The West Coast – Cyclones, Flash Floods, Sharks and Coral Reefs (post and photos by mary)

Sunset on Cable Beach in Broome, minutes from our camp ground.

Well, another coast of Australia behind us.  Matt’s epic blog brought our travels up to Derby where we roamed the mud flats in search of the beautiful Baob Trees.  We found a good number of them, but it was not enough. 

Beautiful and inviting as this coast was, danger lurked and rules were to be obeyed!

We continued west and arrived in Broome in mid December.  What a lovely little seaside town with its long white sandy beaches, turquoise water and endless surf.  Palm trees lining the streets and many interesting shops to press your nose up to their windows.  Many featured the cultured pearls grown in the local waters.  As lovely as they were all set in their diamond bling, they were not for me.  Broome was fun, secretive Christmas shopping excursions and Australia’s oldest out door movie theatre where we watched a couple of movies under the stars. (“Red Dog” is a must if you can get your hands on it!)  Broome became our home base for our various excursions in the area.

Sunset camel safaris for the romantic.

A shy leatherback turtle turned away from her mission to lay eggs in the dunes on the shore.

The water was not to be swum in as we were still in crocodile country, despite the locals saying, “not to worry, mate!”  Trust me, we worried.  More so for the deadly stinging jelly fish.  Some larger than three metres and most smaller than your fingernail!  No thanks.  We stocked up on goodies and headed north to Cape Leveque for Christmas.  All along the Dampier Peninsula were free camping places.  We stayed one night at Willie’s Lagoon.  Really a wild and remote place and definitely crocodile territory.   We moved onto Kooljaman Resort where we spent the holidays in a beach hut on a cliff overlooking a fabulous beach!  With caution we accepted the local’s encouragement to swim in the ocean as the jelly fish and croc’s never came to those shores.  “Well, ok” said the receptionist, “there was one crocodile lounging on the beach just six weeks ago, but he moved on!”  Matt swam with great anxiety the whole week there!  Ah, that was a lovely place.  We had three beaches all to ourselves for the first two days and clothes were optional.  Our early morning shell beach, our swimming beach and our sunset beach.  Rich red carved cliffs standing on a golden sandy beach were our target for each sunset photo shoot.  The tumbled sandstone layers became an obsession!  So many pictures.

Away in teh Manger – our cresh for the Holidays.  Sweet Home!

Our view from our tent shelter.  This was our swimming beach.

We spent five days north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsula where camping is free and the land and shoreline is wild.  Australia’s last wilderness frontier.  For the most part we were alone in that wild place, nestled under a canopy of much appreciated shade trees.  Day time temperature was reaching mid 40’s and the ocean was not safe to swim in for fear of stinging jellyfish, which we found washed up on the beach.

Matt collecting shells like a boy in a candy shop!  Our Shell beach at Cape Leveque.

A sunset rock chair to relax on on one of Broome’s beaches.

South was where we were supposed to go next.  But as we rolled down the red sand track out of the Dampier Peninsula, Matt suggests we go east, back to Derby.  He just didn’t think he really captured the essence of the Baob Tree.  Derby was just a mere 200 kilometres, a minor detour.  I readily agreed – we were still close enough and would have big regrets for not going back when we had the opportunity.  So east we went!  And Baob Trees we found.  Lots of them!  Another three days in Derby roaming around more mud flats, back on the Gibb River Road and a good distance back toward Fitzroy Crossing on the main highway!  More like a 600 kilometre detour by the time we got back to Broome.   But very happy with our Baob collection.

These old relics were nestled amongst the Baob Trees on the Derby Mudflats.

This ancient Baob is know as the Picnic Tree on the Fitzroy Highway.

O dear, poor Rocky sprang a leak out of his rear wheel bearing!  One more visit into Broome for a quick repair.  Our last chance for our favourite Kebab shop, the Land of the Pharos!  Big, juicy, garlicy delicious falafel (or for Matt, chicken) kebabs!  We have rarely treated ourselves for eating out, but in Broome, we became regulars.  With Rocky’s wheels fixed we did finally head south to Karajina.

