Albany

Albany was the last stop on our camping trip.  We stayed in the city at Middleton Beach Caravan Park right on the ocean's doorstep.  A bit different from the bush camping in Fitzgerald River National Park.  There, we had no amenties and were 80 some kms from the nearest town.  Here, we had mulitple washrooms with showers, a swimming pool and spa, games room, theatre, camp kitchen and kids programs all adjacent to a city of 30 000.  We paid for it though - national parks are $7 per adult per night compared to $58 per site per night.  We made sure we had extra long showers and put the kids in the day camps to get our money worth.  The photo is a Blue Bottle Jellyfish washed up on shore.  Don't touch, the tentacles sting!

Brig Amity is a replica of the first ship that brought convicts, sailors, craftsmen and settlers to Albany in 1824, Western Australia's first permament European settlement.  

Brig Amity seemed pretty small for the dozens of men who sleep and worked on the ship.  Most definitely it had some mastercraftmenship of the day.  Above we are listening to the audio tour desribing the innards of the hold and what life was like aboard the ship.

Go figure, one of the oldest buildings in Albany is a convict built gaol (jailhouse)!?

More reptiles out and about in the spring sun.  This one was the aptly named long necked turtle.

During the morning kids programme, us adults went for a hike along the coast without kids.  Later, we stopped by a cafe and drank tea.   (If my sister saw us, she would of called us a pair of dorks!)

The beautiful Two People's Bay Reserve is just outside the city limits.  Nice granite rocks, wonderful colours in the water, spring wildflowers in a peaceful natural setting until our two cranky pots woke up!  I guess 11 nights in a tent and 12 days travelling takes it's toll.  We had one more night to sleep in the tent and by the next afternoon we were already packed up and home in Harvey. And will our kids ever stop picking stuff up out of the bush?  This time it was a leg bone from a kangaroo!

Pluses and Minuses from our Camping Trip

+ Gas BBQs in city parks, camping spots, caravan parks, bush camping spots, the beach.  Aussies got it going on :) with all the free bbqs available.  We only used our cook stove twice.

+ Free kids programs at the Albany caravan park.  Yes, please take our kids for 3 hours.

+ Empty beaches.  If we were in any other country or near a metropolitan area, they wouldn't be so special.

+ Nature. We saw animals that exist no where else on the planet, more reptiles in 2 weeks than in the past year, endless open bush, seemily untouched coast and nature preserves.

- Ticks!  Becky got a tick in Dryandra Woodland (removed with tweezers - not so good) and Collin got one in Point Ann (removed with olive oil - less than 5 seconds - much better).

- Rain and clouds.  Can't complain too much about the weather.  We knew we were camping in the spring, so one night tenting during a thunder storm and two mornings driving in the rain isn't so bad.  The clouds did make it feel a little cooler near the water though.

Fitzgerald River National Park

Bush Camping at Fitzgerald RiverNational Park
We stayed two days at Point Ann in this world wide recognized biodiversity hotspot.  Some 1800 types of flora are found in the park.  The bay at Point Ann is a southern right whale nursury during the winter months.  Unfortunately, we missed the mommas and calves by only a week:( 

Bush camping sites have sheltered spots, but basic amenities.  No water, unless you count the sea :)  

We arrived with stormy weather - gorgeous pictures of the park and coast.  Thankfully no rain for the two days and nights. 

The next day we drove a 4X4 track to another beach.  Noboby was on this 10-15km  stretch of coast.  One the greatest parts of being in Western Australia is getting away from the crowds and finding these secluded pieces of paradise.  Again, beautiful white sand that squeaked when you walked on it.  We parked the vehicle at the top of the ridge not wanting to risk getting stuck on the drive back up the dune.  But, on the walk down to the beach Jackson and Caleb ran ahead of us and then quickly ran back shouting and talking quickly.  "Jackson saw a snake and picked it up!"  "I thought it was dead and when I picked it up it hissed at me!"  Top right is a drawing by Jackson with Caleb writing AAAHH! and HISS!   Monkye See - Monkey Do.  Just a few days earlier dad picked up a snake (albeit dead on the road), so it must be okay.  Good thing it was only a baby, less than 10 inches long and thinner than your pinky.  We think the colourings suggest it was a python. Sorry no photo evidence, but the memory will be long lasting.

Caleb on top of the whale lookout. 

The background shows the pit toilets, and two bbq shelters.  Behind the ridge is the 8 tenting sites.

Esperance - Australia's Best Beaches

The town of Esperance was voted as the Top Town in WA (and #2 in the country), Twilight Bay was voted as WA's favorite beach in the entire state, and the beach at Lucky Bay has the whitest sand in Australia.  So, what do you do in Espereance - hit the beach of course!  Above left is the coastline along the Great Ocean Drive where there are more than 11 amazing beaches in 11 miles.  The island featured is Observatory Island where in 1792 two French vessels, L'Espereance and Recherche, sought shelter from a storm.  They also gave a lot of French place names to the area.  Above right is Twilight Beach as it's calm, clean, cool waters.

