Last Sunday we started to head south of Perth to checkout the area and as most of the tourists appear to head south in their vans we were expecting good things.
There were a couple of things that immediately struck us. Firstly the scenery was quite different. After the barren looking flatness of the north, the south gave us hills, countless trees and loads of farmland. To be honest it is all a bit reminiscent of the English countryside - maybe that's why so many Brits live here?!?!
The weather also changed, it became much cooler (no complaints there). After the first couple of days it changed to low to mid 20's but with it came overnight storms and rain.
To be honest we initially weren't that thrilled with this part of Oz. There were more people to contend with, things didn't have the relaxing laid back feel of the sparse north and everything just seemed that little bit more complicated!
Anyway, what we got up to in a nutshell was:
- drove around the coast which was very much the same as up north. Got a bit choppy and rough on the south coast though - quite different from the tranquil Indian Ocean bays of the north.
- saw lots of big trees - Karri and Tingle trees.
- went for a tree top walk - on a suspended platform which was level with the top of the trees, a bit wobbly in places but we really enjoyed it.
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| Monkey Adams! |
- paid a visit to the Gloucester tree, which is a 60m Karri tree that was used back in the day as a fire lookout across the national park. You can climb to the top of the tree using the series of metal poles which have been shoved into the tree. The poles spiral to the top and there is no harness - just a net over the poles to help you bounce to the ground in a slightly more orderly fashion! We thoroughly enjoyed climbing to the top and were commended by the locals for our speed and obvious natural ability ;-)
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| Rob on his climb! |
- ate some shark and chips from the local fish and chip shop. Bit sceptical about it before we bought it, but the very friendly chippy owner fried a bit so we could try it. Turned out Jaws is very tasty after all.
To be honest apart from driving, seeing camping sites and small towns that was pretty much it for the south of Perth. Surprisingly for us it was all a tad underwhelming and no where near as enjoyable as the north.
Onwards .... We fly to Cairns on Saturday to drive the east coast to ultimately end up in Sydney for New Year's Eve - looking forward to seeing the new year in at the harbour bridge! For this stretch sadly no camper van - we've decided that sleeping in a tin can in all the tropical humidity may be a bit much. So for at least the next 2 weeks we'll have a car and accommodation.
So here we are in sunny and very hot Western Australia. After a couple of decent flights and a bit of loitering waiting for connections, we arrived on Friday 30th November. Having yet more time to kill and not knowing exactly when we'd next get the opportunity, we decided to use the rather handy showers at the airport, before getting the shuttle bus to Perth.
The bus trip took what seemed like a lifetime. This was mainly due to the fact that we were welcomed with the dulcet tones of Rolf Harris and it soon became clear that Bill (our driver) must have a Rolf fetish. 90 minutes later Rolf was still going, so you can imagine our excitement to finally leave the bus and collect our lovely little Toyota Hiace camper van!
The whole camper experience was new to us so we received our camper induction from the Travellers Autobarn and we were on way, heading north of Perth to check out the outback.
This was quite an experience. You can drive hundreds of miles until you see anything that resembles civilisation and the scenery does get a bit dull after the first few hours - just lots of bush and red dirt. Emus and kangaroos often distracted us and provided a fair few minutes entertainment.
The van gave us freedom. It's great just to pull over on the side of the road and cook lunch, grab an ice cold drink from the fridge or have a nap. Just a small tip on that one - if going for the nap option, then set an alarm. One 30 minute siesta turned into 3 hours - Oops!
So, the things we did in the outback:-
- Yanchep - this was our first overnight stay in the camper van, Rob put the gas stove to the test cooking some kanga bangers. This was all after we had called roadside assistance as the camper decided to illuminate the engine warning light after driving a massive 30 km's. Not the best start, but the RAC man sorted it quickly. The next morning it was great to wake up to the sun rising over the Indian Ocean.
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| Yanchep lagoon |
- visited the Pinnacles (limestone formations).
- got to see some sheep shearing in a place called Hamelin. The farm we stayed at kindly showed us the shearing sheds and we got to see the real stuff in action. Looks like hard work especially in the heat and it's very competitive apparently. The top shearer doesn't want lose his ranking especially as they get paid $2.70 per sheep and can do around 200 per day - new career maybe?
- visited a resort called Monkey Mia, where dolphins arrive everyday for a small feed. This was very different to what I (Lisa) expected. I found it a bit hypocritical to be honest. Apparently they only feed a small amount of fish to specific dolphins each day as they don't want them to become dependent, but given that one of the dolphins has been arriving everyday for 36 years it seems pretty dependent to me. Frankly it was all a bit too gimmicky for our liking and making money was the real reason for feeding the dolphins. Without suckers like us paying to view the dolphins this place would be a ghost town soon enough.
- we snorkelled at Coral Bay. The Ningaloo reef is very close to the shore so we got to see a few pretty fish and a dolphin swimming very close to shore. Also got properly sunburnt here - next time we'll be swimming in burkas ;-)
- visited Kalbarri National Park on the hottest day so far. It got to around 38 degrees, and I (Lisa) felt a bit heat stricken so needed to escape the sun for a bit - not always easy when there are no trees!
- Lisa has become addicted to Subway Surfers and is playing it every night in the van hoping to beat Rob's score (trying for you Gem!) and she's also disappointed at the lack of ginger nut or rich tea biscuits available in Western Australia ;-)
So in short, the road trip north has been pretty interesting. As well as the stuff above we've had fun getting used to our new 4-wheeled home, seen some amazing sunsets, a few lizards basking in the heat on the middle of the road, lots of road kill (sadly mostly kangaroos) and fortunately we haven't encountered anything venomous at the moment which is pretty good going!
