Days 156 - 169

After filling up with oil at Kalbarri, we hot footed it down to Perth, stopping off at a few roadside rest areas along the way. At one stop, we were so close to the road that not only could you hear those lovely road train drivers who felt it necessary to honk their horns as they passed at various stages of the night (which made us think that the road train was about to smash through the camper trailer), but the camper shook as they went passed.

With Perth came luxury – hot showers and proper toilets. It felt fantastic. We got to see quite a few suburbs of Perth as we stayed for the first two nights with Les and Carol (who we met up at Mitchell Plateau when we were having problems with the Battered Fish), two nights with Gordon and Sally (who we met at Francis Peron National Park), and two nights with Bob and Sal, the Aunt and Uncle of Angie Mount, a great friend of mine in England. We were totally spoilt in each place and are extremely grateful to everyone for accommodating, feeding and cleaning us!

We really liked Perth and found time to do a few touristy things. We ran around the foreshore of Cottesloe Beach admiring the ocean scenery and watching games of beach volleyball, visited Freemantle and its Saturday morning markets stopping for a lazy cup of coffee and had an afternoon at Hillary’s marina, (which, if you exchanged canal boats for yachts and speed boats, reminded me of Brindley Place in Birmingham on a nice summer’s day), where we finally caught up with Gerard’s cousin Anthony, who is working in the mines in WA, over a couple of coldies. The highlight was probably Rottnest Island. After the ferry ride over, we hired bikes and set off to explore. Little Salmon Bay was our first stop, where we snorkelled a snorkel trail of underwater plaques and saw some huge fish, which Gerard thought would go well on our barbie.

We also did and saw some non-touristy things such as watching Gordon and Sally’s pet sheep, “Lamby”, being sheered for the summer, joining Sal in a mixed doubles tennis tournament in Subiaco and going into the ABC studio’s for a radio interview, after a press interview in Kings Park. We really packed it in but had a great time.

From Perth, we headed South West, passing through lush, green fields, tall Karri trees, flowing rivers and something very pleasing to the eye, acres of vineyards. The scenery was in stark contrast to North WA, where all we saw for km after km was low scrub, road kill and empty rivers. We drove through a forest of karri trees dotted with beautiful wildflowers and putting all thoughts of The Blair Witch Project aside, we decided to camp in the forest for the night. The clouds came over and there was no moon or stars for light – it was pitch black and if I’m honest, a little bit scary. The next morning, we were not woken up by the birds, but by a huge thunder storm. For the first time in over 3 months, we heard the pitter patter of raindrops falling onto the canvas and quickly got up to shut the windows and doors, which we leave open during the night (we find this amusing as when we were living in both the UK and Sydney, we locked our doors and windows the whole time and here out in the bush, probably when you are at your most vulnerable, we leave everything open). The thunderstorm rumbled on for a while and much to our annoyance, the rain continued on and off throughout the day, and for the next four days and nights. Our camper trailer was sodden and leaking. I realise that my complaints about four day’s of rain in over 3 months will fall on rather deaf ears to those English folks but when you are camping, it sucks. Everything gets wet and small jobs such as lighting the camp fire take an age because the wood has to dry out first.

We decided to don our almost matching rain coats and brace the elements. The bad weather did have some huge advantages for us. We found an absolute gem of a place called Lake Jasper, where we had the entire lake, white sandy beaches and camping areas totally to ourselves. We got a huge bonfire going, cracked open a bottle of warming Frangellico and totally forgot about the rain. Many of the tourist attractions, such as the 61 metre tall Gloucester Tree, were also tourist free without a “wicked” camper van in sight.

Only in Australia could you be allowed to climb the Gloucester Tree. It is a 61 metre near vertical climb, with no ropes or bars holding you in. You just have to grip onto the iron stakes, which have been hammered into the tree, and climb. I climbed first and Gerard started just behind me. About 20 metres into the climb, I started feeling a little shaky and looked below me at Gerard. All of the colour had drained from his face and he informed me that he was not doing so well and needed to go down, he could not go up any further. He had frozen mid climb and clung onto the iron stakes. It was awful for me to watch but I could not do anything as I had started to feel queasy myself. We both regained our composure and rather shakily, made it to the top and back down again. I did not realise until the next morning that when I was climbing, I was so focused on holding for dear life onto the iron stakes and taking my time that I had only used one leg to push off for the next iron stake the whole time. My left bum muscle the next day was agony!

