Nights 218 - 235; The Coral Coast part 2.

NIGHT  218  -  WHALEBONE BAY CAMPGROUND, DENHAM

I could be having writer’s déjà vu.

I want to start this section exactly the same way as I started the first section of the last blog entry.

Then I was referring to Exmouth, saying how you couldn’t go there by mistake as it was nowhere near anything else.  Well ditto for Denham.  Both towns exist at the end of an archipelago that juts out from the mainland into the Indian Ocean.  To get to both towns you have to go around a gulf and head north again, towards nothing other than a single town and its attractions.  The main attraction to head north to Exmouth was Ningaloo Reef.  It was worth the drive.  The main attraction to head towards Denham is Monkey Mia.  It could go either way.

On the way we stopped at Shell Beach.  Shell Beach doesn’t have sand.  Instead, where you’d expect sand to be, there are billions of tiny shells.  It’s bizarre and very cool.  Naturally Shana loved it.  She loves shells and she loves beaches.  Combining them as occurs at Shell Beach was almost more than she could process.  She laid in it and made shell angels with her arms and legs like people sometimes do in the snow.

 

Whalebone Bay is a National Parks campground just south of Denham.  You have to ring National Parks and book a site, there only being six available.  We were excited that we got one.  It’s rare that we can camp right on the beach owing to Morrissey being a dog and dogs being interpreted as the modern equivalent of the black plague. (The mindset is that he will somehow decimate the native wildlife just by his presence). 

We were the first people there and had our choice of the spots.  The first spot we parked in was perfect, but while walking around we found a better perfect spot soon after.   Then, just as we found it, we could see a car and caravan approaching in the distance.

Heading directly toward us.

We were afraid they’d try to gazump our more perfect perfect spot. 

A plan was quickly enacted.

Putting their bodies on the line, Shan and Moz occupied the space while I urged my middle-aged man legs to more rapidly negotiate the sand. It looked like being a race to the spot.  Once in the ‘bago I careened forward, recklessly disregarding sand humps and pot-holes, the other vehicle seemingly speeding up as if becoming aware it was in a race.   Calculating trajectories and distances I was confident of getting there first.  Probably.  It’d be close because the path I was taking was winding and the road went straight on.

Sometimes you have to fight for what you want.

But not this time.

 Luckily (for them) they chickened out, slowed down, and turned off up to the lookout. After giving the place a quick once-over, they drove sedately back out (retreated!).

The perfect spot was ours.

We were 5 mtrs from the water along two sides, with hard sand, flat, and tucked behind a headland away from the southerlies that hadn’t stopped blowing for the last two weeks.

 

We spent a fantastic day not catching fish and playing in the water.  Several cars appeared throughout the day but only one other camped for the night – a hired backpacker van that set up in our rejected second-to-perfect spot.  We waved across the distance, they waved back, and no other communication was needed. 

Nightfall came gently, the sun setting into the ocean.  A meal was prepared, bevvies consumed. 

Then the wind picked up and we thought we were going to die.

It was the strongest wind we’d encountered and it bludgeoned the van like a giant’s fist, over and over and over.  The van weighs almost 5 tonne and, while lying awake at 2am, it was continually hurled from side to side, rocking wildly on the suspension.  It sounds like overkill in the light of the day but we thought it was about to be over-turned.  The windows were rattling furiously, the hatches kept creeping opened so that wind whistled through and something was banging furiously somewhere outside. 

We’re thinking about having T-shirts printed saying ‘We survived a night at Whalebone Bay’.

We give The Whalebone Bay Campground 5 stars out of 5.  Maybe that will appease the wind gods.

NIGHTS  219, 220, 221 – MONKEY MIA RESORT.

What can I say?  Could anybody really travel around Australia without going to Monkey Mia?

 A few people had suggested to us that we needn’t go.  They said it was a long way out of the way and was over-hyped.  “Yeah” we said, “but…”  It’s a bit like Disneyland really.  Maybe the reality can never match the hype but the place has a quasi-mythical status.  I’ve harboured a desire to go there since I first heard about it and Shana was the same.

So we went and IT WAS BLOODY FANTASTIC!

Do believe the hype.

Firstly, and importantly given that the constant wind is driving me batty, Monkey Mia is on the east coast of the archipelago.  The howling onshores of the west coast were a lot less blustery at Monkey Mia.  It was windy still – the archipelago is only 25km wide - but way more tolerable.  So I was a lot happier in general.

Secondly, Monkey Mia is a good blend of wilderness and resort.  This is perhaps best summed up by discussing fish and chips. 

