The Nullabor...and a bit of "me time"

We it is fair to say we made the right (albeit late) decision to send Mel and the kids home on the plane from Perth....the road from Perth to Melbourne is extremely long without a lot of big name tourist attractions.

The morning after sending the family home, I did a quick visit into the Perth Arena to complete my business there and then I was back to hook on the caravan for the long haul across the Nullabor.  I didn't get away until 10am with my first destination being Kalgoorlie.   I heard that the Boulder Cup was being held in Kalgoorlie that day so I thought it would be best to google the caravan parks.  I was very surprised when the pre-emptive search engine almost sent me to the Kalgoorlie Brothels which obviously is highly googled term in Kalgoorlie.   I then learnt that the prostitution trade was huge in the gold rush and that there were still functioning brothels in Kalgoorlie...one even offering a tour at 3pm daily to give you an insight.  Apparently back in the day, it was very similar to Amsterdam where the pro's would sit in the windows of the brothels so you could do a bit of window shopping.

Anyway, I checked out the Superpit - which is the lifeblood of the town.  It will be very interesting how the town fares after 2021 when the believe the pit will run out of gold.  I then ventured into town to have a cleansing ale at the Exchange Hotel which was buzzing after the big race day in town.  I sat down to be greeted by a scantily clad lass behind the bar....I had again stumbled across a "skimpy's" bar....I am starting to see a trend in these mining towns!!  So I ended up having a couple of beers to assist in stimulating their economy...

The next morning I had a later than planned start as I intended to commence the Nullabor Golf links which commenced at Kalgoorlie Golf Course, but I couldn't get on until 8.30am.  Nullabor golf is the longest golf course in the world which stretches 1365kms from Kalgoorlie to Ceduna.  It commences at Kalgoorlie where you play 2 holes and then you stop every 100kms or so and play another hole at different golf courses of road houses along the nullabor.  It sounded enticing and also a good way to break up the trip for myself, so I teed off at the beautiful course in Kalgoorlie.  Little was I to know that this would be the highlight of the golf courses as the majority of the holes where at roadhouses where they had plonked some astro turf for a tee and another bit for a green - and the rest the advertised as "natural terain" which meant they hadn't cleared anything and you were hitting over shrubs and dirt.  I had never been asked to rake the green or tee before while playing golf, but some of the holes were very unique.  All in all it was a bit of fun, but I didn't finish all the holes as I did find it was slowing me down significantly as you had to find the hole, get your card stamped at the visitors centre etc.

One of the highlights of the drive (and in fact the whole trip) was the visit to the Head of the Bight where I was expecting to just take some scenic photo's of the shear cliffs and the crashing waves.  What I didn't expect to see was 30 odd whales with the calves at the "whale nursery".  Apparently 130 or so whales frequent this area annually to give birth.  It was spectacular....whales as far as the eye can see!  This put me a bit behind, but certainly worth the stop.

Almost home now...a couple of big days on the road and about $1000 worth of fuel and I will be sitting in my leather recliner in the next few days!! 

Perth, Rottnest and the little quokkas

We know that the kids have got used to the long drives when Charlotte asked if it was a long day in the car and when I replied 224kms, she celebrated and said "yay, a really short day!!".  She won't be able to complain about the drive to Torquay.

We made it to Perth in time to set up and then go and enjoy the sunshine (27 degrees today) at Kings Park.  We had a play in the Rio Tinto Natures playground and then viewed the city from the Kings Park Bridge walk.  We loved Kings Park.

We needed a quiet day for the kids the next day, so we headed down to Cottesloe for the best breakfast at Beaches Cafe and let the kids have a play at the playgound at the beach.  They had a ball!  We got back to caravan park in the afternoon and found another jumping pillow, playground and also a huge pool (including an awesome spa which we couldn't remove the kids from).  We were very happy with the caravan park - we even had friendly wildlife that were very well fed.

We got up the next morning and jumped on the ferry out to Rottnest Island.  We had the perfect day (29 degrees and sunny) to go to the island.  We hired some bikes and started to explore Rottnest.  Charlotte was enjoying being back on a bike.  We stopped for some lunch at a park when we were joined by a little Quokka.  Will was very taken by the little rodents - who were very tame. 

We moved onto a little bay where we had a swim and Will made more sandcastles.  Very surprised to still be swimming in Perth in mid September, but if Perth was to produce 3 perfect days to convince Mel to move there, these were the three days!!

