“K K K”
No: 10
The Coral Coast
to Perth
WA’s Coral Coast stretches
1100 kilometres from Exmouth down to just above Perth and boasts some of that
States major tourist attractions and natural scenic beauty, with Shark Bay,
Ningaloo Reef, Coral Bay and Point Quobba among its ‘hotspots’.
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| Old OTC Satellite Dish |
It’s our 111th. day away and we’re up early
packing for departure from Quobba
Station and then revisit Carnarvon
to inspect the old OTC Satellite Dish,
the Mile Long Jetty and top up
provisions before continuing on southwards. Early Wildflowers are now coming into bloom.
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| WA Wildflowers |
We passed through km upon km of endlessly flat, red, open
Saltbush plains, seeing only a few cattle but many goats, and an Emu mother in
the table-drain, as we sped past so perilously close, was hopefully instructing
her 5 chicks about ‘road safety matters’.
Our first overnight stop was at Gladstone Beach, a Council-run campground 6km from Yaringa on the eastern foreshore overlooking
Shark Bay, which became a World Heritage
Marine Park
in 1991, one of only a handful of places in the world to achieve that status. The
bay was discovered in 1616 by Dutch Captain Dirk Hartog, but named by English
buccaneer William Dampier on his visit in 1699, for its many Tiger Sharks,
before sailing on to Timor.
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| Whalebone Bay |
Next morning we passed through 65km more of red saltbush
scrub to the Overlander Roadhouse where we took the road to Denham. The
weather was overcast, with distant rain showers, but we managed a few photos of
Goulet Bluff and Whalebone Bay
during sunny breaks enroute to the pretty seaside township
of Denham, Shark Bay’s
commercial centre.
After a coffee break and look around, we continued a further
28km on to Monkey Mia, world famous
for its friendly wild Dolphins and Emus, and booked in to the Caravan Park within the up-market Dolphin
Holiday Resort.
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| One of the Locals |
The following morning at 8am is Dolphin feeding time; for
many years wild Dolphins have come in to the sandy-beach, calf-high shallows at Monkey Mia to be fed by Park Rangers,
who pick 8 people to hand- feed fish to adult females only, and yours truly,
that’s me, Bruce, was one of those chosen few!! How good is that?
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| Thanks Bruce for the fish! |
Having now achieved “celebrity status” just two hours
earlier that morning, we’re back on the road again retracing our route of
yesterday, but stopping to ‘smell the roses’ along the way.
First stop was Shell Beach,
an amazing pure white beach and one of only 2 such beaches in the world, created
entirely naturally from billions of tiny cockle sea shells layered up to ten
metres deep, stretching for over 120km!
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| Shell Beach - tiny, 5 to 10mm in size |
A little farther on is Hamelin
Pool, one of the few places on earth where living microbes build marine Stromatolites (strom/mat/toe/lites) .
These rocky looking lumps in the highly saline shallow waters are similar to the
oldest and simplest forms of life on earth, dating back 3000 million years,
built by microbes of blue-green algae, and are incredibly slow growing at 0.3mm
a year.
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| Hamelin Pool Viewing Deck |
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| Living Stromatolites |
Continuing south on Hwy #1 we enter the Batavia Coast region where the ubiquitous red stony scrub country
turns to greener forest grassland and fields of young grain, then find an
excellent overnight camp spot on the north bank of the Murchison River beside
Galena Bridge, and warm ourselves with a welcome campfire. There’s no moon
tonight, and the Milky Way glows brightly in the dark heavens.
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| Murchison River Campsite |
We then leave the main highway and take the Kalbarri Road
toward the coast through Kalbarri
National Park, where we deviate to see Hawks
Head Gorge and Ross Graham Lookout
overlooking the Murchison River, and just before Kalbarri township we enjoy the
panorama of the town, and river mouth entrance to the Indian Ocean, from the
limestone capped Meanarra Lookout
behind the town, all of which are situated within the Kalbarri National Park.
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| Hawks Head Gorge - Kilbarri NP |
There’s nothing much to see in Kalbarri village so we head
off 25km southwards down the coastal road with its scenic ocean views and
decide to camp that night, with two others, at a roadside rest area with a
gazebo, and pleasant ocean views beyond an open grassy field. Excellent dry
fuel lay all around, so another warming campfire was enjoyed. Early next
morning an Ultralight Aircraft passed overhead which I was surprisingly able to
photograph on zoom.
