TravelStream™ news feed for member bshorts on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/bshorts en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:58:42 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bshorts/4/1221547620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bshorts/4/1221547620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bshorts/4/1221547620/tpod.html Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:58:42 -0500 Round the World - Australia

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Darwin, Australia

Litchfield was a cinch to reach and just before arriving there we stopped at the butterfly farm, certainly a unique place. The proprietor had the most unusual accent ever, turned out to be part Yorkshire, part Belfast, part Aussie. He seemed to think that being in Belfast when his father was there as a soldier made him part Irish but there you go. From there we continued to see the magnetic termite mounds. Disappointingly these mounds are not actually magnetic, but the name reflects the fact that the mounds are aligned on a north south axis to take advantage of the morning and evening warmth but escaping the midday heat. They are strange looking things to say the least.

We later visited the Buley Rockholes, a beautiful area of natural pools and the Katherine Falls, where the aggressive fish were biting....me! Quite a nip on the foot out of the little bastards. Next day we visited some other waterfalls and wound up at Wongi which was a lovely little pool for swimming. No fish there really but still a good swim. So from there we hit the dirt roads again and returned to Darwin where Maria's deviousness once again stood us in good stead. We had failed to book a room but when Maria told them we actually had they were very apologetic and accommodated us so that was cool. I didn't fancy trying to find another hotel.

Having returned the crock of a van we had a couple of days to mellow before our flight so we visited the night markets at Mindil Beach and chilled for a couple of days. It's a good town for that kind of thing.

Leaving the town for our flight to Cairns we had one of those annoying incidents at the airport. You know the ones where you have the bad luck to find the only anal check-in person? This was our third time through Darwin Airport between passing through en route to Perth and arriving from Broome and this was the first time that our hiking poles were a problem (never a problem in about ten flights since Nepal) and also the first time my backpack was deemed to be oversized luggage. So annoying, and such a waste of time. Sadly the little fool wouldn't listen to reason and insisted on doing everything by the book. I hate the book.

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Darwin, Australia

Having passed through Darwin on our arrival in Australia we knew enough to use the free internet in the airport to book our hotel on arrival. Don't ask me why we don't book things further in advance but we don't. Anyway the Cavenagh was cool, right in the centre and we got a good rate on the internet too so happy days. Darwin seemed like a great place. It's the first big town/city here that isn't ridiculously sprawled out and everything is very central which makes life very easy. There are plenty of bars and restaurants and the waterfront esplanade is a lovely place to take a walk or just chill out. To the northwest of the city is Lake Alexander which is man made and seems to be the only really safe place to swim due to jellyfish in the sea. It nice up there too though and that's where lots of people go to sunbathe.

In terms of sights Darwin is like any other Australian town and anything of any remote significance is excellently marketed as a tourist attraction. Some of them are very interesting but some less so. We took in the Fannie (snigger) Bay Gaol and the museum one day and that was decent. Probably the most interesting sight there is the recently opened Crocosaurus Cove where there are some huge saltwater crocs as well as lots of baby ones, turtles, a reptile centre with lots of lizards and snakes and a good crocodile information centre. Those big crocs are scary alright, its hard to believe the sheer bulk of the males. The males are 5m long on average but the lads here, all rogue crocs from around the region, were all close to 6m, weighing 650-750kg! Avoid at all costs in the wild.

Our mode of transport was to be a camper van from Wicked. This company specializes in cheaper rentals as the vans are very low key. Perfectly adequate but without the modern trappings of our last rental, but that was just what we were looking for as we're probably going to be camping as we go down the east coast. Sadly we discovered the real reason the rentals are so cheap...they don't bother maintaining the vans. Ours had faulty air conditioning, non-working sunroofs to start with, and on the road we discovered a leaky radiator, one of the two chairs broken and a pot with no handles! It was also dirty in spite of a poster in the depot saying that all vans must be returned clean! Collecting our van on a Saturday (I won't discuss the infuriating utter incompetence of the depot manager other than to say it took over 2 hours to get our van...why? Who knows?) the a/c couldn't be fixed until Monday morning so we decided to wait. That may sound a bit precious but with temperatures of 37 degrees where we were going and dirt roads making open windows a bad idea, a/c seemed like a near essential. It turned out that it was company policy was to disable the sunroofs and they pretty much failed to fix the a/c. Offered no alternative van we could either wait another day (having already lost three!) or go with it. Bear in mind that they wouldn't even offer a refund! Bastards! If they'd just refunded us the fees we could have arranged with another company for rental but we couldn't due to their 'policy'. Their complaints department (ironically named the Care Department') have ignored us too so we'll have to see where this goes.