We stopped at the bakery on the way back to the ferry where we bumped into more little Quokkas.  Will wanted to keep one.  We jumped onto the ferry and Charlotte entertained a table full of Japanese tourist by counting to them in Japanese.  They were very impressed.

We stopped at Little Creatures in Freo on the way home and enjoyed a cleansing ale and cider.  The kids loved the big sand pit.

The last day for the family in Perth was again spent down at Cottesloe.  Mel and I caught up with previous work colleagues will the kids played at the park.  The kids had a swim back at the caravan park while Mel packed the bags for the flight back to Melbourne.  The kids are very excited to get back to Melbourne.

The next morning I dropped the family off at the airport...forgetting one very important bag....the backpack with all the food, colouring books, the ipad etc which was supposed to entertain the kids for the long flight back to Melbourne.  I left a stressed Mel and excited kids at the airport and went to do some business in Perth. 

I visited the Perth Arena with the millions of Tri-Fixx screws holding it together....what a fantastic project!!

Going south to Jurien Bay

On the road to Jurien Bay....we stopped at Gregory to view the Pink lake (high on Charlotte's must see list).  We were suprised how Pink the lake actually was - the pink colour is due to the algae stuck in the sand. 

At Jurien Bay the wind found us again.  We were in a beautiful place right on the water, but I didn't even rig up the rods.  The kids found the jumping pillow so they were happy.

We used Jurien Bay as a base to go and visit a couple of attractions in the area.  The first was the limestone Pinnacles.  They were a little underwhelming, but we ticked them off our "must see" tourist attractions list.  We visited the stromatolites (look it up) on the way back to caravan park.

We decided to go to the Stockman Gully caves in the afternoon which meant more sandy rough roads.  We let the tyres down and made it to the caves to find that we were the only people visiting.  We went passed the sign warning of "feral bees" and went into the cave.  Mel go the heeby jeebies and once we made it to the other end of the first of three caves and encountered a massive bee hive, we decided to about face and hot foot it back to the car.....after Will warned the newly arrived car that it was very dark in the cave and there were lots of very loud bees.

The kids had another play at the park by the beach and on the jumping pillow and we decided that Jurien Bay would be a very nice place to visit if you plan a holiday without the wind.

Kalbarri....you'll love it

We had a major disaster when we left Denham....the dvd player had stopped worked.  We were now going to have to entertain our children ourselves!!!!  After checking the laptop (flat) and iPad (also flat - but could be charged in the car) we started playing eye spy and rhyming games - it was going to be a long 350kms today!!!

We actually survived quite well and even made it to Kalbarri by lunchtime.  I managed to get the DVD player to spring back to life (with a good bang with my fist!) and the last 80kms was very peaceful.  The temperature was again over 30 degrees so we spent the afternoon at the park and having a paddle at the beach.

Charlotte and I went for a stroll down to the foreshore (all of 100 metres away from our caravan park) to feed the local pelicans the next morning - while Will had a play with his cars.  The pelicans were a bit cheeky, but did enterain the crowd.  Charlotte once again got to feed the wildlife although she was a little apprehensive of their big beaks!!










We decided that we were ready to visit another gorge (it has been a few weeks) so we headed out to the Kalbarri National Park to visit the Nature's window and do a couple of short hikes.  We were very impressed by the scenery and took the necessary photographs.  We even got a good taste of the wildflowers that are everywhere here now which were very beautiful.

The last day in Kalbarri was a bit overcast and it even tried to rain.  I went for a quick run (although my pace wasn't quick at all) and Mel took the kids to the park.  We all then went off to Australia's largest parrot/rosella park where the birds flew all around the kids who had a ball.

We are going to treat ourselved to Fish and Chips tonight - looking forward to not having to cook.

Monkey Mia

330km further south we drove into the beautiful town of Denham.  Denham is 23kms south of Monkey Mia (on the western side of the Pennisula).  We set up camp and the kids had a teddy bears picnic.  We then strolled into town along the foreshore to see the lay of the land and were instantly impressed by the small town.  The kids had a play at the park while I got some local fishing knowledge, which I put to good use of the jetty that afternoon catching lots of small yellow fin bream and little blue fish I couldn't identify.

The next day we were all excited to head upto Monkey Mia to see the dolphins.  We arrived for the second feeding (a much smaller crowd than the first feeding) and we were lucky enough to see 2 dolphins including Nikki who was pregnant.  Charlotte stood up very straight and was lucky enough to get picked to give Nikki a fish - we had some very hungry Pelican watching who would have loved the fish as well.
 
