Hey everybody, welcome back to our blog (the first one written by Jamie)!
Our last few weeks have once again been packed full of adventures and we have had an amazing time exploring the coastal areas between Cervantes and Shark Bay.
With the current heat wave (a week of above 38) bearing down on us, we decided to head to a more coastal camp than our previous spot in the bush. We drove through the beautiful town of Jurien Bay and tried our luck with some fishing from the jetty, and were extremely lucky and managed to catch lots of fish…… all of which were poisonous puffer fish haha.
We kept driving north along the coast and managed to find a beautiful camp spot on a little point called ‘freshwater bay’. It is a tiny little Bay with a nice sandy headland and a few small fishing huts, which looked to be abandoned. We found ourselves a nice spot right on the edge of the small sand dunes overlooking the ocean, next to a few other campers. It wasn’t time to sit back and relax just yet though, as we have recently started up an exercise regime, so we got stuck into the gruelling death-like exercises. No sooner had we finished, than we started hearing a lot of thunder heading our way. The thunder turned into a huge electrical storm, lightning was streaking the dark sky for hours and heavy rain began to fall. It was really exciting and almost a tad scary while the storm was directly above. True to his nature, Pumba slept through the entire storm.
The next morning we packed up camp after going for a quick swim to cool off, and drove into Geraldton, which is the last main town for about 1000kms. Our fridge/freezer had decided to crap itself so we went into Super Cheap Auto in Geraldton, expecting to have to send it away for months under warranty. Instead we were pleasantly surprised when the service guys told us that they were going to give us a brand new fridge as an exchange. Woohoo! We didn’t have to drink warm beer!
We stocked up on food, water and beer (all of the necessities) and went off to a nice beach called Coronation Beach. We stayed here for the next 4 nights as it was a welcome change to have a cool(ish) sea breeze during the days of 40 degrees. We spent the 4 days parked up on the beach, making jewelry, surfing, kayak fishing and taking frequent swims to cool off. Pumba managed to dig himself a beauty of a den in the sand and peered creepily out at us every time we moved around camp.
Our next stop was supposed to be the beautiful Kalbarri National Park, which has massive gorges and spectacular cliffs. But as we found out, after detouring off the main round for 30mins each way, the entire National park was closed to public for ‘feral animal control’. What a load of crap. Why would they close the entire Park off during peak season? After leaving Kalbarri with crushed souls, full of disappointment, we tried to stop and make lunch at a roadside stop, however the flies had other ideas. As soon as we hopped out of the car, at least 100 flies each swarmed all over us. We can honestly say that after our months of travelling through the centre of the country, this had by far been the worst for flies. So we jumped back in the car, which now had about 100 flies inside it and proceeded to ingest our cold can of baked beans and a pack of corn chips with salsa (the best we could muster together in such a panic situation)
It was safe to say that neither of us were in the greatest mood (Pumba included, whose dozing had been interrupted by the fly storm) and we set off to see if we could make it to Denham in World Heritage Shark Bay (about another 200kms). During the next part of driving we watched some amazing cloud formations roll towards us and turn into about 10minutes of heavy tropical rain. We stopped at a beach named Shell Beach, and let me tell you the name was really fitting. The entire beach was small beautiful shells, as far as you could see and it was the first part of ocean we had seen in Shark Bay. Things were beginning to look up, or so we thought… we walked back up to the car to notice that we had a flat tyre (awesome). We changed the tyre over and drove the rest of the way into Denham (the most western town in Australia). It is a really picturesque coastal town with turquoise water and Dirk Hartog Island in the distance.
We booked into the Caravan Park, as there was no free option for camping around the area. They had a deal of pay 3, stay 4, so we jumped on that and sprinted straight to the showers. From Denham we had a pretty busy schedule lined up over our 4 days.
The next morning we dropped the punctured tyre off to be repaired and went off to see ‘Ocean Park’, which offered a guided tour of their aquariums, run by a Marine Biologist. We learnt a lot about the local area, the local fish, shark, ray and sea snake species. We learnt that there had never been a shark attack in Shark Bay, even though there are thousands of sharks swimming around the bays each day, some Tiger Sharks up to 3.5m long. We also learned about dreaded stonefish. If you are unfortunate enough to step on these fish posing as stones you will be in excruciating agony! Once back at camp, we went for a quick fish straight out the front of camp and caught a few small fish, then all of a sudden the rod started squealing as something big took the drag for a run. We managed to reel in dinner for the next couple of days, a nice sized Shovelhead Ray that looks like a mix between a stingray and a shark. After this we went for a quick snorkel in the small lagoon, which we were warned about the deadly Stonefish that inhabited parts of it. We counted ourselves lucky not see/step on any. That night we had a beautiful meal of freshly caught Stingray and salad.
The following day we woke up early and headed into Monkey Mia, which is a wild dolphin sanctuary, where dolphins swim straight up to the sand and take fish from your hand. We were lucky enough to be one of the few selected to feed the dolphins out of a group of approx 100 people. One of the wild dolphins had an 8 week old calf that we got to view from up close!
