Big Tree Country

After a couple of days in Albany, we headed south and west to a beach-camp in West Cape Howe National Park. The surf was pretty fierce, so we didn't venture in for a dip.

We did however find an amusing diversion in sliding down the sand cliffs that had formed on the beach. To get back up to the top however, you had to run as hard as you could up the cliff, the sand collapsing all around you, and with limbs flailing, frantically hurl yourself back over the top before the sand swept you back down.

At Ocean Beach in Denmark I was very excited that the surf was gentle enough for me to use my new boogie board! It's not the flashiest of boards - really just a hunk of polystyrene, but she rode the waves a treat. Having previously poo-pooed my purchase of the board ($2 in an op shop), I could tell Andy was more than a little envious when he saw it in action.

Along the road towards Walpole we stopped in at a honey farm. Here we tried numerous samples of honey mead and scoffed down some honey ice-cream to round off. Needless to say, we were feeling a little queasy by the time we left.

In William Bay National Park we snorkelled around Green's Pool, a natural sea-pool protected from the surf by massive granite boulders.

A short walk away in the shallows we came across the huge huddle of boulders collectively known as Elephant Rocks. You could wade through the crevasses between boulders that form a kind of natural maze.

Around Walpole we entered the famous tall-tree forests of south-western WA. Red Tingle (Eucalyptus jacksonii) is the predominant tall tree in the Valley of the Giants. These monsters grow to around 60 metres, with a circumference around the base of up to 25 metres. The inner trunk tends to get hollowed out by fungus and fire, so the remaining outer layer must flare and buttress outward to retain the tree's stability - hence the enormity of the basal circumference.

With no tap-root and and a very shallow root system, it's a wonder they stand at all!

The big attraction in the Valley of the Giants is the Tree-Top Walk. This narrow walkway is suspended 40 metres up in the canopy of the giant tingles, allowing you a spectacular view usually reserved only for the birds. In case just seeing the canopy isn't enough for you, the walkway also sways with the trees in the wind, so you really get a (somewhat unnerving) taste of life at the top.

Further into the Walpole Wilderness area (a conglomeration of around 8 big tree national parks), we swam in a pool in the Shannon River. This abundance of water made quite a change from the bone-dry Australia we have mostly seen so far.

With our new power source – the solar panels on the roof of the van – we are able to indulge in a couple of little electrical luxuries. In a bold move, Andy decided that he wanted me to learn to trim his mop, so that he can have it done whenever he wants. So we invested in some electric clippers (for about the price of a haircut with a barber), and I got busy. To my great surprise, I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself!

Back at the coast, we took a walk along the cliff-tops on the wild coast at Windy Harbour.

At window lookout along the walk, a hole in the limestone cliff framed a view down to the waves gnashing at the base of the rock.

Heading back inland, we visited the Gloucester Tree near Pemberton. This 60 metre Karri tree was used as a fire-lookout until the 1960s. Spikes were driven into the side of the tree in a spiral arrangement to provide rungs for the watchmen to scale. Having read about it in the guidebook, I had ambitions of scaling the thing myself.

However, on actually seeing the beast in question I had no hesitation in chickening out. You can't even see the “cabin” at the top in the photo, but it was LONG way up. No sir-ee, no way, na-ah, not climbing that thing.

That night we camped among Californian sequoias in the Tall Tree Arboretum near Pemberton. The morning happened to be cool and crisp. Together with the smell of the sequoias, it was strongly reminiscent of our mornings waking up in the back of a van on the west coast of another continent.

Our arrival at Cape Leeuwin, the most south-westerly point in Australia, marks the transition from travelling westward to travelling northward on our circuit of the continent.

This water-wheel was constructed in 1895 to supply the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse with drinking water from a nearby spring. Incredibly, the tank in which the wheel used to turn has become entirely filled by limestone precipitating out of the spring water, with the wheel itself being half-entombed.

From here we have nowhere to go but north, so north it shall be...

G'day from WA

If we were pleased to see the end of the Nullarbor, it is hard to imagine how Arthur Richardson felt in December 1896, having crossed the Nullarbor on a bicycle, doing so some 16 years before the first motor vehicle. In just 31 days, this superhuman covered 2100 off-road kilometres from Coolgardie (WA) to Adelaide (SA) on what must have been the most primitive of cycles by today's standards. But before you ask, I don't have a clue why he did it. He must have got some kind of kick out of it though – in 1900 he became the first person to cycle the Australian coast circuit, some 18,507km in 8 months.

From the drab mining town of Norseman that marks the end of the Nullarbor drive, we turned south for Esperance, situated on the coast. Esperance was named in 1792 when two French ships, L'Esperance and Recherche sailed into the bay to shelter from a storm that hit them while exploring the coast of New Holland. Esperance makes the bold claim of having the finest beaches in Australia. And by gum, they've got a point – the beaches were rather idyllic.

