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