Big Trip Diary 1

 

Well we arrived at Parry Beach on Thursday 23rd of February, having spent a night in Manjimup and a night at Muirs Bridge on the way down from Perth.

 

Before leaving Manjimup we decided to check out a camping spot on the Manjimup– Nannup Road but the sign said no caravans. We headed back towards Manjimup and decided to have a lunch break near One Tree Bridge. What a great spot—lots of bird life and trees, not to mention the delightful little river nearby.

 

Muirs Bridge is a great spot to stop overnight as it is on the Frankland River. As the Muir Highway, which is the route between Manjimup and Mt Barker, is not very busy it makes for a quiet stopover. I think there were only three vehicles that passed by overnight.

 

Just before reaching our stopover we called in at the Lake Muir Conservation reserve for afternoon tea. Here there is a lovely area for a picnic amongst the trees and bushes with a variety of birds to share the space including blue wrens, inland thornbills and grey fantails to name a few.

 

We arrived at Parry Beach to find that it was still quite busy with lots of grey nomads well settled in. We paid our fees and found a nice secluded spot way down the back of the camping area. The bird life here too is great. So far we have spotted red winged fairy wrens, splendid fairy wrens, golden whistler, inland thornbills, white breasted robins, grey fantails, kookaburras, silver eyes, magpies, western rosellas, new Holland honey eaters, hooded plover, apart from the usual variety of sea gulls and oyster catchers.

 

The fishing has not been good, although we did manage to have one meal which was a mixture of whiting and herring. Mike did catch a large sting ray which was good fun and we let it go.

 

Since we were in the area Jan wanted to  go to the tree top walk. We missed it in October when we were here last. It is truly wonderful, taking you to a height of forty metres amongst the very ancient red tingle trees—some as old as 400 years and sixty metres tall. This attraction is truly a credit to C.A.L.M. and the people who designed it. A great place to spend a couple of hours

 

On our return to Parry Beach  we visited  Peaceful Bay, Boat Harbour and Conspicuous Cliffs. All very pretty spots and very typical of the coastline in the area.

 

Went  to Denmark for some supplies today (28th Feb.) and on our return visited Greens Pool in the Williams Bay National Park. This is a very popular beach as it is well protected from the Southern Ocean by huge granite rocks and reefs.’

 

Trip Diary 2

 

We have now travelled back to Perth for Jan’s birthday and now we are staying at a delightful spot on the Greenough River near Walkaway.

 

The journey to Perth was punctuated with a stopover at Lake Towerinning near Darkan. A beautiful spot which I remembered from my time at Kojonup some years ago. It was very peaceful and birdlife abounds. We understand that weekends in the summer are particularly busy with water skiers. It was a nice interlude to leave the Albany Highway at Kojonup and to meet it again at Williams.

 

We camped at Natalie’s house while in Perth. Natalie arranged a family meal to celebrate Jan’s birthday—roast pork—and we all had a good time of it. This brief stopover allowed us to catch with a few things and restock the caravan. We left Perth on Monday afternoon, heading north.

 

Our first stopover was Drummond Grove on Bibby Road (to Cervantes and Jurian Bay). A very quiet spot away from the main Brand Highway. The next morning we headed up Indian Ocean Drive towards Dongara hoping to find a suitable stopover along the way for a few days. Nothing that we could find encouraged us to stop so we continued on to Dongara where we stayed a couple of nights. Dongara is a great place to stop if you enjoy nice beaches, a bit of fishing and some interesting historical walks.

 

We are now staying at one of WA’s best kept secrets, Ellendale Pool. It is located on the Greenough River just outside Walkaway. Jan has been enjoying her daily swim and has even encouraged me to take a dip—soooo refreshing. The birdlife here is terrific. We have identified close to 20 species in our short stay, many of which are species we have not encountered until now. Other wildlife we have encountered here are “Jack” the lizard and today we saw—wait for it—a large kangaroo making its way across the face of the limestone cliff that is the backdrop of Ellendale Pool. We are not sure how he did it but he did and we were privileged to witness it.

 

From Ellendale Pool we intend to head for Lucky Bay for a while. A bit of fishing will be the go.

 

 

Big Trip 3

 

We camped at Lucky Bay for the best part of three weeks having stayed overnight  at he Sunset Beach Caravan Park in Geraldton. Sunset Beach was a good spot to stay as it is right on the beach and there is a little shopping centre just up the road for re-stocking, .