My shell collection in Cape Leveque became an obsession!

Karajina was the one place in Australia that I had researched before leaving Canada.  For four months we talked about the spectacular canyons, gorges and waterfalls and how we would spend ten days photographing it all!  We could hardly wait to get there.  In questioning fellow travellers on Karajina’s conditions, Matt was dismayed to hear that the water holes were rather dry.  This was not acceptable for his photographic expectations, so in the full force of his powers, he demanded rain of the sky gods and yelled, “Bring It On!”  This always makes me nervous when he does that – it seems a bit disrespectful to the gods.  Well on fueling up at a  Road House on our final approach to Karajini, Matt read a road report that Karajini is closed due to flash flooding from the rain storm the day before.  On arrival at our detoured destination of Tom Price, an industrial mining town, we are told by the surly caravan park receptionist that a cyclone is brewing on the coast and was headed straight for us!  Yikes!  Mental Note:  Use the invocation “Bring It On! cautiously!   By the next day, cyclone Heidi was promoted to a category 3 and the two roads out of Tom Price were closed!  Five days we stayed in that most unfriendly caravan park,  occupying their camp kitchen using their electricity to edit photos and watched the winds blow and rain pour down on the earth. Our trusty canvas nomad tent proved once again to be weather worthy! We finally threw in the towel waiting for Karajini to open up.  We were told the flooding was so bad that it was going to take three weeks to get the roads open and the gorges cleaned.  We conceded that we could not wait that long and would have to miss out on our most longed for photo shoot of this trip!

The white sand dunes lined the Coral Coast for hundreds of kilometres!

Over looking the tall dunes and the turquise green water.

Sandstone ledges and shelves that cut into the water forming the inner coral reef.

South to Exmouth and the Ningaloo National Marine Park.  Six days in the most wild, coastal bush camping along a sand dune lined shore paralleled by an inner and outer coral reef.  This made for the best snorkeling at a number of beach and shoal locations.  The weather was at its hottest yet, plus 90, possibly even over 100 on some days.  Very few trees for shade and luckily we found a camp site on a beach with a row of trees to nestle under.  The heat was so hot is felt like your skin was being seared like a steak on a grill!  It was a good thing that we were there to snorkel and had some relief staying in the water for hours on end (using lots of sun screen and wearing clothes in the water – not the bikini babe you see in the magazines!).  The coral life was abundant, colourful and entertaining.  One evening we drove up to a beach well known as a turtle nesting area and witnessed a big leatherback turtle come out of the water and waddle right up to the dunes just next to us and dig her two metre hole and lay her eggs one at a time, carefully landing in her back legs and tucked into the sand.  Very cool.

The Emu Watering Hole.  Check out their giant feet!

The whole gang, including two young ones, well protected by their fathers.

The ever elusive and very shy Enid.  Found him crossing the road.  So cute, but not cuddly!

We met a flock of Emus at the one and only water tap.  They were very happy to see us as it meant that we may spill water for them to drink, which we did.  That was an awesome encounter with these very large raptor-like birds.  We were surprised to learn that the young ones we saw were cared for by their fathers.  Their mothers flew the coup as soon as the chicks had hatched!  At the last camp site, which was very remote on a 4WD track, once again alone in Auz, we snorkeled around the point at our beach.  Good snorkeling along a deep wall – good until we saw a shark!  Evacuation!  Matt saw it circle around us and came back to have a good look.  We climbed out over the shallow shoal and continued snorkeling in our sheltered beach toward the other point.  Nervously I kept looking over my shoulder and soon enough a school of fish darted past us also looking very nervous.  There it was “Jaws” sneaking up behind us!  Evacuate!  That was the end of our snorkel.  We may have been just fine but neither of us were willing to take that chance.
We left Ningaloo following its 4WD sand track hugging the coast line all the way to Coral Bay.  This was a lovely afternoon’s drive, once again alone in Australia far from anything but green desert, large white sand dunes and a wild and windy turquoise sea. The snorkeling at Coral Bay was not nearly as interesting as Ningaloo.  We made our way further south and got stuck in Carnavon for 24 hours.  The road was closed due to a bush fire south of us.  Luckily it opened the next afternoon and we broke camp and hit the road the moment we heard it was open.  The Francois Peron Peninsula and Monkey Mia National Park was our destination.