There were also some down sides to the rain – mozzies and flies were in almost plague proportions at Windy Harbour. At the camp, we were hassled by mossies who bit through your clothes. Down on the beach, we had to constantly wave our arms around like 70s disco junkies as flies landed on us like we were some uncovered food. They are the worst we have encountered on our trip so far.

We continued on in the rain to Albany, which was a town built around the now forbidden Whaling. The whaling stations shut down in 1978 and rather ironically, Albany now thrives as a town for watching migrating whales. We visited the old whaling station, where we learnt about whaling from some rather graphic video footage and pictures. The job of a Fleanser has to be the worst job in history (if you are eating at this very moment, you may want to put the food down as I describe the job of a Fleanser!). They were the ones who pulled off the whales skin using a winch and cut the thick blubber away from the whale. They would then feed the blubber into a pot of boiling liquid to extract the oil form the blubber. This would then be shipped of to the US and Europe. The job was so dangerous due to the boiling liquid and sharp instruments they used that no one would offer them job insurance. The museum was fascinating and well worth a visit if you are in Albany. It even has the last whaling boat used, Cheynes IV, for you to explore where you can impersonate Leo and Kate with your Titanic impressions. Of course, Gerard and I did not do anything so childish.

From Albany, we slowly made our way to Esperance, stopping off at small beach side towns along the way. The weather improved enough for the camper trailer to dry out and our moods improved significantly. We even had highs of 21 one day, which was positively freezing compared to the weather up North, but any sunshine was welcomed with open arms.

With the change of weather came wildlife. We continually had to dodge bobtail lizards and snakes on the road as they were coming out of their hiding places to bask in the sunshine. The birds also came out. We saw white-tailed black cockatoos, brightly coloured parrots, kookaburra's and owls in the evening time. We also heard on the radio about some recent sightings of some slightly bigger animals - a 6 metre great white shark just off the coast of Albany. I am definitely not getting in that water just yet!

We are currently in Esperance, where we will be staying for a few days before we go into Cape Le Grand National Park and Cape Arid. The roads are 4WDrive mud tracks so we are waiting until they dry out a little before we head in. Our next trip will be crossing the Nullarbor Plain to head into South Australia.

I have included some pictures of the bobtail lizards and other lizards we saw on the roads, some of the beautiful beaches on Rottnest Island, me climbing the Gloucester Tree, the flies at Windy Harbour on Gerard, the beach at Black Point (just before we reached Lake Jasper), a parrot we saw having his breakfast and the Elephant Rocks.

Hope you are all well and as always, thanks to all who have emailed and blogged.

Rach and Ged x

Days 142 - 155

I know that the question on everyone’s lips has not been how will the financial market meltdown affect you, but what was wrong with the Fish. We got a few emails and comments with suggestions for what could possibly be wrong with the car, for which we were very grateful. However, what we have quickly learnt is that it is not easy trying to do mechanical repairs whilst on the road – we do not have a workshop to hand or as many of the tools as we would like. After going through all of the suggestions, it still boiled down to one vital part – the Injector Pump (“IP”). When we purchased the car, it had done 366,000 kms and still had its original IP. Due to time constraints and money, we decided not to change the IP before we left Sydney. Just under 24,000 kms later, we were slightly regretting that decision as this is what the problem with the Fish turned out to be. Once a new IP was freighted up to Exmouth from Perth, and then fitted, 8 days later, the Fish was back on working form once more and our trip could continue.

Continue it did for a few hundred kms until our next problem reared its ugly head. The veg oil fuel lift pump also decided to give up the ghost. This meant we had to travel on diesel until we got to Carnarvon, where we purchased a new one. We felt dirty using diesel for this time! Everything is running fine now and we are once more back on the sweet smelling WVO.

Once the Fish was fixed, we went back to Cape Range National Park, where we spent three very windy nights. We went snorkelling at some of the places we visited last time and also got to see hundreds of Loggerheads turtles up “very close”. When I say “very close”, I literally mean just that as we came across them at mating time! It really was an incredible sight for there were turtles everywhere – the majority were in the shallow surf but there were some big fellows having a rest on the beach after their morning’s exertions. It can’t be easy with a flat stomach and a rounded hump.