Left is the three boys exploring a rock at Twilight Beach.  October is still spring and the cooler Southern Ocean waters keep a lot of swimmers away until summertime.

The warmest day we had during our camping trip was 24 degrees and the coldest was a high of 17.  Nightime temps were around 10. So, not so bad springtime weather.

Above and below is Lucky Bay in Cape Le Grand National Park.  Just a short 3/4 hour drive from town.  We did not go above our knees in the water that morning, but played and hiked in the squeeky fine white sand.  The water is shallow and clear, must be quite refreshing during the hot dry summers.

Hellfire Bay had a little rougher seas, but that didn't stop the kids from swimming and splashing at the beach.  Both adults went in up to their waist, but didn't brave any further.

If Albany has the Dog Rock, then this one must be called Hound Rock or Pooch Stone or Wolf Mound?! 

Below is Jackson warming up after a dip. 

We finally got a photo of a metre long goanna, we saw at least a dozen on our trip through out the Southwest.

Cape Le Grand Beach - low hard flat sandy shoreline that a jumbo jet could land on.  Just to say we did, we drove our Suzuki onto the beach... if we kept driving another 24 km we would of reached town via the coast.

On the drive home we saw something on the road with tire tracks across it.  We made sure it was dead, before Collin picked it up.  Keep in mind that every snake in Australia is poisonous [to varying degrees], except the python, and we are sure that this one isn't a python.  But, even after going through several snake books, Australia's Deadliset Creatures. and the internet, we still couldn't identify it properly.  It might be a whip snake, because of it's slender head, body and tail?  Through oral descriptions, we had 3 different Aussies tell us it could be 3 different types - a burrowing snake, dugite (brown snake), tiger snake. 
Any one else know? Email cbwalker@sasktel.net

One of Esperence's residents - Sammy the Sea Lion, lazily sunny himself by the Tanker Jetty.
We weren't sure which way to choose.  So we just went in the middle.  The boys, including Collin went topless, but Becky had a two piece on (but, naked underneath!).  It didn't really matter anyways as we had the entire beach(es) to ourselves for more than 2 hours.

Caleb and some wildflowers along the Rotary Hill walk trail. 

Esperence's distance from Perth (700 km) keeps the crowds away, so most of the summer (and even more so during the rest of the year) there are few crowds on the many, many beautiful beaches.  And a good portion of the visitors we talked to didn't stick around for long, as Esperence was the last big town on their road trip heading east through the Nullabor and onto South Australia.  To us, it was most definitely worth the drive for the clean white sand and the crystal clear cool waters. 

Wave Rock - More Fun Than School!

 Jackson: "Wave Rock is funner than school! It's the funnest thing in the whole world!"
Caleb: "Even funner than your Leapster?"
Jackson: "Yes!!"
Caleb: [Totally confused and not able to understand that.]

How many surf poses can you do on Wave Rock? On the edge of the desert and the outback is a quiet wheat farming community of Hyden.  Only famous because of a 1100 million year old rock where erosion has carved a giant wave.  The boys climbed and slid all up and down the granite rock face.  They laughed and laughed

 

Lonely Planet travel guide dares that anyone who visits NOT to strike their best surf pose.  We didn't last 15 minutes before the camera caught us in sea surf action some 400 km away from the coast.

On top of Wave Rock is a 1.5 km walk.  A few steep steps and we hiked the top of the monolith.  Caleb found tadpoles in the rock pools.  A rainbow greeted us as we looked out onto the bush and wheat fields.

Hippos Yawn is the second most visited part of the area.  In between Hippos Yawn and The Wave is a mini-wave, just not grown up yet.  Below is Mulka's Cave.  About 15 km drive to another large granite rock called The Humps is a cave steeped in Aboriginal history.  Several hundred painted hands and drawings are inside the cave left over from the centuries. 

Dryandra Woodland

From the coastal plain, over the Darling Scarp and onto the wheatbelt lies a wonderful forest reserve called Dryandra Woodland.  It was our first stop on our 13 day camping trip in the southwest of Western Australia.

What is special about this park, is that less than 3% of the original woodland remains in this productive farming area.  Therefore it is an oasis for all sorts of rare and unique flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world.  The woodland is known for its high concentration of numbats, a squirrel type of ant eater.  Unfortunately, there were no sightings from the Walker family:(   Note: if any Aussie bushman or bush princess notices any errors in our namings, please email us or comment, so we can correct any errors.

Left, is a picture of Wandoo eucalyptus trees, a type of white gum. 

Being that it is spring, all the cold blooded animals are far more visible.  Just in our drive to Dryandra and within the park we saw 5 types of lizards come out and sun themselves.  To the right is a lizard I think is called a spade head?  Below is a bobtail lizard, also called a blue tongue, for obvious reasons.  The video is clumsily shot, but the first few seconds it has the blue tongue out.  The blue tongue is harmless and only opens its mouth when trying to defend itself and scare away predators.  The other types of lizard were goannas - we saw more than a dozen of these giants, and geckos, and skinks.  All too fast for the camera.