Those lost days meant that our intended trip to the Bungle Bungles was off the agenda which is a real shame as we've heard great things about that. But eventually we set off to enjoy our trip through Kakadu, Katherine and Litchfield in spite of those bastards. It's another road trip!!
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Broome, Australia

So on to Port Headland, a port town through which more iron ore is exported than from any other port in Australia (boring enough but it is the town's claim to fame). This results in everything in the town having a fine layer of red dust all over. Massive ships arrive and leave every day, being loaded from trains arriving from the mines. These trains only carry ore and with 3 engines they can pull up to 3km of carriages. A popular tourist activity is to stand on the bridge and watch the long line pass below but unfortunately while we were there the only train had arrived over half an hour ahead of schedule (we were actually early for something and it didn't pay off!) so that wasn't to be. There's also a huge salt production operation with massive mounds of salt just sitting there. We didn't stick around there and continued on with the intention of stopping en route north, leaving about 250km to Broome for the next day. We also hoped to make it to 80 mile beach possibly for some fishing.....or what our attempts pass for. Sadly in spite of being 80 miles long the beach only had one obvious public entry which we couldn't get the van through so we pushed on. In hindsight we should have forced the van through, but we thought that over the course of 80 miles there might be more access. Eventually we ended up driving to Barn Hill 130km short of Broome where there is a beautiful beach where we were able to chill out, do some running, swimming etc. It was recommended to us by several old people we'd met along the way, and it was choc full of the grey nomads. So funny, apparently some of them just up and leave home, basing themselves there for months at a time. Brilliant. They also had open top showers which meant that at night we were showering under the stars.

So on to Port Headland, a port town through which more iron ore is exported than from any other port in Australia (boring enough but it is the town's claim to fame). This results in everything in the town having a fine layer of red dust all over. Massive ships arrive and leave every day, being loaded from trains arriving from the mines. These trains only carry ore and with 3 engines they can pull up to 3km of carriages. A popular tourist activity is to stand on the bridge and watch the long line pass below but unfortunately while we were there the only train had arrived over half an hour ahead of schedule (we were actually early for something and it didn't pay off!) so that wasn't to be. There's also a huge salt production operation with massive mounds of salt just sitting there. We didn't stick around there and continued on with the intention of stopping en route north, leaving about 250km to Broome for the next day. We also hoped to make it to 80 mile beach possibly for some fishing.....or what our attempts pass for. Sadly in spite of being 80 miles long the beach only had one obvious public entry which we couldn't get the van through so we pushed on. In hindsight we should have forced the van through, but we thought that over the course of 80 miles there might be more access. Eventually we ended up driving to Barn Hill 130km short of Broome where there is a beautiful beach where we were able to chill out, do some running, swimming etc. It was recommended to us by several old people we'd met along the way, and it was choc full of the grey nomads. So funny, apparently some of them just up and leave home, basing themselves there for months at a time. Brilliant. They also had open top showers which meant that at night we were showering under the stars.

And so to Broome. I was thankful of a short drive and the prospect of no driving for a few days. We returned the van on our second day and hired bikes instead. In spite of the damage on the side of the van we had no troubles with the return and thanked our lucky stars that we'd paid the extra, especially thankful we'd got the windscreen cover as a crack had started towards the end of our rental!

Broome is a decent town and has a great location with Town Beach with mangroves on one side and the famous Cable Beach on the other. We continued our trend of early starts and were up nearly with sunrise on two days, firstly to see the planes that were shot down by the Japanese in WWII. These were right outside the caravan park we stayed in so we only had to walk out about 1km to see them. The next day we cycled out to Gantheaume Point to see the fossilized dinosaur footprints there. It was a long and tough cycle with the wind in our faces there and back for some reason but worth it really to see the footprints. Both the footprints and the planes are only visible at very low tides so we were lucky enough to be in town when the tides were right.

