Paddling location

My friend Jacquie just sent me a picture of her new boat she just got. Guess where she lives  Lately, I have been looking at my thousands of pictures from our trip Downunder 2 years ago a lot and wished I’d be there right now!!

Australia 2009 Report – QLD/NSW Part 4

Tried to get this finished off before our next trip to Hawaii on Monday. So this is for now the last post about Australia. For a LOT more pictures visit my picasa photo albums:

https://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/AustraliaQueenslandPartI12Nov2Dec2009

https://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/AustraliaQLDPartII12Nov2Dec2009

Day 17/58 (Nov 28, 2009): Only 2.5 more days left in Queensland and so many things still on the list. Today was another snorkeling day on the Great Barrier Reef leaving from Port Douglas – the most trips leave from here. We drove into town and looked at all the different tour companies – most of the smaller boat tours were infrequent and needed to be booked in advance. Of course we didn’t have anything booked in advance. Lucky for us once more, the big tour operators in Port Douglas seem to start early and answered our call before 7AM already. So we ended up booking a day trip on one of those 100+ people fitting big catamarans.

Calypso - bit bigger boat than the last trip

Again we had to wait for a bit before boarding but no nice palm tree lined beach in sight this time. So we walked through the still sleeping shopping mall – I had to stock up on under water cameras and memory cards for which we paid through the nose in a little kiosk type store, the only thing just opening at that time. After we boarded the boat I decided last minute that I wanted to go diving one last time. They offered 3 dives all together for the same price. It took almost 2hrs to get to the reef (as mentioned before) and we were using most of the time for a dive briefing and to gear up because as soon as we hit the reef – Agincourt Ribbon Reefs, just outside of Cape Tribulation but on the outer reef – we jumped off the boat as soon as it anchored. The dive was down to a depth of 18.5m, not too much to see down there except for a spotted ray but as we worked our way up the coral became more plenty and colourful. Lots of damaged coral though compared to Mackey Reef. I had a bit of buoyancy problems when we were diving shallow but another piece of lead fixed that. We stayed down for 45min in total. The next dive was a drift dive and we only had 25min to get ready. The sea was a bit rougher as the boat moved to the next spot and I could feel my stomach turning squeezy. I used to get sea sick VERY easily but haven’t had a problem so far. No time to worry about it and soon enough we were jumping off the moving boat with no air in the BCD to drop to the sandy bottom right away to not getting caught in the current too early before we could assemble as a group. We started out slow at lower depth but finally made it up to 9m for the drift. It was hard to take pictures while drifting and also the movement reminded my body about being sea sick again. I was okay though as long as we kept moving along and had stuff to look at. Things like meeting Morty – a big Moari Wrasse which was very diver and picture friendly (they had a professional photographer on board who took pictures of every single diver (3 groups of 6-8) with Morty. Morty didn’t seem to tire of the attention at all. Nevertheless the safety stop was a pain in the butt - well stomach - and I felt really sick. They always tell you that you can throw up through your regulator but I really wasn’t interested in finding out now. I just made it up to the surface and pulled the reg out before breakfast came back up. Oh well, all sudden I was very popular with the reef fish surrounding the boat – nothing get’s wasted out here – and all the evidence was gone in seconds and my stomach was empty. I went up from the lower diving deck to the upper snorkeling deck – Jeff had a good time snorkeling although he also noticed the coral being more damaged. He saw a reef shark and me diving below him – not at the same time mind you. It was lunch time and the crew brought out a great variety of food but I wasn’t too much interested in food and only had a few bites. I rather popped one of the anti sea sickness pills they offered on board. It helped but I still skipped the next dive as it was supposed to be a drift dive again. I tried snorkeling instead which actually provided some better coral viewing than the diving as there is more light in the shallows. But it was also worse for getting sick as you are bobbing up and down in the waves. So I got rid of the little bit of lunch I ate, once more being rewarded by a huge number of tropical fish all sudden surrounding me. I didn’t last long mind you and headed back to the boat long before Jeff.

Morty and I

A dead whale's jaw is being recovered...

... attracting a whole bunch of sharks

Shark supper is served

Would you stick your hands into the water to get this shot?

Shortly after everyone was back on board we had to leave the reef. I started feeling better as we started moving and the highlight of the trip was yet to come. The skipper picked up a radio transmission of someone who found a dead sperm whale floating in the water nearby. So we actually headed for it to have a look. They were cutting of the sperm whale’s lower jaw to take it back to the mainland for some reason. But the interesting part was the guy with the gun pointing into the water while his two mates were cutting the jaw. The water surrounding the whale carcass was loaded which sharks – mostly tiger and bull sharks, both of them known to snack on humans if they are available – hence the gun. When the other boat left after successfully retrieving the jaw, we went close to the drifting carcass and watched the sharks tearing the leftovers apart. SOOOO COOOL. Even the skipper in his over 30 years on the ocean hasn’t seen anything like this. From the top of the ship I could see the sharks swimming all around us. The professional photographer even stuck his camera and hands into the water to get an underwater shot. Not sure if I would have done it as the sharks were obviously in a feeding frenzy and likely would not distinguish between dead whale or human hands. Well he lived to talk about it and since I purchased my picture with Morty I also got one of his underwater shark shots for “free”. When we were about to leave Jeff and I looked around us and noticed that the reef we had been snorkeling at wasn’t actually that far away from all this activity. I was thankful that the dead whale must have smelled worse than my regurgitated lunch so I didn’t attract the sharks.

We made it back into port 30min late. Jeff and I still had to find a campsite for the night and decided in a rush to go up into the Atherton Tablelands near Kuranda. But ah – going up in height after diving isn’t the smartest thing to do and I did feel quite exhausted and tired. Just past Kuranda, we found some signs towards a NP campground called Speewah (never mentioned in any of my travel guides) and since I didn’t know how much further the spot I had planned for was we followed those instead as it was getting dark. Turned out the site was pretty small – only 3 small sites all together – but we managed to get the last one. It was located on a open grassy area surrounded by forest and most importantly it allowed you to self register without having to call someone!!!! And it was quiet – only sounds were some animals rustling through the grass behind our tent. No matter how much we tried, we never caught a glimpse of them.

Day 18/59: The birds woke us up early again – 5AM and I was up. Today’s agenda – explore the Atherton Tablelands ala Japanese Tourists – rush from one attraction to the next. After breakfast we first did a hike that started just outside this little campsite, called the Douglas Trail to Glacier Rock. Almost 10km return through a mix of rain forest and eucalyptus forest up to a lookout overlooking the plains below and the ocean. Even though it wasn’t a strenuous hike it took some time as we had to watch out for death adders hiding in the leaves on the trail.

We made it back to the car by 10am and returned to Kuranda to visit the local fruit bat colony in Jum Rum Creek.  We searched the creek up and down, only to find a sign at the end saying the colony has moved on. Oh well,  next! The next stop was the Barron Falls Lookout – beautiful big falls with several pools. On the way back from the viewing platform we rescued a stick bug from being killed by green ants – maybe he survived but he had lost at least one leg. We continued on to Wright Lookout overlooking the Barron River gorge – an easy drive in lookout, check. We bought some lunch take out and continued on to Davies Creek, the place I meant to camp at last night. What a nice place. A little creek flowing through open dry eucalyptus forest with a couple pools to lie in and cool down. It for sure was hot today.

Barron Falls

Barron Gorge

Tropical Rainforest, Barron Gorge NP

Fern trees

Davies Creek

We chilled out for an hour and didn’t get back on track until 2pm, being well short of the program I had laid out for the day. So we skipped the Curtain Fig Tree (I had seen it before and Jeff said he had seen enough fig trees anyways) and visited Mount Hypipamee NP instead. The main attraction a huge vertical diatreme (volcanic pipe) formed when a vent exploded violently. The resulting hole, a short walk in from the parking lot, is 70m in diameter and 82m deep and nowadays 1/3 of the depth is filled with water covered completely by a green water algae. It looked really spooky especially as it had clouded over when we arrived which created low lighting conditions. On the way back we took a detour to have a look at Dinner Falls – again part of the Barron River but hardly more than a stream here compared to the big river we saw earlier. While I hung out at the small falls to look for rainforest frogs and snakes Jeff sprinted back to the car looking for a washroom. Not too long I heard him try to shout-whisper. I first couldn’t really hear what he was trying to say but eventually I got it: “Tree Kangaroo”. I also started to sprint up the trail (for a little bit then walked) and finally caught up with him watching the tree kangaroo climb up into the tree canopy 50m off the ground settling in for a nap. By the time I got there most of the animal was hidden from sight and the lighting was too little to take pictures (well I tried anyways) but both of us felt really special about taking a glimpse of this very shy and elusive animal. Lumholtz’s tree kangaroo’s are quite common in the tablelands but you may get lucky and see one at night. This was real special!! They are the prettiest kangaroos yet with their dark faces and yellow tummies. Jeff even saw it on the ground before it headed up onto the tree. Damn him for getting ahead of me .

Diatreme - Mt Hypipamee NP

The crater in it's whole covered by green algae

Lumholz Tree Kangaroo

Atherton Tablelands with Mt Bartle Frere in the background

Millaa Millaa Falls - waterfall circuit

We continued our journey through the southern part of the Atherton Tablelands – a mix of rolling green hills interspersed with pockets of rainforest here and there and Mt Bartle Frere looming in the background. Very pretty – the sun even come out to paint everything in a fresh bright green! Last on the list of things to see was the waterfall circuit near Millaa Millaa – 3 falls on a 15km stretch of road that leads mostly through fields and hits now and then a pocket of rain forest with a waterfall in it. The falls were all different in shape but mostly small to medium in size. Nothing compared to Wallaman Falls or Barron Falls. Nevertheless the falls give you a hint at what this area must have looked like before farmers discovered the good soil and cut down most of the rainforest. Remaining task for the day was to find a campsite for our last night in Queensland. The only NP camping in the area was at Henrietta Creek – a big open grassy area with a cooking shelter in the middle just off the highway in Palmerston NP. The few campsites hidden in the trees were already occupied. Good enough for us and we hitched our tent near the edge of the rainforest. The site also offers a short walk to Henrietta Creek itself and pools in which one may see platypus hunting in the evening. We didn’t see one and managed to leave the flashlight at the tent so we had to return before it was too dark through thick, dark rainforest with stingy plants all over the trail. We decided to have dinner under the shelter as there were some really dark clouds moving in. Lucky for us as it started raining and then pouring on us for almost an hour with lightning and thunder all around us. It stopped again when we finished dinner and the cicadas started chirping so loud it almost hurt my ears which lasted until complete darkness. That concert was followed by a lightshow in the bush – fire flies at work all around us. What a great way of spending the last night in Queensland.

I woke up in the middle of the night really having to take a leak but was afraid to get up. The tent was surrounded my ankle deep grass which snakes love to hide in and I am blind at night without my contacts. Eventually I had to get up though but obviously I lived to tell the tale – no last minute snake encounter in the dark.    

Day 19/60: Packing day!! The camp was damp with heavy fog and it was difficult to dry off the tent fly before packing it into the packs. Our neighbours happily accepted some of our leftovers we could not take with us. Nevertheless we managed to pack everything in less than 1.5hrs and headed towards Cairns Airport – a 111km drive. The sun came out and everything looked fresh and beautiful along the Bruce Highway – also called the Great Green Way. Last time we came through here the mountains to the west – the Bellenden Ker Range – were hidden in dark black clouds. An enjoyable and easy drive and we made it in plenty of time for our mid day flight to Sydney. The flight itself was also spectacular with great views over the coast and some of the inner parts of the Great Barrier Reef below us.

Last Camp in QLD - Henrietta Creek, Palmerston NP

Great Green Way (Bruce Hwy) - Mt Bartle Frere & sugar cane

Great Green Way (Bruce Hwy) - Rainforest covered mountains of Bellenden Ker NP

Last meal in QLD - not the most scenic

Arriving to rain in Sydney

We got into Sydney on time and there was Darren to pick us up – all the way from Minnamurra. And guess what after Sydney went through a heat wave and drought for the past 6 weeks with huge wild fires threatening the National Parks in the area, it rained when we landed and temperatures were in the mid teens. Darren couldn’t stop laughing at us calling us the bad weather tourists. He didn’t quite believe us when we said we had mostly good weather on our travels through Western Australia and Queensland. The drive back to Minnamurra was slow due to traffic – poor Darren – and we went straight to Rob’s and Margaret’s place in Wollongong for dinner. It was so great to see all our friends again and they welcomed us as if we had known each other for many years and not just 2 weeks. And remember, we haven’t seen a hot shower for some time (Mossman was the last) but at least I did dig out some fresh clothes from my backpack this morning. Nobody said anything . 

Dinner in Wollongong

Dinner was fantastic with several types of appetizers (salmon & prawns on avocado, cheeses and crackers) followed by steak with fresh veggies for the main meal and fresh fruit for desert. We were in heaven after 6 weeks of one pot meals (with the one exception of our night at Mission Beach). Somehow we managed to stay awake and chat till 10pm and still had a 30min drive till bed in Minnamurra. Darren, Michelle and the kids had since we left moved into the empty townhouse we stayed in at our fist visit while they are renovating the big house. Pretty cramped but Mitchell and Brandon had surrendered their bedroom to us, Mitchell sleeping at a friend’s place and Brandon sleeping on the sofa. We felt bad about Brandon’s sleeping arrangements but he assured us that he spends most nights on the sofa anyways falling asleep in front of the TV. I was too tired to protest any further and both of us fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.

Day 20/61: We woke up before everyone else in the house but late for us – 6:30AM. To not make too much noise we went for a walk along the Minnamurra River – again what a place to live. The sun was up and it was relatively warm – much better than the day before!! The mansions along the river were quite spectacular. And one of those is supposed to be Darren’s and Michelle’s soon. After our return everyone was up and we had breakfast together. We went for a quick trip with Darren into Kiama to see the blowhole. It was Michelle day off and we picked her up and went for a drive up North to have a look at the spectacular Sea Cliff Bridge stopping in on some of the beaches like the “Farm” and Mount Keira Lookout along the way. We had lunch at Mount Keira which offers a great view over the escarpments and the ocean.

Minnamurra's waterfront

Kiama Blowhole

Mt Keira lookout - looking north over the escarpment and the coast

Darren & Michelle - the best hosts in the world

Jeff and I - do we really need to leave?

In the afternoon we went for one last paddle in Downunder – Darren in his K1, I am in the ocean ski and Jeff in the spec ski. It was also training day on the Minnamurra and we met Darren’s coach Terry and about 10-12 younger athletes out there in their K1’s in what I call quite choppy conditions! I didn’t feel good being back in a boat – didn’t miss it at all over the last 6 weeks. The guys kept paddling away from me and I got too frustrated trying to keep up. It wasn’t until I decided to just enjoy the paddling and scenery as I used to do that I relaxed and felt good again being on the water.

The last paddle in Australia for Jeff, not for Darren

Back at the house I finally had my hot shower. We had a nice and uncomplicated dinner at home with tons of prawns and roasted chicken –eating with our fingers again, yummy. Jeff and I had bought pies for desert on the drive earlier. Perfect last evening in Australia! Thank you, thank you Michelle & Darren!!! We spent some time packing that night but didn’t finish it all before falling asleep.

Day 21/62 (Dec 2, 2009): We got up early again since we still had to finish packing. Our plane wasn’t to leave Sydney till noon but the drive into town is a good 1.5-2hrs. Darren, the angel, insisted on driving us to the airport one last time even though Jeff and I offered to take the train. He would have none of that. I so hope we’ll see him again in Vancouver one day to return at least some of all those favours!! We made it to the airport in good time and had to say our good byes. It was weird – even after over 2 month away from home I still wasn’t ready to go back (home?). Usually after a couple weeks in a tent one feels like it’s time but the vast Australian landscapes and even more so it’s wonderful people really made leaving a sad thing. I felt at home here.

Good bye Australia - sigh!!!

Checking in all our baggage took a long time but finally we made it onto the plane back to Vancouver ready or not for another almost 15hrs non-stop flight. Between the two of us we watched a lot of movies on our personal entertainment centres (Up, the new Bond, 9, rabbit-proof-fence, Perfect Getaway, Gran Torino, Happy Guys…) and got very little sleep. We watched a great sunrise although it was still the same day we left which was kinda weird.

We landed the same day, 5 hours before we left Sydney NSW, back in Vancouver BC. To our surprise, home didn’t greet us with the usually temperate winter rains but with a sunny and really cold day (-1 which was more than 20 degrees below what we were used to). We didn’t do much that day – went shopping for food, started unpacking and laundry, watched more TV, napped, folded clothes, ate, had dinner, checked email, started downloading pictures, played Wii… and managed to stay up till 11pm. Same old , same old. Welcome home.

Australia 2009 Report – QLD Part 3

Day 12/53 (Nov 23, 2009): We got up at 4:45AM to visit the Platypus again. The light was even worse than in the evening for taking pictures. Thick mist was hanging low in the trees – Eungella doesn’t translated into “Land of the Clouds” for nothing. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure watching the 2 or 3 animal dive up and down doing their thing one more time. Few less people around in the mornings as well. At 6AM we returned to “our” table near the ranger station for breakfast before driving over to Finch Hatton Gorge for our hike of the day.

Tropical Rain Forest along Rawson's Creek

Finch Hatton Gorge

A refreshing dip below the "Wheel of Fire"

The sun had broken through the mist by now and it started to get hot. On the way we stopped at the Sky Window lookout which provides a beautiful view over the rainforest covered hills and green valley below. The hike followed Rawson’s Creek before moving over to Finch Hatton Creek through tropical rainforest with a couple scenic stops along the way. At the Araluen Cascades we stopped for a bit to watch the Yabbies – small little crayfish – walk along the bottom of the pools. We made it up to the main waterfall – Wheel of Fire – which was falling into a big pool on the bottom. Good thing we brought our swim stuff – it was hot and the cool water was nicely refreshing. The hike was only a few kilometers but we sweated quite a bit going up. It was hard to leave the place but more and more people started to show up. On the walk back we scared a couple Iguanas that were sunning themselves on the trail – too fast for pictures.