Lucky bay on nearby Cape Le Grand is perhaps the finest of the fine. Never have I seen such white sand, and as fine as flour too.

One cool morning we climbed Frenchman's Peak, a bare-topped granite dome near Lucky Bay.

After a steep scramble to the top, we were rewarded with excellent views of Cape Le Grande and the Recherche Archipelago. Incredibly, this photo is taken under an immense arch that was carved by waves many millions of years ago, when the sea-level was 250 metres higher than it is today.

It was slightly unnerving to walk under this huge overhang, also carved by the ancient sea, but I suppose it's held this long, so we'd be pretty unlucky to get squished now!

Throughout our travels in Australia so far, I have been struck by the unrelenting flatness of vast tracts of the continent (and that's saying something from a fenlander!). Coming as we are from North America and New Zealand, the contrast in Australia's topography is stark. Australia is an ancient land whose hills and mountain ranges have been largely worn to dust over billions of years by the forces of wind and water. We had already come across some of the most ancient land on Earth, in the shape of the Recherche Archipelago (off the coast at Esperance), which as part of the Yilgarnia escarpment is over 2.6 billion years old. But for me, nowhere has the erosive effect of time on the earth been more apparent than at our next stop - the Stirling Ranges National Park. Having climbed to the top Mount Hassel, of one of the rounded granite-dome hills of the Stirling Range, the view evoked the countless aeons in which mother nature has patiently stroked mighty mountains down to mere ripples in the landscape.

Once we got to what we thought was the top of the steep walk up Mount Hassel, we were faced with this large granite stack. We managed to scramble about 90% of the way up, but unfortunately the last section proved too steep for us to undertake, so we never got to see the view from the very top.

The next day, we tackled the three peaks trail in nearby Porongurup Ranges National Park. The Porongurups are characterised by a deep red loam soil that allows immense karri trees (Eucalyptus diversicolor) to thrive. The steep trail led us up to bear peaks for impressive views over the tops of the trees to the Stirling Ranges.

The grass-trees on the tops of the peaks reminded us of the Joshua-tree yuccas way back in southern California.

Still in the Porongurups, we took another hike out to a precarious balancing rock. Something tells me I'm probably not the first person to pull this pose!

Well, if you though that was a classic, what about this one?

Just beyond balancing rock was the mighty castle rock. We scaled it it on the kind of ladders and platforms where “don't look down” is generally good advice.

Returning to the coast, we stocked up with supplies in Albany, the oldest European settlement in WA (founded 1832).

Next to the supermarket we came across charming "dog rock".

Two exciting things happened in Albany. The first was positive - we bought some solar panels to sit on top of the van and charge things like the laptop and mobile phone. The second was rather more negative - some moron reversed into the back of our van. We caught him in the act of driving off having broken our number-plate on the bike carrier and bent the pedal crank-arm on one of the bikes. The guy was a German tourist, and boy did he have some nerve! When we stopped him driving away, far from apologising, he started telling us that they were muddy old bikes and couldn't be work much!! Andy very reasonably tried to straighten the crank-arm there and then in the car park, but the effect was less than satisfactory. In the end we negotiated that the German should give us $50 (that's only about £20) for a replacement. The next day however, Andy managed to straighten the crank-arm a bit better, so we treated ourselves to fresh fish'n'chips at the harbour with the German's cash - deeelish! The biggest consolation though was the enormous dent in the boot-lid of the German's hire-car! Justice is sweet.

From here we head along the south coast towards the big trees around Walpole... see you then.

Feeling the heat in... Lincolnshire?

In march 1774 Matthew Flinders was born in the Lincolnshire village of Donington. Although expected to follow in his father's and grandfather's footsteps to become a doctor, the boy, inspired by Robinson Crusoe, decided that he wanted the life of an explorer. A natural aptitude for mathematics allowed Flinders to teach himself navigation, and by the age of 16, he had been made midshipman in the Royal Navy.

Flinders established himself as a fine navigator and cartographer on his first voyage to Australia (then known as “Terra Australis” or “New Holland”) aboard HMS Reliance in 1795, arriving seven years after the first European settlement at Sydney. For his second voyage to Australia, in 1801, Flinders had been promoted to Commander of HMS Investigator. Under his command, Investigator became the first vessel to circumnavigate Australia, with Flinders charting much of the coastline with unprecedented accuracy.

And so it came to pass that 200 years later, two landlubber yellow-bellies (that's Lincolnshire folk, to the uninitiated), should find themselves among familiar names in a strange land. Though the region could hardly have been more different from his native Lincolnshire, Flinders must somehow have been reminded of that far-off place as he navigated the waters around the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, for many a fenland town is there commemorated. Our first overnight stop in Flinders' Lincolnshire tribute act was quiet little Louth bay, with its white-sanded beach that provided a taste of things to come.

