Coral Coast Part 2 English.

Like I wrote last that we past the 17.000 km mark, in the meantime we passed the 19.000 km mark and we haven’t reached Perth yet where we after a live performance of Nearly Neil (our Canadian friend) on the 18^th move on towards Sydney. There we have on the 7^th a live show with the real Neil Diamond. We know it is 3975 km from Perth to Sydney and we got 18 days to do it in.

Back to; our trip right now.

In Carnarvon we went With Des & Jeannette to the Apollo Space Centre who played a important part with the first man landing on the moon. At that time 250 people were working there in the centre but after the Apollo mission ended in 1975 all the Americans went home and they took almost everything back home. What was left behind they buried as the story goes. Left over are a couple of big disc and the stuff in the museum where we stayed almost the whole hot afternoon.

Along this part of the coast it is hard to swim because of the high waves and the cliffs and if they are not there you will find the mangrove forest blocking your way. This area is well known for all the fruits they grow here and send all over Australia.

Up to Hamelin, where we found a gem of a campsite, hiding amongst the dunes behind a part of the old shell quarry from “Shell Beach”. Here they used to cut big block out of the pressed shells and build houses with it in the old days.

Because it was a short trip today we had plenty of time to go to the real “Shell Beach “close to Denham. A very nice and quiet place to be, and an easy walk through the dunes to get to a beach which is covered with white shells in a layer of tens of meters thick and millions of years old. (The shells are only 1 to 2 cm big). You are allowed to swim there but the water is more salty then usually and if you can’t rinse of the salt set to your body. So we just walked, looked and took photos. The Indian ocean water here has a blue greenish color.

From there to one of the few spots in the world where you can actually see the start of new rock/stone and which is on the world heritage list, the stromatolites.

The tide was low now and compered to 4 years ago when the tide was high it had now les colors, but nevertheless it is a fantastic thing to be able to look at.

Back on our bush camping we discovered a large colony of wild Zebra Finches there. Which only came here apparently after a cyclone past over the area 4 years ago and scared away all the crows. So those cyclones are good for something anyway. The colony first lived in a tree with a big bush of mistletoe in it but now they have expanded to other place to nest like windowsills, roof beams and sunshades. It is estimated that the colony is about 200 but there are nest with chicks everywhere to join up as well.

Kalbarri, to get there you‘ll have to drive through the dessert for about 70 km but this is so nice because the dessert is starting to bloom right now at the end of the winter.

The place itself is a spot I would like to stay for a long time so nice and lay back it is. Els and I celebrated my birthday here in a pub with a lovely meal and some of that yellow drinking stuff.

The next day, up to a big bird park along the coast on our trip towards Geralton. There is only the coastal road to drive up there and we had headwind all the way up for about 120 km, but also fantastic views over the dunes and the Indian Ocean.

Geralton was just a stop over and after one night we moved on to Cervantes, this road runs partly along the coast as well and also through parts of the now blooming dessert with Blue, purple, lilac, rose, Yellow, white and vibrant orange flowers, sometimes low other time high in the trees. While you’re driving you can’t see it all.

Cervantes is the place to be if you want to visit the Pinnacles, and we did for four hours. When you walk there, I get the feeling you’re in the Dinosaur time, afterwards it is explainable because the Pinnacles where formed in the same period. Only they been covered with sand for thousands of years before the dunes started to wander about and if you look at our photos you can still see the wandering dunes in the neighborhood. On some photos you can see that on the front of the dune it is covering the plants up.

After two nights at Cervantes we moved on to Toodyay which is further of the coast.

We been here before but we missed the camping coming down the hill that is how secluded it is. This is a real gem. In the middle of the school holidays and it was a nice and quiet, lot of birds flying around even some of the endangered species.

It took me some time but in the end a 28 came to eat some food out of my hand.

From here to Hyden, the Wave rock, we camped two nights at the bottom of the rock. But there is much more to do and see in that area, like the Hypo Yawn rock, Mulka’s Cave and his story (I will write a separate page about it some day). And we did a couple of nice walks.

The wave is a outcrop of a big part of a granite mountain from where only a small part sticks above the earth. Through the years (many, many, many years) the rivers, and the sand and rocks shaped the off wind side into the shape of a wave of 15 meters high.

We moved on to different places and left this magical area, but that is for the next time.

Regards The Downunders.