Our final night we also visited the famous Sun Cinema which is the oldest outdoor cinema in the world operating since 1916 or so. Unfortunately the only thing showing was the incredibly gay Mamma Mia, based on the Broadway musical of the same name. It's pretty much an excuse to squeeze as many ABBA songs into 90 minutes as possible. They did a good job really. The cinema was okay, the highlight of the experience was the arrival of a jet to the nearby airport, flying low overhead as we watched.

Finally we were off, taking a flight to Darwin. It seems like all internal flights here make stopovers, in this case at Kununurra, which really adds to the length of time traveling. But anyway, no problems here and so the second leg of our Australian jaunt begins.
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Karijini, Australia

Leaving Exmouth we were faced with a pretty intense day of driving to reach Tom Price, gateway to Karijini National Park. I think we covered about 600km in getting there, but as always it was on straight well paved roads so it was fine. We kept passing road signs warning about flooding which seemed baffling to us with a parched landscape and a clear blue sky around us. We later learned that in wet season there is a major flood risk as up to a metre of rain can fall in a week, with as much as 200mm in one day. At those times the roads can be impassable for a couple of days until the water drains away. It sounds crazy but at least we were there in dry season.

Tom Price is a crap hole, very rough seeming and with easily the poorest standard of roads and all that we'd seen yet. It's a mining town which I suppose doesn't lend itself to a classy existence. The town was founded in the 1960's I think and is named after an American employee of some big mining company who convinced the government to allow mining in the area. To demonstrate the historical disregard for the Aboriginal all native names in the area were ignored, even to the extent of calling the biggest mountain hereabouts Mount Nameless! Aborigines have lived here for over 50,000 years and have names for everything but still the European settlers called it Mount Nameless!

We were a little worried about the unsealed roads in the park after our experience of Kalbarri but they were much better here so we were pretty happy that we didn't do the $150 4wd tour! Instead of crawling along at less than 20kph as in Kalbarri we were able to cruise at 60-80kph. Thank god for that, the last time was a bit of a nightmare. The visitor centre has some great information about the area and the history since European settlement. The Aborigines got a seriously raw deal....but that's not so surprising really. At first some of them were shepherds...but then fences were introduced. Then they became Dingo hunters...but that work soon ran out. Many of them were stockmen on the stations here but were paid very little, often just clothes and basic rations. Even that fell through in the 1960s when the courts ordered equal pay with white people, at which point the station owners said they couldn't afford to have them and laid most of them off!

Anyway they now own this land again and run it in conjunction with the government as a National Park. The park is very spectacular, with gorges that far outstrip those of Kalbarri in depth and grandeur. Again we did plenty of walking, but the rating system for advising of the difficulty and duration of the walks was way off. They were saying that 2km would take over 2 hours! Crazy really and seemed to be a worst case scenario, like for a 1 legged, asthmatic blind man or something. I don't know. Anyway in the course of our walking we saw lots of beautiful waterholes, waterfalls and scenery. Dales Gorge was a decent start although we didn't swim in the freezing circular pool. Life's too short for that!

Later we visited Oxer's Lookout and decided to find Handrail Pool which is rated level 5! Okay it was a little tougher to get to than earlier ones but still fine. That little trek was cool enough as we had to wade some parts and climb around on the rocks too. By the time we reached the pool it was getting pretty dark in the gorge so it was time to go before real darkness set in and made things dangerous.

So, tired after another long day we set off for another hour of driving to shorten the next day. We reached a 24 camping site and, in the dark drove up, parking randomly and settling in for the night. It was with delight that we realized we'd stopped in a beautiful place, surrounded by hills and canyons with great views all round. It was so nice to sit outside and enjoy a morning cup of tea overlooking the countryside.
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Katherine, Australia

Located just 300km south of Darwin, Katherine is 5 degrees hotter, and that's hot, believe me. One of the main attractions of the town is the nearby Nitmiluk National Park, home to the Katherine Gorge. We opted for the full day canoe rental and duly set off for the 13.5km round trip. This allows sufficient time to make it to the third gorge so that was our goal. The unremarkable first gorge was navigated quickly and easily but in order to reach the second gorge we had to carry the canoe for about 200m uphill and over rocks. It was damn tough I tell you. The second gorge is the beautiful one usually included on the brochures and indeed the cliffs were impressive, towering over the river as we paddled through the bends of the gorges. At the end of the second we had another portage but only about 20m this time. The third gorge was very short and we turned for home feeling pretty good, but little did we realize how much it would take out of us. By the time we reached the long portage place again we were very keen to be done with it all but we still had several km to go.....seems like we didn't quite think it through!