We stayed around Monkey Mia and learnt more about dolphins and even got to see the dolphins feed again (this time 5 arrived) and bought a few things at the gift shop.  We thoroughly enjoyed Monkey Mia - especially with the weather warming back upto 30 degrees.  Charlotte and Will played on the beach in the arvo as I attempted to catch some sand whiting but unfortunately I only caught bream again.

When we returned back to Denham we visited the Ocean park which had many varieties of fish including Sharks.  We watched the sharks being fed and will was more interested in the sand on the ground rather that the dangerous Lion fish...but everyone had a good time.

The next day and the wind had dropped out so we drove back up to Monkey Mia and jumped on the Aristocat Catamaran to go in search of Dugongs (after feeding the dolphins again....unfortunately Will didn't get picked this morning).  We saw many more dolphins, a variety of shovel nose rays as well as many big dugongs in the weed beds.  The Catamaran also had a boom net at the rear which Charlotte couldn't resist, so she stripped down to her undies and jumped in.....which meant I had to as well!!  It was a bit fresh to start with (which meant Will didn't last too long) but it was a fantastic experience watching all the dolphins swim by behind the boat.  Pods of dolphins surrounded the boat on our trip in, with many jumping out of the water and putting on a fantastic show.





When we got back, we went back to the jetty to drown the last few prawns in the Waeco.  Once again we fished in the kindergarten and both Will and Charlotte dragged in a fish.

 

Today was Mel's favourite of the trip so far ( I know, we say this most posts), and it would have been close to mine as well....until Fremantle beat Geelong and kicked the Cats out of the 2012 finals series.  The kids couldn't understand why I was yelling at the TV - it was weird watching the game at 5.30pm with the kids still awake!  Oh well, it was an even year anyway....look out for the Cats in 2013!!

Carnarvon and the blowhole

Carnarvon

When we headed off this morning we had intended to go to Quobba homestead with Mum and Peter, but after much discussion on the way, we decided that we need to get some much needed to supplies and make some important calls, and we doubted Quobba would have phone or internet access, so we went into Carnarvon.  The wind was still up today, so Andy and I are both feeling a little disappointed with this coast to date, and we have had jumpers on today, not at all what we signed up for.

We checked in at Wintersun Caravan Park, it seemed to be the one to go too, if the queue out the front was anything to go by.  Andy only checked us in with 1 child, so poor charlotte needed to duck down in the back seat as we drove in.  The kids were very impressed to see the park, and after lunch were off like a shot to have some fun.  Andy and I spent the afternoon making calls and catching up on bills and necessarily boring stuff, or not so boring, BUYING ME A CAR!!  Then we headed into the town of Carnarvon for shopping so we could feed the kids some dinner. It was a much cooler tonight, I think the nights of sitting outside may sadly be over, but we did have TV service, so it was nice just to watch the idiot box for a night.

Today we got up and decided to head out towards Quobba to see the blow hole, who should we see along the way but Mum and Peter, apparently Quobba Homestead was not what all it was cracked up to be and they decided to leave to head for Denham.  Andy and I were secretly glad we had made the right decision.  After a quick stop at the Light House we got to the Blow Hole – it was really cool, we got quite close, and the noise was rather loud, and amazing how high the water shot up.  Back to the Caravan Park for lunch, and we had our usual stalkers arrive (Mum & Peter and Lorraine and Graeme) as they decided to stay a couple of night in Carnarvon as well. 

 In the afternoon we headed to One Mile Jetty and caught the train out to the end and back – it was extremely windy (25-27knots) so we didn’t stay out there too long, but the kids had a ball doing it.  Our last night in Carnarvon, and really the last night we would see Mum and Peter on our trip, we had another lovely feed of fish compliments of Andy’s fishing Charter.  Off to Denham tomorrow, looking forward to it, just hope its not as Windy there.

 

Coral bay...and the big red emperor

Coral Bay

We arrived at the picturesque yet small town of Coral Bay, and we joined the queue of about a dozen other vans waiting to check in, lucky we booked.  After we set up camp, and waited for the oldies (Mum, Peter, Lorraine and Crazy Graeme to arrive) we headed off down the beach.  We waded in the shallow water while two stingrays were swimming around us – very cool.  Then Andy and Charlotte were off snorkelling again, and Will and I opted for some quite time on the beach, more hide and seek with the cars (we didn’t have to sacrifice one this time).  After a quick last minute dash to arrange something for Fathers Day (funnily not much to chose from in Coral Bay), our travelling friends were kind enough to put on a roast dinner for us.