We had a brilliant meal of fish and chips on our last night.  We’d caught the fish ourselves – whiting.  It was easy to catch because the resort only takes up about 300mts of beach front.  Either side of it reverts back to wilderness.  So, 200mtrs past the end of the resort we discovered a sandflat where the biggest whiting I’ve ever seen lined up to strike at our bait – pippies we’d dug up earlier from the same beach.  We caught 14 whiting in two sessions on two afternoons.  Fresh and filleted and rolled in flour they tasted amazing.

But we didn’t have any spuds.  It didn’t matter.  A two minute walk to the bar and bistro and you could order a box of hot chips.  Shan took the walk and (after sneaking a quick pear cider as well) arrived with chips hot and crispy.  The wilderness fish and the resort chips complimented each other perfectly on the plate. 

What more could you want?

Except…maybe…

DOLPHINS.

 

You’d have to be a hard-hearted person to remain unmoved during dolphin feeding.  If you harbour ecological concerns about the welfare of the dolphins and the effects of the feedings then the pre-feeding talk soon allays those concerns.  These people care about and care for these dolphins.  And the dolphins cruise before you, less than a metre from your shins.  If you’re lucky there’ll be mothers with their babies.  If you’re lucky you’ll watch dolphins as they sleep before you, chase fish before you, play with each other before you and harass the human rangers.  Some people are chosen to feed them – we went a few times and never got chosen – but nobody is allowed to touch them, not even the rangers.  They have discovered that human diseases can be transferred to dolphins through touch.   The rangers keep a very vigilant eye on people going for a sneaky grapple.

And while the dolphins capture most of your heart, the pelicans capture the rest.   They waddle, old men with big bellies and stiffened legs, and complain until they receive a share of the feeding.  They strut the foreshore and weave in the water among the dolphins.  Meal over, they collapse onto the sand in a feathered white ball.  With eyes closed they then completely ignore the goings on around them.  They truly are the grandfathers of the beach.

 

We stayed for three days.  We’d have happily stayed many days longer. 

We give the Monkey Mia Resort 4 7/8 stars out of 5.  They lose 1/8 owing to the massive emu that wanders the place without fear.  It starts off being an eye-popping experience and you rush for the camera as it sticks its head into somebodies tent.  After half an hour though you see it more as the world’s biggest seagull, constantly scavenging through peoples things and having to be shooed away.

NIGHT  222  -  GALLENA BRIDGE REST AREA, NORTH WEST COASTAL HIGHWAY.

 The scenery changed today.  Since we first ventured into Exmouth we’ve seen nothing other than low coastal scrub.  It becomes monotonous.  As we drove further south wildflowers started to appear again alongside the road.  Eucalypts also re-appeared, adding an upper story to the view.  Then, through what was becoming a thickening eucalypt forest, there were flashes of something light yellow that we couldn’t fully discern. We wondered what it was for a kilometre or two then, as we came over a rise, it revealed itself to us - wheat fields stretching before us, over the hills and into the distance.  Coastal scrub had given way to eucalypt forest which had then given way to pastures full of honey coloured wheat.

 We didn’t expect it, and it saddened us a little.

It symbolises that the tropical part of our trip is over.

We give the Gallena Bridge Rest Area 2 stars out of five.  People who knew more than us sat outside wearing beekeeper type veiled hats to keep the flies at bay.  We got bits of leafy branch that we continually swatted in front of our faces.  Eventually we gave up, going inside watching black swans through the windows.

 

NIGHTS  223 – 225  -  MURCHESON RIVER CARAVAN PARK, KALBARRI.

We’d been told several times that we must go to Kalbarri.  We’d been told we must go to Kalbarri while watching crocodiles fight for food at Cahill’s Crossing; while discussing motorhome etiquette in a supermarket carpark at Kununnurra; while swimming in the ‘infinity pool’ at Lake Argyle; and while ignoring a yappy little Jack Russell in Exmouth.  In fact, just about everybody who’d already been up along the Western Australia coast recommended Kalbarri as a must see.  All I knew is that, according to the Surfing Western Australia website, it had ‘one of Australia’s heaviest left-hand point breaks’.  I wanted to see that.

But, for us, as much as anything, Kalbarri is the place where we nearly got fined $500.