Eventually we made it back and I don't know if I've ever seen Maria so physically tired before. Passing through the gorge there is debris in the trees a long way from the water level and this represents the flood levels of the previous years. Two years ago the floods went to 13m which is high but nowhere near the record of over 19m in 1998. That flooded the town and destroyed most of it. Imagine that though, about 65ft of water above the dry season level! It's frightening really. There's a railway bridge outside the town with markings in metres on the side and seeing that really brings home just how high the water came. Although the river is quite low at this time of year there are some places where it's still deep, the deepest area of 30m deep being located just upstream from the shallowest area of 1.5m.

There's actually quite a few interesting little sights around the town so we took in a few of them the next day as we recovered from our exertions of the gorges, starting with Jurassic Cycad (ancient plants) and the Katherine Museum with its scary footage of the record flood of 1998. The heat was pretty oppressive too so it was good to chill.

The town, like a lot of Northern Territory towns, has a serious problem with alcohol abuse, primarily with Aboriginals. It's a little intimidating with lots of them hanging around all day on any green area. We decided to drop into the local area AFL final and there was a lot of drunk people there. Some old ladies had smuggled in booze in coke bottles and positively reeked of drink. Unfortunately some of the same ladies (I use the term loosely) just reeked! The footie was pretty good for a local game, with only a couple of token white players. It was a good game anyway and yet again we were amazed at the facilities in Australian towns. The football ground was great, with a small stand, great floodlights and facilities.

I can't think of too much else about the town and we left after three nights. Our original plan of going west to Kununurra was sadly abandoned due to the lost days with the van so from Katherine we went north to Litchfield National Park.

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Kakadu, Australia

So leaving Darwin with our a/c supposedly fixed we were ready to go, fearless of the heat which our dashboard display told us was 33 degrees. Sadly we quickly realized that the a/c was in fact blowing hot air in our faces and we rolled the windows in a vain attempt to cool down. That aside, leaving Darwin is a frustrating first half hour as there is a non-stop succession of traffic lights and seemingly arbitrary speed limits and limit changes (from 90kph down to 70kph back up to 80kph) which made you think they had to be designed to catch people speeding and make a bit of cash from fines.

Soon after that we arrived at the Adelaide River with about 30 seconds to spare before the boat departed for the "Jumping Crocodile" cruise. You know the sort, take a boat out, dangle some meat, crocs jump to eat....mundane, dull, boring. Was it what? Quite the spectacle really, massive crocs leaping to snap the food. The crocs knew what was expected as this is a cruise that goes three times daily, but I was impressed. We got some good photos too. Towards the end we saw lots of birds of prey, mostly kites but also the sea eagle, Australia's second biggest bird of prey. It's a beautiful black and white bird. It actually swooped in to claim a piece of meat too so we saw it up close, albeit for only a few seconds as it flew away with its prize.

So with that done we rang Wicked again to see about the a/c and wound up wasting almost 2 hours until the mechanic in Jabiru just disabled it as he couldn't fix the damn thing. It was almost a relief that we now knew it couldn't be fixed and so we continued on to Ubirr, one of the main areas of Kakadu. On the other hand it was 38 degrees in Jabiru so the a/c would have been nice. Oh well, we'll sweat out any weight we've put on since arriving in Australia.

Kakadu is a very impressive park, the largest in Australia. There are ranger talks at different sites every day and regular guided walks. Our route happily coincided with the schedule and we had the benefit of rangers' knowledge at Ubirr, Nourlangie and Yellow Waters. Ubirr is famous for its aboriginal rock art, with further extensive galleries at Nourlangie. Yellow Waters has loads of birds and fish to look at. There are wallabies everywhere and some scrub fowl too, which are interesting as they have disproportionate legs for scratching in the dirt. Up near Ubirr we took a breather at Cahill's Crossing and had the delightful fortune of seeing two salties basking on the mud. They seemed to be a breeding pair but I think its fair to say we were pleased they were on the other side of the river. The say that for every one croc you see there are 6 that you don't....keep away form the water. There are warning signs everywhere and its very simple don't go near the water, don't stand on the bank, keep back. At Cahill's Crossing there's a boat ramp but I don't know why anyone would be standing there getting a boat into or out of the water with a pair of crocs about 4m and 2.5m long lurking in plain view.