From Louth we skirted Boston Bay before pulling into Port Lincoln. We arrived just in time for the annual “Tunarama” festival, which celebrates the town's history as a tuna-fishing port (though I suspect they don't actually bring in much tuna there any more, not least because we failed to see tuna on sale anywhere at the festival!). The festival kicked off with an impressive hour-long parade, with every local organisation and society seemingly being represented. The local Celtic Society wheezed out a rousing bagpipe rendition of “Waltzing Matilda” as they marched past, which was, shall we say, a novel experience.

Perhaps the highlight of Tunarama was the boat-build challenge, in which teams of two people built a boat out of plywood in two hours before throwing their trust (and themselves) into their craft for a race around the harbour.

On the starter's gun the teams carried their “boats” to the water.

Needless to say the result was carnage. Several vessels sank at the starting line. Two craft were sufficiently buoyant to make a good fist of the course. The spirited battle ended with our favourite (the boat nearest the camera in the previous photo) just pipping the other to the post.
The other big event was the tuna-toss, where competitors sling a (plastic) tuna as far as possible. Randomly, Robson Greene of “Soldier Soldier” fame put in an appearance, tossing off a respectable 6.5 metres.

After the excitement of Tunarama, we retired to the scenic serenity of nearby Lincoln National Park for a couple of days. We camped in a fantastic spot above Spalding cove on the Donington Peninsula.

We took a hiking and cycling tour of the peninsula, and to Stamford Hill, exploring one expansive white-sand cove after another.

Moving out of Little Lincolnshire, our next port-of-call was Coffin Bay National Park, where we camped with heath goannas (the lizard in the pic).

On a hike around the bay we encountered a great many emus, all of whom were too quick for our old camera to catch, though their footprints were not. At six-foot plus, the emus leave a tread reminiscent of Jurassic Park's residents. On the right is that of a chick, its mother is in the middle and my size-5 is on the left.

For the last couple of days, we had noticed that it was mighty hot and sticky. When we got back to the main road and into radio-range, we found out that South Australia was in the grip of the hottest week for 100 years – no wonder we were feeling a bit toasty! On the hottest day, the state capital Adelaide was at 46 Celsius, dipping to just 33 at night. Phew, what a scorcher! Somehow on those hot hot days we would come across a beachy cove with a cool breeze, else we'd visit a local air-conditioned library. So that's how we got by.

Near Streaky Bay, we came across Murphy's Haystacks – colourful weather-sculpted granite outcrops known as inselbergs. We couldn't bear to hang around for long though – despite it being 8.30am, the temperature was well into the 30s, with only a hellish hot breeze to take the edge off.

After checking out a sea-lion colony near Murphy's Haystacks, all that remained for us to do in South Australia was to make the epic journey across the Nullarbor plain to Western Australia. On the only road through the Nullarbor - the Eyre Highway – it's 1200km from Ceduna (the last town in SA) to Norseman (the first town in WA), as this sign at the border-town of Eucla points out. The several “towns” marked on the map along the road, are actually just roadhouses, which are glorified (and very pricey) service stations.

“Nullarbor” comes from the Latin for “no trees”, which turned out to be a fair description of only a surprising short stretch of the journey. The road actually skirts only the southern edge of the true Nullarbor, which, being near the sea, receives sufficient rain for trees to grow in most places. The other surprise was that the plain was blissfully cool, providing welcome relief from the blistering hetawave.

Where the Nullarbor meets the sea, you can get a hint of the geology of the plain. The Nullarbor is an ancient limestone seabed, 300 metres thick in places. 20 million years ago shells and other marine organisms settled on the seabed. Some 3 million years ago, the bed was gently raised to form a huge plateau, 700kn long and 300km wide. Beneath the surface are Australia's most extensive cave systems, all of which have now been closed to the public due to the high mortality rate among explorers.

The Nullarbor also can also claim Australia's longest stretch of dead straight road (147km), which Andy found he could quite happily traverse hands-free!

After a couple of days solid driving, we were thoroughly bored with all the songs on our iPod and and slightly sickened from watching prodigious quantities of road-kill zoom past, but otherwise we made it across with body and soul intact. The next instalment will follow our journey along the south coast of WA.

On the road again

Edna (our new camping wagon) required some last-minute attention before we could hit the road. The mechanic to whom we took her spotted a cracked inlet manifold and dodgy thermostat, which were duly replaced. Then we bade our fond farewells to Melbourne and the Bowers clan and jumped on the Princes Freeway heading southwest. The road met the coast at Torquay, where it became The Great Ocean Road. At the outset, the scenery was rugged yet serene.