You see, even though the wildflower season is almost over, the road into Kalbarri still put on quite a wildflower show.  On seeing a patch of several different flowers alongside the road Shana asked me to stop.  She got out and spent ten or so minutes collecting specimens.  She loves flowers and we often have a posy in the van somewhere.  We are respectful types and so she only gathered the flowers directly from the side of the road.  We think it discourteous to collect them from people’s private property or from national parks.  So, apart from now transporting hundreds of tiny black ants in the cabin with us, we drove away content (and naïve).

We found the caravan park we wanted, booked in, backed in, and set out our things.  Shan arranged the flowers in a vase (coffee cup) and then wanted to take a picture.  She tried several places outside the van, carrying the flowers around, trying to find a sunny place with a nice background.  That was when a grumpy voiced man approached her and said “You shouldn’t have those”.

At first he sounded like he was going to bawl her out.

“You’re not allowed to pick wildflowers” he continued, sounding authoritarian and offended.

“They were on the side of the road” Shan answered.

“Doesn’t matter.  (He almost spat that bit out).  There’s a five hundred dollar fine if you get caught”.

I was inside wondering who he was.  Shana later told me she was doing the same.  She didn’t know whether to be nice to him – maybe he was the guy who did the fining – or to tell him to mind his own business.  Of course she was nice to him.  That’s who Shan is.

“I didn’t know” she said, which was true.  We’d collected and read many information brochures on wildflowers and hadn’t once read that they couldn’t be picked.  He believed in what he was saying though.  He stood staunch and resolute.

“Well, you’ve done it now. (pause)  Not much you can do about it I guess. (pause)  I suggest you keep them out of sight.  (pause)  Unless you want to get fined that is”.

And then he was gone, his grumpy warning left hanging in the air. 

We couldn’t work out where he came from and didn’t know where he went.   Neither of us could really remember what he looked like.  We think that maybe he was the guy across the road and down one from us, but we couldn’t be sure.  We smiled at that guy anyway, but stayed well away.

 

Jaques Point (Jakes) was the left hand break I’d read about.  It was about 5 minutes away by Vespa. I know that because I rode there several times.  It was working though wind affected on the first day we got there – a large wave that hugged the rocks and required speed to avoid the close out sections.  I thought I’d give it a miss. I reasoned it would be better in the morning, when the wind would be less fierce.

It wasn’t.

Nor did it break again for the three days I was there.

I sat on the Vespa, quietly dejected.  It wasn’t all bad though.  I enjoyed zipping about town on the Vespa.  Motor scooters have the ability to make 60kph feel like 160 and, in my mind, I was topping 100mph as I rode along past the Kalbarri cliffs.

That’s a buzz in itself.

We give the Murcheson River Caravan Park 2 ½ stars out of 5.  Technological advancement seems low in the park. Pen and paper still rule here and wireless internet is the stuff of science fiction.  But Kalbarri is beautiful.  We’ve now been there and, like most people, recommend it (although Shana remains less convinced. She does rate the Gorges Café very highly though).

NIGHT  226  -  BATAVIA COAST CARAVAN PARK, GERALDTON

We drove by The Pink Lake between Kalbarri and Geraldton.  The place is visually disturbing – seeing it conjured up possible Beatles lyrics from their psychedelic period i.e. ‘imagine a lake like a strawberry milkshake, with water the colour of little girl’s rooms’ (to the tune of ‘Lucy in the Sky”).

The water really is pink.  It confuses the senses, especially when set against the blue sky.  Of course there’s a scientific reason why the water is pink.  It’s a chemical thing, and natural (if not normal). But I didn’t want to know the exact reason why really.  I just like to know that in Western Australia there’s a weird arsed lake with pink water.  And that I’ve seen it for myself.

 

It was then on to Geraldton, Western Australia’s equivalent of Coffs Harbour.

Or so we reckon.

I’ve said it before that there’s something about Coffs that I’ve never taken to.  Although I should like  Coffs because it has all the things I normally like – surf beaches and salt water and sunshine -  the place has a sprawling great ugliness. I want quaint seaside shanties and casual head-nods but at Coff’s I’m instead confronted with a procession of servos, shopping centres and double-story blond brick boxes.  

Anyway, Geraldton’s much like that also – it is heralded as the largest town between Perth and Darwin.

 I must admit this excited us a little.  Contradicting what I’ve just said (what else is new?) we’d anticipated a little shopping time.  There are things we want to get that have been unavailable to us since Darwin.  A service for the ‘bago is one of them.  Geraldton houses the first VW dealership this side of Darwin.  Camera gear is another.  I’m looking for a specialist camera shop.  There’s a certain lens I want to check out.  So, even though Geraldton has nowhere within a 15km radius that will accept dogs, we drove into town with high expectations – quickly shattered.