This morning I got up to go for a run, and was back in 10 minutes, yep the road leads to nowhere and the tide was in so I couldn’t get around the corner to run on the beach, Andy attempted after me opting to go the other direction, and I think was back in 15 minutes.  I cooked up pancakes for Fathers Day breakfast, which were a hit.  It was a little windy and overcast today, so we didn’t head to the beach, but took the kids to the pool, the water was incredibly warm, I think the first warm pool that we have encountered on our trip!!!  Andy spent the afternoon checking out fishing charters and deciding which one to try his luck on the following day.

Andy also went for a quick fish down at Maud’s landing with Peter just to make sure that Glenn’s surf rod wasn’t broken and came back with a couple of Trevally (and a very dejected Peter who once again caught nothing!!)

Andy was up and gone by 7.30, so the kids and I had a quite morning, Charlotte did some school work and I made some calls that needed to be made, then we headed back to the pool, I think the kids loved the warm water, and weren’t interested in going to the beach anymore!!!  After some lunch it was time to hit the park for a while, then it babysitting time for Nana while I went to a much needed Beauty Therapy session.  When I returned the kids weren’t to be found, but I could see Andy had returned, so I thought I would wander down to the beach to see if I could find them.  There was a lot of commotion near the beach shelter area so I went to have a sticky beak – there were tubs and tubs of fish, I thought perhaps it was a market – but no it was the fishing charter Andy had been on.  Well he was like a kid in a candy store – proudly showing me his tub of fish, which included a rather large red emperor!!  He said he also hooked a sail fish, but it got away (ah yes the elusive one that got away).  He had a very successful day, they bagged out, Andy caught 11 fish, although could only keep 7.  Once we had them all back at the camp we divided them all up between us and the McCallums and Elliotts.  There was so much fish that it feed all 8 of us for dinner that night, plus there was enough for another 2 feeds for each family.  The feed was delicious that night, we just got some chips to accompany the fish, and there was not a scrap of food left.

 

Andy added – Thought I better mention a thing or two about the fishing charter....it was awesome.  20 nautical miles off shore, 116 fish caught in 3 hours (so we had to head back in early).  We were fishing in 120 metres of water and ever cast caught at least one fish (2 hooks per line....pulling 2 fish up from 120 metres tires you out.  We also saw a marlin jumping out of the water a few times after it got caught in our lines under the boat, and then a humpback whale also put on a performance on the way back in.  I was extremely pleased with the trip, but would have loved to have landed the sail fish....will have to come back next year!

Off to Carnarvon tomorrow.

Exmouth

We were really looking forward to Exmouth, but we were a little bit disappointed as when we arrived the wind blew up and we were limited to what we could do.  We got some snorkelling gear and headed to Turquoise Bay and the marvellous drift snorkelling spot that takes you over the Ningaloo reef.  We thought this might be a bit difficult for Charlotte to learn on, so we moved around to Lakeside where we practised and immediately saw a massive Manta Ray.  Charlotte took to snorkelling like a duck to water, so we continued to practice in the swimming pool at the caravan park to iron out a few breathing problems. 

The long days and windy nights caught up with the kids today so we rescheduled the glass bottom boat to a day we didn’t feel like throwing them overboard.  Nana and Pa joined us at the caravan park today which was a nice distraction!

We were up in the middle of the night putting the awning down as the wind really picked up at night...when will it end??  The wind was blowing from the other direction today so it meant that the reef was protected and it was a great day for snorkelling!!!  All of Charlotte’s practising paid off as she was like a big fish, swimming with all the little fish on the reef.  We have a new favourite day of the holiday now (how many times have we said that?)

The water was aqua and warm, the fish were everywhere and better still, the current drifted you over the reef, so you didn’t even have to swim (until you wanted to come in).  We say a million different type of fish, we really didn’t mind us swimming above them as we drifted time and time again .....Charlotte being the first in the water every time.  We had fish swimming around our feet looking for crumbs as we ate our lunch in the water.  Will had a ball making sand castles and running in and out of the water, and we finally got him in at the end (albeit with a wetsuit on) so he could experience the reef.  Charlotte’s underwater camera was a big hit as I got to get some video under water which of course didn’t capture the full beauty of the colourful fish, but it was still impressive.

