Western Australia, north of Perth

We flew into Perth late Friday January 13th with a full moon. Good thing we’re not superstitious. We walked out of the airport into the cool crisp air and were relieved to be back to camping weather again. In fact, we may have prematurely sent our sleeping bags and under layers back home. We ended up buying a couple of inexpensive blankets for the cool nights which we will give away when it is time to fly to Bali. We’ve enjoyed losing the extra weight of items we shipped home so honestly no regrets there.

  

We went to pick up our rental car and I was thrilled to see that we got a Toyota Corolla hatchback! I’d seen them allover NZ and in Australia and love them. I wish they were sold in the states. There are lots of different cars in NZ and AU that we don’t have in the states even though the same maker. Anyway, I was glad to get our car back in the order we had it while in NZ. Also, Toyotas and Hondas have the most comfortable seats I’ve experienced in a car. (We drove a Hyundai while in Queensland and there was a metal rod in the seat just below the lumbar that presses into your sacrum. Very painful and extremely poor design; the seats are also C shaped which makes you hunch over. Who in the world designed those in this ergonomical design age?)

Once we got our car we drove to a beach to cook breakfast. When I saw the beach I was so happy. It was so beautiful, and full of people and their dogs. No stinger nets. Just gorgeous clear water and dry hot weather. We were going to hang out there for a while, but decided to check out the prison in Fremantle before getting sandy. The tour was very interesting and informative, but I was saddened to hear many of the stories such as young children imprisoned and receiving lashings. Also, women were imprisoned back in the day for things such as “idleness” or “drinking too much”. They were thought to have a serious mental disorder for doing those “crimes”. Then there were the disgusting tales of serial killers. There was a clear presence of evil in that place and I was ready to leave when it was over. It was very strange to be touring a prison that was operating in my lifetime. It closed in 1991.

We had heard about and read about some places on the coast north of Perth so we began our journey north after leaving the prison. We decided to find a less crowded beach to go to, but once we did it had become cold and windy.  We ate dinner in a park and while we were cooking, kangaroos hopped through the park grazing. They came within 10 or so feet of us! They tend to come out around dawn or dusk.

One of the first places we went was the Nambung National Park with the famous Pinnacle Desert. It was very cool. A big thank you to Rebecca Little for suggesting it.

We continued on up to Port Gregory where there is a pink lake officially known as Hutt Lagoon. It was really PINK! Our nephew Alex told us about this before we came to Australia, but we didn’t know we were actually going to see one. It can range from deep red to pale pink due to beta carotene in the water. There is actually a plant there that harvests the beta carotene to use in supplements.

We stopped at several beach towns which were all quaint with pretty beaches, but not very much to do. We played golf one cool morning in a small town called Dongara. We made our way to a town called Kalbarri which I really liked. There were some beautiful beaches there and we went snorkelling at a couple of them. We had really hoped to visit the Kalbarri National Park which has a huge red rock gorge with a river running through it, but the road to hikes we wanted to go on was closed for the next several months except to tour operators or weekends. It was early in the week and too late to go on a tour that day so we missed out on it.

We saw some amazing sunsets along the way too.

We visited this gorgeous lake of stromatolites which are millions year old bacteria mats. Beautiful. No swimming though which was torture since it was nearly 100 Farenheit that day! But cool to see such beauty.

Saw this pack of emus crossing the road. They tend to travel in groups.

 This is a spot where Dave snorkeled in Kalbarri.

These are of the pink lake from the opposite side. As you can see it is huge!

We drove on up to Shark Bay which was very underwhelming especially considering how much hype was built up in the visitor magazine and the very long drive it took to get there. At that point we were at a bit of a crossroads. Our plan was to drive as far north as Coral Bay where you can literally swim out to the coral reef from the beach to snorkel. However, from Shark Bay it was going to be an additional 6-7 hours driving one way to get there for it to possibly not be any more impressive than the towns we’d already seen so we decided to head back towards Perth and explore south of the city. On the drive back we stopped in a couple of the towns we’d passed through before and did some snorkeling.

We were blessed with this amazing sunset in Jurien Bay. We decided to camp near Jurien Bay and while we were cooking our dinner we noticed a man who appeared to be homeless. I wish we had asked him to join us for dinner, but instead we bought him some food from the grocery store. He was very grateful and we planned to invite him to eat breakfast with us, but he was gone in the morning. Lesson learned; don’t miss an opportunity when it presents itself.

All in all I don’t regret the drive north. The beach towns were nice and not commercialized with annoying high rises. The beaches had white sand with clear water. And it was an experience driving on the long redundant straight flat roads of the outback. We saw some beautiful landscapes. And it was definitely worth going to the pinnacle desert in Nambung. I of course cannot leave out the incredible weather; practically no humidity, mostly warm to hot days, and cool nights perfect for camping.