So Saturday arrived and brought with it the start of our eight day road trip. The plan was basically to travel cross country in a south easterly direction heading for a coastal town called Esperance. This would be the longest and probably most tiring day of the whole trip. We would then spend the next 7 days touring along the coast and round back up to Perth.
The distance from Perth to Esperence is about 800 km's or 500 miles, which is a fair distance to cover. Along the way we stopped at York for some brunch and then at Wave Rock. This as the name suggests is a rock in the shape of a wave. It was not that impressive but did break up the journey, although the hundreds of flies were a bit annoying. We pressed on and a made good time. To break the silence form the lack of radio signal we had Jo's small collection of Cd's. As Jo was the baby in the group she was not allowed to drive. I think this is something she was quite happy about. Pete. Tricia and myself all took our turn to drive. I had the graveyard shift. This was made livelier by the fact that from dusk onwards you have a good possibility that a kangaroo will hop out into the road in front of you. Our insurance didn't cover for roo damage in anyway and so I had to take it easy. We rolled into Esperence about seven and checked into the hostel.
The next day we went into Cape Le Grand National Park and visited Lucky Bay, which had wild kangaroos having a sleep on the beach. Then onto Wildfire Bay where we took a dip in the cold sea. On our way back we stopped at the Pink Lake. You might think that this is pink, but it's not. That night we went to Taylor Street tearooms for a bit to eat.
We travelled on and spent the whole day in the car apart from stopping for lunch and seeing a half buried truck. We spent the night in Albany.
We set off for the Gap and National Bridge. These are both well-known attractions on the coast. The gap as it's called is a large whole where the sea comes in and splashes up. It doesn't sound all that good from my description, but when your there it's a whole lot different. The National Bridge is a bridge, what a surprise. Formed out of stone and created by the sea's waves. It's quite wide and high up above the sea. You can walk out onto it. I didn't like the though of this as the wind was quite high. This how ever didn't stop other and at one point I had to look away for fear of seeing someone slip or fall off. Not something that would aid me to sleep at night. Further down the road were Elephant Rocks due to, yes they look like Elephants. As you can see there is a trend here to name places and natural formations by what they look like. Elephant Rocks were huge boulders shaped like elephants. Hard to imagine, but very similar when seen. Next we travelled onto green lake, which I don't need to explain, I hope. Our next stop was one Jo was not all that keen on. Tricia had already done this and stayed with the car. It was the Tingle Forest Tree Top walk in the Valley of the Giants . Walkways made out of aluminium had been placed through the forest of Tolkienesque trees. AT the highest point the walkway was 40 meters above the ground. During this trip I have been to the top of the AMP Tower in Sydney, Rialto Tower in Melbourne and Climbed the Harbour Bridge in Sydney and I think have lost my fear of heights to a degree. This was a piece of cake. The walkways did have restrictions on how many people could be on them at any one time. They did flex and bounce when you walked fast on them or jumped up and down. Jo was not amused when I did this. I can't write what she said, but it did start with "Will would you stop .......... doing that" We travelled onto the Gloucester Tree. This is 60 meter tall tree which you can climb, had steel bars driven into it in a staircase/ ladder pattern. Talking about it in the car I was ready to do it, but when I saw it it was a different story. Pete and Jo were not up for it. Tricia had done this before and said how much her legs hurt the next day. She did want to climb it again, but only if someone else would climb with her. Within a second all eyes were on me and the pressure building. Comment form both Pete and Jo of how they were scared of heights were flooding out. AS some of you will know I can be very stubborn and determined at times and this was one of those. The increasing amount of pressure was not going to change my mind even when the girls both looked at me as if to say wimp. We made for Augusta, which is meant to have the best YHA in Oz. I can see why it has won best YHA a few times because the building is pretty modern with good facilities. But I have stayed in better equipped hostels. The evening is quite a memorable one as we went for a Chinese. It was chines or...... well I can't remember the other options. The restaurant was quite busy and the hostess was running around like she was on fire, but didn't make life any easier by spending a long time chatting to people as they were leaving. When we got the bill, divided up and were about to leave when she engaged us in conversation. Her grasp of English was not bad and I could understand what she was saying. I think some of the others had difficulty understanding what she said and may still be unaware of what was said.