Oops, dead end track.  The road was swallowed up by this great dune.  Which way now?

Earth’s saviour, ancient Stromatolites.  The original bacteria that brought life to earth.

Sunset breaking out of a thick cloud seemed reflective of how this bed of stromatolites would have affected the atmosphere billions of years ago.
This national park is a world heritage site due to the unique shallow waters protected by a double peninsula.  The inner waters were home to ancient Stromatolites, giant clusters of oxygen producing bacteria formations lying in the warm shallow waters.  We were in awe of their role of earth’s evolution.  Without their ability to produce oxygen, none of us, plant, animal or man/woman would be alive today.  It seemed suiting that we would find them along the journey to compliment the science theme of our travels.  Matt has been reading a book by Bill Bryson, “The Short History of Nearly Everything”.  It has been a delight to Matt to learn about all the great science theories and read them aloud to me and open many long discussions on what is scientific fact or not.  The shores along this coastal region were layers of tiny white shells, deep enough to make quarry stones for early house building.  I have given a good description of this area in my Drowning Kangaroo story.  O the flies, the flies!

The famous hungry dolphins at Monkey Mia Resort.  Mama and her young one.
We were followed by Cyclone Iggy the whole journey down the coast from Carnavon.  Iggy changed direction at every location we stayed at, always pointing its course toward us!  We thought we could out run it, but Iggy was determined.  Could this be in reaction to Matt standing on the shores shaking his fist and yelling “Bring It on Iggy!  Is that all you got?!”  Honestly, he really does make me nervous!  Matt, not Iggy!  We stayed in Kalbarri, a really lovely seaside surfer town.  The winds and seas were whipped up in a wild froth and we were chased out of the forested gorges by a heavy thunder and lightning storm.  Our best discovery there was the shark!  Fish and chips style for only $10!  A really good deal in Australia!  So good we had it four days in a row!

Kalbarri’s River Gorge.  This was the last glimmer of sun before the onset of Iggy’s rain hit us.

Great surf beaches in Kalbarri – swollen with Cyclone Iggy pressing onto this shoreline.

Iggy caught up with us in a small coastal town of Jurien.  By then he was demoted to a tropical storm but still managed to produce a big swell, strong winds and a heavy rain.  We were tucked in behind a wall, anchored down to Rocky and took shelter in the camp kitchen.  By morning, we emerged dry as a bone to find our fellow campers soaked and sleepless!  Love our canvas nomad tent!  We spent a cloudy day exploring the mysterious Pinacles in the sand dune desert before the final stretch to Perth.  The Pinacles were very interesting.  Science has still not been able to figure out just exactly what they are.  Geological formations or ancient fossilized crustations or coral formations or remains of a petrified forest?  It is a big scientific mystery.

The strange Pinnacle formations jutting out of miles of sand dunes.

What are they – rock, fossil, micro organisms?

The yellow sands were so bright that they reflected in the low cloud cover above.
We stayed with Matt’s Mom’s first cousin Derek and his wife Judy in their lovely home in Perth.  Ahhh, a real bed, comfy couches, TV a big kitchen, a dining table to eat on and our own bathroom!  What a luxury!  Perth is a rich, beautifully manicured, green parkland, beach lined city.  It held an outdoor culture offering something for everyone.  Parks were numerous and had exercise stations along the footpaths.  Bicycle pathways were everywhere and the beaches were fabulous.  Free parking to make it accessible and water sports of all sorts were found.  A city that seemed to be on a big holiday!  We dined and went sailing with Derek at the Perth Royal Yacht Club.  They won the evening race that Matt crewed on!  It was lovely to meet Derek and Judy and for Matt to piece together the family bonds of another dimension to his Mother’s family.
Leaving Perth began the last leg of our Auzzy walk about.  A time line was drawn up giving us two weeks to explore the very south west stretch and then head north-east back to Alice Springs to try and sell the truck.  A new chapter to that journey will be posted in short order!