4000km on the road in WA

travelling along the western
australian coast from broom to perth has been a dream for many a year, and yet it never happened till now, well actually june this year, when my friend jim and i decided to go on the journey in a rented campervan. so we planned to fly into perth, meet there and then fly to broom, pick up the van and then over the course of two weeks drive down to perth. and, when faced with the fact that both our flights arrived in the late evening while our flight to broom was not till early next morning, we both decided that silly is good, thus opting for staying up all night to experience the famous perth nightlife. this decision we started to regret when the first thing we saw after stepping out of our taxi in nothbridge at 23:04 was two guys hitting a third one, shortly followed by a bloke who stripped naked and run down the main road in the buff. from there the scenes did not get better so i have to say, perth did not leave the best of all impressions and i was rather happy to return to the airport and sleep all through my flight to broom where we landed on a sunny sunday morning that saw us taking a taxi to the car rental company, checking out the campervan, going shopping in the local supermarket and grog shop to stock up on essentials for the coming two weeks and having a rather huge breakfast at a local café. having survived all this we spend the night in one of the campsites next to cable beach, where we sat at beer o’clock to see the sun go down into the indian ocean for the first, but certainly not the last time during this trip. yet as soon as the sun went down i remembered why it is not such a wonderful idea to go during the dry season to wa, because it gets real cold at night :|


the next morning saw us buying a 4 week national park pass at the CALM office before hitting the road south, and while contemplating why australians build inexplicable bends into roads that go from A to B in a seemingly straight line we decided that we ought to break the do-not-take-your-rented-2WD-onto-a-dirt-road-rule on the second day and turned off the bitumen to take the 10km, as it turned out freshly grated, dirt road to the 80 mile beach caravan park, which turned out to be a smashing idea. the caravan park is nice, and the beach is, well 80 miles long, and full of sand, and sand dunes which are lovely to sit on with a bottle of beer watching the sun going down. at this point i am sure that you as the educated reader that you are, can spot the patter in the plot; yes correct, beer o’clock with australia’s finest - coopers real ale. between two of the countless sunset shots we took we decided that the coast is rather good but that one should not ignore the wild beauty of the pilbera, thus making way next morning, back across the red dirt onto the bitumen that took us into the red centre. our aim was the highly recommended karijini national park, and we drove most of the day from the coast inland only to arrive at the np visitor centre 5 min after it closed. so off we went to the dales recreation area where we got a space for our campervan.

after having moved the van to another lot the following morning we went on a wonderful walk along the dales gorge, one of the many gorges that karijini is famous for. honestly it is great, and it reminded me lots of watarrka, and made me a tad homesick, but nevertheless, or maybe especially because of that i fell in love with the place. in the afternoon we went to the visitor centre, this time before it shut and ask one of the aboriginal stuff which other gorge in the park she would recommend, and without hesitation she nominated hamersley gorge, which meant breaking the above named do-not-take-your-rented-2WD-onto-a-dirt-road-rule once more and this time properly, because the next morning saw us going 62km on the dirt to get to hamersley. but it was absolutely worth the risk, because once again the road had been freshly grated, which is one of the advantages about travelling early in the dry and of having lots of mines around who, for totally selfish reasons, do a good job on the dirt roads ;)

and trust me when i tell you that the trip was totally worth is, the gorge was super, and we used the combination of absence of shower, remoteness and warm afternoon as an excuse to go for a rather quick skinny dip in the river getting back into our clothe only a minute before other visitors came. that night we spend on one of the overnight car parks one finds around the australian outback, and we managed to keep the pilbera cold of with a blazing fire, it was simply wonderful, at least for an hour before the flames went down and we crept into our sleeping bags at the usual time of 8 o’clock ;)

i kid you not the trip was marked by very early nights, because it being june and we are moving south it got colder and colder with every day, so we woke and slept with the sun which gave us lots of rest and still lots of daylight driving time. next morning we went back on the dirt till we hit the bitumen again at tom price and then headed back towards the coast, where we had a bit of a low petrol fright when going on super reserve to the next petrol station on highway 1, but we made it and got our daily iced coffee treat – an addiction that i carefully instilled in jim over the course of the trip :D








our next stop was exmouth, or the caravan park at the northern most tip of cape range national part at ningaloo reef, where we had showers for the first time since 80 mile beach again, hurray. next morning we drove on down the coast to one of the yardie creek campsite in the south of cape range national park, which was full of euros and even fuller or flies, a fact that made us spend even more time on the beach with a beer in order to enjoy the fly-free breeze. i have never seen so many flies in my life and their presence gave birth to two things the following morning; a rather lush breakfast in the most wonderful organic café in exmouth and the term deflying; the act of accelerating the van rapidly while opening the windows to drive all the flies out. this joined the rather important term bottleometer previously created on the dirt, which is the box of empty beer bottles in the back of the camper van which started rattling whenever we drove too fast on the dirt, hence setting of the bottleometer alarm, a very important indicator when breaking the do-not-take-your-rented-2WD-onto-a-dirt-road-rule.

after our rather wonderful sunday breakfast in civilisation which was also our mid-holiday marker we drove on south, surprise, surprise, towards carnarvon and took the turn off to the point quobba blowholes, that were after we found them absolutely spectacular, because we had the good fortune to arrive there at low tide. the night we spend at a tiny campsite just south of the blowholes before driving on to shark bay the next morning where jim said his personal thanks to the still living stromatolites for being the first life forms creating oxygen, thus bringing us all into existence – hail to the stromatolites!

but the days final destination was some higher life, to be precise, the dolphins at monkey mia. so we drove to the other end of shark bay where we got up real early next morning to witness the dolphins coming close to shore to get their daily feed. and man was i happy when i was chosen to be one of the feeding people, so happy that i ignored the freezing cold water that interrupted the blood circulation in my feet, only to realise that jim had not taken one photo of the memorable event, so here you go, only dolphins and pelicans for you...

and as the francois peron national park is for hard core 4WD only we moved on at 80km per hour towards kalbarri national park, when i spotted in mid drive an echidna in the shrub beside the road, hit the breaks, did a u-turn and jumped out of the car to take a picture before jim even knew what had hit him. don’t ask how i managed to see that at high speed, the only explanation i can say that kalbarri np features a lot of shrub, so much so that it seems there is nothing but shrub, thus anything other than shrub catches the eye ;)

but beyond the shrub the park has lots to offer; inland there is hawks gorge with a rock that does not look like a hawk at all, and at the coast red bluff, which is a spot one should put on every wa itinerary. here the red cliffs meet the blue see and white waves beat the rugged coast; simply awesome!

after this going south seemed like a burden and entering the weatbelt was a horror we would have gladly forgone, so we decided to go on a 500km run inland to mount magnet and back towards the south-west to avoid the horrid winds blowing over the raped soil and to sleep one more night in the wild, lighting a fire and watching the stars. and while mount magnet is vile, the detour was great, yet returning to the weatbelt was bad and was only made better by the sight of the pinnacles under the gloomy rain-clouded sky, standing there as memorandums of geological history in their little desert. that night we warmed ourselves with some pints in the pub, and a maga portion of chips from the take away; not healthy but we circumstantially goooood :D

and there we were, on our last day, stopping off at yanchep national park for a spot of lunch and koala spotting before driving back into perth, where i first dropped jim at the airport and then the campervan at the rental place before getting myself in a taxi to the airport and my later flight myself. all in all, it was the most wonderful trip in the company of one of my most wonderful friends…