Back at the car we started the long drive up north towards Townsville following the main highway. Leaving the green hills and valleys full of sugar cane and mango trees behind the scenery changed into the dryer eucalyptus forests and grasslands again. We spent almost half the day on the road. Only stopped in Proserpine to book our tour to the Whitsundays for the next day – we were planning to spend a couple days sailing/snorkeling around the Whitsundays. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately or maybe luckily most of the trips were already booked out. Schoolies were on the run – all those kids just recently graduating from school and now looking for a good time. Immediately that brought the image of a lot of loud, drunken young adults into my head. No THANKS! So we changed plans and decided to go to Magnetic Island as a day trip instead. A friend from Vancouver told us this would be a good place to spot wild Koalas. We did one other stop to pick up some fresh mangos – 3 for a dollar!!!!

Alligator Creek - Bowling Green Bay NP

Mini frog - hundreds of them

Mini Wallaby - blinded by the camera flash

For the night we pulled into Alligator Creek (part of Bowling Green Bay National Park) 10km off the highway. The campground was nothing special right along the access road and quite open but nobody – no other humans at least – around. Lots of tiny, little wallabies around – no taller than a cat, even smaller but also prettier than the Pademelons in Lamington.  We found ourselves an okay spot in one of the corners of the campground. Since it was still early we started to explore our surroundings a bit more – a short walk from the campground let to Alligator Creek itself surrounded by dry eucalyptus forest. The water looked really inviting after a hot day but we didn’t bring any swim suits or towels. But hey there was nobody else around so we just went skinny dipping – only disturbing the fresh water turtles and tiniest frogs I have ever seen. Neither of those complained too much as far as we could tell. After we dried off we climbed up the creek side to a lookout over the creek. Daylight started to fade away and by the time we made it back into camp to cook dinner it was dark. We had pasta tonight and had drained the water not too far from our camp. While eating we heard someone rustling through dead leaf. First we thought it was one of those ever present brush turkeys but using a flashlight we notice that one of those mini-wallabies was licking the salty pasta water off the dead eucalyptus leaves. Off course I had to take a picture but the flash for sure blinded the poor animal. SORRY! Meanwhile, a few more people had pulled into the campsite for the night but the camp stayed quiet all night.  

Day 13/54: We were woken up by rain starting to fall onto the tent – we did have the fly on but left the doors open. It was already 4AM but we stayed in bed for another hour. Luckily the rain subsided again while we had breakfast – which we had to defend from a sneaky brush turkey – but the sky remained threateningly grey. We headed into Townsville to catch the first fast-cat passenger ferry to Magnetic Island at 7AM (cars are VERY expensive to take across). The sun was trying to poke through the clouds when we left. The crossing only takes 20min. We originally planned on renting a couple bikes to get around on the island but the place near the ferry terminal was already rented out – Schoolies had taken over Magnetic Island as well. And instead of walking to the next town where they rent bikes 2km down the road we decided to do the 6km scenic detour though the hills – promising great views over the island. Unfortunately the dark clouds were catching up with is again and shortly into the walk it started to rain. And it rain pretty hard and for almost the whole 6kms. No views as the clouds were hanging low over the island. Needless to say we got wet – very wet – but it was still warm so we stripped off anything we didn’t need to wear and still be decent. The scenery was still beautiful – even in the mist – with some new vegetation to take pictures off. When the rain finally stopped we had just reached the trail junction to go down to the next town to rent bikes or continue on through the hills to the place where one has the best chance to spot a koala – “The Forts” trail – another 7km or so. We opted on walking which seemed the right decision at that time as the weather turned mostly sunny. Near the beginning of the Fort Trail we ran into a couple of kids coming down which said they saw 4 koala – the first 2 being a mother and her baby koala in a tree right next to the trail. So we walked slowly and kept our eyes peeled on the eucalyptus trees around us. And voila – mama koala and junior hanging out in a tree no more than 10m away from us. SOOOO cool and we watched the little one trying to find the best spot for his next nap for some time while mama koala hardly moved at all. All in all we saw 7 koalas – some as close as a couple meters. We were pretty excited about it. Okay, those koalas are obviously used to people but there was no fence to keep them close to the trails – I call that wild koalas. Apparently they can get pretty vicious if disturbed in their slumber. The views from the top of the Fort – a leftover from WW II – was pretty amazing as well now that the sun was out and one could see most of the northwest side of the island with it’s forested hill and sandy bays below.

Magnetic Island in the rain

Magnetic Island in the sun - Arthur Bay

Baby Koala

Adult Koala

So close - no fences

Tasty Green Ants - apparently lemon flavoured

So we decided to finally check out one of those sandy bays. By now our legs were getting pretty tired though from all the walking and we didn’t make it to the “per travel guide” most spectacular beaches. Nevertheless Arthur Bay was nice and most importantly hardly anybody there. The water looked really inviting but we were a bit nervous about the Box Jelly Fish which were suppose to arrive along the Queensland coast any day now. The people we met at the beach didn’t know for sure but they were wearing stinger suits. We figured we go back to one of the SLSC patrolled beaches instead and find out from the life guard on duty if the stingers have arrived yet. Instead of walking we took the bus into Acadia and decided to have lunch before hitting the water a sit was already past 1:30PM. As expected the food was expensive for more or less just pub food but it tasted fine. We crossed over to Alma Bay which was crowded with Schoolies – most of them in stinger suits which are not very dressy I have to say. Checking the SLSC board it said no stinger sightings yet so we went into the water finally. But I wasn’t really enjoying myself – expecting the jelly fish to show up any minute. We moved over to Geoffrey Bay which was much bigger and less crowded and just hung out on the beach for over an hour doing NOTHING.

Rainbow Lorikeets keeping us company while waiting for the bus to the ferry

At 4PM we had enough of that and headed back to the mainland. Waiting for the bus and then ferry took a while and it was after 6PM by the time we were ready to leave Townsville. Instead of heading north to find some place to sleep in one of the NP along the way we returned to Alligator Creek. To our surprise the campsite was almost full – lots of young people and we feared for our good night sleep. Luckily those kids were of the quiet type.

Sharing breakfast…

 

Day 14/55: Up at 5AM we had one of those mini-wallabies join us for breakfast. I am sure it was revenge for the first night when I blinded one with the flash on my camera. Today we would head up north into the “Wet Tropics” in search of the elusive Cassowary and maybe try our luck and rent a kayak to paddle to Hinchinbrook Island. I already missed going there last time I was in Australia – and it was high on my list of things to do. Heavy clouds were hanging low in the sky and it did rain on and off – heavy at times. Well, the name Wet Tropics doesn’t come from nowhere and it was the beginning of the rainy season up North. First stop was just past Ingham where we turned of the Hwy onto dirt road to visit the Wallaman Falls in Girringun National Park. The drive went through misty wet tropical forest alternating with open woodlands. Cassowary crossing warning signs all over the place but we didn’t see one. Arriving at our destination the rain had stopped again. We managed to see the 268m tall, free falling falls from the upper viewing platform before the clouds rolled in again and the rain returned. We tried to wait it out in the car but I got impatient and set off on the hike down to the falls on the 3.2km long Jinda trail into the gorge. It was warm and humid and wet so I put on a raincoat and left Jeff in the car. The trail started out in open woodland of eucalyptus and she-oak only to be swallowed by dense tropical rainforest less than half way down.

Wallaman Falls

Close-call snake encounter

Misty tropical rain forest in Girringun NP

The falls were just as spectacular from the bottom falling into a good size pool which then emptied into a wide and rocky creek bed. The rain had stopped and Jeff finally caught up with me on the bottom viewing platform (he didn’t have to take pictures although he said he was running down). There were signs all over to NOT climb down into the creek bed which we of course ignored.  Not necessarily the smartest thing to do with all the rains around us – they always warn of flush floods. Anyhow, the water didn’t get us and sitting below the falls was kinda cool but on the way back to the trail we almost stepped on a snake. I THINK it was only a python and not a poisonous one but I don’t know anything about snakes! We made it out without being bitten but not without being rained on again. It was s steep climb back up and Jeff was running ahead to not get too wet (I am sure he did not succeed) while I took my time walking through the rainforest mostly hidden by thick clouds and in the pouring rain – what else would a rainforest at the start of the rainy season look like. The drive back to the main highway through the misty forest was pretty cool. The next destination was Lucinda – the getaway to Hinchinbrook Island. Although I knew we won’t have the time to explore the island – all of it a national park and only accessible by foot or boat, known for its rainforest covered mountains, beautiful beaches, mangroves and giant rats (to the camper’s delight) – but I was hoping we could rent a kayak or canoe and explore the mangroves along the coast. But with the exception of a couple black Cockatoos the town seemed to be deserted – off-season! Oh well, the weather wasn’t too promising either although it did stop raining for a while. 

Only soul in Lucinda - Black Cockatoo

Sanctuary Retreat - our luxury cabin tent

We continued on to Cardwell and instead of being active sat down for lunch. The sun came out for a little bit when we walked along the beach afterwards but the weather forecast warned for a stormy night. A good friend of mine who spent a year in Australia right after University, had suggested to stay a night at this “Sanctuary Retreat” in Mission Beach. Usually we wouldn’t have even considered it but it was only $65 a night and we weren’t really keen on experiencing a tropical rainstorm in our tent. The other attraction was that the retreat can only be reached by foot or 4×4 pick-up (no self-drive) and that it sits in the middle of tropical rainforest where spotting a Cassowary was a good possibility. So we gave into a night in luxury. And it was well worth it. The hike up a steep mountain to the retreat through rain forest, soaking in the retreat’s swimming pool, the fantastic diner with a bottle of red wine, the “cabin” which was more or less a mosquito net with a solid roof and a bed, the view over the forest and ocean from the patio having a luxurious breakfast in the morning …. We never saw a Cassowary though even though we tried really hard.

Day 15/56: Although this was the first time in a real bed for some time we didn’t sleep well – it was a stormy night after all. We managed to stay in bed till late – 6:15AM – and went for a walk down to the beach before breakfast. The weather improved and although the mountains in the background were still covered in black clouds the sun was shining along the coast. Originally the plan was to explore the Atherton Tablelands today but since the clouds were hanging threateningly low and black over the mountains we changed plans and continued up north towards Cape Tribulation to finally find one of those elusive Cassowaries. We only stopped once along the way at Josephine Falls in Wooroonooran NP. We were lucky and caught some sunshine even though we were at the foot of the highest mountain in QLD – Mount Bartle Frere which was invisible to us in the clouds. The falls were busy with kids sliding down the rocks – the falls were cascading down in several steps getting less and less steep so that the bottom pool had the perfect rock slide going into it.

Mission Beach

Josephine Falls

Tropial North - endless beaches & rainforest

Cauliflory - Fig tree blossoms

We continued on past Cairns towards the end of the road at the Daintree River Crossing. A short ferry ride and we were on our way to Cape Tribulation. Cape Tribulation is known for its spectacular white beaches and green mountains where the “Rainforest meets the Reef”. And it is also the end for our 2WD as the paved road ends and adventure begins.  We forked out some big dollars and visited the Daintree Discovery Centre for a self guided tour through the different levels of the rainforest and a potential glimpse at a wild Cassowary that seem to frequent the centre on a regular basis. We learned a lot – few examples:

The Cassowary dad raises the chicks not the female who in turn is the larger of the two sexes. They are apparently very curious animals and not shy at all watching the workers when the discovery centre was being built. Still we didn’t see one.

Death adders don’t move no matter what and if you happen to step near one buried in a stack of leafs they strike like lightning and can kill you in minutes (we have been hiking though their territory for a while now – lucky us).

Most fruits are poisonous while seeds generally are eatable. So are green ants which apparently have a lemony flavour.

Vicious-Hairy-Mary is used to make furniture and baskets (rattan).

Mahogany trees are much more beautiful alive than any piece of furniture could ever be.

Cauliflory is a botanical term referring to plants which flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks rather than from new growth and shoots. This can allow trees to be pollinated or have their seeds dispersed by animals which cannot climb or fly. With fruit, plants may instead have fruit which drop from the canopy and ripen only after they reach the ground, an alternative “strategy” to cauliflory.  I only knew the term cauliflower as a vegetable or damaged ear lopes.

All in all a great afternoon and it was time to find a camp spot and to check out those magnificent beaches. Noah Beach offers the only NP camping in the area but it wasn’t busy at all. The campsite were under some type of fig trees and a short walk away from the beach but by the time we got to the beach after setting up camp and eating dinner it was dark. Still warm enough though to sit on the dark beach watching the stars and listening to the ocean. We slept much better tonight.

Day 16/57: Day 2 at Cape Tribulation and I woke up before the sun was up. So I watched the sunrise on “our” beach. We didn’t really make any plans for what to do today so first off we went to the actual Cape Tripulation and walked around for a little bit – soaking in the sight of palm-tree lined beach with the forested mountains in the background. Bliss!!! As mentioned Cape Trib is one of the closest places to the Great Barrier Reef and we decided last minute to check out if we could still get on one of those 1/2 snorkeling day safaris to the reef on a fast semi-inflatable. When we got to the head office the place was closed as it was still early. The waiting paid off though. It turned out we were lucky again – they had 4 cancelations last night and therefore room for us. Nevertheless the boat wouldn’t leave for another 2 hrs and we had time to kill. We walked through the mangrove swamps (almost being eaten alive by mosquitoes) to the nearest beach – Myall Beach - and enjoyed more palm tree lined sandy beach walking. We found a still intact green coconut below one of the palm trees and opened it up by using a stick rammed into the sand – ala survivor man. It worked and we had some refreshing coconut milk to drink. There was lots of milk but hardly any coconut meet. We miserably failed though climbing up a palm tree, even one which was on a 45 degree angle to the ground already. Only passed one of the survival skill tests – good thing we weren’t actually stranded on a far away beach! We still had the beach all to ourselves this early in the morning.

Cape Tribulation - where rainforest meets the reef

Myall Beach - climbing palm trees isn't easy

Fresh coconut milk ala Survivor Man

Our snorkling cruise - start loading

Mackay Reef - one of the best!!

Finally it was time to get geared up and hop into the boat – there was no dock or anything and we had to walk out to the boat from the beach to get in. Jeff and I caught seats right in front and the ride was bumpy but a lot of fun taking only 30min. We headed out to the Mackay Reef 22km off shore, part of the inner reef. The snorkeling was exceptional. The corals were less damaged then when you go with the big companies that operate out of Port Douglas/Cairns (which also take 2hrs to reach the reef). Soft coral, hard coral, colorful reef fish, huge clamps and rays. The reef was shallow and the water calm so you could see all the different colours. We spent an hour in the water on the first snorkeling outing – last ones back to the boat. The boat switched spots and we had another 45min in the water before I really got too cold in only a stinger suit. Saw a big school of parrot fish crunching on the corals and a leopard fish this time around. I could have stayed longer but we had to go back to the mainland. The trip only took 3 hrs altogether and most of those 3 hrs were spent in the water – not like trips out of Port Douglas/Cairns where you spend all day and hardly 20% of that in the water. Well worth the money.

We said good-bye to the beautiful beaches of Cape Trib and headed back south. We took a river cruise on the Daintree River to have a look at the saltwater crocs. Unfortunately the tide was up which makes it harder to spot the crocs. But the guide “managed” to see all the attractions (not sure if they were all alive as he spotted some of them from a long ways away) on the 1hr long trip: Scareface – the 4m long, 60 year old local favourite male salt croc, a tiny hatchling (obviously alive as it was actually moving), a green tree frog, a green tree snake, an amethyst python and a couple beautiful kites. We missed out on seeing any of Scareface’s eight or nine females or his even bigger nemesis – Fat Albert – from up river. Pretty touristy little trip but still enjoyable. Next stop was Mossman Gorge – the true rainforest and I had been waiting for this to take many more rainforest pictures, especially as we had a nice sunny day. Turned out that the hike I wanted to do was closed for off-season maintenance – probably a good thing as it was already late in the afternoon by the time we got there. So we only did the short walk up and down the gorge and stopped for a dip in the upper pool. The water was nice and cool – very refreshing – but the current was also quite strong. 

Daintree River

Scareface - the local salt crocodile

Tree Frog - not sure how the guide saw it from 50m away

At night in Mossman - Praying Mantis, Christmas beetle and translucent geckos

As it was already late we decided to stay at a private campground in the town of Mossman for the night – Riverside Park along the Mossman River. Nothing spectacular about it but it was relatively quite and clean. The highlight – once it got dark all sorts of crawly things showed up in the lights around the kitchen and washrooms: Christmas Beetles, Praying Mantis and almost translucent, tiny geckos with painted nails. The lowlight – the campground light was lighting up our tent all night long.

Australia 2009 Report – QLD Part 2

Day 6/47 (Nov 17, 2009): We were up before 5AM this morning and quickly broke camp to have enough time to do a little hike along Rainbow Beach (after too much driving all day yesterday). Just a bit to the south of the town’s swimming beach is the start of Cooloola NP – also called Great Sandy National Park up here. Luckily the beach wasn’t closed due to the bushfire (by now I think it was pretty much contained).

Rainbow Beach, Cooloola NP

Soaring White-breated Eagle

Covered in black dust

The walk had us climb above Mulgo Rocks – the only obstacle for 4×4’s at high tide, back onto the endless beach along the “Coloured Sands” cliffs. We slowly wandered along for about 45min to 1hr watching a white-breasted sea eagle soar high above the ragged cliff. On the way back the tide was still too high to get around the rocks but at least we could climb over them rather than through the sliding sands of the cliff. Only problem – those rocks were volcanic – and I don’t know how Jeff managed to get away without any black on himself but I was covered in it from head to toe. I looked like being covered in soot. Good thing it was early still and nobody around when we got back to the car. Before leaving town we had a look at Carlos’s Sandblow.