Those were the last crocs we saw and we spent our last Kakadu day at Gunlom, the last of the main highlights of the park. We did pretty much all the highlights except for Jimjim Falls and Twin Falls which are only accessible by a 4wd track. Given the difficulty in getting there we opted not to. With Jimjim not even flowing right now it seemed like a waste of 4 hours. Gunlom was good, and the campsite had fireplaces so I got in touch with my inner caveman and got cooking! The results were excellent. The falls at Gunlom are only a trickle at this time of year (the Wet starts in October and lasts til February) but the upper rock pools are beautiful and the tour groups don't come up there as much as they spend time at the lower plunge pool.

So farewell to Kakadu, its off to Katherine.
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Exmouth, Australia

Exmouth was our next stop and it's a long way on a dead end road but we were really glad that we made the effort because it's a great little place. For such a remote place there is a load of development including an enormous marina, but the prices wouldn't look out of place in Dublin.

Anyway again some of the weather was bad enough but overall it was great. One day was spent driving down the west side of the peninsula to Cape Range National Park, 100km away. The weather turned bad as we reached Yardie Creek, but its was amazing to see lots of emus and a crazy number of kangaroos. Nice, but I wish they'd stay off the roads more as there is a serious amount of them as roadkill. Returning in the rain we made our first attempt at fishing but just casting was giving us some serious problems so we called time on it and headed for home. We tried again the next day but in spite of one excellent bite we caught nothing. Maria still talks about the one that got away. We still haven't caught anything though.

Exmouth is north of Denham and the renowned Ningaloo Reef Marine Park is nearby so the biodiversity is in line with Shark Bay. We did some snorkeling where it was hard to credit the number of fish so close to shore, even if only 2 ft of water. There are just isolated pieces of coral where fish tend to congregate in large numbers so its fantastic for snorkeling. Australia is really fantastic in the way it does the national park thing.

Having done a little research into diving we opted for quality over quantity. Navy Pier (see below if you want to know what it's for) is a huge steel structure in water of 12-14m depth. It's a highly restricted area hence the cost of the dive but its renowned for its remarkable variety of sea life with all the different types found in the nearby Ningaloo Reef found here in a small space. It began with a 2m high entry which was daunting but fine and then we were in the middle of everything. 5ft potato cod and groupers, 6ft reef sharks, bright yellow sea snakes were all the large animals we saw bit there were so many other fish in schools, perfectly coordinated in their movement and feeding. One particular highlight was one of the big cod having its mouth cleaned by a small cleaner fish. Just a fantastic dive and so cool to see so much too. It was worth every penny.



Navy Pier was built by the US as part of a global radio network which allows submarines to communicate without surfacing. They built 13 masts, the tallest at over 400m in height is one of the top 3 tallest buildings in the southern hemisphere. Anyway they built an enormous pier just in order to deliver diesel for power generation. Apparently they generate enough power to light up the most of WA but if the power was needed to send a message then everyone would be without power. So they generate all this power and just waste it. Crazy really.
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Denham, Australia

We stopped for the night in a roadside campsite, one of many laid on by the authorities with toilets. We really hadn't reckoned on the cold at night. Holy moly it was cold, I mean it was like mountains in Nepal cold! We were wrapped up like then, with the only difference being the lack of a sleeping bag! Needless to say that was not a good night's sleep but we were able to get on the move early.

We were very happy to push on to Shark Bay and Denham. Shark Bay is a World Heritage Site with an incredible unique ecosystem. Its marine bio diversity is pretty unequalled due to its location at the southernmost reach of the tropical waters and the northernmost reach of the temperate waters. I may be wrong but I think there are over 1200 species of fish in the area which is incredible. There is also a hyper saline part of it too which allows the growth of stromatolites, an organism that existed 2000 million years ago and helped to change the earth's atmosphere by emitting oxygen and thereby making it possible for life to develop. How interesting is that? Not very I suppose, but I liked it.

