Sunday, September 28, 2008

aboriginal art news

Thanks to the website Aboriginal Art News for mentioning our humble ramblings.

Two Sheilas and a dog

Friday, September 26, 2008

more dolphins

At the bay in Monkey Mia, 25 km from where we are staying, there is a pod of resident dolphins which have been visiting the beach for free food for the last 50 years.We were up at 6 am to watch them come in to shore.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3
Amazing!

dugongs and dolphins

We went out dugong spotting aboard 'Shotover' an 18 m catamaran. Dugongs graze on sea grass in waters only about 2 m deep so the sailing catamaran is ideal for getting up close to them. Of course we chose a peculiarly choppy and windy day, not ideal for seeing under the water. The company claims that you will never be seasick on their vessel and guarantee a $100 to anyone who vomits- Vanessa came very very close to being the lucky recipient of said cash prize.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3
We did see a whole family of dugongs bobbing up to the surface.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3
No prizes for marine photographers of the year, but it was very choppy!

There are an estimated 10,000 dugongs in this area representing around 10% of the world's population. Sightings of dugongs supposedly started the myth about the existence of mermaids.Now I suppose if you were in a ship that had not seen land for 12 months, and were suffering from scurvy and cholera, and only had cheap rum to drink you may ( at a push ) think these odd brown bovine looking creatures were attractive naked ladies with fishy tails. Or maybe not.

Also spotted several dolphins and a giant loggerhead turtle.
From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

road sign quiz

We have seen some interesting road signs warning about the possibility of animals on the road.The one here in Denham is curious..............identify that creature please!


From trek phase 3

a break from the road

We are now in Denham, Shark Bay. It is school holidays and Monday is a Bank Holiday in WA ( the Queen's birthday holiday yet again, old queenie has many of them it seems) so we decided to book in for a week to have a break from being on the road and await a pile of forwarded mail. Geoffrey is also having a much overdue spring clean.

It is the first time we have booked anywhere in advance, so here we are at The Seaside Tourist Village. The name should have been a warning, and they appear to have placed us in the car park, but I can see the Indian Ocean as I write this so life could be worse.

It is the most westerly caravan park in Australia, and we are here to find dolphins,turtles and dugongs.

Meanwhile disaster has struck- my ipod has exploded.While charging it became too hot to touch and has been malfunctioning ever since.Not only does that mean we are musicless while driving ( the cd player gave up the ghost several thousand kilometres ago) but I am behind with 'The Archers' and do not know what happened since Sabrina Thwaite entered a stolen fruit cake in the fruit and produce category at the Ambridge show.

shells, sharks and stromalites

Back to the coast and heading towards Shark Bay, another world heritage site due to its marine life and coastal features.

First stop was Hamelin pool, one of only two places on earth where living marine stromalites exist.

The existence of stromalites highlights one of the many gaps in my education, and I had absolutely no idea what there were. It transpires that they are considered 'living fossils' and consist of layered limestone rock built by single-celled cyanobacteria which trap and bind the sediment. 3.5 billion years ago atmospheric oxygen was scarce, but as stromalite colonies expanded they released more oxygen eventually raising the level to 20 % and enabling air-breathing life forms to evolve.

So we can thank these little puppies for our existence:

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


The pool is located near an old telegraph station and the buildings were made by mining limestone made from 6000 year old shells from the Cardiid cockle. Calcium carbonate leached from the shells then dried to form a binding agent producing the soft limestone called coquina ( which , if nothing else, is a fabulous Scrabble word). It is funky stuff.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3
The camp site at the telegraph station has a collection of old post office signs, just in case any of you were missing the post office feature.

From trek phase 3


Further up the coast is shell beach- no sand, just piles and piles of cockle shells.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


Ness could not resist throwing herself into the ocean:

From trek phase 3


Possibly not her best idea to date.....they call it Shark Bay for a reason:

From trek phase 3

karijini national park

After the joys of Port Hedland we took a detour inland to visit the Karijini National Park. Found some excellent free camping sites with great gorge views.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3

The next morning the tables were turned and Geoffrey had to rescue a German couple in a Toyota Land Cruiser with a flat battery by towing them downhill to jump start the vehicle.They seemed somewhat embarrassed that their all terrain 4WD had to be towed by a Winnebago.

The national park contains a series of gorges and we walked into and along Dales Gorge, the only one accessible in a van.This involved a near vertical descent using rough steps and ladders then a walk from a circular rock pool along the gorge to a waterfall and swimming hole.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3
We managed the trek without encountering the 6 metre Pilbara olive python or the ominously named death adder.

From trek phase 3

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Oresome

We moved west along the coast from Broome, but the coastal road is 20-30 km inland and all beaches and sea views involved unsealed roads that would destroy Geoffrey so we missed out on the little bays and inlets.

Port Hedland is on the coast and is a large mining town and port, the main industries being iron ore and salt mines. It is quite a grim industrial place, certainly not picturesque, although full marks to the Tourist Board and their catchy slogan.....'Come to Port Hedland- it's Oresome!'