 

Lucky Bay is the same as ever, windy on the beach and hot in the lea of the wind. The fishing has not been good, well the line fishing anyway. No Taylor, but mullet, oh plenty of mullet. We have cooked them a number of ways  and they have been delicious. I can’t remember ever seeing so many schools of big sea mullet. While swimming one day Jan and I were completely surrounded by them.

 

Cyclone Glenda has come and gone. Thankfully it missed us but gave us one very windy evening. We just buttoned up and watched a video. All is well.

 

After a little over a week our supplies were in need of some replenishment so we took ourselves in to Kalbari for the day. The estuary still showed evidence of the flooding of the Murchison River a few weeks earlier. We found the Laundromat and the supermarket, fuelled up and then sat down to  nice lunch while we checked our email. Its interesting to see some of the looks we get as we sit at the park bench with laptop in hand. The wonders of technology.  Having parted with some of our hard earned cash we headed back for Lucky Bay.

 

The birdlife here is not as abundant in many ways as some of the places we have visited, but none the less we have been able to identify quite a few. There’s the Welcome Swallow of course along with Black Faced Woodswallows, Tree Martins and Swifts. We have also sighted a pair of Grey Shrike– Thrush, Singing Honeyeaters, the everpresent Willy Wagtail and of course the very delightful Blue Breasted Fairy Wrens. On the beach we have seen Ruddy Turnstones, Common Sandpipers, Red capped Plovers, Crested Terns, Fairy Terns, Osprey, Pacific Gulls, Silver Gulls, Greater (large) Sandplover, Oyster Catchers, and yes, back at camp we spotted a Sacred Kingfisher early one morning. As we have driven around the tracks we often come across a pair of  Richards Pippets bobbing about.

 

I eventually caught a nice Taylor, approx. 60cm or so long. There’s two meals for Jan and I so we packed up and returned to camp. Taylor are such a good fish to catch, especially when they are relatively large. As far as we are aware I am the only person to land a Taylor here in these past couple of weeks. Just as well fresh mullet is good to eat.

 

At the end of our stay here we will head towards Shark Bay, making a short stopover in Kalbari to top up the larder and do some more washing.

 

We travelled some 400 km on Holy Tuesday to take us from Kalbari to Shark Bay. We stopped at Galena Bridge for morning tea and made a brief inspection of the aftermath of the flooding of the Murchison River some weeks beforehand. Main Roads workers were busy re-establishing the camp ground. There will be many travellers who will no doubt appreciate this as they begin to move northwards during the coming months.

 

 

Diary 4

The days following our arrival at Shark Bay were marked by rather strong winds, so Jan and I concentrated on setting up camp and checking out the local bird life (surprise, surprise) prior to the arrival on Good Friday of our friends Bruce and Robyn. As it turned out the weather was perfect for a spot of fishing on Good Friday so Jan and I launched the boat and set off. After catching a few small fish for bait we headed off to some familiar fishing grounds and were not disappointed in bringing back 3 rather nice sized Blue Lined Emperor (black snapper). YES- fish for our Good Friday meal. Bruce and Robyn,  who had arrived while we were fishing, were delighted.

 

Bruce and I went out fishing  most days, weather permitting, catching fish most times. Our catch included Blue Lined Emperor, Pink Snapper, Spanish Mackerel, a solitary squid, and of course lots of hardy head for bait. We ate plenty of fish and Bruce and Robyn took some home for the family.

 

Our walks have been fruitful in identifying birds such as Willy Wagtail, zebra finches, chiming wedgebill, crested bellbird, crested pigeons, Richards pipit, welcome swallows, white winged fairy wrens, pied butcherbirds, white bellied sea eagles, wedge tailed eagles, singing honeyeaters, and the usual display of sea birds and waders.

 

There have been some interesting sightings on the water including the ever present dolphins who often want to play in front of the boat as we motor towards our fishing spots, a sea snake which inadvertently bumped into the side of the boat as we were drifting, a large turtle ( 1 metre), numerous sharks and rays in the shallows, and tuna capturing their lunch. We did not spot any dugongs but often heard what we believed to be one coming up for a breath. Shark Bay is renowned for its population of dugong who feed on the numerous sea grass beds found in the waters of the gulfs.

 

In its own very unique way the scenery is quite spectacular and we have enjoyed that aspect of our stay. The combination of green waters, white sands, limestone bluffs and red soils provide a wonderful array of colour for the vista.