En route to Denham there is Hamelin Pool where the aforementioned stromatolites primarily reside, and where the shell beach begins. This has formed over thousands of years from a huge amount of shells (cockles I think) which thrive in the super salty water. Over time they cement together to form a solid layer of rock, which has been used for some buildings in Denham and around. We saw the old quarries there although its no longer used for building in order to protect the area. Shell beach stretches something like 80km.

So to Denham then, a small town founded originally as a pearling town. In the old days they didn't use the oyster shells (mother of pearl) for any commercial purpose so the main street in the town was actually paved with mother of pearl. I'd love to have seen that but sadly its now just tarmac. Our main reason for visiting this area was to see the dolphins at Monkey Mia. Here, several dolphins arrive every morning to be fed. Once upon a time anyone could feed them anything but its now done with a little more focus on the animals' wellbeing. This means that only trained government staff are in the water with them, and the dolphins are only given a maximum of 25% of their daily requirement. Also from experience no young are fed so that they learn to hunt properly and no males either as they get too aggressive. The whole thing is really good and the people working there give an excellent 25 minute talk about the dolphins and their lives. They have big problems with the sharks in the area (the bay's name is well deserved) and just as an aside, everyone has to leave the water when its feeding time to minimize the noise in the water. This is so that the females can hear their calves communicating. A few years ago with lots of spectators in the water at feeding time a calf was taken by a tiger shark, a seriously ferocious creature, when the mother couldn't hear the calf because of all the people. Anyway the Monkey Mia dolphins have been closely observed for almost 30 years and there are now 4 generations there. Very interesting indeed.

With the sky overcast and threatening rain we opted for a boat tour to see some more wildlife like the rays, sharks, turtles and dugongs in the bay. Unfortunately the bad weather reduced the visibility through the water and all we really saw were lots more dolphins swimming around the boat. After that we were moving again, en route to Carnarvon, but not before we stopped at the unexpectedly excellent Ocean Park. They have all sorts of local sealife there, from sharks to turtles, crabs, rays, sea-snakes, and lots of big game fish like trevally, grouper and barramundi. Very interesting were the ray with half of its tail eaten away by a crab as it swam by, an estuary cod who couldn't sink as he'd overeaten, and the brutal stonefish. Step on one of these boys (they look exactly like a rock, algae and everything on them) and 13 spines along its back will shoot up and with 2 venom sacks at the base of each, you'll get a good shot of venom. The spines can go through your footwear and the pain is supposed to be one of the worst pains known to mankind. People have reputedly tried to self-amputate their legs to end the pain! Its rarely fatal to a healthy adult but its effect is to breakdown the muscle tissue. The best cure now known is as simple as hot water. Immersing the area in water over 42 degrees will cause the toxin to break down. Keep it below 52 degrees though or you'll end up with burns and scalding! It's a fascinating place alright. So to Carnarvon where our new fitness regime began with a 20 minute jog!

There has been a lot of fishing going on here on the west coast so we decided to satisfy Maria's curiosity and picked up a basic fishing rod and some hooks, weights and whatever else. We'll see how that goes.
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Margaret River, Australia

I think a direct flight from Bali to Perth takes 6 hours. It took us 13 hours in total. Left Bali at 9pm, arrived Darwin 11.30, left Darwin (no sleep for me) 4.30am, arrived Alice Springs 6.30am, arrived Perth 10.20am. I don't know why a flight from Darwin to Perth takes the ridiculous detour via Alice Springs which meant a major dogleg on the route. But at long last we arrived, tired but glad to be there. Noreen and Stoney were waiting for us so we jumped into the hire car and set off straight for Margaret River, a renowned wine producing region. It was a three hour drive but it was great to see a familiar face after so much time. We arranged an apartment for two nights on arrival and settled in. That was ideal because we had a kitchen and living room which meant we could just relax without having to go anywhere. We watched a lot of the Olympics, Stoney seems to be quite the sports nut, and with the Aussies doing so well in the pool he was having a ball. Maria and I were knackered after our overnight trip so relaxing was great. Its winter here so the town is very quite and lots of cafes/restaurants are closed. I say winter but the days were glorious, clear skies and low 20s in terms of temperature, an unseasonable heat wave greeting our arrival after a week of heavy rain. So after taking in some of the seaside views on the journey down we went to the beach for sunset, braving the evening chill for the excellent colours of our first west coast sunset.