We went home and dropped Pumba back at camp, so we could board our sailing cruise on the Shotover Boat. The aim of the cruise was to spot some of the local Shark Bay Dugongs. We had great weather and before we even left the docks we had turtles swimming around the boat. We set sail with Coronas in hand and started our searching for sea creatures. It wasn’t long before we spotted about a dozen Dugongs and a few dolphins. We were lucky to be on board with a cool bunch of people, so it was a really enjoyable cruise. Once again we had a nice meal of Stingray for dinner.
On our last day in Denham, we went into the Francois Peron National Park, which has striking red sand and crystal clean blue waters. The tracks through the park were all 4x4 only, so we aired down the tyres and headed off on our way. We called into the Big Lagoon and fished/snorkelled at Gregories. This time we were lucky enough to catch quite a few fish, (spangled emperor, whiting, garfish) and even managed to see our first wild shark chasing one of our fish on the line. We packaged our fish and put it in the fridge and continued to the tip of the peninsula (Cape Peron). Not far from the tip we saw a huge amount of black smoke. We knew it must be something serious due to it being the middle of the day and total fire ban season. We went to investigate and saw a few cars all parked up, one of which was an old Jackaroo completely engulfed in flames. We made a quick call with the satellite phone, to the local ranger to organise a fire truck. Everything was safe and nobody was injured, luckily. We weren’t much more help to anybody there, so we continued on our way to the tip. What an amazing view! The beautiful colours of the red sand meeting to turquoise water are really a sight to behold. We had a glance at the time and realized that we were running late for part 2 of our sailing cruise the free sunset cruise). We sped off down the track, going much faster than we should have been and managed to make it to the boat 10 minutes after boarding, but before they had set sail. We even managed to spot our first and much anticipated Thorny Devil lizard. He even let us pick him up. It is such a fascinating lizard. The sunset cruise ended up being more of a social event, with the crew from the day before than actually watching the sunset (although that was nice too).
We hit the road once again, heading for a Station called Carrarang Station (the closest dog friendly camping to the western most point of mainland Australia). It was only about 200kms from Denham, but it wasn’t a fun drive due to the 80kms of heavy corrugations. But once we got there we fell in love with the place. The station covers one of the peninsulas of Shark Bay and we have the best campsite, located on a point with 3 private beaches, 2 points and a section of small cliffs and reef for fishing and snorkelling. The wildlife here is absolutely next level! During the day we have wild goats with kids running around, small jimby lizards, a resident Osprey eagle and a larrikin of a horse called Fury. The water is teeming with life as well. There are colourful and delicious fish, we have snorkelled with reef sharks and fed them fish heads, and we’ve snorkelled through schools of stingrays and eagle rays, over reefs and ledges with all the fresh, local oysters you could eat.
We have been here 4 days now and have spent 3 of the days just enjoying our location. We almost didn’t want to leave to see Steep Point (the most western point of mainland Australia) but decided it was worth seeing.
Our trip to Steep Point started early as we had been told it would take 7 hours return to drive the 100kms to the point. They weren’t wrong; the 4x4 track had some of the worst corrugations I have ever seen that stretched distances of up to 40kms per section of corrugations. The tyres were down to 18psi and at times we had to sit on 15kms/hr so we didn’t rattle the car to pieces. As far as the track goes, it wasn’t very tricky 4x4 wise, but the corrugations really made the Edel National Park a remote place. We made it to Steep Point and took a few photos at the sign and had a look at the Zuytdorp Cliffs. It was a really rugged place and the water is a really dark blue, due to how deep the water is. This is what makes it some of the worlds best land based game fishing. So we tried our luck with fishing off the cliffs, we barely had our rod in the water for more than 20 minutes when a bloke fishing next to us hooked onto a 1.2m long Spanish mackerel. He pulled the 10kg fish up the cliffs, walked over to us and said, “you guys may as well have this one”. After a bit of a discussion we found out he was being dead serious and that they were staying here for 2 weeks and bound to catch more fish than they could keep. To say we were stoked was an under exaggeration and we happily started filleting up this giant A class eating fish (we even started cutting into it and eating some Sashimi style). What a good bloke!!
With absolutely no need to fish, due to having about 8kg of fillets now stuffed into our fridge we went off and went to a nice turquoise bay and snorkelled around the reef. Saw a huge amount of different fish species, a few brightly coloured giant clams and more oysters. We packed up and on the way back to the car found a couple of cowrie shells on the beach, for Camille to use for her jewellery. We started our 3hour trip home and couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces. We gave a couple of large fillets to the Station owner, had a bit of a chat and properly met the 17 hand horse called Fury. He was an ex-racing horse and full of character. He gobbled down a carrot, tried to snatch a bag of chips out of the back of the ute, barged his way past and popped his head into the inside of the car searching for more food and ended up settling with licking the salt off the paintwork. Hahaha what a legend!
Dinner that night was a delicious Asian style honey soy mackerel with a Vietnamese cabbage salad. Followed by more delicious mackerel meal creations for the next breakfast/lunch and dinner.
We can honestly say that Shark Bay would be the highlight so far of our 7 months on the road. You really need get up here and see it for yourself!