We left Cape Range (after the Fish gave the Vanderkellen’s car, “the white gerka”, a little kiss goodbye – sorry Vandi's) and headed South to the Quobba Coast. It was still blowing an absolute gale around Cape Range and we thought heading South may be less windy. We were very wrong. We drove to Red Bluff and could hardly open our doors to register for camping. The coastline was extremely dynamic, high cliffs and huge waves pounding the rocks and the beach, and the landscape was low scrub with few trees to shelter you from the wind. We camped in a beautiful spot right on the beach. When the wind died down a little, we could see hump back whales about 200 meters out to sea. I don’t think I will ever get bored of that sight.

Before leaving the Quobba Coast for the area of Shark Bay, we stopped off at the Blowholes. As the wind was still strong and the waves bigger than ever, the blowholes were fantastic, blowing water into the air a good 20 metres.

The area of Shark Bay is World Heritage Listed, and like every other part of the Western Australia coastline we have visited, absolutely stunning. We struck pure paradise for the second time on this trip when we drove over sand dunes and soft sand tracks to get to Francis Peron National Park. We were rewarded for our efforts by white sand beaches, bright orange sand dunes and turquoise waters teeming with sea life.

As soon as we finished putting the awning of the camper trailer up, the wind died down and the water became like glass. We went for a walk at low tide to see what seafood we could forage for dinner and saw turtles, cow-tail sting rays, black tip reef sharks, shovel nose sharks and dolphins, all in the shallow waters. Food wise, we picked up cockles, pipis and mussels and boiled them up for dinner with some garlic and wine.

Our camp spot was once again right on the beach with only one other couple, Sally and Gordon from Perth, sharing the whole stretch of beach with us. On our last day, they invited us out in their tinnie for some fishing. We went about 3 kms out and saw dolphins and the dugongs, which are apparently hard to see as they are so shy. I felt slightly embarrassed about my fishing skills, or more precisely, my lack of fishing skills, but Gordon assured me that you could not miss out here and even his mate, “who was such a bad fisherman he couldn’t even catch a cold” caught fish out there. Right, no pressure then!

On my first cast out, I forgot to free the reel so that the line could unwind on my throw. Bugger. Pretending it was a dummy throw (like a dummy swing in golf), I calmly freed the reel and casted out again. Much better this time as the line actually went in the water. I tried to get Gerard’s attention to ask him what I do if by some miracle, I actually do get something on my line, but before I could do this, I saw and felt my rod twitching and I was in for a fight with something. Everyone on the boat stopped fishing and looked at me fighting with this thing, shouting instructions about what to do. In the end, it turned out that there was nothing on my line, I had gotten snagged. Bugger again! Gerard caught the first fish of the day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the pink snapper we were all hoping for, but the inedible, ugly looking toad fish. Things did get better throughout the morning with everyone catching snappers, Gerard catching a small lemon shark, Gordon catching a Spanish Mackerel and me catching my first fish ever, a stripey sea perch. Each fish we caught was identified using our trusty "guide to fish" book, measured to make sure it was the correct size and either thrown back, or kept for dinner if it was the right size. We had a fabulous morning with Sally and Gordon and I now have the bug for fishing.

We left Francis Peron after an hour of Gerard digging us out of some soft sand (my fault!). On the track out, we saw a lot of spotted Goanna’s and to our delight, a thorny devil (no, not Gerard, it’s a reptile). We headed on a 4WD track West to the most Western point of Australia, Steep Point. We travelled over huge sand dunes and corrugated tracks to what seemed like the end of the world. We eventually arrived at a homestead and registered. As I was registering, I noticed the lady sniff the air and go and check her kitchen as she thought she had left her frying pan on. I told her that we were running our car on waste cooking oil and she said that we were the first car to go out to Steep Point on WVO. Once we found the most Western point, we got out the car and were hammered by the wind. It looked as if there was a huge storm going on out to sea, with huge waves and swell.

We are currently in a beautiful little town called Kalbarri, where we are restocking on WVO before we head down to Perth for Wednesday/Thursday. We are hoping to catch up with a few people from our travels and some old friends.

I have included some pictures of the beautiful Francis Peron NP, the thorny devil we saw, dolphins, an exhausted looking turtle after its morning exertions, a pelican, a cow-tail sting ray, me with my first catch, Gerard and I at Steep Point, the view from the top of Red Bluff over the coast, the waves pounding against the rocks at Point Quobba, Gerard enjoying the blowholes and the Vanderkellen children, Clancey, Lilly and George on top of the Fish.

Hope you are all well and thank you to all who have emailed and blogged.

Rach and Ged x