We made use of the kitchen for some homemade breakfast; I think our first home cooked meal since Ireland, and then set off for some wineries. We went through 6 or 7 of them, of varying quality. A couple of them were just shy of outright rudeness, but some were very friendly and informative. Stoney knows a little about wine, asking what sounded like educated questions which certainly impressed me. Come to think of it he may just be a very good bluffer!! I think the general consensus was that Moss Brothers' was the best, both in terms of the staff and the quality of wine offered. Delicious. It was fortunate for me that of the few wines that I know the local specialties included three, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz. Good stuff. The following day we slowly made our way back towards Perth, stopping for the night in Fremantle, a big town 20km from Perth with a reputation as a great place for cafes bars and good times. Along the way we stopped a couple of times to see what was going on, firstly at Naturaliste to climb on the rocks and then at Bunker Bay to walk along the excellent beach. The weather was beautiful, with not a cloud in the sky. The water, while cold, looked very inviting. We resisted.

Western Australia also has a strong reputation for brewing, with a lot of micro breweries. One of the most famous is Little Creatures in Fremantle so we paid them a visit and found a really different type of place, like a warehouse almost. They have a brewery, bar and restaurant on site and it was all good, with nice beers and very tasty food. After a swift one at the Sail and Anchor we opted not to join the half hour queue for the nightclub and returned to the hotel.

So ended our sojourn in the very south and in the morning we headed north again via Cottesloe beach (another beauty) and an enormous breakfast. Reaching Perth we had time to find a hotel, have a coffee and then it was time for a parting of company. Noreen and Stoney left to go to the airport and we returned to the hotel where an off-colour Maria took a nap. Shame to see them go really, their journey across the country was much appreciated. I think it took 6 hours to get over from Brisbane so fair play to them. It was great to see Noreen again, won't see her now (I assume) until we're back in Ireland. Not very soon anyway.

]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bshorts/4/1219541340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bshorts/4/1219541340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bshorts/4/1219541340/tpod.html Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:34:47 -0400 Round the World - Australia

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Kalbarri, Australia

So from Geraldton we departed early for Kalbarri, arriving at the scene of the aforementioned scrape around lunchtime, just enough time to explore the coastal gorges before dark. There was some absolutely beautiful scenery along here, with the cliffs overlooking the Indian Ocean. We spotted a couple of whales breeching out at sea from the cliff tops too, and then settled in with blankets against the chill to watch the sunset.

Our next day taught us a lesson about expecting the unexpected and expecting our plans to go somewhat awry. I all started brightly enough, going to watch the pelican feeding at the waterfront. The Australian Pelican is the largest species in the world and it's massive, standing about 1m tall with a 3m wingspan and a long beak capable of holding 10 litres of water. Seeing them wait for the food and then take it from someone's hand was nice. After all that we set off to the National Park to see the famous river gorges and this is where it all went kind of pear shaped. We thought that we'd get there around 10.30, do some hiking and then push on north in the evening to make the following day a short enough drive to Denham at Shark Bay. It wasn't to be though as our travel expectations proved unrealistic. Firstly while we knew the gorges were about 30km away we didn't realize that the national park started about 5km away, meaning 25km of the most corrugated road imaginable just to reach Nature's Window then another 40 or so to go via other spots and back to the road. Sooooo to put it simply the 70 odd km took us well over 2 hours instead of the expected 45 minutes.

Anyway, aside from the incredibly annoying flies, Kalbarri was pretty good, Natures Window was cool and we did the 8kim Loop hike there. Another few km hiking at a couple of other spots like z-bend gorge and we were done, with only the nightmare road to face. All of this driving on the dodgy road left us behind on the driving so rather than drive while tired to make it up we pulled into a roadside 24 hour campsite. This was an incredibly cold night, shocking really and even I needed some extra layers of insulation. Maria returned to Nepal sub-zero tactics and applied about 8 layers. So cold.

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