Exploring the West Coast

It’s been a busy and fun couple of weeks getting to know a new part of the country. Mum, Dad and Grace arrived in Melbourne on a Friday night and we spent the weekend walking around the city and taking a daytrip to the lovely Wilson’s Promontory National Park on the most southerly tip of the Australian mainland with its beautiful white beaches, very tame marsupials and great sunset views. The following week we had an early start to fly to Exmouth in Western Australia by way of Perth. Chris and I wished goodbye to our suburban home of the past four months without a backwards glance, but as our taxi took us through Melbourne in the pre-dawn darkness I was glad I wasn’t having to say goodbye to the city yet. We arrived in Perth after a four-hour flight and sat in the lounge as we waited to board our much smaller plane on to Exmouth further north, and Chris and I discussed Perth’s status as the world’s isolated city. A Google search told us that this classification was based on the measure of being the city furthest from another settlement of over 100,000 people. I thought about the roadtrip ahead of us from Exmouth to Perth and couldn’t believe we wouldn’t pass through a town of a hundred thousand until we reached our destination. I think at that stage I hadn’t quite grasped just what Western Australia would be like...

A Wilson's Prom sunset on the winter solstice

Exmouth was hot and dry; a welcome surprise after several winter months in Melbourne. We picked up our car and left the tiny airport to drive through dusty red desert. We were to spend many hours on the road on our journey of over a thousand kilometres and overwhelmingly this consisted of single-lane roads that we had all to ourselves, passing through vast plains of scrub or deserts crowned with hundreds of termite hills in all directions. What struck me most about WA was the vast expanses of sky everywhere we went as it was all so flat, and the sky was always blue. Exmouth turned out to be an intriguing little settlement of no more than two thousand that had only been established in the 1960s as an American military base for spying on its Cold War enemies. It was sparsely populated and most establishments were staffed by European backpackers earning their rural work quotas for their working holiday visas. We stayed for three days, enjoying that holiday feeling of drinking beer at midday and pursuing outdoorsy activities such as snorkelling, swimming, sea kayaking and jogs along the beach. The next stop on our itinerary was Coral Bay, which was no more than a large resort but was still a lovely place with a beautiful beach (we were spoiled for beautiful beaches over the two weeks). Here we had a brilliant trip on a glass bottom boat to see the coral and do a spot of snorkelling. The coral here was hard, not soft, so didn’t share the wonderful colours of soft coral as in the Great Barrier Reef, but nonetheless it was hugely abundant and unspoiled and we saw lots of beautifully shaped corals. While snorkelling we were lucky enough to spot a turtle that let us swim around with it for ages, and at another spot found ourselves in the midst of a huge crowd of fish. Chris freaked out more than a little when he thought the fish were attacking him, but (obvious to everyone except him) it was a little prank played by the boat staff who threw fish food off the boat around us. And I found that having a laughing fit while wearing a snorkel certainly produced some interesting noises.

We spent a night in a tiny place called Carnarvon where the main attraction was a creaking wooden jetty a mile long out to sea with a café at the start. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to form judgements about places I’ve merely passed through- not that you need very long to see all that Carnarvon has to offer- so I’ll just say that I don’t have a huge amount to say about Carnarvon! Throughout the trip we stayed at a couple of such places, but nonetheless it’s been an interesting insight into life in Australia’s largest- but often most overlooked- state. What we sacrificed by way of diverse dining options and reliable Wi-Fi we gained in sunsets over the sea almost every evening and the freedom to do whatever we wanted without the impediments of traffic, queues and scores of tourists. Our next stop was Denham, a long drive down Shark Bay and onto a peninsula that homes the Francios Peron National Park. On the way we stopped at Hamelin Pool to see some stromatolites, which are- as far as I can understand- ‘microbial platforms’ and at an impressive three billion years old are the world’s oldest living organisms. Observing these unremarkable rock-like lumps in the shallow waters it was hard to fully appreciate their significance, but even so you knew by their age alone that you were looking at something special. Even if they don’t look it. Denham was a nice little town with a beautiful waterfront and in the morning we set off early for Monkey Mia, a neighbouring resort that has become famous (at least by the standards of the area) for its dolphin-feeding sessions (called ‘experiences’) that take place every morning that dolphins and visitors show up. There were perhaps fifty people at the first ‘dolphin experience’ at 7.45am, the most people we’d seen in one place since we left Melbourne a week earlier. Even so, the experience was managed tastefully, and staff were at pains to stress that every effort is made to ensure that human interaction does not compromise the normal hunting and socialising behaviours of the dolphins. It seemed that it was all being managed very sustainably with a focus on education, which was good to see. We got to see the dolphins close-up in the clear, shallow waters and it was all good fun. After the dolphins had been fed their quota of three fish each, they swam off and the crowds dispersed. It seemed that the majority of tourists hit the road again after this, but we decided to stay in Monkey Mia a bit longer to enjoy the views and the tranquil atmosphere. After Denham came Kalbarri, one of our favourite places on account of the lovely rugged cliffs and choppy waves that made it very scenic. We hit the road again after two days exploring the town and the neighbouring national park, and our next destination was Dongara. On the drive down we took a small detour on a special request of mine to visit an eccentric place called Hutt River, a sovereign state since 21^st April 1970 when a farmer named Leonard Cassey succeeded from Australia following a tax dispute with the state government. Today the self-appointed Prince Leonard and his son Prince Graeme welcome curious visitors to their country, where you can purchase a visa or get a stamp in your passport and receive a tour of the main sites- the post office and government building, the museum and the interdenominational chapel named in honour of the late Princess Shirley. We were shown around by Prince Graeme- who took it all astonishingly seriously- and saw the flag of the principality, photographs of their various representatives around the world and an assortment of other oddities. Rather unsettling was the collection of passports and ID cards supposedly donated by visitors. As my mum pointed out, they all belonged to white, bearded German males, and the faces staring up through the glass cabinet made us wonder whereabouts on the farm they had been buried… Joking aside, it was certainly a bizarre place. Notably, all the daughters of the family had left Hutt River at the first chance to head to Perth, and we promptly followed suit.