We arrived on a Sunday and Geraladton is completely closed on Sundays.  We passed three large shopping centres all of which were closed.  Even the supermarkets, which was a bummer as we’d purposely waited until Geraldton to restock, never in our wildest imaginations thinking that nothing would be open.  We’d just come from Kalbarri, Carnarvon, Exmouth and Denham, all towns vastly smaller than Geraldton, yet all of them having at least one supermarket open 7 days a week.  We made do, resourceful types that we are, because, like the continual existence of gravity, fast food places never falter.  I had a dodgy burger, Shan bought some dodgy pad thai and, shopping now done, we drove the 15kms back out of town to the Batavia Coast Caravan Park , which was at least 12km from the Batavia Coast.

I’m not going to say anything about the Batavia Coast Caravan Park.  As the old adage goes, if you’ve got nothing nice to say, then say nothing.

The Batavia Coast caravan park – nothing.

NIGHTS  227 & 228  -  DOUBLE BEACH CARAVAN PARK, CAPE BURNEY.

Cape Burney is about 15km south of Geraldton.  We’d booked the ‘bago in for a service but had to wait a couple of days.  I chose The Double Beach Caravan Park as the place wait in.  It was close to town and, theoretically, had some of the best surf in Geraldton. 

It’s a pretty name I reckon – ‘Double Beach’.  We love a beach so having two beaches must surely be a good thing.  The caravan park sits alongside the Greenough River and behind the ocean sand dunes.  The river doesn’t flow into the ocean anymore, instead a sandbar has formed which retards the water’s flow.  So, when walking the sandbar, there is the ocean beach on one side, and what is now like a lakeside beach on the other.  Hence double beach.

The ocean beach was nice.  There was no rideable surf (the wind continues to howl from about 10am every day) but, as I’ve now said about a few places, the potential was there.  But on the riverside beach there was a big sign warning against any contact with the water at all – no swimming, skiing or fishing.  It sounded pretty toxic to us and the water had a funny yellow look about it.  It was a good place to walk Moz though.

So we waited in the wind, neither fishing nor surfing, until our trusty vee dub received the attention it deserved.  Then back to the Double Beach for another night.

 

I give the Double Beach Caravan Park a different score than does Shana.  I didn’t mind it and give it 2 ½ stars.  Shana, on the other hand, really didn’t like it.  She thought it was seedy and grotty, with trapped birds in cages and a distinct lack of friendliness.  She gave it 1 star for the brightly coloured bathroom doors. 

 

 

NIGHT  229  -  FLAT ROCK BEACH, BETWEEN GERALTON & DONGARA

This was a dodgy free camp, and a fantastic one at that.  We are back on the surf trail and my internet research keeps taking us to out of the way places.  There’s great surfing footage of Flat Rock on YouTube.  It’s a rock shelf that throws out A frames that hollow out as they run across the reef.  It’s also a lovely beachside spot, with rock pools and sand dunes and a decked area to sit on and watch the sunset. (It also has  lots of flies).

 

I met some locals and, as the wind had died down briefly, went with them for a surf.  Shana and Moz went for a swim and walked the beach. Moz, however, ate something off the beach that disagreed with him.  As dogs then do, he went off seeking grass to help him to throw up.  All the grass he found had seed heads on it, being spring and all (this will be important later).  When I came back in - all chat and exuberance from a morning surf - Moz was retching in the carpark, a very concerned Shana watching over him.

He seemed to get better as the afternoon progressed.

The next morning the wind was howling and the surf was flat.

Absolutely lying through my teeth I give Flat Rock ½ star out of 5.  You’re not supposed to camp there so I don’t want to encourage anybody.

CLIFF HEAD NORTH REST AREA, INDIAN OCEAN HIGHWAY.

Don’t worry about the Cliff Head rest area.  It’s a place to park.  Some people may love it because, being a series of inter-connected dirt roads running alongside the beach, there are many places to camp.  The beach is all seaweed though, and smells terrible.  We stopped there, we camped, we kept our windows closed.

 

Of more interest is the town of Dongara, which we stopped in at on the way.  It has a gorgeous main street, lined by hundred year old figs that overhang the road and footpath.  We did more shopping here than in bloody Geraldton.  It had a large and well-stocked op shop and a surf shop with discounted winter gear, which suited me perfectly as I hadn’t packed well for warmth.