Carlos' Sandblow

It was only a short walk through red and white barked eucalyptus forest but Jeff didn’t stay long to explore the sandblow itself. The sign at the parking area warned about “High Theft Area” and obviously we had EVERYTHING in the car. I walked across it to look at where the sand slowly swallows the vegetation along it. Nice views towards the ocean on the one side and the rainforest to the other. On the way back to the main highway we made one last stop in Cooloola NP at Seary Creek – a little freshwater creek meandering through the low bush. We cooled off our legs in the water (and I washed off the black soot) but didn’t have time to stick around.

Rum Country - near Bundaberg

Back on the road we were following some paved backcountry roads to Maryborough before hitting the main HWY to Bundaberg where we stocked up on groceries. The drive was scenic through tree plantations, eucalyptus forests and sugar cane fields – the dirt was very dark red in stark contrast to the green sugar cane growing in some fields – rum country. Smoke billowed up in the distance on and off – constant signs of wild fires all over the place. We arrived at our final destination at 2:30PM – Agnes Water, a small community and the gateway to the southern Great Barrier Reef. We originally planned to stay a night on one of the Coral Islands but the only way to get there this time of the year would have been by taking a day cruise. Nothing wrong with that except that we would have to pay for the trip twice even though we would only go half the distance each time. So we skipped that plan (to regret it later as we would have had a whole island to ourselves + the local wild life) and only booked on a day cruise on one of those large catamarans which go out to the reef every day and have room for almost 200 people. There are smaller cruises as well but in the off-season they only go on the weekends. The lady at the tourist information where we booked the cruise also suggested a great campsite for the night at Workman Beach – a nice spot with lots of trees to provide shade and a little bit of privacy from other campers. It was very quiet in the afternoon except for the brush turkeys fighting for which campsites was “theirs” to look after during dinner time.

Agnes Water swimming beach

Body surfer Jeff

We drove back into town to visit the actual swimming beach watched by the local Surf Life Saving guard. We checked the conditions with the life guard first as the water was a bit rougher and this time of the year the so famous and deadly box jelly fish are know to frequent the Queensland coast. But we were “lucky” that no box jellies had been seen yet, only a few blue bottles (another type of jelly fish) and some fireweed. Both burn you like hell BUT they aren’t deadly. So off we went into the water. But the sea was too rough for me to body surf and there was a lot of stuff floating in it. I did not get stung but I was afraid of it every time something touched my body. Therefore, I didn’t last long in the water and rather enjoyed some UV light causing skin-cancer exposure out on the beach .

Back at the campsite I walked along Workman beach and climbed up into the cliffs surrounding it. Beautiful beach lined by eucalyptus and palm trees. For the first time we managed to have dinner before the sun set and crawled into our sleeping bags around 7:30PM. But sleep didn’t come easy as the campsite was noisier than I was hoping for. Since it was relatively early a couple Aussies set up camp next door. And a family two sites over seemed to be chatting all night long. We learned all about their several month long trip – you can imagine how long those stories were if you were following my report so far. Anyhow, everyone finally shut up and I fell asleep. Only to be woken up by lightning and thunder a short while later. Ever since the rainstorm in Bunya Mountain we had been setting up our tent without the rain fly again. I was up in two seconds to throw it on just before the rain started. Luckily it didn’t rain hard but it took some time listening to the light rain before I fell asleep again.

Day 7/48: Our natural alarm clock went off at 4AM this morning – the Kookaburra started laughing in the trees above our heads a long time before we had to be at the marina to board our cruise at 7:15AM.

Alarm clock - laughing Kookaburra

Since I felt like I had just fallen asleep I rolled over again and dosed off till 5:30AM. Besides the “late” start we had plenty of time to pack up our snorkeling gear and still made it to “The Town of 1770” with plenty of time to board the “Spirit of 1770”.  Enough time so that I talked myself into doing one of the dives as well. I used to do a lot of diving but haven’t been for over 5 years. But the dive guide, Tine from Germany, convinced me that I should go onto the lagoon dive which is easy and good to get back into the diving routine. So we forked out another bunch of dollars besides the already not cheap fare for the trip – did I mention already that Queensland is so much more expensive . As a bonus, we got prime seating for our money – right with the captain in the wheelhouse. Skipper Brett was like THE typical Australian guy even though he was a bit older – blond, tall, fit looking, great accent and full of fun stories. The 1.5hr crossing to Lady Musgrave Island went by very quickly in calm seas.

Lady Musgrave Island is one of the few real coral cays in the Great Barrier Reef and it looks like paradise. A big lagoon surrounds the island with a small opening for boats like ours to enter the protected lagoon. Water was wonderful clear with colours ranging from light green to deep blue and everything in between depending on depth. Just WOOAAH! The boat was anchored at a small platform just off the island. Jeff and I were in the first group to go onto the cay – it’s pretty small (200m across) and to limit the impact they split the tour guests up into several groups. And even though we were eager to hit the water we could not say no to walking onto a real coral cay. The beach was white with dead coral, the centre was covered with Pisonia trees which were surrounded by She-Oak. And EVERY branch was covered with Black Noddies – a bird which comes here to nest, besides Terns (nesting on the edge of the forest in the grass), Shearwater (nesting in holes in the ground) and Seagulls. It was Noddies’s breeding time when we visited the island. The birds help build and fertilize the island. Pisonia Tree seeds are kinda sticky and get stuck to the birds that fly from island to island and get dropped there. Some birds actually get caught up in the seeds while on the ground and die – an important part of the islands growth as they fertilize the soil, together with all that bird poop. I was lucky to wear my hat – not everyone had one . Pisonia trees are fast growing tree and their root system prevents the dirt from being washed of the island again – and so the island grows.  VERY impressive and well worth the trip. We also saw the campsite on our walk across the island – deserted, not a soul. Okay there are a lot of day tourists but we would have had it all to ourselves for the night, well us and the millions of birds. Back at the boat we grabbed some lunch (good selection) and finally hit the water with our snorkeling gear wearing full body suits to protect us against jelly fish – just in case.  Water was nice, 24C, the corals were beautiful and fish plentiful. As I had my dive come up shortly as well I was out of the water after about 40min. I was a bit nervous about going diving again and it took me a little bit to play with my buoyancy. But soon enough I was back into it and it was an enjoyable, easy dive around the” Brommies” – coral mounts within the lagoon. Jeff saw a stingray on his second snorkel trip.

Lady Musgrave Island

White coral beach, green She-Oak and Pisonia, blue Ocean

... and lots of Black Noddies

Our transportation, the "Spirit of 1770"

Too soon we had to leave the paradise behind and were heading back to the mainland. After we left the lagoon, we saw a few manta rays swimming next to the boat – pretty cool. Later on I even saw a manta ray jumping out of the water. I would not have believe my eyes if the skipper hadn’t seen the same thing. To top it all off we saw a few dolphins in the distance. When we got to the harbor the tide was still too low and the big catamaran could not get back to the dock. So they had a barge come out to transport the passengers of the boat – about 20 or so at a time and there were 118 of us on the boat. Since Jeff and I were in no hurry and found some nice people to chat with we were the last group to go. By then the tide was up and we actually didn’t have to go onto the barge any more. A great day and we never really felt like the boat or water was too crowded – they did a great job splitting us up into groups for the island walk, lunch and snorkeling activities. By the time we got back to the car it was nearly 6:30PM. The drive back to Workman Beach was short but dinner and dishes were happening in the dark again. The chatty family from last night was still at it. Tonight they were fixing a flat tire. A neighbor offered to help and pulled his diesel truck up providing light and the air compressor was going the whole time – not sure why it takes so long to blow up a f… tire. Luckily we were still at dinner so it didn’t bother us too to much but when they kept at it after the tire was fixed I walked over and asked if they could keep it down a bit. They apologized and went pretty quite right away. It was 9PM (very late for us) until we crawled into our tent (fly on this time) and I thought I would fall asleep ASAP. But no – a horde of German’s came in an hour later and they managed to make even more noise setting up camp than last nights Aussies – !$$@$%%^$ – never minding that at 10PM it would be past a lot of people’s bedtime as the rest of the campsite was dead quiet. After 45min Jeff finally had enough yelled across for them to “Bloody Hell SHUT UP!”. They giggled and turned it down a bit but not for long. This was the 2^nd time we encountered German tourists not at all respecting that people who camp like it quiet (okay I was born in Germany too but I am sure I never had to let the whole world know when I arrived at a camp spot) . I for sure had enough of camping near popular tourist places and was looking forward to leave the coast behind the next morning.

Day 8/49: We got up at our usual time at 5PM – making sure the German’s next door knew we were up!! We had a long day of driving ahead of us to Carnarvon Nation Park via Miriam Vale, Biloea and Rollerston. Carnarvon NP is part of the Great Dividing Range and is known for its deep gorges sculpted by running water over a period of over 25 million years as well as its creeks and river pools that are frequented by Platypus.

Bottle Tree

Floppy Ear bull

Floppy Ear cow

Going inland the landscape became much dryer. Mostly grasslands, some large eucalyptus trees here and there and some so called “Bottle trees” that look like Baobab trees as well as some huge cacti some even in flower. Traffic was much less than along the coast. Around Rollerston we saw a whole bunch of Emus in the fields. The Australian cattle are also worth mentioning –they have long hanging ears like a Beagle and we called them floppy-ear cows. As we were getting closer to Carnarvon NP the grassland turned more into wooded areas with eucalyptus as well as palm trees and more and more kangaroos showed up along the road – hadn’t seen any in a couple days. We drove to the headquarters and they looked deserted. The air looked all foggy from smoke. We looked for a ranger but a sign said they were all out on fire patrol as there was a big fire in the western part of the park. The trails up the gorge were only open maybe half the way up. We tried to find a campsite but there only seemed to be a walk-in one in the area that was closed to tourist some 10km up the gorge. We finally phoned the Queensland Park Reservation Line and they told us that the campsite at the headquarters was closed since it was off-season but luckily there was a private campground, Takarakka Bush Resort, just a few couple kilometers outside the park. It was quite a bit more expensive than the NP campsites but quiet, had a nice cooking shelter and was located along some pools where the owner told us we could catch a glimpse of the local platypus family. They even had a small store and we treated ourselves to some fancy Australian beer and wine for later. But first off we headed back into the park and did a short hike to “Rock Pool” – a deep “swimming” pool in the mostly shallow Carnarvon Creek. It was quite hot in the park even though you couldn’t see the sun as it was hidden behind all the smoke blown in from the wild fires. But the water was just right. After we dried off on the beach long the pool we drove to the start of another shorter hike – Mickey’s Gorge.

Rock Pool (without the smoke)

Mickey's Gorge - Warrumbah Creek

Sharing the campsite - Pretty face Whiptail Wallabies

The trail through open eucalyptus forest interspersed with palm trees split into two after about 1km and we chose to follow the Warrumbah Creek. The official trail seemed to end after about 200m but a narrow path continued deep into the canyon. The walls got closer and closer together and near the end we could touch both sides with our hands. Very cool!!! We followed the narrow canyon until a big rock sealed it off.

We headed back to the campsite to look for the platypus in the nearby pool – they usually come out when the sun is setting. So we sat along the pool for over an hour until it got pitch black but didn’t see one. Saw some freshwater turtles though and lots of fish and birds. Maybe tomorrow! Back at the camp we cooked dinner in the lit shelter on a big propane stove – in much more comfort than we were used to lately – before hitting the tent. We weren’t the only people at the campground but most of the sites were empty and therefore it was REAL quiet.

Finally a restful night once again.

Apostel Bird - eying our food

Day 9/50: The Kookaburra woke us up at 4AM and we got up at 4:45AM to look for the Platypus. We may have seen a glimpse of one but it could have been anything. We sat around till 6AM while the bush around us started to wake up – Kookaburra, Pied Currawong, and cockatoos as well as a Black-footed Rock Wallaby. We decided to stay an additional night at Takarakka to have another chance at seeing the platypus – and it was such a nice and quiet spot. Back in camp we finally had breakfast – joining us were a Kookaburra, 3 Magpies as well as 10-15 Apostle Birds, all of them wanted a piece of our sandwiches. The Kookaburra almost succeeded in his first attack on Jeff. It was almost 7AM before we drove to the start of today’s hike – Carnarvon Gorge.

Due to the wild fires the trails were only partially open but still enough for a 14km return hike along the bottom of the gorge. It was an easy stroll along/across the creek with offshoots into the surrounding cliffs every so often to have a look at the parks attractions. The sky was blue and no trace of smoke in the air today – the wind must have changed directions since yesterday. And it was HOT. We saw quite a few western grey kangaroos and pretty-face whiptail wallabies mostly near the parks headquarters and the start of the trail. We visited the “Moss Gardens” where ancient rain water is being filter through the sandstone and resurfaces again once it hits the watertight shale after thousands of years in this little canyon to keep it lush and green.  We had a look at Aboriginal paintings and carvings at the “Art Gallery” – over 2000 engravings, ochre stencils and free-hand paintings adorn a 62m long sandstone wall, a significant Aboriginal site. Most of the stencil paintings were of boomerangs and hands and most of the carvings were of vulvas. Next stop was “Ward Canyon”, another one of those narrow, shady canyons and one of the few places left where one can find the rare “King Fern” – the dinosaur of ferns. And last but not least the “Amphitheater”.  It looks like one would be walking right into the canyon wall – 50-70m in height – until last minute a small crack opens up. Hidden in the wall of the gorge is a 60m deep chamber gouged from the rock by running water about 20-30m across. Very impressive! Along the way we saw several geckos and lizards as well as parrots and other birds. We finished the hike around 1pm.

Carnarvon Gorge

Moss Garden

Art Gallery - stencils & carvings

Ward's Canyon - ancient King Fern

Entrance to the Amphitheater

By now it was unbelievable hot and we drove back to “Rock Pool” for a dip in the cool water. Once we had cooled off enough we went to finish our hike in “Mickey’s Gorge” – the trails split into 2 sections and we had only done the one yesterday. We again ended up in a narrow gorge scrambling over and under huge boulder until an old rockslide area stopped us once more. On the way back I was attacked by a palm leaf – actually my toe did. There is a reason why one should not hike in sandals even if it is only a short walk but when it is 30+C it’s hard to put on the heavy hiking boots. Back to my battle with the palm leaf – did you know that those palm leaves stems have pretty tough thorns? Anyways they ripped open my toe as the palm leave got caught between my toe and sole of my sandal. First I only felt a little sting that hurt like hell but I wasn’t thinking anything off it. Not until I felt myself sliding around in my sandals and looked down to see the one was soaked in blood. Obviously we didn’t bring any first aid kit on a 30min easy walk but I had an old tissue in my pocket. So we wrapped that around my toe and we made it back to the car without any other attacks.

Mickey's Gorge - Jeff narrowly escapes the boulder

I lost my battle with the palm leaf

Back in camp Jeff had a hell of a time picking the soaked tissue out of the wound. It was pretty ragged and fairly deep but luckily didn’t need stitches. We added some of the antibiotic crème I got the day we left for Australia when I ramped a piece of my paddle into my pinky (see earlier report) and taped it up carefully. After some ice cream and a cold beer from the resort store I was as good as new. Ready to go hunting for the elusive platypus again! It was almost dark but finally we scored. Some other campers had spotted it in one of the lower pools and we managed to sneak a peak before there was no light left. Pretty cool. Needless to say we had to cook dinner again in the lit up shelter. While finishing up in the shelter we think we even saw one of those other animals the park is famous for – most Australian animals are active at night. What looked like a yellow-bellied glider was jumping from a tree onto the roof of the shelter. But we never saw it again. Went to bed at 9PM.

Day 10/51: We were up early again at a quarter to five to have one last look at the platypus. And it was around this time but hard to spot as the pool it was in was surrounded by trees. Jeff seemed to be more lucky than me in spotting it – so no picture exists. We also saw one of these big iguanas swim across the pool – like those in the Galapagos. After brekkie we went for one last hike in this beautiful park – I actually put on my hiking boots today despite the heat. This time we hiked up onto the canyon rim to the Boolimba Cliff lookout.

View over the Carnarvon Gorge from Boolimba Cliff

Jeff and I at Boolimba

A steep climb up in a narrow ravine with cool views of the cliff up close quickly got us to the top. The view from up there was spectacular to say the least overlooking the entrance to the big gorge and onto the plateaus surrounding it. The area is know for its spectacular multiple day hiking trips but those have to wait till another time. If you ever get to Queensland don’t skip this park only because it is so far off the beaten track and beaches – it’s well worth it – although it seem to get really busy in the main tourist season during the Australian winter. Nevertheless, Jeff and I had to move on if we wanted to make it to Cairns in time to catch our flight and see all those other million things along the way. We had one more stop in the interior – Blackdown Tablelands. If we would have had a 4×4 the drive to Blackdown would have been a relatively short one but with our Camry we had to take the main highway which had us go more west again before we could go north-east towards the coast. We came back through Rollerston, finally turned north in Springsure and east in Emerald – we did not stop to dig for precious gem stones which is THE thing to do just to the west of Emerald. The scenery was mostly open grassland and dry open eucalyptus forest. The only wildlife I remember seeing were the too cute looking Australian Floppy Ears (cows) and an Australian Bustard. There was very little traffic on the road. When we got closer to our destination for the night we again could see smoke in the distance – coming off a big plateau sticky out of the otherwise flat landscape – could that be Balckdown Tablelands? Are we finally running out of luck an this park is now closed the park due to wild fires? But when we got close we could see that the plateau was split into two sections and our destination was in the part without the smoke. While climbing up the steep road the vegetation got greener and trees became more plentiful again. We stopped at a lookout at the cliffs edge with a great view over the plains below and the second tableland across – the one the smoke was coming from it.

