-fibre mast!!!! Not good. I knew this meant I couldn't sail until it was either repaired or replaced and this was not the place to find a windsurfing shop that could do it.
However, something did work out all right for us at least. We went to the electrician's house to look at the board he had for sale and offered him $250 for the board, 2 sails, boom, mast and sail bag. He accepted the offer but not the money and suggested we rig it up first and take it out for a sail before paying. That afternoon we scrubbed both our boards with Jiff and rinsed all our sails and other bits and pieces. We rigged up both sails and David looked so proud of his new toy.
We rang Ian at the dive shop early to see if we were diving today but he said the conditions were even worse than yesterday. We were really disappointed to have to miss diving with the sealions but since I couldn't sail then there was not much left for us to do in Leeman to warrant waiting around for the conditions to calm down. We seem to be having a bit of bad luck with the weather due to the cyclones and no one can predict what will happen.
We left Leeman after cooking "eggy-bread" - a favourite breakfast dish of the Addocks. We drove to Cervantes, another crayfishing town but much larger than Leeman and Greenhead.
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Just out of Cervantes is the Nambung National Park whose main feature is the Pinnacles Desert where limestone pinnacles rise up 5m out of the sandy desert just 4km from the beach. |
We also found a great windsurfing beach at Thirsty Head in Cervantes where 2 guys were out on small boards and sails. One was using a 4.0m2 and the other a 4.5m2 and both were having trouble keeping their boards on the water in the screaming 35knot wind. I couldn't sail there because my smallest sail was 4.5m2 and the mast would definitely have snapped and probably ripped a sail. So we camped at the caravan park and fished from the wharf where the locals told us we would catch herrings and tailor.
Most of the jettys in these small towns on the WA coast serviced the crayfishing boats. At the end of the jetty a processing plant pumps crushed cray heads back into the water - and obviously that means good fishing. We caught a bucket full of hearings and I bought a live rock lobster and blue manor crab for $10 off one of the boats as it came it with a fresh catch. We had a beautiful seafood feast back at the caravan park that night.
| We left Cervantes at 9am and drove 17km south to the Nambung National Park to view the Pinnacles. They really were a pretty sight but it only took us about an hour to explore the desert area. |  |
My maps showed a shortcut to our next stop, Lancelin that bypassed the main highway (which we haven't driven on in WA for more than a few hundred kilometres). This track was marked as a 4WD only track and would take us 9km to the township of Grey and then 80km to Lancelin. Just as we started the track a Ford F100 4WD pulled us over and told us the track was rough and the sand was very soft in places. He seemed to think we'd get the trailer through so we continued. The road was certainly rough and slow with hard limestone rocks that couldn't be avoided. We averaged about 20km/hr for the hour. The community of Grey was a surprise - it was a shanty town set on the most beautiful stretch of coastline you could imagine. We read signs that said no more shanties could be built but if you wanted you could live in the "squatters shack" until something turned up. We found the tracks leading south of Grey took us around the cliffs and below we could see other 4WDs on the beaches. We navigated our way through the maze of tracks and had to let down all our tyres to get the car and trailer up some steep, sandy hills. It took us over an hour to prepare the car and complete the obstacles. When we finally made it down to the beach and loved the miles and miles of beautiful beach driving we had along the shoreline. The beach finally brought us to another shanty town, which we hadn't expected but found it was called Wedge Island. The locals here pay C.A.L.M (Conservation and Land Management) $600 per year to live here in tin sheds they build themselves. To get to Lancelin we had another 40km of beach driving to go but the locals who advised that 2 cars had just got into trouble soon stopped us. Apparently, they had slipped into the water at a point where the beach slopes to such an angle that not even a good 4WD could make it through. We had to take an inland track that took us through Royal Australian Navy land used for gunnery practice but we finally made it to Lancelin at 3pm.
We drove straight to the Lancelin sailboard shop and showed them the crack in my mast. They confirmed it was irrepairable but couldn't replace it with the same type of mast, unless we were prepared to wait a few days for it to be sent up from Perth. After having a look at the terrible accommodation on offer at the 2 caravan parks, we decided to drive straight to Perth and sort it out ourselves.
We phoned our friends Nev and Katrina and were invited to Xmas drinks that night. We parked our troopy in the front yard besides Nev and Katrina's troopy and swapped travel stories all night.
I spent hours this morning on the phone trying to find a replacement mast. My insurance company were easy to deal with and advised I should buy whatever I needed and send a receipt by fax which they would reimburse by cheque to our post office address. It took some time but I looked up a friend who owns Sails and Windsurfing, one of the largest shops in Perth, and he sorted it all out for us.
Finally, we are ready to take advantage of the great wind here and plan to leave Perth tomorrow. We are going back up North to Cervantes to sail for a few days. Katrina wants us to spend Xmas Day with her at her mother's house not far from Lancelin so it all works out well for us. Nev has just bought a new boat and we'll go over to Rottnest Island for a few days diving between Xmas and New Year.
We arrived at Cervantes around 2.30pm and drove straight to the windsurfing beach "Thirsty Point". There were half a dozen people out on boards so I rigged up my 4.5m2 and had a great blast for a few hours. We packed up and waved goodbye to those we'd met and checked in at the caravan park. Just as we were erecting our tent, the people in the tent besides us arrived - it was a couple (Dave and Dee) we had been windsurfing with, which was just great!
Excellent wind - 4.5m2 weather again. David, Dave, Dee and I sailed all day.
Excellent wind - sailed all day on 4.5m2 again.
