West Coast Cooler

  Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Monday, November 3, 2008

Ripples in sand in evening light

Much, much cooler, in fact!  It may be the kind of weather that would be deemed a heatwave back home, causing people to collapse with heat exhaustion, but after the extreme temperature up north, the past week of traveling down the west coast has had me donning a fleece in the evenings and zipping the sleeping bag right up at night.  We met a couple way back in Kununurra who, after their trip up the west coast had come to believe that W.A. actually stood for 'Windy Always'... and I can see why.
 

Cape Range N.P.

Turtle on beach nr. Exmouth

It's a beautiful coast though.  The snorkeling off Ningaloo Reef was good, with some gorgeous branch coral and lots of bright exotic fishies, but the wildlife award went to the huge turtles bobbing about and mating in the water and landing up on the shore.  The wind at Cape Range N. P. churned the water up too much after two days so we moved on but found it as bad at Coral Bay and continued on to Monkey Mia, famed for the bottle-nose dolphins which visit the sheltered bay daily.  I had seen photos of lines of tourists observing these creatures being fed by rangers at the waters edge, and the staged spectacle didn't appeal but it was a delight to watch them a little further out in the sea, rolling around playfully with each other.  
 

Thorny Devil

Get that tongue!

The week's reptilian celebrities were the 'Thorny Devil Lizard' (real name) and 'Stick-Out-Your-Tongue Lizard' (not real name, but I can't identify it!), one casually sunbaking in the middle of the road, not moving even when my camera was two inches from it, while the other ran for the cover of the dry grass, from where it unhinged its jaw and repeatedly thrust out its tongue in defence.
 

Pelicans on beach

Pinnacles at sunset

  Kalbarri offered us pelicans on the beach, fighting with the seagulls over fish, and also showed us the remains of the spring wildflowers along the roads to the river gorges, as well as some lovely coastal cliff scenery.  Further south we stopped at the Pinnacles and were impressed with how much bigger they look in the pictures!  It was a great spot for a sunset though.
 

Gorge in Kalbarri

We had truly left behind the dramatic wild scenery of a couple weeks ago as we drove lower still, passing alongside cultivated fields and then vineyards until we arrived here in the city of Perth where I was shocked to see huge Christmas decorations in the streets, having managed, up in the wilds, to blank out the approaching silly season.  Not a fan of excessive  decorations anyway, I find them very strange on a warm sunny afternoon, surrounded by people in shorts and t-shirts!