Blackdown Tablelands NP

Yaddamen Dhina (Horseshow Lookout)

Munall (Mimosa) Campground

The Munall (Mimosa) campsite in this park was pretty empty and nicely nestled into a tall eucalyptus tree forest. We found a spot for us and set up camp. Jeff relaxed into a camping chair with his puzzle book while I had to go for a walk and stretch my legs. I followed the Mook Mook Trail along Mimosa Creek. The creek itself was pretty much dry and the walk wound back and forth crossing the creek a couple time into open forest with eucalyptus, she-oak, cork trees and the odd palm trees. At the end the view opened up as it reached the edge of the plateau. Apparently the cliff light up in beautiful colors during sunrise but were now all in the shade – still nice walk. Back in camp we had dinner under the eucalyptus trees which were loaded with noisy lorikeets high above our heads – so I knew we won’t be sleeping in tomorrow. Nevertheless we sat around for a while watching for shooting stars when it got dark. It was pleasantly warm and we omitted the fly again. A quiet night.   

Day 11/52: The quiet night ended abruptly at 4AM when the lorikeets started screeching in the tree tops – oh well we knew that would be coming.  But the lorikeets soon got help from Kookaburras, Cockatoos, Magpies and tons of other birds I could not identify. That was the loudest bird concert in a while – it felt like our tent was in the middle of a bird cage.  

Goon Goon Dina (Culture Circuit)

By 5AM I had enough and crawled out of the tent to make breakfast. Today’s first hike was a walk through history – signs along the Goon Goon Dina Circuit explained how aboriginals and than later on early settlers made use of the plants in this park. Apparently the grass in this area has a too low phosphor content which causes bone disease in cattle and the area was abandoned early again by the white man not without leaving some fences and other garbage around (now called historic monument). I guess this special grass also prevents kangaroos from frequenting the area – we didn’t even see their droppings. The aboriginal stories were more interesting. Bark from the stringy-bark tree was being used for baskets, my beloved grass trees provided sap that was used as glue, banskia flowers provided the aboriginals with sugar while the bitter bush was used as medicine against tooth ache. I told Jeff to try some as his teeth had been bothering him for a few days – he declined graciously. Besides the plants this area also has some cool sandstone boulders formed by wind and rain as well as Aboriginal paintings. The walk was fairly short and we had enough time to have a look at the parks main attractions – Rainbow Falls. I saw a picture of them in some magazine we picked up in Emerald and knew I had to go there – it also showed a pool for us to cool down in for a bit. The walk (Gudda Gumoo – Rainbow Waters) was pretty through lush bush along the cliff top and down to the falls – except the falls were dry and the pool in front was pretty scummy looking. Not anything like the picture I saw in the magazine – darn it!

Rainbow Falls - no falls, no sun and stale pool water

Cave below the falls

Cool looking lizard

But not all was wasted effort. We saw a lot of lizards, skinks and geckos along the way. And we went a little bit past the falls along the dry creek bed and saw this enormous drop and at the bottom an opening to a huge cave. Below us was actually some water running as well and everything was lush and green – very cool sight. So we scrambled around in that area but never made it all the way down. We were back at the car before noon and started the long drive back towards the coast – actually Eungella National Park was our next stop. The place where one can easily spot platypus . The drive east led us mostly to cattle ranchlands through a little town called Nebo – the typical Australian outback town. Just past the town, we saw a couple emus resting below a Bottle Trees (I am still mad at Jeff for not stopping to take a picture) but otherwise only Australian Floppy Ears (cows) again. Closer to the coast the landscape became more hilly again and vegetation got greener – lots of sugar cane. Eungella is up in the mountains again surrounded by tropical rainforest 80km west of Mackay. The main attraction – at least for me – is the platypus viewing area in the Broken River section of the park. The NP campsite if walk-in only but it is only a 500m walk and we found an okay spot to set up our tent – nothing too fancy though. Dinner will have to happen after dark at the ranger station where they had benches etc set up for the day tourists.

Broken River - Engella NP

Tourist-friendly Platypus

Anyhow, first thing to do was to look for the platypus. The viewing platform was already full of people and it was only 5PM. Nevertheless, the platypus showed up right away and right in front of us – sooo cool!! First you se the bubbles and then the animal pops up. I got a few shots of before it became too dark in the trees. A second platypus showed up as well and we spend almost 2hrs watching them dive down and come up and chew on stuff. Back at the ranger station we prepared dinner. While we were eating in the dark, fireflies started to turn the bushes around us into a sparkling wall like stars in the dark sky. We walked to the tent guided by moonlight.

Australia 2009 Report – QLD Part 1

Okay, okay, we have been back for over a year now and I still haven’t finished my report. But hey, when I started working again in March I just didn’t have enough time. Summer was too busy with training, fishing, …but now it is winter and I have no more excuses. My dad complained last week that he is getting tired of waiting for the story to continue. So here comes part 1 of like 4 or 5. Enjoy!

Day 1/42 (Nov 11, 2009): Our first day in Queensland. Our plane landed in Brisbane just after 6AM and both of us were pretty tired not having slept much on the red-eye flight from Perth, WA. All our luggage arrived without any damage – even though a lot of things were just duct-taped onto the backpacks.

First QLD camp

Our rental car - parked at Green Mountains - Lamington NP

Trying to find a bench in the airport to curl up for a couple hours until the car rental place opens up was impossible. So we took a cab to the rental place instead hoping they would have a bench in front. Even better, there was a little park a short walk away and we made camp there till 8:30AM.  We picked up the car – Toyota Camry – and stopped at the first mall on the way for breakfast and to stock up on groceries.  Haven’t had eggs for breakfast in some time, although the Aussie hashbrowns were terrible . We left Brisbane right away (I had been here before visiting friends from Germany – he was doing his post doc at Brisbane U) and headed south through Canungura into Lamington National Park. QLD has a different system for booking NP campsites. One has to either book online (which we obviously couldn’t) or phone ahead to make a reservation – no more on-site registration. I wasn’t pleased. Luckily our so useless-in-WA cell phone did work again in QLD, almost everywhere!!! It took forever to give them all the details they needed to know over the phone and we found out that we finally were over the limit on our major credit card (turned out later that the care rental place never returned the damage deposit for the 4×4 in WA to us until MUCH later which we hadn’t planned for). Again lucky we had a backup. The drive up into the park was beautiful – from farm country through eucalyptus forest into lush and green rolling hills covered in subtropical rain forest. We camped at O’Reilley’s – Green Mountain and shared our site with lots of pademelons and parrots. It was already afternoon by the time we arrived and Jeff went for a nap while I explored the area. This is a pretty touristy spot but luckily it wasn’t very busy. They have a beautiful botanical garden (more the natural type than the manicured one) to introduce you to all the different rain forest plants and a small tree-top walk. But I didn’t quite make it to the top of the tree as my memory card was getting full. Returning to the campsite to switch cards (another 8G) I found Jeff awake and dragged him with me up the tree.  I love rain forests – Booyong trees, Fig trees, Palm trees,…, lots of fern (elkhorn, steghorn, crowsnest..) and hanging gardens, the ever present Australian brush turkey… and never enough light down below to take good pictures .

Pademelon with Joey

 

Overlooking the sub-tropical rainforest from the top of a fig tree

Hanging garden and ferns

 

Booyong

Australian Brush-Turkey

 

Crimson Rosella eying my dinner

Back at the campsite we had an early cold dinner (forgot to buy cam fuel oops) with the locals – a couple Crimson Rosellas decided to get a piece of our buns, hoping around on our heads, arms and “dinner table”. Despite a nice warm day it got cool at night and it also got dark much earlier – Lamington NP is up in the mountains after all and much further north than Perth. As usual we crawled into our sleeping bags by 7:30PM.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 Day 2/43: We were woken up by birds at 4:30AM. Some of those joined us again for breakfast – King Parrots this time.

King Parrots for breakfast

Even though we planned to do a couple hikes in the morning we broke camp first and moved our car to the day parking area. Our program for QLD was just as packed as WA. Our first hike was along Box Forest Trail (~9km). A very pretty and easy hike into a lush river valley with the most ancient trees in between the more common Booyong, fig trees, Bolly gum trees, Satin trees, Marara, Palm trees, Fern trees, Hook Pine trees…: Brush Box (Arol) trees – up to 1500 years old, much older than the rest of the rain forest surrounding them. They are massive and beautiful!!! I must have photographed every single one .

Giant Brush Box tree

Trail going past some huge figs as well

Elabana Falls

Angle-headed Dragon

Once in a while the trail crosses the river to give us access to some nice waterfalls such as Box Log Falls and Elabana Falls as well as give leeches access to my legs. Besides leeches and other insects we also saw a King Parrot and an Angle-Headed Dragon.

We finished the hike at 10AM in the morning and dove on to hike #2 – Python Rock lookout. A short walk through more rain forest into open Eucalyptus forest (and my beloved grass trees) to a lookout over the rainforest covered hills into the open grassland below.  

Rainforest giving way to dryer forest

Moran Falls and Moran Gorge

View from Moran Fall across the dryer forests along the south facing mountain side and in the valley below

While rainforest prevails on the northwest facing slopes

In the distance one could see Moran Falls which tumbled about 50-70m into the Valley below. Since the day was still young we decided to do the hike to Moran Falls as well instead of doing the long drive to Binna-Burra, another area within Lamington NP. Turned out it was a good decision, even though the walk only got us to the top of Moran Falls. The view from there over the lower plains was worth it. One could see all the different climate zones from Brush Box Forest to subtropical rainforest up high (rainy mountain side) to tall eucalyptus forest and open woodlands (dry mountain side) to dry rainforest on the bottom.

Storm brewing over the southern Darling Downs

We were back at the car by 1PM and started the long drive towards Bunya Mountain NP – 300km northwest from here (as we had ditched the idea of spending another night at Binna-Burra earlier). The drive took us through the “mountains” and Main Range NP into the open farm country of the Darling Downs. The mountains weren’t much of what we have for mountains here in Canada – lower and much drier than near the coast and lots of smoke from wild fires all over the place. Once we were pass Toowoomba – the biggest town around (stocking up on camp stove fuel) we saw huge black clouds coming up from the south over the open plains. Lightning flashed in the distance and high winds started to blow the dirt from the field across the road. The radio talked about heavy hail south of Toowoomba. It looked really eerie – good thing we were turning off the hwy to go much further north with blue skies ahead of us and left the storm clouds and rain behind. We started climbing out of the plains up into a mountain range when it started to get dark. Luckily there were lots of signs directing us to the National Park campground at Dandabah – we got there and … rats hadn’t booked our camp site yet. To our surprise, the cell phone worked even here way in the middle of nowhere. While we set up the tent – in the complete dark – we noticed lightning flashing in the south and heard thunder all around us. Well, the storm had finally caught us with us after all. We managed to make camp just before the rain started but hadn’t cooked dinner yet. We could not find the cooking shelter in the dark but the rangers hut had a covered veranda and lights – nobody around. So we quickly grabbed all our cooking stuff and hid out under the roof. It did rain hard for about an hour or so and it was past 9PM before we finished dinner. Fortunately the rain lessened when we moved all our stuff back into the car and crawled into the tent.

 Day 3/44:

Fog lifting in the morning Dandabah in Bunya Mtn NP

Wallaby enjoying the nice grass

Bird wake up call at 5AM to a foggy morning. It even started to rain again but we found the campground cooking shelter so we were okay for breakfast. This time we had a satin bower bird check out our food. When the fog started to lift we could finally see our surroundings. The campground was a big open grassy field with wallabies and Crimson Rosella’s feeding on the grass. The grassy areas was less than 100m across until the big trees started – Hook Pine and Bunya Pine trees – neither of them real pine trees as we know of in Canada. Apparently Bunya Pines can grow pine cones the size of a football weighing up to 10kg. One has to watch out in the summer as not to get hit by one on the head – serious injuries are known to have occurred. We were safe as it was still spring in Australia. The fog was still hanging low in the trees which looked beautiful but… Jeff and I dressed for a rainy day.

It was already 7AM when we started our hike – taking the long route combining three hikes – Bunya Bunya track, Scenic circuit and Barker Creek circuit & lookout – to a ~14km walk through rain forest (not as dense and moist as Lamington but still beautiful), eucalyptus and grass tree forest as well as open grassland also known as “Balds” with cacti growing in the open. We made a game out of identifying all the Hoop and Bunya pines as they have a distinctive different bark. Along the way were supposed to be several spectacular waterfalls such as Festoon Falls, Tim Shea Falls, Big Falls, Little Falls and Paradise falls but except for the first two NONE of them actually had water in them – not sure were last nights rain went.

Hoop Pine trunk

Bunya Pine trunk

Bunya & Hoop pine tops

"Balds" - open areas covered with blue grass and cacti

View from m Mt Kiangarow

The sun came out after an hour into the hike and we started peeling off layers as it got quite hot in the open areas. The creek areas were moist and cool with lots of fern trees and other big leave plants I was used to see growing in pots only at the garden centres back home . We ran into some feral cats and a rock wallaby but luckily no big snake which are apparently quite common around here.  Back at the campsite at 11:30 we hung out in the sun for a while before hitting the road again. We continued on the drive through the park and stopped in at another short hike up to the highest point in the park – Mount Kiangarow which provided a nice view over the highland and plains below and lots of my favourite grass trees.

Next destination was Rainbow Beach – the gateway to spectacular Fraser Island – all the way back to the coast again. Bunya Mth NP has been quite a detour but we avoided Queensland’s busy Sunshine Coast – more known for it surf beaches and party life even though there are some nice sounding parks missed. Our route went through Kingaroy, Goomeri and Gympie – cattle ranch land and dry eucalyptus forests mostly. When we turned off the main highway towards Rainbow Beach we could see a lot of smoke in the air. A huge wild fire was ranging in nearby Cooloola National Park (apparently started by someone’s camp fire) – a park that had been on my list if not for the detour to Bunya Mtn. Turns out we once more made a lucky choice as most of Cooloola Park was closed due to the fire. In Rainbow Beach we needed to get a permit to visit Fraser Island – National Heritage site – the world’s largest sand island, 120km long and on average 15km wide – with over 200 inland lakes covered by mangroves, heathlands, eucalyptus and sub-tropical rain forest, known as K’gari to the Aboriginals meaning Paradise. No need to say more. Ah, maybe that the island is also known for its Dingo population. The only way to see it is by organized tours (big busses with room for 40 people) or rent a 4×4 as all the roads are made of, well sand. All my friends who had ever been to Fraser Island swore it’s the best place in the world to visit and driving there was fun. We decided against an organized tour and forked out the big bugs to rent a 4×4 for a couple of days. Unfortunately we arrived on a Saturday and the only vehicle left was a big Toyota Landcruiser with room for 8 (gas engine not diesel). As it was already afternoon we decided to start our island adventure the next day. By the way the 10min ferry ride it takes to get to the island was another huge expense, so was the permit. Queensland is much more expensive than Western Australia. We stocked up on groceries in town and headed to the nearest QPWS (Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services) campground on Inskip Point. Saw a dingo on the drive but since I thought we’ll see plenty more on the island I didn’t make Jeff stop to take a picture. The campground was PACKED – well it was a weekend. Since we still had our regular car till the next day we could only get into some of the many sections along the road – in most of them the sand was way too deep. We managed to squeeze our tent into a small spot in between a family of 5 from Germany and the fence – having to climb over the fence every time we needed something out of the car. Definitely not what we were used to but it’ll do for one night. So we thought – cars kept driving through the campground all night with their light shining right into our tent. If you hit the sack before 8PM that’s a long night, although it did eventually quiet down.

Day 4/45: The next morning we were up by 5AM. We had plenty of time to kill till 9AM before we could pick up the rental truck and take the ferry so that we hit the low tide that is needed to get onto the beach. Beach driving is only allowed until 2.5hrs before and after high tide – and most of the traveling is along the beaches.

Lake Poona in Cooloola NP

Rainbow Beach's swimming beach

Therefore, we decided to check out a little bit of Cooloola NP – the fires were supposed to be located in the southeast and we were at the most northern part. Nevertheless when we got to Bymien Picnic Area (that’s as far as the car would go) all the hikes were closed to potential wild fire hazard. Off course I ignored the warning signs and did a 4km return walk through the rain forest (with much more palm trees that Lamington and Bunya Mtn) to Poona Lake. A pretty lake nestled in the forest with clear water that’s stained brown from Tanin. Back in Rainbow Beach it was still only 8AM and we decided to check out the actual beach – blue sky and it was getting quite warm. The water looked great with a small surf coming in. We watched the locals body surfing those waves and tried it as well – lot’s of fun (there will be no swimming on Fraser Island due to hazardous currents and tide rips).

Beach HWY on Fraser Island

Jeff driving our Monster Truck onto the Barge at Inskip Point

Finally it was time to pick up the Landcruiser and head over to Fraser Island. We were a bit nervous about all the beach driving (given our experience in the southeast of Western Australia) but the rental people gave us a quick introductory drive on how to best navigate the sand in this huge vehicle an said that the worst part will be getting on and off the ferry. We packed all our stuff into the truck and headed for the ferry at Inskip Point. The paved road stopped shortly after Inskip Point campsite and one ended up on this huge beach from which you drive onto the ferry – which really is just a big barge. Jeff had no problem driving on and once we hit the beaches at Hook Point on the other side all our fear was gone. At low tide the beaches are as solid as paved roads – you only need to watch out for the creeks as the sand gets softer and sometimes even though it doesn’t look like a drop, the truck drops down into them with a big bang. We didn’t even have t engage 4×4 and were in 2WD all the way. And it was BEAUTIFUL hammering along the beach at 80km/h. The 10 cars that were on the same barge as us spread out pretty quickly and it looked like we have the whole place to ourselves – well except whenever we passed on of the several attractions along the beach. We skipped those on the way up and drove all the way to Indian Head – as much north as we’ll likely able to get within the 2 days.