The next day we set off for Cape Leeuwin lighthouse. This lighthouse the has the Indian Ocean on one side and the Southern Ocean on the other side. I climbed the 179 steps to the top for a good view out to sea and the surrounding coastline. Parts of the lighthouse were made in Birmingham and also Shropshire. We then went to one of the many caves in the area. Lake Cave was one of the smallest but also most interesting. It had a stream which ran through it. The way in which it had been lit up using special waterproof lights was amazing. It had quite a few stalactites and stalagmites which take hundreds of years to form. The path from the shop to the entrance of the cave was easy going on the way down, but the 300 plus steps on the way back were hard work as I went up them at a fast walking pace. This left me breathless and unable to talk much. Some people might think that would be a good thing! With mt breath back we headed for Main Break near Margaret River for the sunset. It was beautiful. The sky had shades of red, purple and orange in it. This was a main even for alot of people. The car park was packed. Some people had esky's with food, wine, fizz and of course beer in. They had brought chairs and even tables. Yes this was something that had to be done right. That night we stayed at Margaret River and went to the local pub for food and beers. I can't remember the name of the establishment, but they had a deal on for backpackers that night. This was a curry for $5 or $10 with a beer. It seemed a bargain and was priced in accordance with the size of the portion. My brain along with both the girls was not switched on (a rarity I know) and thus we got the smallest curry I had ever seen. This was compensated by a bowl of the best wedges I have ever had.
The next day Myself, Jo and Tricia had decided to do a canoing trip on the Margaret River. This I thought was going to be good fun as I had a little experience from when I went kayaking at Port Macquire. Jo and Tricia had never been in a canoe before and kept worrying about it capsizing. We set off in a big four man canoe with just the three of us in it. The idea being that this would be more stable in the water. There were about 10 or 12 canoes with a mixture of two, three and four man canoe's. We went up river stopping in a few places where our guide told us about the area and the different types of plants, bushes and trees. As the group progressed up the river we managed to keep up despite zig zagging left and right and sometimes pointing in the opposite direction. We had a little co-ordination and communication problem. As with Port Macquire I had to sit at the back and steer as well as paddle, but this time there were two women to contend with. In the end we, yes all of us sorted out the problems and went straight as a die, well nearly. The group stopped at a place called "The Boat House", which was an old boat house. Here our guide showed us some real bush tucker. Things such as damper bread, kangaroo, wild turkey and emu. We all tucked in and made up some sandwiches. We even had some wiggidey grub pate, how posh. Further down river we stopped and climbed up to the top of the cliff, where we had a great view of the river and surrounding areas. Back down on the bank we all jumped back into the canoes and formed a line across the river. The reason for this was that we were going to race back to the bank where we started form. The winning canoe got a bottle of plonk. We made a good start and pushed a couple of the others out of the way. The river curved round to the left, so I took the course of least distance and tried to maximise our efforts. we passed a couple doing this but at the same time nearly ran aground as were close to the bank. The river straighten out and we went full steam to the bank. We hit the bank in second place which we were pleased with. On our way to our destination of Dunsbrought we stopped off at a few wineries. The area has so many, you could take a couple of days to visit them all. Our first was "Mad Fish" which reminded me of Jacobs Creek in that it had a very impressive building with great mens dunny. I don't know about the Sheila's room, but I'm sure it was just as good. I felt a very under dressed walking round in a well used t-shirt, baggy shorts and sandals. Our next port of call was Lenton Brae which was a small, almost family run winery. We almost felt a little guilty just turning up and trying trying their wines for free. I thing the gilt got to Jo as she brought a nice bottle of Shiraz which I later found to be very palatable. Our third and final tasting was at "Moss Brothers". We then headed on to our hostel. They had a barbie on and so to complement the fine selection of meats we were to consume we had to make a trip to the bottle shop. On mine and Pete's return with a slab of Carlton Cold we stocked the fridge and took our places for the barbie.
The next day we visited a small light house at Cape Naturalist and then eagles bay. We found a nice beach and crashed for a while. At Busselston the girls went along the pier to an underwater observertry while Pete and I checked our e-mail. Busselton was bustling with people and quite a nice little place, That night we stayed at Bunbury. For our evening meal we went to a Thai restaurant where I had my first taste of Thai food and found it to very nice.
The morning came and brought with it an early start as we were off to see dolphins. Jo is very much into her animals and sea creatures and this was therefore a must see for her. I was not that bothered, but still went and had a look. Each morning wild Dolphins come into a beach. A centre with volunteers has been set up. This morning a dolphin called Levy came in. We stood in the water with it just above the knee and watched him swim back and forth. For most this was a great experience, but I didn't think much of it really and am not sure why. Later on in the day we made for Fremantle (Freo) but stopped at Rockingham. Rockingham is a coastal town with a man street where people with custom cars and Harley's pose. We had ice cream form an Italian ice cream place before carrying on to Freo. Freo, just south of Perth is a great place. It is a good place to eat fish and chips as it's fresh. It has a harbour full of boats used for fishing. Freo also has a good selection of restaurants and bars serving a large range of foods and beers. It also has a very bad YHA hostel.
We set of for Perth and stopped at Cottesloe on the way as Tricia, Jo and myself were going to stay there. We dropped off the car and said goodbye to Pete. That night we went to the Sunday session. The Oz's love the Sunday session and I was determined to have just as good a time as I did in Surfers Paradise. We spent a couple of night there before travelling back into Perth.
Posted at 5/20/2004 5:05:44 am by willpovey
