Australia Report - WA Part 2

I guess I should have put up the map in my last post. Well here it is. Start/end in Perth, following the marked route clockwise. Green dots are campsites, red marks paved road, yellow unpaved road and orange are 4x4 tracks.
Trip stats: 22 days & nights, 7522km, ~900l of diesel and 6,397 pictures. And we didn't even get to see half of Western Australia - it's huge!!!!

Day 3/21 (Oct 22, 2009): We were up at 5am again since we had a long drive ahead of us. First though we did a little 4x4 detour thanks to exploreOZ. It actually wasn't a detour but a shortcut but of course you don't really save time going off road. But it was sure worth it. We visited a little national park which never gets mentioned in any travel guide (at least I didn't see it and I researched quite a few): Stockyard Gully National Park which promised us caves to explore. The drive in was through the usual WA low bush - quite a bit of flowers to look at as well. We got to the parking lot of the national park and it didn't look like there would be any caves - the land was a flat as my home country in Germany!!! Ah, but we didn't take into account that you could go DOWN into a ravine or gully in order to get to the caves. While the top was all low bush, the gully was full of good size eucalyptus trees. Apparently a river flows below the surface here. Drovers were bringing their cattle through this area since water was easy to get to being just below the surface (on rainy days it could cause a bit of a problem though if water level rose) - hence the name. We didn't try digging for any water, we brought our own. Following the gully for a couple 100m we saw the cave entrance. It was reasonably big and we just walked into. Not too long and it was pitch dark around us. Thinking ahead we had brought our flash lights. It was pretty cool and we felt like real explorers, crawling on all fours into a small side channel. Didn't get too far or maybe not wanting to trust our small little flash lights too much or maybe were a little bit worried to run into some small little crawly things with many legs. The main cave was getting bigger and bigger and my headlamp wasn't strong enough to light up the ceiling. Continuing on along the main chamber we all sudden saw day light ahead of us. Turned out that we did not get turned around in the dark but that this cave was an actual tunnel. Another cool thing this park had to offer were all the feral bees around the tunnel entrance/exit. You could see their hives very well. Luckily they were high enough up so we didn't bother them. Apparently they can get quite defensive should one get too close. It was barely 8am when we had finished our first hike of the day through Stockyard Gully NP and we hit Brand Hwy to make some time going north. Next stop: Kalbarri National Park. Now this park is mentioned in EVERY travel guide. Our route to the park took us past the Principality of Hutt River - if you thought Australia was an island nation, you would be wrong. Continent Australia's second "largest" country was formed when farmer Leonard Casley, appalled by new government quotas on wheat production, seceded from the Government of Australia on April 20th, 1970. And to this date it is still run as an independent country by Prince Leonard and his Princess Shirley. Apparently they welcome visitors to call on their residence but we skipped it. For us Australia is about natural history and not so much about monarchy. We made it to Kalbarri National Park with plenty of day light left for a long hike along the colorful red and yellow sandstone cliffs with spectacular formations such as "The Grandstands" and "Natural Bridge". The turquoise ocean was ~100m below us while we walked through the flowering bush on the top, watching kangaroos on one side and humpback whales on the other. And surprisingly not too many people around. Well maybe not that surprising as it is off season still in this part of the country - apparently it gets real busy during the Australian "summer/Christmas" holidays. The disadvantage with it being off season though is that it's also the time when most of the park maintenance is done. So again we ran into a road block (this time on foot) where the trail was closed and had to detour around it. Just a minor inconvenience here but in some National Parks many of the trails were closed - but that's the story for another post to come. Did I mention yet that it was REALLY windy again? It also started to cloud over in the afternoon. After our wonderful hike along the cliffs and back we started to look for a campsite. There wasn't any in the park itself so we were forced to stay in town (wild camping is NOT allowed in National Parks) - one of my least favourite campsites but we had worse. The spot we got was small and close to the road with a youth hostel across from it. Pointless to mention that it was pretty loud at night, especially since we crawled into our sleeping bags shortly after sunset while hostel guests usually start waking up at that time.