 A half-price hoodie later and we were headed for a coffee shop that Shan had read about – Starfish at South Beach.  The beach was (again…still…for fuck’s sake…) like a wind tunnel but the food, coffee and service were all good.

In fact, Dongara has been out favourite little place since Agnes Waters in Queensland.  That probably says as much about what we are used to as it does about what we enjoy.  Still, we recommend you go there.  It’ll make you smile.

We give Cliff Head Rest Area 1 ½ stars out of 5.  It’s free and legal and has a toilet.

NIGHTS  231 & 232  -  UN-NAMED BAY, GREEN HEAD.

My desire to check out recommended surf spots lead us along another dirt road, and into another beautiful piece of WA coastline that we would have missed otherwise.  We were looking for Point Louise, a surf break near Green Head.  Again when we found it the wind was playing chaos with the tiny waves but, by following a few more dirt roads, we came across a bay sheltered from the wind.  We don’t know its name but as we pulled up a dolphin was catching fish 2 mtrs from the shore.

There were no ‘no camping’ signs to be seen.  We interpreted this to mean ‘enjoy camping here – go play with the dolphin’. 

Occasionally people drove past – utes mostly with long fishing rods tied like trophies across the cabin – but nobody else stopped.  That suited us.  The wind died down and, glory be, stayed away all day.  It felt like we’d won the lottery.  We walked around the rocks during low tide and found oysters clinging in clumps.  We got our oyster knife and pried them loose, taking turns at throwing them down our throats while we stood knee deep in the ocean. 

The sun shone and we read and swam and felt like we were on a deserted island (until the next ute went past anyway).  It was truly idyllic.

 

Except that Morrissey wasn’t well.  He seemed to have something caught in his throat.  All afternoon and into the night he sought grass to eat to make himself throw up, which he did several times.  Eventually he went to sleep but we could hear him breathing.  It wasn’t him snoring – he’s a terrible snorer – but there was a rasp present in every breath he took.

We hadn’t intended camping in Un-named Bay another night.  We thought we were going to head further down the coast, towards Perth.  Instead, the next morning, we drove 100 kms back in the direction we’d just come; back to Dongara to take Moz to the vet.

Moz had grass seeds caught in his tonsils.  The vet said that he could have eaten grass for ever without the seeds becoming dislodged.  They would then have become infected, causing major problems.  Moz needed to be sedated and the vet extracted the seeds out through his throat.  All this was before lunch.

After lunch, with a drowsy puppy confused in his kennel, we drove south again, past the stinking Cliff Head Rest Area and back to Un-named Bay.  The sun was back out and the wind was gentle and the next morning two dolphins came back to play. 

 

We loved Un-named Bay.  It was another unplanned and unexpected highlight on what has so far been a wind spoiled West Coast.

 

We give Un-named Bay 5 stars out of 5.  It was our own deserted island in the sunshine.

NIGHTS  233  - 235  -  JURIEN BAY CARAVAN PARK.

After 4 nights free camping we needed a shower. 

Jurien Bay is only 2 or so hours north of Perth, and was thirty minutes south of us.  It’s a popular holiday destination.  It’s only a small town but it has all the trappings.  It has a jetty that has nothing to do with boats or shipping.  It’s a new looking jetty and its sole purpose is to provide entertainment to holiday makers.  People gather in clusters to fish off the end and the more adventurous tourist jumps from the jetty into the water, climbing back up one of the several ladders to do it over again.  Parents and grandparents push the kids in one of the many brightly coloured ‘rides’ in the foreshore playground alongside the jetty.  Further along the foreshore there’s an adult playground; an outdoor gym with eight different apparatus to tone the muscles and get the heart pumping.  There’s a bike/ walking track that goes for 5 kilometers running parallel to the shore.  There’s water bubblers and garbage bins wherever you look and free dog-poo bags hanging off posts positioned every 500 mtrs or so.

 

 

It’s pretty flash.

And the caravan park is right there, in the centre of everything.  AND IT ACCEPTS DOGS.

Book us in baby. 

We paid for three days and then went to the café next door where the curly fries taste like dessert.  The wind is back though, and the fishing sucks, little puffer fish attacking the bait before anything more desirable has a chance to realise it’s there.  I caught 8 puffer fish in half an hour before I threw them the bait and gave up.  Other than that, though, Jurien Bay is a pretty swanky town for thirty bucks a night.

 

We give the Jurien Bay Caravan Park 4 ½ stars out of 5.  Having a dog friendly park in the centre of town is rare; having one that sells curly fries even rarer.  It is a thing to be cherished.