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| Ultralight |
Next was Port Gregory
42km away, near the mouth of the Hutt
River, which is said to
be the windiest place in WA. A picturesque fishing village enclosed by 5km of
exposed coral reef, it is also bordered by Hutt Lagoon, also known as the ‘Pink
Lake’, due to its
pink colour created by the naturally occurring beta carotene.
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| A few kilometres long and all Pink |
Many of you may recall this region has another interesting
aside, in that it is home to the “Hutt
River Principality” a self proclaimed micronation established by wheat
farmer Leonard Casley, who succeeded from Australia in April 1970 in protest
against a newly introduced wheat quota system.
Assuming the title of Prince
Leonard with his wife Princess
Shirley (who died last year), though not acknowledged by government (and he
still pays Council Land Rates), the province is open to visitors daily, issues
its own passport and postage stamps, and is a successful tourist attraction in
addition to its pastoral income.
A further 42km finds us in Northampton, one of the
oldest settlements (1864) in WA outside of Perth, and home to WA’s first public railway
in 1879. With many old historic buildings and cottages, and classified as a
historic town by the National Trust of Australia in 1993, it is an interesting mix
of history and charm.
By now the countryside was changing to gently undulating
open grazing pasture being interspersed with fields of young green wheat, starkly
contrasting with fields of bright yellow maturing Canola, offering attractive
snapshots of rural scenery. Canola, an acronym of Canada Oil, is the ‘new’ name
for the “old’ Rape seed, whose burgeoning popularity occasioned the name change
to Canola.
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| Fields of Canola |
Intrigued by the mystique of ghosts, we decided to visit Okabella Homestead, south of Northampton, which is said to be the most haunted house in
Western Australia.
The old white-washed stone homestead has, over its long history, witnessed the
mysterious deaths of a man and a boy, and is open for public inspection as a
paid attraction.
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| The Haunted Oakabella Station |
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| Rub-a-dub-dub 3 Emus in a tub - Oakabella Stn rustic art |
We did a conducted tour of the homestead, fully furnished
with much of its original 130 y/o pieces, plus its several outbuildings,
culminating with a home baked Devonshire Tea, then stayed that night in their
open field Van Park with several others.
In the morning we drove into Geraldton, a bright, modern city with nice ocean beaches and a sizable
shipping harbour, and having a distinct holiday atmosphere. After a look at the
waterfront we toured the town and reprovisioned foodstuffs, then took the
coastal highway with its ocean views through ever green countryside dotted with
fields of green and yellow and, increasingly, flocks of sheep.
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| Near Geraldton |
Continuing on Hwy 1 through Dongara, we lunched at Eneabba (E-nee-abba) Roadhouse then
continued on through Badgingarra and took the inland road at Moore River,
enjoying a very scenic drive through park-like shaded grasslands grazing sheep,
down to Wannamal, passing through a
few rain showers, a rare occurrence since departing Brisbane 116 days previously.
A cold night was spent in the Wannamal Rest Area, though not unexpected as we venture farther south. Wildflowers, Parrots and Grasstrees were a
feature here. Dew,
almost the size of rain droplets, covers everything in the early morning, a
reminder that we’re free of the semi-arid climate of further northern regions.
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| Wannamal Rest Area |
On July 31, day 118, we’re on our way to Perth, deviating
via the town of Gingin which shares
its name with Gin Gin in Queensland, a cattle grazing area where Bruce started
his Auctioneering career fifty years ago, so the namesake was a ‘must see’.
Before we knew it, Perth’s excellent freeway systems had
delivered us to the Baldivis home of
sailing friends Nic and Jen Devonport, on lovely rural acreage near Rockingham
about 45km south of Perth, where we spent the following ten days discovering
Perth, Fremantle and the local region.
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| Planting Australian Natives with Nic and Jen at Baldivis |
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| Old Fremantle Market |
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| Bruce in The Stocks! |
Stay safe,
Bruce and Audrey
9-8-2014
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