Day 4/22: Again an early start although we didn't sleep much during the night. The birds didn't care. First we explored a bit more of the coastal part of the park such as "Mushroom Rock" and "Rainbow Valley" in the early morning light. Although the sun wasn't quite in the right location for lighting up the rocks the scenery was great - some nice beaches, 420 million year old Tumbalgooda Sandstone in all shades of yellow to dark red and tube like fossils created by some ancient worms. Next stop was the inland part of the park - the Murchison River Canyon. We did "The Loop" hike -8km- first following along the top of the canyon ridge then down to the river and along its shores. You get to see great coloured cliffs again as well as the main attraction of the park "Nature's Window". When we first got to the start of the hike there were maybe one or two cars in the parking lot since it was still early. We had "Nature's Window" all to ourselves which is only a short hike from the car. After the 3hr hike (we/I took our time taking pictures) we returned back to "Nature's Window" and it was packed with people. It pays to start off early. On our hike we only saw a couple people. It also got REALLY hot once the sun moved up higher into the blue sky. Although the hike was wonderful there was a part which wasn't so much fun ... Flies!!!! Ever heard of the flies in the Australian outback? They can be really annoying. We did bring fly nets of course but they are not 100% fly proof. So by the end of the hike I had at least as many inside the fly net as outside. But those flies inside the net wanted out so they were NOT trying to get into my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Without the net, that's where those bastards would be. We stopped at a couple other attraction of the park such as Z-Bend, Eagles Lookout and Ross Graham Lookout. All great sites with spectacular canyon views but also all infested with millions of flies. Not all tourists were fortunate enough to bring fly nets. Needless to say, we skipped the idea of going for a swim in the river. Saying our goodbyes to Kalbarri NP we hit the main hwy again on our way to Monkey Mia Reserve (the next big tourist attraction hundreds of kilometers north - distances are unbelievable vast here in mid WA). Along the way the green bush we were so used to by now gave way to a more arid vegetation of thorn bushes and spinifix grass. As for animals, we mostly saw feral goats - one of WA's biggest problem since they eat everything and endanger the native wildlife. Them, foxes and feral cats are the least loved animals in WA, wiping out the local mamal population such as Bilbies. Remember the fence they build a long time ago to keep out the rabbits? Well they are still building fences these days (saying they are better build) to keep out foxes, wild cats and goats to reintroduce native species - the Peron Peninsula in Shark Bay Marine Park is one of those areas. We spend the night in Nanga at a big private resort & campground right on the beach with hardly any guests. We managed a quick dip in the ocean followed by a dip in the pool to refresh ourselves after the long hot drive before the sun disappeared. Beautiful sunset once more.

Day 5/23: Today's program started with watching the "wild" dolphins swim to the beach at Monkey Mia Reserve, together with about 50 other tourists. Every morning between 7:30 and 10am Australian Bottlenose Dolphins swim right up to the beach where they get fed by a couple rangers - only the females and only a selected few animals each time. Kinda cool to be so close to the animals but one doesn't really get the feeling of seeing a "wild" animal. Never mind it is the animals choice to show up and they sometimes don't. We didn't stick around too much longer but went on to discover other parts of this beautiful peninsula and Shark Bay Marine Park which is by the way listed as a World Heritage site. We stopped in at a lookout called Eagle Bluff with stunning views over the turquoise ocean. The water is so clear you can see the bottom from 100m up high - oh and you can see the fish swimming through the clear shallows such as turtles and SHARKS. Not just one but multiple ones. We were hoping to see some Dugongs as well (the Australian Manatee) but no such luck. Even the German/Austrian tourist with their high magnifying telescope didn't get to see them. But the view alone was worth it hanging out for a while. Next stop, Shell Beach - masses of tiny shells have been accumulating here for 4000 years to build a beach in places up to 5m deep and 50-100m wide. These shells are unique to the extremely salty waters in Shark Bay. Another unique site are the Stromatolites in Hamelin Bay. Apparently those brown rocklike small mounts have been build by the oldest living organism on earth - cyanobacteria. These only strive in extremely salty water - hence Hamelin Bay is one of the few and best known places in the world where they can be found. Sounds exciting but they really don't look like much :-). The rest of the day was spent, again, with a lot of driving. We stopped in Carnarvon for the night - our next destination was still another 200km further north. Driving at night isn't really recommended unless you need the adrenaline rush of seeing kangaroos run out in front of your car every few kilometers and risk paying the rental car company a lot of money to get the car fixed. There is LOTS of roadkill on the highways. Carnarvon is known for its fruit and vegetable plantations, due to it's location right on the mouth of the Gascogne River - the river by the way was a river of red sand when we crossed it the next morning :-)