Our first night in the new accommodation was spent in the small seaside town of Apollo Bay. It's the first town along the coast that is sufficiently far from Melbourne so as to be spared the commercialisation that comes with weekend mass-tourism. Indeed, an evening stroll revealed the beach to be nearly deserted.

As we continued along the Great Ocean Road, the serene seascape gave way to furious waves savagely pounding at a scarred shore. At around Princetown, we came upon The Apostles – the much-photographed megaliths that stand stubbornly in the surf, receiving a relentless beating for their troubles. As the name suggests, there were once twelve Apostles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their unending punishment, there now stand only six.

But don't weep for the loss of the Apostles. As is the nature of such things, new ones are being born all the time. For instance, this formation known as “London Bridge” was until recently joined to the land by a second arch. That arch fell in 1990, leaving two alarmed tourists to be rescued by helicopter from the newly formed island.

Not all of the sea's erosive handywork is obvious from the shore. Around 100 metres inland from London Bridge is this huge blowhole. It was formed by a roof-collapse in a section of a tunnel that has been carved out by the waves. We were told the tunnel stretches 200 metres inland from the sea, with this being the only open section.

Along the way we took a brief sojourn in Warrnambool to repair a heater pipe elbow that was leaking coolant.

Further west, our passage through Portland coincided with a stock-car and sprint-car race meeting. The racing happens on a well-watered speedway track, so that we (and Edna) received a decent caking of mud as the cars sped around the arena. The racing was surprisingly competitive and professional, considering we out in the sticks.

The next day we took a drive out to Cape Bridgewater. Among the standard jumble of ruggedly beautiful coves and headlands that we had by now come to expect, was a rock formation that the guidebook described as a “petrified forest”. Puzzlingly though, the formation consisted of clusters rough, hollow, vertical tubes, which little resembled trees. In fact, these rather unprepossessing structures turned out to be a bizarre phenomenon known as “solution pipes”. An info panel informed us that a pipe is formed when an acidic solution puddles at the base of a plant growing in limestone sand. The acid then seeps downwards, dissolving minerals as it goes. This mineral solution then cements the sand to form a hard trunk-shaped pipe under the ground, which becomes exposed when the surrounding sand is eroded away.

As we continued along the Prince's Highway, we stopped to ponder the improbable blueness of aptly named Blue Lake, located in a volcanic crater in the town of Mount Gambier.

At Canunda National Park, we encountered our first taste of Australia's truly wild coastline. Though lacking conventional attractiveness, we came to appreciate that the scrubby, arid shore, with its giant (almost impenetrable) sand dunes and pungent salt lakes has a magic all of its own.

Passing through Kingston Southeast, we just had to stop for a photo with Larry the Lobster.

After blasting north past Adelaide (in case you hadn't noticed, we're not really "doing" the cities on this trip), we found ourselves in the Southern Flinders Ranges. Away from the coast, the weather is pretty bloody hot, to be frank - well into the 30s celsius. So we took a short walk through narrow Alligator Gorge, before heading back to the coolth of the coast.

At Port Augusta, we took a pleasant stroll through the recently opened Arid Lands Botanical Garden. To be honest, to our untrained eyes the garden resembled much of the surrounding countryside. Funded by major polluters and land-users in the area (like mining companies), the garden has a strong conservation mission. The collection is attempting to preserve the exquisitely adapted scrubland plants from all over Australia that introduced species and development are rapidly wiping out.

At Port Augusta our route turned south into the Eyre Peninsula. We stayed a blustery night at the appealing seaside town of Arno Bay.

In the morning we battled high winds to take a stroll on the boadwalk through the nearby Mangrove forest. Mangroves grow along the brackish water where streams meet the sea. They are able to tolerate daily tidal immersion by projecting pneumatophores (the twig-like structures in the photo) up from the roots to "breathe" above the water's surface. They cope with the high salinity of their situation by exuding salt from special glands in their leaves (we couldn't resist a lick!). Often considered as wasteground good only to be cleared for industrial plants or shrimp farms, mangrove forests actually perform important ecological functions such as sheltering juvenile fish and stablising coastal land. Thus, widespread destruction of mangroves (particularly in Southeast Asia) has contributed to collapsing fish stocks and coastal erosion. Some scientists even suggest that the destruction wrought by the 2004 tsunami would have been significantly less had mangrove forests not been cleared from vast stretches of the affected Asian shorelines.

Of course, a week in the wilds of Australia would not be complete without spotting some wee beasties. As well as emus, wallabies and kangaroos, we spotted a number of these bobtail lizards in Coorong National Park, south of Adelaide.

We also spotted some cuddly-looking koalas along the Great Ocean Road, though they apparently didn't want to come down for a hug (I apologise for the crappy nature photograpy, we only have 2x digital zoom!).

Our next leg will take us past many a familiar-sounding town (Donington, Sleaford Bay, Louth Bay, Boston...) to Port Lincoln.