View north from Indian Head

On top of Indian Head

Indian Head is the only rock on the island and offers fantastic views over the ocean and the sand dunes and forests inland. The colours are really spectacular. We saw dolphins, sharks, a turtle and some other larger fish swimming in the shallows from high up on the cliff. Only drawback – tons of people around, especially every time one of those 40-person tour busses stopped. We tried to head a bit further north but got stuck in the sand driving around Indian Head. Above the high tide line the sand does get really soft. It took us a couple tries but we made it – another hard packed beach for 200m till the start of another inland track. That one was a bit more tricky – big bump trying to get of the beach and it sounded like we are destroying the truck trying to make it over it.  Not that it wasn’t doable – lots of other trucks flew by but we decided to better check out the site further south we just speed by on the way up. There were beautiful yellow, orange and red colored sand cliffs to explore (such as “Red Canyon”, “The Pinnacles” and “The Gargoyles”) as well as the Mahena ship wreck and last but not least a dip in Eli Creek – to wash of the dust before dinner and a good chance to see Dingos. But the creek was busy again with other tourists and the wild Australian dogs seemed to be in hiding.

Red Canyon

Mahena Shipwreck

Eli Creek

Campsite near Mahena Shipwreck

As it was already near 4PM and the tide was coming up quickly we decided to look for a spot to camp. There are a lot of areas along the beach were you just pull into the dunes and find a spot to set up your tent. Pulling of the beach though meant deep sand again and we had to lower our tire pressure down to 16psi to make it up the small dune. But we had found the perfect spot (just north of the Mahena wreck) tugged in behind the dunes under a small Myrtle tree and nobody in sight. We went down to the beach and lay in the warm ocean for a while – no swimming remember. Back at the tent we slowly dried of in the setting sun while reading a book or doing puzzles before dinner. It got dark early again but it stayed quite warm. We spend time watching the stars lying on “our” beach listening to the surf before hitting the bags. Well, so far it looked like the money was well spent.  

Day 5/46:  

Sunrise on Fraser Island

Up at 5AM as usual and on the “road” by 6AM – well the tide was still high but enough drivable beach was left. Today we wanted to discover some of the lakes and the forest in the island’s interior.  There are two inland routes people are allowed to drive on and of course we wanted to do them both. We were told by some guys we met at the Mahena yesterday that the inland tracks are VERY sandy and that we should lower the tire pressure – well we already did that getting to our campsite. The sand wasn’t the only challenge – the tracks are only wide enough for one vehicle and are full of huge potholes and ruts when the ground got a bit harder. The track width didn’t bother us as we were early enough to avoid the crowd but the pot holes were bad enough to almost cause me a headache. On top of it the truck started smelling like gas all the time going slow. Nevertheless the northern forest drive was well worth exploring but the going was really slow. From heath to eucalyptus to rainforest: Banskia, red barked Crab Apple Trees, white barked Squiggly Gums, Picadilly Palms, Satinay Giants… From large sand dunes to lakes: Knifeblade Sandblow, Lake Allom with it’s freshwater turtles, weedy Boomerang Lakes and Lake Garawongera. The last stretch of track was very rough – a fallen tree was crossing the track and our tall trooper barely made it through beneath it. Finally we hit the beach again but it took us almost 4hrs for the maybe 40km drive – along the beach we covered over 100km in less than 2hrs.

Single track driving on the Northern Forest Drive

Knifeblade Sandblow

Freshwater turtle in Lake Allom

Boomerang Lakes

Crab Apple Gum - beautiful red bark

Squiggly Gum" tree - marks are left by the worm that burrows under the bark. At this time of year, the bark falls off and reveals the squiggles underneath

We had to skip the hike to Lake Wabby as it was too long for the time we had left (should have stayed 3 days) and we still wanted to see one of the gems – Birrabeen Lake. We left the beach again at one of the small resort towns on the island – Eurong. The southern forest trail is the more popular route and we thought the track might be in better shape – how wrong we were. Apparently it hadn’t rained in a LONG time and all island tracks were at their worst – I did believe that. It started out as a wide track with enough room for two vehicles – although barely enough for us and the huge 40-person bus which came barreling down the hill towards us. Shortly after the track narrowed again to a one way (not being classified as a one way though) and the sand got softer, the potholes deeper and the hills steeper. I did hid my head a couple times on the roof of the truck when we took a run at the sandy hills – which means quite a jump given that a landcruiser has a really high roof. Oh man, if they wouldn’t have told us at the rental place that these roads are fair game to drive on we would have thought we were off the track. But we got all the rewards when we finally reached Lake Birrabeen. Did I mention paradise before? We surely had found it: Crystal clear lake, deep blue color surrounded by white beach – and nobody there for the first little while. The sun was shining out of a cloudless sky and it was hot. We hung out for an hour, swimming, laying in the sun or walking along the sandy lake shore – I was still desperately looking for my dingos. But all I saw – in the middle, hottest time of the day – were some iguana tracks in the sand and a heron in the tree. Reluctantly we left the lake as we had to get of the island today and return our monster truck. The track continued to be a rough and we took another break from being jostled around at Lake Boomanjin – just as beautiful and clear as Lake Birrabeen but coffee brown in colour, stained by Tanin again. The camping area on the lake was actually fenced in to keep the dingos away from the campers – and I still hadn’t seen a single animal.

Sandy track through heath

Pothole alley through the rainforest

Lake Birrabeen

Lake Boomanjin

We hit the beach again at 3:30PM trying to catch the ferry at 4PM – but racing along the beach was easy and relaxing after the ordeal on the inland tracks! We made it to the ferry in time, dropped of the truck (after gassing it up – gosh it used a lot of gas, way worse than our Nissan Petrol Diesel in WA and I am sure I breathed in half of it) and camped again at Inskip Point for the night as it was too late and we were too tired to find another spot (we planned to make it to Bundaberg/Mon Repos that night to watch the sea turtles come up and lay their eggs on the beach but oh well). The campsite was much more quite that night – after all it was a weekday now.

Australia Report – WA Part 8

This is the last post for Western Australia – last 3 days, sigh. But we are not done yet with traveling through Australia – 18 more days to go through tropical Queensland, yeah.

It took a while to write it all up so far and I am sure it takes a while to read it allas well. If you feel like you want to see a million more pictures from WA check out these links:

http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/AustraliaWesternAustraliaPartI20Oct11Nov2009

http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/AustraliaWesternAustraliaPartII20Oct11Nov2009

Day 21/39 (Nov 9, 2009): It was still dark when the birds woke us up – and it was really loud. I climbed out of the tent before 5am to see what all the raucous is about.

What a mess!!!

The culprit - a whole flock of Black Cockatoos

Brittle limestone cliffs in Hamlin Bay

Early morning - the beach was all ours

A whole flock of Black Cockatoos were indulging themselves on those red flowers all around us – literally making a mess spilling them all onto the grass below. Initially it was too dark to take pictures but they stuck around long enough for some good shots – too many if you ask Jeff who already had breakfast, brushed his teeth and put the tent away by the time I was done taking pictures J. As usual it was early when we left the caravan park – most people were still asleep. From here on we traveled north along the Cave Rd. The area between Cape Leeuwin and Cape Naturaliste is known for its good wines, its limestone caves and beautiful surf beaches – we were now back to the Pacific Ocean. It was too early for wine or the caves (not open yet) so we started with checking out some beaches first. The limestone cliffs looked quite a bit different than the rounded granite we were used seeing along the Southern Ocean.  The beaches were just as beautiful and empty early in the morning as they were along the south coast – and it was too cold to go for a swim. I am sure I saw my breath when we got up in the morning. Continuing on driving through some medium size Karri forest and wine country we made it to Lake Cave – one of the most popular limestone caves – for the first scheduled tour. The guided tour wasn’t cheap but we hadn’t really spent much so far on our trip expect for gas and food. First we had to climb down into this huge sink hole or “doline” to get to the cave opening. Apparently the roof caved in 500-600 years ago.

Lake Cave opening (doline)

The famous suspended table - reflections in the lake

Lake Cave straws

 Inside the cave was one big chamber with most of the floor covered in water – hence the name “Lake Cave”. All around and above us were very beautiful looking limestone creations (caltrate or calcium carbonate) – stalactites, stalagmites, straws and shawls – the most impressive formation was a large table suspended over the lake attached to the ceiling by a large stalactite.With caltrate being a very dense material the whole things must weight a couple tons. I also like the myriads of thin straws hanging from the ceiling. Apparently native to the lake are unique little crayfish but with the water level is constantly dropping – faster over the last few year – and researchers believe those creatures will soon disappear forever. Nobody really knows why the water started to drop quicker in recent years than it has done over hundreds of year before that – they are still looking into ways of saving this unique ecosystem. Just adding fresh water from somewhere else could introduce all sorts of “foreign” things.

Conto's - famous surf beach

The area is most know for its good wines - we didn't have any

Next on the list were a couple more beaches – Conto’s and Margret River Mouth. Jeff wanted to try surfing since this is THE surf spot in WA. So we stopped in Prevelly but lessons started at $120 for an hour – didn’t seem worth it. Stopped at Channel Rocks to look at the current raging through the rocks – first time I heard Jeff mention kayaking since we left NSW. It also looked like a good snorkeling spot but people at the campsite last night suggested to go to Yallingup. But when we got there the water was too rough over the quite shallow reef and we figured we’ll leave any further snorkeling to QLD. We decided to do another cave tour instead – Ngilgi Cave. Here the tour was self-guided and you could spend as much time in the cave as you wanted to. This cave was entered through a tiny hole and was all in all narrower but with multiple chambers – tones of cool looking multi-coloured shawls lit up from behind by dim yellow lights creating colours all the way from light orange to red-brown. We stayed for quite a while. It’s a mythical place:

Ngilgi Cave entrance - for the sporty types

Beautiful shawls

Like running water...

The big chamber

Arboriginal Art: Ngilgi chasing Wolgine out of the cave

“The Story Of Ngilgi

Ngilgi Cave is associated with a rich Aboriginal legend describing a battle between a good and an evil spirit. The local Wardandi people tell the story as: Ngilgi, a good warrior spirit, lived near the sea and Wolgine, an evil spirit, lived in the cave. Concerned for the welfare of his people, Ngilgi gathered together the spirits of the waves, lightning, rain, thunder and wind and they created a huge storm. Ngilgi attacked Wolgine and he gradually drove Wolgine back through the cave. So fierce was the battle that a tunnel collapsed, cutting the cave off from the sea.

The collapsed tunnel can still be seen today as a deep gully a short distance from the cave. Eventually Wolgine was driven up through the earth creating the present entrance. Wolgine was banished from the cave and Ngilgi claimed it as his own thus the cave became known as Ngilgis Nurilem (cave).”

We spent the night on a private campground near the last cave – not as nice as the last one but better than some other choices around. And we were able to do some laundry. I was awake half the night scratching my mosquito bites from the day before. 

Day 22/40: Kookaburra wake-up call at 4:30am – hihahahahaha, not funny. We started the day off with a walk around Cape Naturaliste – the bush around the lighthouse had burned down completely a few weeks early – a few green sprouts were just starting to grow.

Lighthouse at Cape Naturaliste - landscape recovering from recent fire

Great views over the Indian Ocean - even saw some humpback whales

My favourite grass trees seemed to be under the first plans to come back to life again. The cliffs offered a great view over the ocean and we finally got to see whales again – humpbacks traveling south to their feeding grounds. Apparently the Bay starting to the right of the Cape – Geographe Bay is a resting place for humpback, southern wrights and blue whales on their migration routes from the northern breeding grounds to the feeding grounds in the south. Continuing driving towards Perth we kept hugging the shore as much as possible rather than taking the highway – that way we discovered Eagle Bay and the beaches along Mellup Rd. THAT’s the place I want to live. The ocean was calm, it was a warm day, we saw humpback whales resting just 100m off the beach – mom seemed to be dosing off just with the tail sticking out of the water while her calve circled around her having to breathe way more often. One could spend hours just watching them. At the next beach on route – Meelup Beach – Jeff went for a swim in the ocean – not far enough out to get to the whale though, I am sure he didn’t even see it – and I went for a walk along the flat coast to take pictures of the plants around and the whales off course from the few vantage points I could find.

Eagle Bay - Jeff and I will move there one day

Beautiful beaches

...and swimming with the humpback whales - except Jeff doesn't know there is a whale in the background

Between Meelup Beach and Castle Rock

As usual our schedule pressed us to continue on – having penguins on the agenda for tomorrow. The rest of the day was spent driving up a 2 lane in each direction highway – our GPS didn’t know that it existed – until we reached the town of Rockingham, less than 50km or so south of Perth. This was our last night in WA and although our flight wasn’t till late the next evening we wanted to be not too far away from the airport. The travel guide made this coastal suburb sound like THE spot to go for a day trip from Perth – with great snorkeling and an island just of shore with the smallest penguin in the world.

Shoalwater Marine Park - Rockigham.

Let’s put it like this – those travel guides lie. The snorkeling wasn’t great. For once it was too rough or too shallow and murky with eel grass and some other lettuce like looking marine fauna being the only things to see. Secondly only one of us could snorkel at a time since the other person had to watch the truck. Apparently we were in drug and crime central – as one of the security guards that was checking the beaches frequently told us about. The guy was a bit of a nerd I thought – complaining too much about gun and smoking laws in Australia, as examples of OZ being a police state. Well the later might be true but the examples I thought weren’t proofing his point. He was an emigrant from Poland, in the country for about 18 years. I almost offered to swap places with him but I am sure he would call Canada a police state as well given our gun and smoking laws. But his advice about the break-ins was appreciated. On to top of all this we found out that those penguins I really wanted to see are only to be seen in the discovery centre on that island – hardly ever in the wild – and only in the mornings during feeding time. They spend the day in burrows in the ground.  And of course we had missed that show by the time we got into town at around 2pm. Great, why didn’t we stay in Eagle Bay? And of course it was my fault since I was the travel guide in Jeff’s eyes.  We decided to stay in town for the early tour to the penguins the next morning. The campgrounds we found were by far the worst we had seen so far – crowded with big permanent trailers – Perth’s weekend getaways I guess. We found a tiny spot cramped right next to the only other tent in the park. Well at least everyone around us was very friendly and we got rid of some of the stuff we couldn’t take with us onto the plane – like the fuel canister we never used and the water canisters we did use a lot. At least it was quiet. For the budget travelers – Rockingham is not a place to linger.

Day 23/41: Our last day in WA dawned foggy and grey. We were up early as usual and packed all our gear for the flight to Brisbane that night. But even though it took a while we were still too early for the first boat to the penguin island. So I finally gave up on seeing my penguins. We left this weird town and headed north past Perth to Yanchep National Park. If you remember from Day 1 in WA, we had passed it that day but decided not to stop. Since we had all day today we thought we’ll rectify that mistake rather than walking around a whole day in Perth – we are not city people. And was that ever worth it. The weather improved considerably as we drove past Perth. The park itself has a botanical garden as well as a Koala sanctuary next to wilderness areas. The koalas are not in cages but roam the tall trees as if they were in the wild (okay it is some sort of fenced in area but nicely done so you don’t feel like being in a cage). And you really had to look around to find the animals sleeping high up in the trees – just as difficult to see as in the wild. We managed to discover 15 out of the resident 17 animal but it took a while. Next we went for a longer walk through the bush – I fell in love with this type of bush on day one and I still am. The sun was out and it was hot – flies were also out in huge numbers.

Yanchep NP Botanical Garden - Red bushy flower

Tiny orange flowers

Big yellow Banskia

Koala Sanctuary

That does not look comfortable

You can almost see the whole animal

Now that looks more comfortable

Playful Galahs

Kookaburra

Jeff walking through the bush - it was a hot day!

We stayed till just after 1pm having lunch under an eucalyptus tree before we headed back into town. Our GPS got as lost one last time in WA – looks like the same address is used in multiple towns all with a similar name – weird. We washed the truck which took some time, return it to the rental outfit, went to the airport and dropped off all the luggage – Virgin Blue was really nice about us checking in luggage more than 5 hrs before our flight at 11pm. Instead of hanging out at the airport for that long we took the bus back into Perth. The whole trip so far I always had a plan what to do, where to go etc – except I didn’t spend any time on what one could do in Perth for 5hrs. We got off the bus somewhere around Kings Park. We walked around aimlessly at first but finally made it to the part where you have a great view over the city and the Swan River from high up.

Cleaning up after 23 days of dust, sand and mud. The truck sure was a good idea!!

Downtown Perth

We followed the cliff for a while before climbing down a steep trail – Kokoda trail – hoping to get to the water. But a big highway was in the way. So we slowly made our way back towards the downtown area to find a place to eat – not the most scenic walk. The Lonely Planet Guide wasn’t too helpful finding restaurant offering only had limited choices – plus our feet were getting sore from all the walking by now. So we picked the first place we could find. Some trendy, wanna be high-end, downtowny place with small portions for lots of money. Food was okay but after 21 days of one pot meals I was looking for something different. We continued walking through the by now mostly shut down downtown area and FINALLY came to a ice cream shack – now that was good ice cream and the guys were joking with us which lifted our spirits again (never mind the couple Thai and Indian places we so on the way). After we finished our ice it started to drizzle again and it was finally time to say good bye to Western Australia. What a great country to explore – not enough time to see it all. We’ll be back again for sure.

Australia Report – WA Part 7

Day 19/37 (Nov 7, 2009): I must haven fallen asleep eventually since I was woken up by the Kookaburra again – his laughing call didn’t sound so funny today. We got up to a cloudy day and quickly had breakfast planning to drive by the teens tent rev-ing up our big diesel engine a couple time. Unfortunately those guys were already getting up by the time we left and started to crank up the music. We swallowed our thirst for revenge and just left – not before we actually saw the bunnies all over the grassy section of the campground, first and only evidence that the Rabbit-Proof-Fence really did fail.