Neither Dave, Dee, David or I sailed today - we were too sore. We all had callusous, bruises and cuts to rest. David and De, mentioned today that they've never caught a fish! David promised to rectify that problem if they dared come fishing with us tonight. It was incredibly cold and the strong wind bit through to the skin. I don’t have much in the way of winter clothing with me so I layered up in a long sleeved cotton shirt under my spray jacket. I left all my shoes at Neville and Katrina's thinking I wouldn't need anything other than sandals so I wore thick treking socks under my sandals - a really charming look! Despite the fashion statements we had a successful fishing session - Dave caught 7 fish that we kept (6 herring and 1 tailor) and 3 trevally that were undersized. David caught 12 tailor, I caught nothing - I was using the squid jig in the hope of catching squid but didn't catch anything. Dee used a hand line and caught an anchovy, a catfish and a tiny herring. We finished up the evening knowing we had enough food to keep us going until Xmas.
David was really hoping for a calm day today. The strong wind is really frustrating him while trying to learn to windsurf. This morning the wind was howling again and we agreed not to sail - to conserve our energy for another day. Dee and Dave, the couple camping besides us, went for a little sail but only lasted about an hour. The wind was the strongest today, hitting 35knots by lunch time! We went with them to the beach for moral support and then spent the day playing games and cooking our fish from last night's catch. David and I had "Tailor Laksa" for lunch and for dinner we prepared "Italian style Tailor pasta in a tomato and herb sauce".
We woke this morning to a calm day for the first time since being in Cervantes. Our windsurfing gear is always packed and ready to go before we go to sleep so all we had to do was eat breakfast and drive to the sailing site no more than 2km away. By the time we pulled into the carpark however the wind was already picking up at 9am. It was still too light for me to go out on my biggest sail so we rigged David's biggest sail. Just as he hit the water the wind whipped up and he needed to return to shore to re-rig a smaller sail - that's the way it goes with sailing! Within 15minutes I was rigging my 4.5m2 sail and I was the first non-beginner to hit the water. We blasted away in 20 - 25knot winds for 2 hours until we were so exhausted we could barely lift a water bottle to our lips. The highlight of David's day was that he pulled off a number of beach starts and stayed on the board for a few good long runs and even managed to deep beach start in water up to his underarms to return back to shore. He has been a very quick learner and we are talking now of trading in his beginners board (affectionately called "Wally") for a high volume, smaller, lighter and faster board. The highlight of my day was falling off besides a seal in the water about 300m from shore. I saw his little head just as I gybed and so I stopped to see what it was. The seal was frolicking about in the weed about 3 metres from me and when I stopped he came straight over to me like a little puppy wanting a pat. He was cute and playful I could have stayed for ages. He swam around my legs, under my board and sail and teased me by coming almost, but not quite, close enough for me to touch.
The wind picked up so much today that most of us were nearly blown out of the water. We've been the first to arrive each day so that David gets a chance before the wind becomes too strong. I've taken to going out early too just to get a few good runs with my 6m.
We all have callusous on our hands but the wind is so consistent that we can't help ourselves - we have to go out. There's a good group of sailors around now and the social atmostphere is developing.
Dave is a showy sailor and I took some video of him performing duck gybes and tacks. He's trying to help me with my gybes too so we watch the video at nights to see what we're doing right or wrong.
David had a great day windsurfing today (and so did I). It all seemed to come together for him and he was adamant to prove that he no longer needed the big board (he calls it the Wally). He has perfected beach starts both from the shore and out in deeper water and is even trying tacks and gybes. He really needs a decent sail and a harness because he stays out sailing for hours and hours.
We had a funny night with Dave and Dee - we really enjoy their company. It's a shame we can't spent more time together. They live in Hawthorn, Melbourne so maybe we might get around to see them towards the end of the trip.
Xmas Eve - we left Cervantes this morning after saying very fond farewells to Dave and Dee and the other windsurfers we met during the week. It was a great atmosphere for sailing and we would like to come back here again after Xmas but we must start heading south if we're ever going to make it home in time.
We arrived at Nev, Katrina and Sue's house just after lunch and finally collected our mail and repaired camera strobe from the Post Office. I had hoped that Ian would've organised a board for David so I could give it to him for Xmas day but he had been too busy so I had no present organised. We had a quiet Xmas Eve which was just as well - we were exhausted after our hectic week of windsurfing.
There were three couples who woke up in the house on Xmas morning so it was fun watching everyone open their pressies (except for us). I had a couple of little things for Sue, Nev, Katrina and her mother and we also received a stocking full of goodies.
Xmas lunch was at Katrina's mother's house at Merriwa. There were 14 people for lunch, 8 of whom we already knew. We had a scrummy seafood entree of lobster, prawns and salmon mouse with a citrus dressing. Mains were set out in the kitchen and we all served ourselves turkey, ham, and salads finished off of course with pudding, a casata style icecream desert and a lemon cream sponge desert with fruit underneath. We rolled out of there feeling very full around 5pm and all lay on the longe in Sue, Nev and Katrina's house complaining how full we were.
David and I went looking at second-hand boards in one of Perth's biggest windsurfing shops today. We found the perfect board,a second-hand F2 Xantos (last year's top model board) but it is a little out of our price range at $1350. It is worth it but while we are travelling we thought the money could be better spent elsewhere. The only other board that could have been suitable was a brand new Bombora 285 for $565 but in time he would need to sell and upgrade if he bought this board.
With that dilema unresolved we dropped in to Katrina's father house for lunch and stayed until it was all over at about 9pm.