Week 14

Day 92: This morning we went down to the beach at 7:30 to see the dolphins that come in for their morning feed. Al and the kids were happy to see them. Housie was there but not as enthusiastic as them. The dolphins came in and swam past everyone. Some volunteers came down with pilchards in a bucket ready for feeding. These volunteers picked people randomly in the crowd to come out and feed the dolphins. Al and Charli were hoping to be picked, but were sadly overlooked. The next usual feeding was about 9:30, so we waited around on the beach until then. By this stage Declan was over the dolphins and just wanted to play cars on the sand, so it was only Al and Charli heading to the water. Sadly they were overlooked again. The rest of the day we spent just hanging around the camper as it was raining lightly on and off and the kids were happily playing together.

 

About a second before it stole Al's toast out of her hand

 

Day 93: Today we had booked a Shark Bay kayaking adventure, with a well known local called Capes. We met this guy at Denham, and he took us out to Big Lagoon, where he said we could be lucky enough to see stingrays, turtles, sharks, fish and possibly a dugong. On the way out Capes talked about how he grew up around Shark Bay and how it was very important to the Aboriginal community. He stopped and got out to "say hello to country", by rubbing the red sand between our hands, this is what Aboriginals do when they go to visit a diferent area. He stopped the car along the track again, and he showed us the bush banana plant that he said was delicious when in fruit. He showed us how we could eat the leaves for vitamin C. Declan was impressed with the taste of this plant.

Track to the lake

Once out in the beautiful blue water, it wasn't long before Capes was pointing out stingrays and about 20mins in we saw a couple of turtles. Capes paddled his kayak out into a position so he could jump off and catch a turtle. We paddled over and he let everyone touch it. He gave it to Housie to put back into the water, but Housie wanted a photo and has since bragged that he caught it. The lagoon, which has a large opening to the sea was huge, and it is surrounded by red sandy banks which are visually spectacular. Capes then took us to a reef where we could snorkel, on the way he pointed out a tiger shark that was swimming along. Every one was keen for snokeling, then when it was time to do it, Declan decided that nothing fitted and he was going to stay on the beach. Housie was out over the reef and could see many fish, something he wasn't expecting was sea snake that swam pretty close to him. Housie started to shit himself trying to get as far away from it as possible. He reported this to Capes who just laughed, and said that they are more venemous than any land snake in Australia. Al, Charli and finally Declan all got to see the many fish swimming around this reef. After lunch Capes took us to a homestead that has a natural hot spring. The water must have been about 40deg, it was hot!!! It took us all ages to slowly get in and once in all wew anted was to get out and cool off. Capes assured us it would be good for our muscles after a big day of kayaking.

 

After having dinner and more drinks during happy hour we saw the Belgium couple walk in so Al asked them to sit with us. It ended up being a great evening with lots of conversation and plenty of beers.

Day 94: We set off today for the Kennedy Ranges, which was about a 500km drive, about 250km of that was through dirt roads mainly used for station owners. The roads surprisingly were in very good condition. Clouds around were dark and rain seemed to be falling every where except on us. When we arrived, about 20km from Gasgoyne Junction, the rain had already been through and water was pouring through a floodway we had to traverse. We made it through ok but the ground underneath was very soft and boggy. When we pulled up at Gasgoyne Junction for some fuel, the kids got out to see Yolo and their bikes covered in thick red mud. They wern't too impressed. From here it was an easy 90km drive to the ranges, they looked amazing. The bad thing about this place was the flies. They were intense!! The kids refused to get out of the camper, and Declan was sure that they had something against him.

Kennedy Ranges at Sunset

Day 95: Got up when it was still dark and headed to the Sunrise lookout. As the sun came up the red glow on these ranges was awesome, even the kids were (they might have been acting) impressed. After seeing the Sunrise we headed to the Honeycomb Gorge with these rocks with holes all through them that have been formed from water and wind. The kids loved climbing up the rocks.

 



After breakfast and more fighting the flies, we were headed to Mt Augustus. We pulled into a homestead called Cobra, that had pretty good write ups on your usual travel websites. How they got them is beyond us. This place was a dump!!! When we tentavely walked up to the door, we were greeted by a guy with one tooth, who's shirt looked like it hadn't seen a washing machine since 83. He was lucky to string a sentence together. Then behind a petition another guy came out in the same sort of condition. All we were after was a loaf of bread, cheap at $6. We were all glad to be out of there and we could hear them get back on their banjos as we drove out. When we arrived at the Mt Augustus Homestead, it was like an oasis in the desert. Beautiful grassed camping area, birds chirping away and minimal flies. So different to what we were expecting.

For everyone reading this you probably haven't heard of Mt Augustus (we never had), this rock is the biggest in the world. It is over three times bigger than Uluru, the reason it is probably not well known is that it has a lot of shrubery on it and it is not as pictureque as Uluru. As you drove past it, it was very impressive. That afternoon we went on a couple of walks around the base. We drove around the rock (about 50km) and pulled up and looked at some aboriginal paintings in some caves that looked pretty good.

 

Mt Augustus

Day 96: Today we took off planning to stay at Meekathara, we arrived at luch time and had a little look around, there was nothing really going for this town so we drove on towards Wiluna. Wiluna is the town where both the Canning stock route and the Gunbarrel highway both start. We read about Canning pioneered the route and dug out the many wells along there so as there was a water source. We left Wiluna and headed south towards Kalgoorlie knowing that we would not make it today. We found a camp spot in the nature reserve, that had a hut that you could stay in with prior arrangement.

That night Housie was kicking himself that we didn't do at least 5km on the Canning Stock Route to the first well, just to be able to say he had been on it. This will have to wait for another time.

Day 97: We arrived at Kalgoorlie and the first thing we had to do was to try out the fast food resturaunt we had seen all over W.A called Chicken Treat. The kids loved it!! Al and Housie weren't overly fussed. We stayed at a caravn park so we could fill up on water and have everything charged before leaving.

Day 98: Today we went to the Royal Flying Doctors in Kalgoorlie, these people do amazing things!! We learn't that 30% of their call outs are for tourists. These people are the livesavers for people of the outback, and often land on makeshift runways. To be a nurse for the RFDS they have to qualified in ICU, midfiery, peadiatrics, ED and phsyc. A lot of the time there is no doctor available to go with them. The government puts some money towards the plane, but nothing towards putting all the equipement needed in side it. They rely heavily on donations, and are grateful for the mining sector who have actually bought planes for them.

Now off to the Super Pit shop where they had a display of both huge dump trucks and bulldozers that are used in the gold mines. The kids loved playing in the truck, and didn't really want to look at anything else on display. We coaxed them into looking at the emergency pod that they have for underground mining if there were to be any kind of freak accident. We'd hate to be in there with 20 other people, it would be a little cramped.

 

After that we drove to the actual Super Pit where they have a lookout over the operations. We were amazed at how small all the trucks looked as they were at the bottom of the pit, and how they followed each other like ants to dump the waste material. Unfortunatly we missed the blast by 40 minutes. We were told that it was also good to look at at night. So we headed off after dinner to s them working under lights.