 

From Shark Bay we will move on to Carnarvon and stay there for a couple of days replenishing our food stores and cleaning up a bit. This will perhaps be the only opportunity for a while for Jan to renew her driving licence.

 

27th April 2006.

 

Photos: (top to bottom)

Mike adjusting the satellite dish, the moon rises as the sun sets, zebra finches take advantage of the water spilled at the artesian bore, juvenile golden trevally and hardy head caught in the cast net, a scene from Eagle Bluff, Bruce, Robyn and Dougie on their way home., .

 

Karratha to Cape Keraudren

 

After leaving Giralia Station a little disappointed we continued our journey northward. The Patrol was now due for a service so we decided to head for Karratha.  We had to stay for four days to get an appointment for the car service so we had a bit of a look around, taking in Dampier, The Burrup Peninsular, Cossack, and a short reci out to Cleaverville. Nice enough place but at the end of the day just another mining town. We decided to spend a week at Cleaverville, so after doing the necessaries at Karratha we were off. Only a short journey so we were there before lunch and found the site we had eyed off a day or so beforehand to still be available. As it turned out it was a bad choice as Jan suffered badly at the hands of sandflies. The fishing was a bit disappointing at Cleaverville but we managed a feed. I got to sample some very nice blue manna crabs that found their way onto our lines and a pot of chilli mussels collected at low tide—Yum. A  week was enough for us and we decided to head further north to Cape Keruadren. This place has become a bit of a favourite for us but it seems the road has not been graded since we were there last, about two years ago—not true but just seemed that way. The ranger told us that he had 47,000 vehicles go through last year and at $10 entry per vehicle an amount of $470K would have gone a long way towards making sure the road was kept in top condition—disappointing.  We caught some fish, enough for a few meals and just enjoyed the place. Walks around the beautiful mangrove area were never disappointing with a number of birds to see—jabiru, mangrove golden whistler, white bellied sea eagle, egrets, white breasted  woodswallows, honeyeaters, rainbow bee eaters, pelicans, and then of course the odd kangaroo laying up in the shade. Walks out on the reef are always fascinating, I even assisted a small turtle to get back into the water as the tide quickly left him stranded on the sharp rocks.. Last we saw him he was slowly making his way into deeper water. We stayed just a week at the Cape and then set off towards Barn Hill Station Stay. I will report on how things are at Barn Hill in the next update.

 

12th June 2006

 

The Photos:

 

The Sturt Desert Peas were everywhere, even where we camped at Cleaverville; part of the gallery of ancient aboriginal petroglyphs to be found on the Burrup Peninsular; our camp at Cleaverville; the Corthouse and Galbraith buildings at Cossack, looking towards the Cape Lambert loading facility from Cleaverville.

 

 

Barn Hill

This next part of our travel diary is dedicated entirely to our stay at Barn Hill. Barn Hill is on he coast just south of Broome, the turn-off from the Gt Northern Highway being 130km out of Broome.

As many of you may remember Barn Hill has become quite popular, particularly since its being mentioned on a 60 Minutes Program a year or so ago. We actually heard about it from some people we met two years ago while on long service leave,  Betty and Harry. Anyway, apart from a distinct lack of good fishing during our stay we thoroughly enjoyed the place. It has a great community atmosphere with loads of friendly folk. The Sunday Roast is a real social turnout—150 people attended the last Sunday Roast we were at. A three course meal and great company for $12.50 per head, just bring your own eating irons, plates, table, chairs, and of course drinks. Wednesday night is community barbeque night where the huge barbies are lit and we all have a few drinks and cook our own sausages, or lamb, or beef, but not fish. Guess who was on the outer for his first barbie turning up with some beaut fish he had caught.

 

Jan and I enjoyed a number of beach walks, and caught up with some new (to us) varieties of birds. I got to see a red backed wren, and the rainbow lorikeets can’t be missed each afternoon. These lorikeets are different to the ones we see around Perth, having a red neck band instead of a yellow one. We also awoke each day to the song of the pied butcher bird and the often cat like sounds of the little friar bird and the twittering of the yellow throated miners. Occasionally we would see a red winged parrot and there was also a group of grey capped babblers. It was amazing to watch the crested pigeons and the peaceful doves coming right into the camp picking up crumbs—often walking between your feet.

