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