Typical Southwest farmland

View from Conspicious Cliff in the rain

 We headed west through scenic farmland towards Warpole-Nornalup NP. First stop was Conspicuous Cliff to have a lookout for Southern Wright Whales – but we were too late in the season. In addition it started pouring rain while we walked up from the parking lot. Otherwise this would have been a wonderful spot to hang out. Sandy cliffs covered in purple and white flowers with great views over the ocean and a beautiful sandy beach below. Instead we ran back to the truck and left for one of the biggest attraction of the Southwest – the start of the giant karri forest around Warpole-Nornalup. And big they were but also wet. And it looked like those forest are mostly explored by car rather than hiking trails. And on top of that, the biggest attraction in the area – The Giant Tree

Valley of the Giants - Walpole-Nornalup NP

Rosella near Coalmine Beach on Knoll Drive

Giant Tingle Tree

Top Walk was still closed since we got there well before 8am – it opened at 9am – so much for trying to beat the crowds today. Instead of waiting around for it to open we continued driving through Warpole-Nornalup NP which isn’t really one big continuous park but small patches all around the area. We headed back to the coast and explored Knoll Drive and Coalmine Beach – the sun even came out for a little bit lighting up some nice flowering bushes and a lorikeet with colors I hadn’t seen before. Next we headed up Hill-Top Rd towards Circular Pool and the Giant Tingle Tree. The Giant Tingle Tree has been a tourist attraction for centuries – families used to drive their Westfalia camper vans into the bottom of the tree. Now all that is left is an old, burned out looking although still big stump. Circular Pool is part of the Frankland River. Its waters are really brown but not from mud like the Fraser but Tannin, a chemical leaching from decaying leaves. Add Saponin, another chemical found in the trees around and you get the perfect cappuccino – it makes the water really frothy-foamy – as seen in the rapids just above Circular Pool.

Rapids above Circular Pool

For Jeff and I the main find was yet another kind of lizard we hadn’t seen before but he was really shy. I would have loved to explore more of the Frankland River System and get more off the beaten track but we were schedule to continue heading west. Instead of taking the main highway though we took another one of those dirt road “short cuts”. For the most part the road was really good even though it was wet. The sun was shining through the clouds more often now and I was looking forward to having lunch on the ocean. We were heading to West Cliff Point in D’Entrecasteux National Park – another one of those ExplorerOZ 4×4 tracks. Track was narrow, bumpy and sandy in sections so we were glad that we had lowered our tire pressure to 30psi. We were soon leaving the giant trees behind us and the drive went through groves of small trees, swamp and bush with lots of yellow, purple and red flowers. The going was slow but we got to the beach just before noon. We didn’t drive onto the beach but walked

West Cliff Point and Fish Creek Beach

Spring along the Southern Ocean - the coast is covered in purple or pink flowers

the rest through low sand dunes covered in purple bushes instead. To our surprise, we weren’t the only ones there. A couple trucks were loading a small fishing boat at the other end of the beach. After having lunch on the beach we headed away from the ocean toward Shannon National Park. There are a LOT of National Parks in the Southwest – covering a vast area. The scenery changed back to really tall eucalyptus trees again and we stopped for a couple walks along the road. We did quite a bit of driving today and were glad to stretch our legs once in a while.  We could have stayed in Shannon NP for the night but the NP campground didn’t look that exciting – just an open areas of grassland – and it was busy again. We continued on west passing by Northcliffe through a mix of big tree forested areas and farmland towards Warren National Park. According to the Aussies we met in the Stirling Range, there was a nice spot in the park, called Draftys, with good camping along

Camp at Draftys - Warren NP

 the Warren River. Warren NP is also part of the Karri Forest Explorer for which the little town of Pemberton, WA not BC, is so famous for. But that’s for tomorrow. In order to get to the campsite we had to crawl down a steep hill on gravel road – no problem but I was surprised they would allow regular cars on it. The area was covered in tall eucalyptus and the campsite was as promised right along the river. We weren’t alone but here the sites were spread far apart from another and surrounded by tree so you couldn’t really see your neighbours – and more importantly you couldn’t hear them! We didn’t get a spot right on the river but found a great little area surrounded by cork trees and good soft soil to camp on. The river was pretty nice – slow moving and surrounded by tall trees. The swimming platform tempted me to go for a swim but it was getting cool quickly now that the sun was gone.  It also got really dark really quick underneath the trees but that only helped us to have a restful, quiet night and a good sleep.

Day 20/38: We had a cute visitor joining us for breakfast today. A Kookaburra sat in a nearby tree and was watching

Kookaburra - looking for some breakfast

Warren River in the early morning

us – or so we thought. But in reality he was watching out for little lizards we scared out of the leaves on the ground. I never thought about what they would eat, being pretty large bird, but I was still surprise see them catching small lizards (the 10cm variety). We started the day off with a little walk along the river to maybe see some wildlife – the smaller cousins in the kangaroo family – in the early morning hours. The fog was hanging low in the trees and the river looked very pretty in the early light but we didn’t see anything alive except for spiders and small lizards – guess 6am is already too late in the spring. Today was Karri Forrest Explorer Day – a driving route through 3 more or less adjacent National Parks (Warren, Gloucester, Beedelup) with their main attraction all being those tall eucalyptus or gum trees: Karri – the tallest tree in Western Australia (up to 90m) and after the Redwoods the second tallest in the world is easily distinguishable by its whitish green bark which it sheds every summer – really looks like what I think an eucalyptus should look like with shreds of thin but smooth bark hanging of it. Marri trees have a really dark bark – almost look burned – with the most distinct feature being the really dark red tree sap. The bark of the Jarrah looks almost like our local cedars – more textured than the other two and also darkish. Jeff and I made a game of trying to name all the trees while driving past. Our first stop though was the Bicentennial Tree – a 75m tall Karri that you can climb up into the tree top. There are two of those climbable trees in the park – the Gloucester Tree is the more known one but also a touch less tall.

Bicentennial Tree

And up we go

Above the treeline - 75m high up in the air.

And back down

Since it was still early and the Bicentennial Tree happened to be in Warren NP just up the steep hill from our campsite we were the first people to arrive – cool!!! Jeez it was tall – to climb it there were metal rods stuck in the tree stump circling up all the way to the top with a couple platforms along the way to rest and explore the different layers in the forest. No net and no rope. I was a bit nervous at first but the higher we got the more confident we were. The view from the top was amazing – being above the tree tops overlooking the vast forested area surrounding us. A couple Black Cockatoos were flying by at eye level. The climb down was just as “easy” as up but if you are afraid of heights it might be a good idea to explore the forest floor instead – very lush and green and plenty of flowers in the spring. We continued on with the drive stopping at most of the attractions along the way such as The Cascades and Beedelup Falls. We were done before lunch – well I guess we could have taken more time but the sites were getting more and more crowded. To stick to our “tradition” of finding a nice lunch spot on some empty beach along the Southern Ocean we decided to do one last 4×4 ExplorerOZ trip to Warren Beach. It was described as an easy drive to and onto the beach – with the only hurdle to maybe get of the beach again – but nothing like the warnings we read about in other beach trips we avoided to date. It started out like yesterdays trip to the beach with a narrow but quite doable 4×4 track. We got stopped by a couple trucks on the road letting air out of their tires. We talked to them about the track and they said it gets quite sandy but with low air pressure (18-20psi) it shouldn’t be a problem looking at our truck.  So this time we decided to go the whole way! Knowing we weren’t the only ones heading that way also helped making the final decision – it being a weekend I guess the local are heading out to the beach as well. We walked ahead a bit to look at the road – what road? It turned into a huge expanse of soft white sand as far as you could see – sandblow. A couple long posts seemed to be the only indication that there would be a road to follow. A bit intimidating if you ask me but we watched the two trucks that were ahead of us gun it up the small slope to get on top of the dune.  Looked EASY!

Up over the first sand blow

So off went, letting air out of our tires down to 20psi – as the guys said – and gunned it up the sand dune. Sure enough, we made it. It felt weird and the truck seemed to be swimming on the soft sand. Once up the small rise it was relatively flat with great views across the sand and blue sky in the background.  We were all excited about finally driving across the soft sand that was so typical for this part of the world –it sure was one of those sandblows since no ocean was in sight yet. The wind was blowing hard across the sand and trying to hide the tracks in front of us – luckily there were those posts. We made it across without any incident and were back driving though low bush in no time. It didn’t take long though until we came over a small rise and looked down this huge expanse of sand with the ocean about 50-100m below us, still a couple kms away. While still enjoying the incredible view and before being able to say a word Jeff started to head down the big sandy slope.

Looking down towards Warren Beach and the ocean - a long sandy way down.

It looked about as steep as the last little rise we had conquered on the way so far but it certainly was a couple hundred meters longer. But I guess we were committed now and lunch at this beautiful beach below us looked like a wonderful idea – certainly still to far away to walk it. The drive down was simple. Just before the beach we got into the actual beach dunes covered with the ever so present purple flower coat before we dropped over a small rise down a steep short stretch right onto the white beach – beach as far as you could see either way. We made it!!! We parked our truck right on this beautiful white beach along the Southern Ocean with the sun high in the blue sky – and had lunch. We could see more cars along the beach in the far distance but we had our little section all to ourselves. I quickly forgot about my concern about getting back up that big sandy slope and enjoyed the scenery. The water seemed a bit too rough to go for a swim – also those long shallow beaches are known for treacherous tide rips so we figure we stay safely on the beach and only get our feet wet. This is life!!!! Too bad we only had a couple days left in WA and couldn’t stay for the night.

Parked on a beach at last - lunch time

What came down must go up - maybe...it was steeper than in looks in the picture

Eventually we had to get going since our next destination was still a couple hundred kilometers away. We jumped into the truck and drove back to where we entered the beach. Wwwrooom – up the little hill and STUCK. We didn’t even make it up this 5 meter long incline off the beach, oops. Ah, we probably didn’t have enough speed to get up. We backed up and tried once more and got STUCK again, while chewing up the track real bad. Okay, let’s analyze the situation carefully. Backed up for a 2^nd time and while we were eying the “hill” three trucks came running up the beach and drove up the “hill” with no problem and were gone…… What the heck!!!??? Ah, tire pressure – the guy earlier had said 18-20psi and we only lowered ours to 20psi. So let’s see what a couple less psi will do for us. Wwwrooom and STUCK. Now I got worried – maybe we’ll stay the night after all? Nah – I could still see people far away up the beach. We can always ask for help. We tried again backing up even further to gather more speed. Wwwrooom and STUCK. What the ….!!!??? Okay, more air out of the tires – our tires are skinnier than the ones we’d seen on most trucks around here. 16psi. Wwwrooom, engine rev-ing high at 5000RPM, well in the red zone and YEAH we made it. We were grinning like mad and thought the worst is over – free sailing from hereon. Well, almost. We got to the big sandy slope I mentioned earlier and started driving up it. No problem, we are almost at the top, just one small turn and over the last a little rise and STUCK. Not enough, speed – didn’t even get close to the red RPM zone. Try again, a bit different line. Wwwrooom and STUCK. While we backed up again for the x-st time today another truck – same model as ours – passed us up the slope and just hopped over the last rise disappearing into the distance. Okay – it is obviously not the truck that can’t make it up the hill….. Maybe more air out of the tires. 14psi – almost looked like we had a flat tire already. Wwwrooom and STUCK. Jeff was cursing loud while I was looking around the slope for a different way out or maybe a good place to put up a tent for the night after all. One last try, we still had air in the tires so down we went to 12psi. Engine roaring in 4L at 5000RPM – wwwroooom and YEAH, we made it at last. My heart was beating hard in my chest as if I had just done a 500m sprint in my K1. This lunch break turned out to be our best adventure yet. While driving along the narrow trail towards the first sandblow – which will be easy after this – we ran in a mother and daughter walking towards us. They were coming back to check on us – they were in the other Nissan Patrol passing us on the sandy slope and saw the RENTAL sign on our truck. Well they didn’t say it but I am sure they were thinking it – stupid tourists J. Well, I still thought it was very nice of them to come back for us. We offered them a ride back to their truck which was parked a bit up the road where the track was wide enough to pull off but they declined – probably not to keen to experience our driving skills in person. We continue on and stopped at their truck to chat with the dad. Apparently 12psi is the magic number to get of that beach – all locals know it. The dad was nice though saying that when he first moved here from NSW he got stuck as well. It’s a different type of sand here in the southwest – very round and it doesn’t pack at all – one just keeps sinking deeper and deeper. Low tire pressure and speed is essential to stay on top of it. On the east coast he says the sand is more flat and packs nicely into a hard layer to drive on. We felt a bit less stupid leaving him to wait for the girls not after thanking him many times over for stopping for the dumb tourists. I was thinking about taping up the rental sign after this episode but we were done with ExplorerOZ type adventures anyhow. We had no problem crossing the sandblow, even stopped to pick up a couple walkers who had to park their 2WD car a ways away – Jeff from all over Australia and Mariana from –guess– Germany.

Getting some air back into our almost flat tires

Back at the spot where they left their car we finally had to get some air back into our nearly flat tires. All we had was a double action foot pump. Next to us those Aussies that passed us getting of the beach way back when were still blowing up their tires with a nice little electrical compressor. Well their compressor wasn’t as little as the piece of junk we had die on us back at Lefroy Beach near the start of our trip. Again I was wishing I had taped up our RENTAL sign on the truck seeing those guys giving us sorry looks when pumping up four tires from 12 psi to 45psi with our foot pump. But we – well Jeff all male ego – managed, stopping at 28psi – good enough to get us to the next gas station – and it actually didn’t take that long either. Never mind, that those jacka… never offered us their compressor when they were done and just kept watching us obviously enjoying the show – reality TV in its finest. Soon after we were back on the paved highway driving through farmland and wine country all the way to the most southwestern point in WA – Cape Leeuwin.

Where the Southern and Indian Ocean meet - Cape Leeuwin

We made it to the lighthouse just before 4:45pmand they closed at 5pm – yup, we are now in total tourist country with fences and entry fees for just about everything. But since we were so late they let us in for free – I love the Aussies!!! Just enough time to run to the point where the Southern Ocean meets the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t really tell where one ocean ended and the  other one started but it was a pretty spot in the low sun nonetheless.

We spent the night on a private campsite in Augusta – Flinders Bay Caravan Park – a nice enough spot with a grassy patch for the tent near the washrooms and tall bushes with bushy red flowers all around and the beach just behind those bushes. Being near the washrooms comes in handy at night if you camp in the company of others – can’t just go behind the tent any longer. Only not so nice thing – hordes of mosquitoes.

Australia Report – WA Part 6

Day 16/34 (Nov 4, 2009): It had been a while since we were woken up by birds. 4AM was when the concert started and we listened to it for an hour before getting up. The sun was shining although it was still cool. I finally had my first hot shower after too many days without and it took a while to get all the dirt and dust off. After breakfast we continued on south through Ravensthorpe all the way to Hopetoun where we turned off into Fitzgerald River National Park – apparently one of the most diverse parks in WA for flora and fauna, situated right along the Southern Ocean. The south coast of WA is known for its really fine and really white sand – it’s like flour. And with the turquoise ocean, dunes

Mt East Barren & the Southern Ocean in Fitzgerald River NP

Four Mile Beach with a dead Humpback Whale

covered in purple and white flowers and a blue sky in the background it looks just fabulous. The first beach we stopped at we saw a dead humpback whale – no swimming allowed. The next beach was closed to recent fire damage – a theme that will come up quite often while traveling in this park. Off the beach the park is mostly covered in low bush or heath – lots of it in blossom. The most unique plant is the Royal Hakea – which looks like a very tall lettuce to me.

Royal Halekea

Another thing specific to this park are a couple “mountains”. Okay they are only a few hundred meters high but the rest of the country is soooo flat that they look like mountains. Although it was sunny it really was too cold to go for a swim. Instead we decided to hike up the first mountain in sight – East Mount Barren. We had done so much driving lately that our legs were looking forward to some exercise.  The hike up was easy enough – only 311m elevation from the parking lot. Before hitting the trail though you had to clean of your boots – to prevent the spread of dieback, a fungus which is slowly destroying the native plant life which is a real shame. So Jeff and I carefully scrubbed of all the loose dirt from our shoes. The park information guide said the hike would take 2-3hrs but we were up in 30min. We would have been even quicker but for me having to stop a million times to take pictures. The whole mountain looks like made of sparkling quartz with LOTS of pretty flowers and blooming bush in between. My favourites were the green spiky “trees” with the bright red, bushy flowers – they

From the top of East Mount Barren looking west over the park

One of my MANY favourite plants

Mountain Frog

Mountain Flowers

looked just like Christmas trees. And the view from the top was just AMAZING, overlooking the ocean to the south, Hopetoun to the east, and green plains as far as you could see to the west and north – interrupted only by a couple more peaks – Mid Mount Barren and West Mount Barren (the aboriginal names are more creative – Narpulgurup and Queelup). It was also VERY windy up top and Jeff nearly lost his hat. The most peculiar sight was a frog wedge into the cliffs right near the top of the mountain –it really looked out of place so far away from any source of water. In comparison the iguana guarding the trail was less of a surprise so were the tons of tiny lizards all over the place. Even though we spent quite some time enjoying the view on top and taking millions of pictures – which by now started to annoy Jeff – we were done with the hike in less than 90min. The plan was to continue on to the west side of the park and spent the night at some remote camp on the ocean near Point Charles at the end of a long 4×4 track. But in order to get there we had to leave the parks east side

Hamersley Inlet

and come back in from the west. The whole center is a real remote area with restricted access only by helicopter or foot. We took in a bit more of the eastern landscape exploring Hamersly inlet and Hamersly drive.  55km highway driving and a few bobtails later we entered the park through its western entrance. The information sign at the

Western section of Fitzgerald River HP

entrance told us that the camp we wanted to go to was closed due to flood damage. In addition the only other 4×4 track in the park was closed to wild fire damage. Personally I just had the suspicion that the park rangers just didn’t want to patrol the remote sites in the off-season (the only other 4×4 access camp on the east side was also closed). Oh well, so we headed to Point Ann instead – apparently the greatest place on earth to spot some whales. And of course I made Jeff stop for plenty of pictures on the way – I can tell you he was getting even more annoyed. Most of the park actually looked like it was recently destroyed by fire – some areas were just starting to green up again. Some bright red and funny shape flowers were sprouting

Point Ann Lookout

out of the ash covered and white soil. Fire is a common occurrence in the park and rangers actually set it on purpose to keep the bush low and manageable and prevent real serious wildfires.  When we reached the camp at St Mary’s Inlet it wasn’t as empty as we wished but neither was it as busy as I feared with it being the ONLY open campsite on this side of the park. We found an okay spot even though the wind was blowing right into it.  Luckily there was a cooking shelter across from it and protected from the wind. It was still early and Jeff headed off to the beach while I walked along the cliffs to the whale watching platform – but no luck seeing any whales. Walking back along the white sand beach I found Jeff hiding behind a rock. The wind was really howling by now and also quite cold.  Dinner was made a bit more unpleasant having bullet ants chasing around our feet – apparently their bite REALLY hurts. The wind tugged on the tent all night long – but it held up well.