Chris at Carnarvon's jetty

Mum enjoying the stromatolites at Hamlin Pool

...And here's what the big deal is

Tranquil Denham

Morning dolphin-spotting at Monkey Mia

Here's a close-up

Grace explores

An abandoned station in the Francois Peron National Park, left as a museum for visitors

The family enjoys another sunset

Pelican-feeding at Kalbarri

Patient pelicans and a sneaky seagull wait their turn

Great views at Kalbarri National Park

My lovely mum and dad

Monument to Prince Leonard at Hutt River Province

At Dongara we stayed in a former nunnery turned to a proper outback-style pub hotel. It was a majestic building with lots of polished wood and a nice terrace, but the rooms felt they’d been left over from the seventies so we didn’t spend too much time in them. Our last stop before Perth was Cervantes, where we had a nice apartment which we all appreciated. We enjoyed a barbie and some beers in the afternoon sunshine before heading out to see the intriguing rock formations of the Pinnacles National Park at sunset. Finally it was on to Perth. We were all looking forward to seeing a city that none of us had been to before, and especially to returning to the urban delights of good coffee and more than one option for dinner. We stayed in South Perth, across the Swan River from where there is a great vantage of the city. South Perth was dominated by apartment blocks, tidy tree-lined roads and tennis courts and it felt as if we could have been in a rich Asian suburb- indeed, Perth is famously closer to Singapore than Sydney and in South Perth it certainly felt this way. On our first evening we took the ferry across the river and walked up to Northside for dinner. After a week of pub grub we all fancied Asian food for tea, which was a good job as that was pretty much all that was on offer. We were even lucky enough to encounter the opening night celebrations of a new Chinese fast food joint, involving a colourful dragon performance on the roadside. The next day we went to check out Fremantle, a town in Perth’s suburbs that once functioned as a port and today is a hipster haven with trendy brunch spots, a market, second-hand bookshops and the (brilliant) Little Creatures brewery. On our last full day in Perth we were unlucky to have rain, but we used the opportunity to duck into the city’s art gallery and museum, which were both very interesting. At the art gallery we were treated to a tour by a lovely volunteer called Jenny, on the subject of Western Australian artists. The charismatic lady was often diverted by other artworks she liked that weren’t by WA artists, but that was all part of the charm. The rain continued into the next morning, when we took a damp morning walk onto a small island in the Swan River, where kangaroos can be spotted. We did spot some, but even more remarkably, I caught sight of a school of perhaps five or six dolphins making their way up the river. We certainly weren't expecting that!

Dongara treats us to another wonderful sunset

The surrealist landscape of the Pinnacles National Park

Chris checks out the view

We arrive in Perth

An incongruous sight- dolphins in the Swan River

After such a flying visit to Perth we took off again to travel across the width of the country to Brisbane, after having said goodbye to Chris at the airport as he was to head back down to Melbourne. We arrived in the evening and picked up a car for the hour’s drive north to the Sunshine Coast, where we stayed with family friends Julia and Mike for two nights. They took us on a whirlwind day out, starting with a morning coastal walk through the national park at Noosa (which I had walked part of with Chris back in February), then to the local pool for a bracing outdoor evening swim, rounded off with a walk in the park and a meal at the local Thai restaurant. Finally, we came to my family’s last day of their trip. We left the Sunshine Coast in the morning and headed back to Brisbane by way of the Glasshouse Mountains. We visited the same viewing point and café that I had been to five months earlier, and it was lovely to revisit the places I had really enjoyed back then. We reached Brisbane in the late afternoon, in time for a leisurely walk through the botanical garden and along the south bank. We had dinner in Chinatown, not far from the hostel I was staying at that evening, and then it was time for them to walk me back and to say our goodbyes. It’s always sad, especially after having had such a lovely time together over the past three weeks, but at least this time it’s only two months or so until I’ll see them again, which made it a little easier.

A morning walk at Noosa

Glasshouse Mountains

Saying goodnight to Brisbane

The Story Bridge in red

Suddenly all by myself, I kept myself busy at the hostel for a few hours before getting an early night. I was up early in the morning before my flight on to Auckland, and decided to make the most of my morning with a walk around the city. I left my hostel a bit after seven and walked through the upmarket clifftop suburb of New Farm with its wonderful views over the river, the bridge and the CBD, before descending to the riverfront to walk along the smart new boardwalk. It’s not often I’m out and about at that kind of time (the hours before 9am are a complete novelty to me), so when I do I feel incredibly self-satisfied about my achievement. I topped it off with a fresh OJ and smoked salmon and scrambled egg sourdough amongst Brisbane’s business people on the riverfront, still marvelling to myself that it was only 8.30am.

By midday I had boarded my flight, and I touched down in Auckland just as the sun set this evening, giving me beautiful views as I descended over the island. I’ve checked into my hostel and been for a beer and pizza tea, and that’s about as much exploring as I fancy doing tonight. Tomorrow I’ll set out and get my bearings in this new city and new country!…