The campsite we ended up at was one of the most expensive we have stayed in to date. It appears that the building of houses has not accelerated to meet the demands since mining took off (all very complex politically, as it requires the release of Aboriginal owned land) so the parks were full of transient workers benefiting from the high tax-free weekly housing allowances and living in tents or old caravans. As they can be paid around $400 per week housing allowance the caravan parks appear to have seized the opportunity and raised fees accordingly.

Plenty of work for us had we decided to stay, but after a night on the beers with a few youngsters doing so I suspect that we would not have survived the experience.

From trek phase 3



We are hopefully staying at a site with good internet access from tomorrow, so I will endeavour to fill in the gaps then.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

so much to tell, so little time

Limited internet access since we arrived in Port Hedland and lots to say, so will hopefully post in detail later this week. Meanwhile latest news from Kununurra is pretty grim...after complaining about our poor flight with Slingair last week this happened.

Helicopter crash

So we were lucky and life could be much much worse.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

heading south

Broome turned out fine in the end.We met some great people in dog ghetto and had a few yarns over an esky of beers ( see how effortlessly I speak 'Strine' after almost a year!).

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3
Heading south today, heat and humidity continues to melt Geoffrey and his external trim is peeling off now so we need to find cooler climes as soon as possible.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3

Sunday, September 14, 2008

broome

We arrived in Broome yesterday.Founded in the late 1880's as a pearling port, the town is famous for Cable Beach, 22 km of pristine white sand on the Indian Ocean..

Unfortunately it is also the most dog unfriendly town we have visited with none of the caravan parks allowing pets, no boarding kennels apart from the local vets, and no free camping with accessible roads for Geoffrey. We were forced to backtrack and camp at a roadhouse 25 km from town. We met up with 2 cocker spaniels and their owners who we had not seen since Alice Springs but appear to be taking the same route as us, so we had a great evening camped out with the dogs complaining about being social pariahs.

The plan was to meet up with Jo who we met on our Arnhem Land trip, but I suspect we will not be seeing a great deal of Broome while we have ginger dog in tow.

girl's best friend

On the return flight we passed over the Argyle diamond mine, the world's largest supplier of diamonds producing approximately 30 million carats per year- one quarter of the world's annual production. Mining has been continuous since 1983.

From trek phase 3

Saturday, September 13, 2008

bungle bungles

In the 1980's my main point of reference about all things Australian was Neighbours, and I clearly remember Helen ( Scot's grandmother ) grabbing an opportunity to go to the Bungle Bungles to paint watercolours of the area. I had no idea what they were, or where they were, but the name stuck in the recesses of my mind.

Situated in Purnululu National Park, the Bungle Bungle Range is a series of spectacular beehive-like sandstone domes. Europeans first arrived in the region in the late nineteenth century, but apart from a bit of gold prospecting and some cattle farming the ranges were pretty much unexplored and undocumented. A documentary about the region in 1983 put the area into the spotlight, and a National park was established in 1987 ( I am pretty sure that was when it featured on Neighbours) and in 2003 it was declared a World Heritage area.

The area is a maze of striped domes, many 250 metres high, and the colours of the rock and the surrounding fan palms are quite stunning.

It was with some trepidation that we arrived at the airport at 6 am, but the lovely Alligator Airways pilot seemed to know how to fly a plane and the 1 hour trip to the bungles was smooth and enjoyable.

We flew over Lake Argyle, the largest man made lake in Australia, created by damming the River Ord in 1971. It is 54 times larger than Sydney harbour, and boats sailing on it have to have a seafaring licence. It provides irrigation to the Ord basin and hydroelectric power to all the surrounding towns.

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3




We managed to choose the hottest day of the dry season to date with the temperature exceeding 40 degrees so walking several kilometres around the rocks, through chasms and into gorges was a challenge.Fortunately we started very early but by mid afternoon we were all flagging. The tourist season is winding down at the top end as it is now too hot to do anything.
From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3



From trek phase 3
From trek phase 3

From trek phase 3


From trek phase 3

flights of fancy

The Kimberley Ranges and the Bungle Bungles are only accessible by serious 4WD vehicles or plane, so we booked a couple of flights to get a better look. We are getting pretty fearless about these trips and all was well until we met our first pilot, a diminutive kiwi girl who made Ness look large.

She was obviously fairly inexperienced, and too short to see over the cockpit dashboard- I think a booster cushion would have been a useful addition. Her constant use of maps and comments about not having done this trip before made my stomach start to churn even before we started to hit the thermals and were buffeted around alarmingly.

The route took us over the River Ord and north to the coast before crossing the Mitchell plateau and Mitchell Falls, with a lunch stop at a remote cattle station. The coastline was impressive but our pictures were somewhat blurred due to a combination of turbulence, wobbly plane handling and severe handshake!

From trek phase 3


Mitchell Falls were inspiring even in the dry season with minimal water flowing. The roads in are closed in the wet season, and flying is also hazardous, so not many people get to see them in full flow.

From trek phase 3
King George Falls complete with luxury yacht and helipad.

From trek phase 3


It was a relief to get back onto solid ground, and we were both extremely disappointed by the whole day.