Day 17/35: I just missed the sunrise this morning getting up at 4:50AM. Jeff still needed some “time off” of driving and picture taking and went to the beach on his own. I walked off north towards St Mary River Inlet. Saw lots of

Lots of Kangaroos in the park

Rabbit-Proof-Fence

Flowers everywhere around Point Ann

kangaroos sticking their heads up out of the bushes as well as a really tiny but brilliant blue colored bird.  After breakfast we broke camp again and drove to the actual Point Ann to do the “Heritage Walk” along the Rabbit Proof Fence to where it meets the Southern Ocean. Again, no whales but lots of pretty flowers along the way.  Next on the list was hiking up West Mount Barren (372m), again a very nice hike similar but different somehow from yesterdays hike – great views and hundreds of different plants. One of the highlights was the snake on the trail. And finally we did get to do some 4×4 driving in the park making our way to Gordon Inlet. The track was in quite good conditions till we hit the soft sand and didn’t want to risk getting stuck. So we walked the rest of the way to the ocean. The actual inlet was closed off from the ocean by an endless looking expanse of white sand.

More mountain flowers

On top of West Mount Barren

Snake on the trail

Gordon Inlet

Getting our feet wet in the Southern Ocean

We walked up the couple hundred meters across it until we hit the ocean. The sun came out and it looked just beautiful – even better, not a soul in sight. We spent some time exploring the beach, having lunch. The water was too rough and cold to go for a swim but that didn’t bother us at all -lots of “stuff” to explore on the beach. Unfortunately, our/mine relentless schedule didn’t allow us to stay over night. Never mind the distances between sites in the Southwest being so much less than anywhere else in WA, there are just so may too explore – hard to pick the “right” ones without knowing what’s down the road. Instead of back tracking the good trail we decided to follow the OZ explorer instructions that promised a short cut leaving the park. We got into some pretty rough tracks but made it to Whale Point – an old or maybe not so old but just deserted fishing camp. After that we got lost in the millions of tracks in the area – none of which seemed to go the direction we wanted (and of course we didn’t have a detailed enough map and our GPS was useless as well). At the end we had to back track a little bit. On the way we came across another oddity in this vast landscape of bush and ocean – a so called “sandblow” – big sand dunes in the middle of the bush constantly

On top of the sandblow

being moved and reshaped by wind – hence one of the roads we ended up trying ran right into it. It almost looks like a dessert in the middle of the green bush and it offers great views over the land. Did I mention yet that I was actually driving – I would have

Can't take pictures while driving

Rough Road

 rather taken pictures but Jeff was happy enough that we didn’t have to stop every couple hundred meters. It took a while until we hit a surfaced road again but after that it was an easy drive through Southwestern Australian farm land, featuring fields, milk cows and sheep. Our next destination was the Stirling Range National Park, real mountains this time.  One could see them from quite far off sticking out of the flat countryside. When we reached the only campsite in the national park by 5:30-6:00PM that night it was already full with maybe 8-10 small groups and families. Luckily the resident ranger found us a little corner to set up camp.  While preparing dinner we got to chat with most of the campers around. Except for one other couple, we were the only non-Australians. All quite interesting characters:  A family of 7 that had been traveling down from Katherine, NT. They were staying in a small tent trailer – 6 weeks and counting. The little girls (all 5 kids were girls – I guess they were really trying for a boy)  were collecting eucalyptus nuts for us as presents. We had to promise that we take them with us – so I tied one to my hat (it’s still there and the others are probably still in the rental truck).  A not so old looking but apparently retired guy that is traveling through OZ by motorhome and motorcycle.  And last but not least a “local” family from Perth. It took them 14 days to get to the Stirling Range – we had less than 6 left. There is just too much to see. We got a few good tips for places to stay on the way to Perth.

Day 18/36: Today the Kookaburra woke us up at 4am – its song did not sound as pretty as yesterday’s concert but for sure the louder and more distinctive, it’s laughing at us. We had a hard time to decide which of the many hikes to do since we only had 1 day in the park (who planned that damnit!!). At the end we settled on the most popular one “Bluff Knoll” –

Overlooking the Stirling Range from the Bluff Knoll parking lot

Bluff Knoll

with 1095 meters the highest mountain in the park and with 6km return a moderate steep hike that the guide said would take 3-4 hours. We hit the parking lot at the foot of the mountain at 6:30am to beat the crowds and we did. Only one other car in the lot but we never saw the owners anywhere. The view even from the parking lot of the mountain and the surrounding plain was stunning. We started the hike under a blue sky and sunshine. Jeff was sprinting ahead not wanting to wait for me taking pictures. I tried to keep up thinking I’ll take my pictures on the way down – well at least the majority but he was gone out of sight pretty quick. Initially the trail led through a low eucalyptus forest and looked more like a paved highway than a trail. Eventually it started to climb up the side of the mountain. The views got better and better but were mostly disturbed by the vegetation around. Once you get near the top it all opens up to low bush covered in white blossoms and the occasional grass tree (remember those from the beginning of our trip?). I wanted to stop and take millions of pictures but was still trying to catch up with Jeff. But I never did until I reached the very top. And a mountain top it was which afforded the most stunning 360 views over the country side: flat farm country to the north and east and a more mountains to the west and south – never to forget the 1000m straight drop down to where the car is parked right in front of our feet.

On the top

The approaching storm

Good thing I had my water resistent camera with me - pretty pictures in the pouring rain

Wow!!! While still enjoying the views we suddenly noticed the huge black and grey front out over the farmland and somehow it looked like it might be coming closer. And it sure was traveling at a surprising speed. Have you ever watched a storm front come towards you when you were up on the top of a mountain? Makes you feel real vulnerable. And of course we were only dressed in shorts and T-shirt – never mind being from Canada you know the weather in the mountains can change very quickly. At least common sense told us to start heading of the mountain at a quicker pace than planned – no time for pictures, darn. We made it off the exposed open area back onto the tree covered trails just in time before the rain hit us. And raining it did hard. I had to put my camera away which made me real sad until I remembered that I had my little waterproof one with me. Jeff was only rolling his eyes and started to speed up. I took my sweet time since I was drenched through to the bone within the first couple minutes and we still had at least 30 more minutes to go. Luckily it was still warm with the trail being within the trees and out of the wind – so I got at least a few pictures but not enough to give this hike the credit it deserved. By the time we were back at the car the rain had stopped and the sun came out again. What an incredible hike – and it was only 9am by the time we were done.  We continued on exploring the park by car stopping at the centre lookout – which was well worth the scramble up a small hill that was covered all over in pretty purple and pink flowers in between the rocks – to enjoy the views through the mountains in the centre of the park. Next stop was for another hike or at least

Hike towards Mt Magog

partial hike towards Mt Magog. It was a flat trail first through wandoo woodland leading into more open low bush with stunning views over the mountains. The only drawback – the millions of flies that also seem to inhabit the area. Views and lots of beautiful flowers to look at allover made us suffer through the constant attacks for about an hour walk – well Jeff actually turned around sooner to hide in the truck with his puzzle book. Just before leaving the park we stopped at the last, most western lookout which was the least impressive of all – except for some good flower shot opportunities. Overall the Stirling Range is well worth a visit if you are in the area. We had lunch in Mt Baker on our way back south towards the ocean. And since it was by now a beautiful sunny and warm day we made an unscheduled stop at “Green Pool” – just a dot on our tourist map that looked like a good place to FINALLY go for a swim in the Southern Ocean. Green Pool is a secluded lagoon protected by rocks from the ocean

Green Pool

 swell. And the water does look green. It wasn’t by any means a lonely paradise but more a Friday afternoon getaway for the locals – the Southwest coastline is quite heavily populated for WA standards. Nevertheless it was all worth it. We put our snorkeling gear on and jumped into the water – gosh it was COLD!!! We managed to only stay in for 15-20min at a time before having to warm up again lying on the rocks heated by the sun. There weren’t any corals to look at or colorful fish but plenty of large schools of fish. Those fish were just as curious about us as we were about them and came right up to us. We hung out for a good hour – snorkeling, walking around taking pictures of rocks and flowers (me) and doing abs exercises (Jeff) until it was time to start finding a camp for the night – can’t just pull of the road here as easily as up north. We stopped at a couple more scenic beaches on the

Flies at Rainbow Beach - the ones sitting on the back are the good guys since they don't fly into your eyes and nose

way, with lots of flies to greet us, before making our way to Parry’s Beach – a private campground right on the ocean a bit of the beaten track (as mentioned by our friends the night before). With it only costing half the price of any of the national park campgrounds it was also really cheap.  It still was busy but mostly with locals that come here for fishing AND as we found out later partying. It was a Friday night after all and a group of 4 teens decided to have a big party that night. We saw them walking to the beach with their drinks and thought all will be well. But a big thunderstorm with an incredible lightning show interrupted our dinner plans. Easy to fix – we ate in the truck watching the display. But that also drove those kids back into their camp. As usual we crawled into our tent just before 8pm – not to escape the rain which actually stopped but to escape the mosquitoes. I had trouble falling asleep and our noisy neighbours didn’t help. The later it got the louder their cranked up their music and talk. How 4 people can make THAT much noise is a mystery to me. At about 11pm one of the other neighbours finally had enough and went to shut them up – it only lasted for a little while. Tossing around at home in your bed is one thing, doing it all night in a small tent and sleeping bag with only a thin thermarest to cushion you from the hard ground is quite a different experience. I should have been dead tired from all the hiking, swimming etc. we did today.

Australia Report – WA Part 5

It’s been a while since I started this post. At that time a storm was howling outside so I decided to better spend some time with warmer thoughts and continue with my posts about our trip last year. We are only halfway through the WA portion of the trip yet. It took 3 weeks to write this part. At that speed I’ll never finsih this year

 

Day 13/31 (Nov 01, 2009): Remember my last post ending with the big rig and it’s compressor running all night. Well, it left at 5:15am just after we got up. We enjoyed the silence around us but only for 15min – another big truck pulled in. So instead of exploring the half desert around us in the early morning to see what creatures we might find, we left in a hurry after a quick bite. Today’s program was mostly driving down HWY 95. The weather was a mix of sun and clouds – some of them real dark storm clouds. Since we skipped my big adventure (maybe a good thing looking at the storm clouds) we decided to take a little detour to have a lock at the “Ayers Rock” of WA called Walga Rock just an hour out of Cue on dirt road. I was surprised to see all those signs directing us to Walga Rock since it isn’t really one of those main attractions the travel guides talk about but I doubt we would have found it without them. Walga Rock should get more attention though because it is almost as impressive as Ayers Rock. Okay it is smaller and a bit overgrown in sections but it is one of those lonely red monolith sticking out of the otherwise flat landscape nonetheless. It also features some weird aboriginal paintings – although I have seen better once in Kakadu NP 15 years ago as well as later on on our trip through Queensland. On this trip though those were the first signs of aboriginal culture we saw (except for some aboriginals hanging out on a bench in a parking lot in Newman where we had lunch). You can walk or even drive around the rock. I started to walk but Jeff headed back for the truck. The flies were really bad at this spot again and started to annoy him seriously. It took him a little while to catch up with me again (I am sure he had a quick nap) even though I stopped a few times to look at the many kangaroos around the rock – these specimen seemed larger and the fur redder than the ones we had seen along the coast. There was also impressive thunder and lightning in the sky and the dark clouds over the red rock lit up by sunshine from behind made for some great shots. When Jeff caught up with me I finally surrendered to the fly attack and crawled into the truck. Jeff quickly regretted catching up with me. Naturally, I had to continue taking pictures every few seconds. Since the windows were really dirty I had to roll down mine for each shot. Word traveled fast in the world of flies and soon enough we had quite a few keeping us company. But they really only bother you as long as you drive slow. Once you speed up with open windows they get blown to the back and eventually die. Don’t call me cruel saying I enjoyed seeing flies get smash when we accelerated – you have NOT been there and can’t judge how bad it can get. Instead of back-tracking to Cue we decided to continue on on dirt road to stop in at the Dalgaranga Meteorite Crater. Never been to one and though that might be a cool thing to see. Again finding it was a challenge our GPS – often helping us to find the way – quite often lost the track completely and we had no idea if we were on the right track, there were so many – well at least we knew the general direction we were driving towards and that helped. But at the end it was luck and another small hand-painted sign on the road that led us to the right spot. Ah and then there was the sign right at the crater explaining how it was discovered and when. Without that sign we would not have known that the little dip in the dirt in front of us was a meteorite crater. Well it said on the sign it is the smallest known one. How they know it’s a crater and not just a little depression in the ground (like many other we had seen all over) I still don’t know. So if you ever go to WA – Walga Rock is a yes, Dalgaranga Crater not so much. But at the end the dirt road got us to Mt Magnet – past some beautiful dessert areas covered in tiny pink or yellow flowers -were we joined the HWY again. We meant to have lunch in Mt Magnet but when we got to town by 2pm everything was closed. Only store open was the gas station so at least we got gas – but I don’t recommend gas station pies. Everyone is Australia says you have to try the meat pies – and yes a good meat pie is a great thing – but not the kept-warm-for-hours variety at a gas station. What can you do when you are hungry though. Continuing on we actually started to head east towards Sandstone. By now we had entered the “Southern Outback” also known as “Northern Goldfields” and sure enough there was a lot of evidence of gold mining along the road - from big open pits to large processing plants. We also learned that 3pm is Iguana time – how those animals know it is 3pm I don’t know but sure enough for the next few days at 3pm they all started to crawl out into the middle of the road and just sit there. Should a car come towards them they started hissing at it but didn’t move whatsoever. Until of course you stopped to take a picture of them. There sure was enough evidence that most people are unimpressed by the hissing and didn’t stop. Otherwise the drive was pretty unspectacular and the country side changed little. In Sandstone we just about had enough of HWY driving and turned of onto gravel road again towards Lake Ballard. Since you drive slower on dirt than on hard surface you also get to see more stuff – Kangaroos and Emus and more Iguanas. The setting sun also gave the landscape this mystical glow of red sand and it changed from boring to “wow that’s what I came here for”. Nevertheless, sunset also meant we needed to find a campsite in a hurry. There wasn’t much of anything along this track. We tried to find a suitable turn-off but it took a while. When we finally turned off onto a tiny track we ended up in some abandoned old mine pit or quarry of some sort. There we finally did found a flat enough area not covered in medium size boulders or thick bush. It was also protected on one side by a small ridge but pretty open in all other directions. Not really what I dreamed off but at least no big semi-truck could pull in here. The temperatures this far south were noticeably lower than up north and I had to put on a long-sleeve shirt and pants. The night was much quieter. Except for the wind rustling in the leaves of the eucalyptus tree above our tent and some wicked bird singing for an hour or so under the full moon.