The kids woke early after another windy night, and all Charlotte wanted to do was go snorkelling.  We did some of this in the morning (in the pool) as we had planned the glass bottom boat for the afternoon.  We made it to the boat ramp where I rang the visitor information centre to confirm the trip was going ahead.  To our dismay it wasn’t (not enough people had booked...not that anyone had advised us) and the captain was only offering a 50% refund.....like that was going to happen!!!  The bloke wouldn’t answer my calls so we headed back into the Visitor information centre (with steam coming out of my ears) and kindly requested the full refund....which we got, and I then released the mans testicles...

I had organised a fishing trip to chase bill fish (marlin and sailfish) on our last day in Exmouth as they had been jumping into the boat at the moment.  Unfortunately the skipper damaged his wheels the night before the trip and while I waited for him to pick me up (while everyone else went snorkelling) I was able update the blog (only 13 days behind).  He eventually cancelled, and my dream of catching a marlin has been put on hold (at least for a few days).

Whilst Andy was not catching his Marlin, the kids and I headed back down to Turquoise Bay for another day of snorkelling.  It was a perfect day, without the dreaded wind, and the kids had a ball, Will isn’t quite up to snorkelling yet, but he always has hours of fun hiding his cars in the sand for me to try to find, I think we started with 20 and now we are down to about 8 cars, we seem to donate one to every beach we go to .  We we got back we were disappointed to see that Andy had been stranded for the day.  Next stop will be Coral Bay – perhaps more luck will be had there!!!  

Eighty mile Beach

Eighty mile Beach

After a short drive from Barn Hill...and down another dirt road, we arrived at Eighty Mile beach caravan park.  The first thing we say was a bloke cleaning a huge Mulloway which he had just caught on the beach.  We looked over the sand dune to see a fisherman every 15 metres for as far as the eye could see...all dragging in salmon and sharks.  We got unpacked super quickly and heading down to the beach only to find that everyone was packing up and we were a bit late.  I still tried without success, but decided to get myself better organised for tomorrow.  The kids played on the beach but were very disappointed not to be able to swim due to strong currents, little sting rays and sharks...swimming was not advisable.

The next morning the tide was way out (as expected) and the beach was flooded with shell collectors.  We drove a couple of kilometres down the beach trying to find a place where nobody had been looking and found some nice shells but nothing very big.  We found lots of broken shells that were very impressive, but nothing whole. 

We found the reason why we couldn’t find any goods shells when we returned back to the park and visited a man next to us (from Edithvale) who had 30 polystyrene tubs full of huge shells that he had found over the past 6 months which he uses to make things.  He gave the kids a coral reef creation (which was brilliant) and we looked at his wind catchers and other handiworks.  There were very impressive.

I tried very hard to catch a fish that afternoon which out success (surf fishing sucks!!) as I watched people pull in fish all around me... my fishing rod must be broken!!

We quite enjoyed Eighty mile beach, but we decided to move on as it was still hot, and the kids wanted to be able to swim.

Dampier

We left Eighty mile beach early as we knew we had to get some kms done today.  We were heading to Dampier about 550kms down the road which we hadn’t done in a while.  We stopped in South Hedland and got some supplies at Coles (and Mel’s coffee at McDonalds) before we made it to Point Samson for lunch where the kids had a play at the park.  As it was a Sunday ,we skipped Port Hedland and Karratha and went straight to Dampier and to a much cheaper caravan park by the Hamersley Iron loading point (which had some massive ships being loaded).  We could n’t be bothered pulling out the BBQ tonight so we walked down to the recommended local pub where that had all you could eat BBQ....big mistake.  The fish was nice but the steak was like old boots.  On the upside  because it was such a male dominated town, the pub had girls in bikinis serving behind the bar....see, I’m always looking for a silver lining.

On from Dampier, we decided to do another big day driving to get to Exmouth in one foul swoop (instead of staying in a roadhouse along the way).  We left by 7.07am got some fuel and Hotcakes for the kids breakfasts (parents of the year) and we hit the road.  The kids did surprisingly well backing up a big day on the road.  We visited Red Dog on the way out of town.

We did one stop on the way and then made it to Exmouth by around 2.30pm, where we stopped in town and booked a glass bottom boat tour, and stocked up on food (at insanely high prices!).  We were staying closer to the reef at Yardie Homestead (about 30kms out of town) which was supposed to be cheaper than in town.  Unfortunately this wasn’t the case as even though I lied about the kids ages (being 2 and 4 instead of 3 and 6) we still got slugged $8 a child which meant it was $46 a night!!  Not happy.

We got setup and it will be nice to have 5 nights in one place again.