 

Amongst the many people we met were Geoff and Heather—from Rutherglen in Victoria. We had previously made their acquaintance at Karratha and here they were again. I took Geoff out in the boat as he was unable to bring his with him. We didn’t get a lot but had a great time, leaving Jan and Heather to find out about the many other activities to join in at Barn Hill—line dancing, craft and more walks. We also met Ernie and Maureen whose home in Perth is not far from our house in Padbury. I took Ernie out in the boat too, but not until after convincing him that a couple of sea sick tablets would see him fine. They had been going to Barn Hill for many years and this was Ernie’s first time out on the water. We didn’t get much—heard that one before—but he did enjoy the different perspective on the scenery taken from the boat.

 

Did we enjoy our stay? Yes. A bit rough and ready, but clean and filled with people who have a great spirit. We originally booked in for three nights and ended up staying for two and a half weeks.

 

July 3, 2006.

 

The next part of our journey will take us into the East Kimberley where we will once again take in Kununurra and its surrounds—including a flight over the Bungles.

 

 

On leaving Barn Hill we decided to head for the East Kimberley Region. We were given a hint to stay at the caravan park at Roebuck Plains Roadhouse as it is only about 30 km out of Broome if we were only going to go to Broome for a shop. We did, and it was a good move at this time of the year, and cheaper too.

Our free-camping guide lead us to a site called Ellendale (the lake) which is on the northern side of the highway and only a few km before the official Ellendale rest area on the way to Fitzroy Crossing. We decided to stay two nights – it was glorious. Lots of birdlife, beautiful sunsets, and peace.

Although quite a popular spot with travellers, all shared similar ideals when it comes to where you stop along the way.

 

At Fitzroy Crossing, believe it or not, we ran into Bob and Sue again (remember Exmouth). We had morning tea together before once again going our separate ways.

 

Bob and Sue recommended we stay at The Fitzroy Lodge CP as it was very good and not all that expensive, so we did. Good move. While at FX we went on the Geikie Gorge boat tour. Very good but not quite as impressive as we had thought. From FX we headed for Mary Pool 24hr stop. Yes, you guessed it, chockers with vans and campers as usual. Here we met Judy and Bob, with whom we exchanged stories over a few quiet drinks at the end of the day.

 

From Mary Pool we planned to go into Halls Creek for fuel and then back track a little to pick up the Tanami Road for and excursion into Wolf Creek Crater. After testing the road for an hour (or vice versa) for 30 km we decided to abort this part of our plan and headed back to the highway and onto Leycesters camp on the old Ord River Crossing. This to was a beautiful spot to stay overnight. The next day we travelled to Kununurra.

 

As I was determined to put the tinnie in the water at Kununurra we decided to stay at the Kona Lakeside Caravan Park. They allowed us to moor the boat next to the JJJ Tour boats and gave us a site nearby.

One of Jan’s hopes for this trip was to fly over the Bungle Bungles, to see them from a different angle so to speak. Two years ago we went into the Bungle Bungles for three days. We booked the flight and found that if we included  a tour of the Lower Ord there was a substantial discount so we went for it. Good move as it turned out. Ashley, the owner and guide for Lower Ord Tours was very informative. Jan missed seeing a Salt water crocodile last time we were in the Kimberley and this was our chance to fix that. She was not disappointed. Ashley also noticed we had our binoculars and made sure we got to see as much of the birdlife the Ord had to offer. We were spoilt. Jabiru, assure kingfisher, red rumped kingfisher, diamond finch, double barred finch, crimson finch, night heron, masked lapwing to name a few.

 

The flight over Lake Argyle, The Bungle Bungles, and the Argyle Diamond mine took care of the following afternoon and was great. A two hour flight in an air-conditioned aircraft – a Cessna Caravan. This was certainly a great way to take in the enormity of Lake Argyle and the impressive features of the Bungles from above. We decided to stay another day at Kununurra and take ourselves up the Ord River to the dam wall, 55km each way. It took us 4 hours to get there taking in the scenery along the way and stopping here and there for a photo moment or a spot of morning tea. The last few kms took us through some sets of rapids – not to shallow – and became quite an adventure. Once at the dam wall we moored the boat and walked up to the grassed picnic area to have lunch. The return trip took just under two hours. It was  a pretty full on day all up, but not one to be missed.

Where we have been

The trip notes continue on the “Contact Us” page………...