 

Day 14/32: It was cold in the morning getting up. We were up before the sun reach our little camp. It didn’t look that much more inviting in the morning either. But the cold kept the flies away – definitely a bonus. I walked around a bit to 1) warm up and 2) find some GOLD. Number 1 was taken care of as soon as the sun crested the little ridge but number 2 never happened. We continued on on the dirt track through some nice bushland, unusual sandstone formations and red dirt all the way to Lake Ballard – a must see in the “Goldfields” as per the travel guides. The word lake is somewhat misguiding since Lake Ballard doesn’t have any water in it – it’s a salt lake, not too surprising being in the outback of Australia. From a lookout hill you get to see how large it is – or actually you don’t see it because the white salt crust and the sky kinda melt together at the horizon and you don’t know where one ends and the other one starts. Pretty cool sight but that’s not the reason why it is in every travel guide. A world renowned artist named Anthony Gormely actually planted 51 sculptures across the lake – apparently modeled after the citizen of Menzies, a nearby gold mining town. If you like art this might be worth a visit. Walking out onto the lake surface you could see the mirror effect along the horizon – on a hot day that sight alone would make you thirsty. When we were visiting the lake early in the morning a freezing cold wind was blowing across the expanse of the lake (I am sure the wind was coming right from Tasmania) taking away from the “alone in the dessert” feeling. Instead of continuing on into Menzies and hitting the sealed HWY going south we decided to stay on the dirt road following the “Golden Trail” in the footsteps of the countries gold mining history. Lots of small attractions along the way such as old abandoned gold mines, small settlements etc. We stopped at “Ularring Soak” – an important aboriginal site but also a watering hole for the early explorers and gold miners. Not a surprise that there were large battles fought about that place. In reality it is a big flat rock that sticks out of the bush or forest – eucalyptus trees became more frequent again the further south we went. It’s only a few tens of meters high at the highest point but quite wide across. Those rocks are important because they collect rain water in some of their crevices which stays for quite a long time – those were called Gnamma Holes by the settlers I believe – providing drinking water for people who lived in the area or were traveling through towards the gold mines. Since we got there just at the beginning of spring most of the Gnamma holes were dry. At Ularring Soak the settlers also dug a deep well to have permanent drinking water – well today it was a hole in the ground covered up with corrugated steel to prevent dumb tourist from falling in. And a very modern looking outhouse nearby. Back on the road we headed towards Rowles Lagoon – the map we had promised a fresh water lake to swim in. Since the temperatures came up rapidly as the sun climbed higher into the sky the thought of having a quick dip in some nice fresh water was fabulous. Well, it turned out to be a very shallow lake with lots of cow tracks around it and murky light brown looking water – we skip the swim. More dirt road driving got us past a couple abandoned towns – although we drove right by not seeing anything but trees and holes in the ground – and the ruins of the Grand Hotel at Kunanalling abandoned in the early 1960. So much about Australian history . Finally the dirt road spit us out at Coolgardie, a small mining town close to Kalgoorlie-Boulder were the “Wild West” is still alive. Well if that is true, Coolgardie sure didn’t show any of that. Okay, the buildings looked like being out of an old Wild West movie (so did most of the mining towns we drove through for the past 2 days) but nobody was on the roads – no horses, no cars, no people. The grocery store only featured the minimum on culinary luxuries like white bread. No cafe to grab one last tasty meal before we headed off road again for another 2 days – outback adventure #2. But hey the town had a gas station and we stocked up on gas and ice for the cooler. What else would we need? It was still early afternoon when we left town and started out on our next planned outback adventure ala ExploreOZ. The “Holland Track” – a piece of Australian history. In 1893 a team led by John Holland cut the original 500km cart track from Broomehill to Coolgardie as an alternative route from the coast to the Eastern Goldfields in just over two month. The northern section of the track was re-opened in 1992 and is now a popular 4WD route. We only did the section from Coolgardie to Hyden – about half way and through real remote country. Past Hyden the track mostly goes through farmland and finding the right turn is the main challenge. The first part of the track out of Coolgardie followed a well maintained 2WD gravel road towards Victoria Rock – another one of those monolithic rocks that stick out of the ground, is only a few tens o meters high and collects water. Victoria Rock actually provided you with a great view over the surrounding area – mostly covered by eucalyptus forest or heath. Some of the pools on the rock had actually water in them and tadpoles!!!! Victoria Rock also features a campsite and is popular with people from Kalgooorlie-Boulder on weekends. Luckily this wasn’t a weekend. Shortly after Victoria Rock we hit the “real” Holland Track – from here on 4WD only. And the track was quite rough and VERY narrow – just as wide as the truck most time, although it is not a one-way. We put in a couple light scratches due bushed taking over again or trying to get around the largest potholes but didn’t see another car for a day and a half. Max speed would be less than 40km/hr for the next 200km. The landscape was mostly tall eucalyptus on white sandy dirt or thick bush. We get to see our first snake of the trip – almost running it over with the truck. But man they are quick – we hit the breaks hard and jumped out to have a closer luck – but the snake was gone. We stopped at Thursday Rock for the night – another of those rocks that …. you get the picture. Nobody else around. While sitting on the rock we watched the sun set in the west and the full moon rise to the east of us – very cool. We set up camp under a couple eucalyptus trees on a nice flat sandy spot with even an old picnic table nearby – we didn’t have that much luxury since … I can’t even remember. Romantic dinner at candle light if not for those mosquitoes – this adventure started out nice. It got cold at night though but that didn’t matter once I crawled into my nice sleeping bag. Poor Jeff though – since we were going to sunny and warm Australia – had only brought his fleece insert. So we both shared my sleeping bag.

 

Day 15/33: It was cold when we woke up in the morning just after sunrise. At least there are no flies about at these temperatures and we could have breakfast again outside out tent again. It did warm up considerably during the day. Today we spend 95% with crawling along at 30km/hr along the narrow and badly eroded or sandy Holland track – good thing it was dry and sunny. I would not want to navigate though those potholes when they are full of water and mud. We stopped in at a few more rocks – getting smaller and smaller each time until they barely rise up over the heath at all anymore and are more like just open spaces in the bush. The bush around us changed little switching between small eucalyptus groves and burned bushland back and forth. It was a bit monotonous except for every so often the recently burned bushland turned into a sea of flowers: yellow, purple, white… blossoms as far as you can see. Just stunning and the air smelled like a mix of Jasmin and honey.As for animals we only saw reptiles sunning themselves on the sandy sections of the track or on the rocks. The highlight was a Thorny Devil – they are soooo cute and completely rely on their spiky appearance to defend them against all possible foes. He didn’t run off at all and we had to push him of the track to not drive over him. Once off the road in the bush he was INVISIBLE. No wonder we never saw them hiking before, they blend in so well into their natural habitat (not so much roads which is a good thing). After about half a day of driving we cam across the Holland Track Logbook – off course we signed in as well. People from all over the world use this track and it looks like cars come by every 2-3 days. We didn’t see anyone until almost the end of the trail a few kilometers out of Hyden. 3 big trucks – even bigger than ours and squeezing by was a bit challenging but hey it’s only a rental. We were getting into the more cultivated areas of the southwest with bush being mostly replaced by agricultural fields. As dirt road was replaced by paved highway again we also saw another brown snake – this time we got a picture. In Hyden we did a quick stop at “Wave Rock” – it was already late in the day and the sun was going down. They still wanted some money to see it but we cheated and while Jeff stayed in the truck I found a side trail to get to the “Wave” without paying. It is impressive but not really worth paying for it. We stopped in Lake King for the night – after spending so many days in the bush we decided to actually camp at a real campsite tonight with a real shower. Nothing special to that town but they did have a pub – burgers and beer for the tired travelers, what a treat. The next day will get us back to the coast. Good bye Outback – Southern Ocean here we come!!!

Australia Report – WA Part 4

Day 10/28 (Oct 29, 2009): Finally woken up by crows again at 5am. Breakfast was a bit of a bummer though since our bread got soak in the cooler. The ice bags don’t last that long when it is this hot all day and hardly cools down at night. We used the early morning to explore the park a bit. First we headed to a lookout over Crossing Pool – part of the Fortescue River system. Most of the area is flat and dry except for close to the river. All sudden you see large eucalyptus trees as well as palm trees. The Millstream palm is actually native to this area. Great to see a bit more green after mostly red, yellow & brown. We hiked for a bit through eucalyptus forest, dry grasslands and areas full of palm trees – all in a couple kilometer radius. We visited the old date palm tree plantation (none native palm trees) near the Millstream Chichester Homestead with a nice little pond in the back yard and “wild” cows hidden in the long grass that scared the hell out of me – or I out of them. As the morning went on and the temperature rose we drove over to Crossing Pool for a quick dip in the water – that was nice. In theory we would be able to do a loop through the park taking in most of it’s attractions in that little area but guess what – the road was blocked off due to maintenance. This area floods regularly in the spring and most of the roads will be covered by a couple meters of water, leaving behind some washed out road once it dries up. Once more we had to back track for a few tens of kilometers before hitting the hwy again which was still unpaved but in good conditions most of the way to Tom Price – another 350km or so away. Scenery on the drive was spectacular again: grass lands, red dirt, low mountains, puffy white clouds in the blue sky, endless roads. We stopped in Tom price for lunch and to stock up on food and other items we figured we need for our “real” 4×4 adventure still to come in a few days time. Clouds had been moving in constantly and it was pretty much overcast by now but stinking hot nonetheless. Tim Price is another mining town but has a bit more to over than Pannawonica. It actually had a pool and a large shopping centre as well as a library. Oh and every tree was covered in Corellas – a kind of cockatoo. We continued on into Karijini National Park – the drive in through a scenic Valley with low mountains on either side. We were going to spend the first night near Dale Gorge one of the two national park campsite. This site was quite a bit busier than others we stayed at but we found a good spot – probably lucky that we were setting up camp earlier than usual. Since we still had an hour daylight left we scooted over to Circular Pool to cool us down for the night – if possible. And what a sight that is. The pool is nestle at the bottom of a 50-75m deep gorge and is almost round. There is a 500m hike into it where you climb down the cliffs and follow the gorge to the end. A couple people were around, two of them a couple from Holland we talked to, but that didn’t take away from us enjoying our swim. A beautiful spot with water trickling down the walls and ferns growing all over – and that in the middle of the semi-dessert. The sun was setting fast and we had to almost run back up since we didn’t bring any flash lights. Needless to say, dinner was in the dark again. And although it was nearly dark, the flies were most annoying while cooking – fortunately they did disappear just before we were ready to eat (not sure about the fly count in the pot though – well it’s all protein)!!! A few small bats were flying above our heads – maybe they scared the flies away.

 

Day 11/29: This morning we decided to have breakfast in the tent to avoid the flies and it worked great. We started the hike at Fortescue Falls walking down Dale Gorge to Circular Pool once more. Although we were at the falls before 6am someone already beat us to it – but the couple didn’t stick around. We had our first swim below the falls to cool us down before the hike – the night had been really hot. Walking through the canyon was relatively cool along water holes, through eucalyptus trees and head high grass. The canyon walls were glowing in all shades of red to brown in the early morning sun in nice contrast to the yellow grass or green bushes. Sometime you had to climb a bit along the canyon wall finding handhold in nooks and crannies. We thought nothing of it until we saw an Australian Red Back Spider sitting in its net covering one of those “convenient” hand holds. Afterwards we were a bit more careful about were to put our hands – the red back spider is the second most poisonous spider in Australia! We did see other spiders as well – bigger ones – but had no idea if they are poisonous or not. Given that we were in Australia, the assumption they would be isn’t too far fetched I’d say. Other creatures hiding in those gorges are lizards of all sizes from 5cm to 2m long. Finally reaching Circular Pool again we had it all to ourselves. Still no sun down here to take good pictures! For the walk back to the truck we decided to follow along the canyon rim rather than retracing our steps down below in the gorge. Gosh, it was hot! Nevertheless we saw a very picture friendly lizard on the trail. He was posing for up to 3 photographers taking tons of pictures. I am sure he wanted to become a movie star the way he was posing on the rocks for us. As mentioned, Karijini NP isn’t a secret in Western Australia and you have to be prepared to run into quite a few campers/hikers. Next we drove onwards to Kalamina Gorge. Similar to Dales Gorge but also different – the cliffs seemed to be closer together and straight up in beautiful layers of red rock. Lots of pools along the way to bathe in. The waterfall at the start of the gorge didn’t have much water in it though – guess up here, north of the Tropic of Capricorn, it was the end of the dry season. Around noon we moved our camp over to the west side of the park into Weano Gorge. The campsite there was now private – twice as expensive for a similar spot but also fresh water and cold beer at the office. For them it was the end of the season and everything would be shutting down for the wet season to come in a week. The camping will stay open but no amenities whatsoever and the nearby wilderness lodge will be closed. Since we had our camp spot secured early we headed over to Oxer Lookout – one of the main attractions in the park. Here you have a view into an area where 5 gorges meet – all of them over 100m deep into the rock, so deep that no sunlight gets down to the bottom. Very cool!!! There were a couple of options for hikers to get into some of the gorges – to explore them in their entire length you need to be a proper trained climber and have abseiling experience. Jeff and I tackled Hancock Gorge first. It started out like any of the others we had seen so far but then narrowed dramatically until you can touch both walls with your hands at the same time. Actually the only way to get through was to walk like a spider since water was running along the bottom making it very slippery – hence it’s called the spider walk. It opened up a bit into a small pool – Kermit Pool – where we stopped for a quick dip. Another couple was already enjoying the place. The walls were dwarfing us being close together and running ~80m straight up. No sunlight down here which made it nice and “cool” in comparison to the scorching temperatures up top. The gorge continued on but it turned into a class 6 hike where you needed proper equipment to get down a 2-3m drop to the next pool. Well, I guess down would not have been as much of a problem than coming back up. We enjoyed the scrambling through these very narrow canyons so much that we decided to do Weano Gorge as well with Handrail Pool as our destination before it also turned into a class 6. We went back the way we came, cross the parking lot and descended down into our last gorge for the day – just noticing the big tour bus in the lot wondering where all those people would be. This gorge also narrowed quite quickly. We saw about 20 pairs of shoes at the beginning of the narrow section which almost made us turned around on the spot – the tour bus!! Nevertheless we continued and after scrambling on came to a narrow gap which all sudden opens up into a large open cavern or pit of ~10-15m in diameter with straight walls going up for 60-70m and most of it filled with water – Handrail Pool. To get down to the water you had to use a handrail and rope – hence the name. There was a small ledge in one of the corners on which, I kid you not, 20 sour looking tourist were watching a family of 5 splashing around in the pool. I am not sure why they all looked so grim because the place was spectacular – maybe because they weren’t told to bring a bathing suite? It didn’t concern us a bit and Jeff and I jumped into the water – what a treat again in that heat – and bonded right away with the family of 5 already in the water. On the opposite side the gorge actually continued on and although it was supposed to be the start of the class 6 I had to see how far one could go. So did the 3 kids and their mom – the guys, Jeff and Dad stayed behind. It was eerie since it was almost completely dark with the walls being even narrower on the top than the bottom. The bottom was filled with water up to your neck or deeper so that one had to wade and swim at times. Then the bottom rose up again and reduce the water flow to a small rivulet before dropping about 5m straight down into the next pool. Needless to say that was the end of the line for us. When we got back to handrail pool only 10 min later the grumpy group of tourists was gone. Jeff and I spent some time talking to the family while warming up on the rocks – the water was actually cold. Those guys were from Kangaroo Island in South Australia. He was a doctor and after spending years and years of hard work and lots of overtime he got the chance to take some time off. So they decided to travel around their own country for almost one year, taking their 3 boys out of school. When we met them they were 8 month into their trip, traveling in a truck just like ours towing a small trailer full off equipment. The stories they had to tell were phenomenal: following old trekking trails through some of the most remote areas in central Queensland; breaking the axle on their truck in the middle of nowhere; helping a farmer driving his cows across the country; staying on remote homesteads in the Kimberley region, etc. Wow, I am not sure if I would be up for all the abuse and hardship they went through and they had 3 kids between 10 and 15. They home-schooled them 3 times a week but honestly just the experiences they gather by traveling around like this will be priceless education. Eventually we had to leave to explore more of the upper gorge on the way back. We saw some pretty, greenish lorikeets as well as a large iguana. And the setting sun set the red canyon walls on fire once more. Beautiful!!! We made it back to camp in time to enjoy dinner with sunset. Although it had clouded over a bit it was still hot. I woke up in the middle of the night hearing a group of dingos howling what sounded like right next to our tent. Karijini NP is known for it’s healthy dingo population. Apparently the family from SA saw one coming right up to them in their camp. We never got to see them only hear them at night which was scary enough.

 

Day 12/30: Today we got ready to leave the park but not until we visited a couple more of the sights. First stop was Knox Gorge – hiking along the canyon floor until we hit the class 6 sign again after which it continues on into Red Gorge as all the others we visited the day before. I was very tempted to try to go on but Jeff wanted to get back. He had by now enough of Gorges and I am sure so do you as the reader. The nice thing about Knox Gorge though, it seemed to be a less popular destination and the trail was more like a trail and not a tourist highway with ladders and steps. Here you get loose rock and muddy trails. We skipped our last hike but had a quick look at Joffre Falls from the top – again no falling water here either although the pools on the bottom looked fine. The flies seemed to be a bit worse today too – time to move on. After we got back to the main highway we made one more stop on the south side of i to have a look at the Mt Bruce (2nd highest mountain in WA) and Marandoo Mine. This area is know for it’s high iron content in the rock. Although all of The Pilbara is red rock because of iron minerals in it, most of it does not contain enough to make mining worthwhile. But there are a few areas that do – and therefore open pit mines are not uncommon. Since Marandoo Mine is in a National Park they apparently save the top soil and try to recover the area once the iron ore is depleted. The lookout didn’t really get you close to the mine and it didn’t look too bad from afar. The same lookout also gave you a great view over the northern part of the park – the part we just left – with the high plateau rising from the flood plains. I could have stayed here forever!!! Nevertheless we had to move on – tomorrow was supposed to be the start of our REAL outback adventure although everything we saw so far already felt pretty real. We hit the highway again driving for hours and hours going east a bit and than south again. Stopped in Newman – another mining town but also the largest city in the area – for lunch and stocking up on supplies for our 2-3 days in nowhere land. So this next adventure was again something I found on ExplorerOZ – Carnarvon Range & part of the Canning Stock Route. A really remote place – 300km of rough track through the Australian Outback -where you have to be completely self sufficient: bring all your fuel, water and food (which we had), be able to navigate by map and GPS (which we had), have at least 2 spare tires (of which we had one and a repair kit), be able to fix anything that goes wrong with your car (of which we had nothing), ALWAYS travel in groups (we were alone), etc. Bad weather can turn the tracks into big mud holes and make them impassible for days. The only way to get help would be via satellite phone (which we didn’t have) or wait for weeks or month for a framer or other adventurer to come along (we only had supplies for a week max). Some of the route is on private land and we still needed to get permission – so we stopped in at Kumarina Roadhouse, the only gas station/pub/restaurant along the highway for hundreds of kilometers. Those guys were really friendly but looked at us funny when we told them about our plan: “Why the hell would you want to go there?”. I think Jeff was wondering the same thing the whole time but for me this was the ultimate challenge AND I was scared of it. Nevertheless we found out about the owner of the land we were supposed to cross and told how to get there and what to do. Filling up on water and diesel one last time we continued on. To the east of the highway – the way we would be going – we saw huge storm clouds build up. No rain yet. The drive to the homestead we had to go to took longer than expected and we didn’t want o walk in on them in the middle of the night. My resolve started to crumbled. My homemade travel guide had another 10 days of sight seeing listed mostly in the southwest of WA and we didn’t have any day to spare to get stuck. So finally I gave into my fears or Jeff said common sense and we decided to skip this part of the trip. It was hard for me since I had done so much research on it and the likelyhood of something going seriously wrong was small – but I guess in the Australian Outback even a small risk is a high risk. And really, we haven’t done that much 4×4 driving in Canada – logging roads in the temperate rainforest are not the same challenge as semi-dessert tracks in Western Australia. I still want to do it one day though – but I would bring a satellite phone along!!! So instead of turning of east into the unknown we continued on along the highway until we found one of those roadside rest stops where we could pull off a little deeper into the bush. We set up camp hidden from the road – you could still hear the truck driving by every so often but it was a nice enough spot. After we crawled into the tent we heard a semi-truck pull into the rest area. And this id… had his compressor running all night long with few interuptions. Not a very restfull night under the full moon in the outback of Western Australia – not what I had hoped for at least.