Rocks, Dry Lakes, Tin Horses & Whales

I left Esperance (and Phill and Liz who had a small gas problem) and travelled to Quagi Beach.  The beachside camp grounds are fantastic - they usually have composting drop toilets that don't smell at all and they allow fires, are a short walk to endless beaches and have spacious, private sites.  On the downside, there were ticks (aaahhh!) and baits (double aaahhh!) so Maggie was back wearing her cage on her head ... much to her disgust.

This area of Western Australia seems to have a fixation with the suffix 'up' when naming places.  There was Dalyup and Coomalbidgup and Munglinup and Jerdacuttup and Pingrup and Jerramungup and Gnowangerup and Kendenup and Porongurup and ... well you get the picture.  Evidently there are 158 place names with 'up' in WA due to 'up' meaning 'place' in Noongar language.

The silo art at Ravensthorpe was beautiful, reflecting the six stages of the banksia and featuring a honey possum and a new holland honeyeater.

Farmgate art on the way to Hopetoun

I know this is going to sound a bit strange but I was getting over beaches.  Also, I have had a desire to see Wave Rock since I was 11 years old, when we had to make the choice of WA vs QLD for our big family holiday.  I voted for WA just because I wanted to go to Wave Rock.  We went to Queensland.  So I was determined not to miss out this time and I left the coast to go to the rock!

There were various obstacles in my way ... HUGE farm machinery that trundled towards me, forcing Van Morrison off the road.

And the distraction of stunning salt lakes, stretching off into the horizon.  This is Lake King.

Then I decided to take a little detour to see the silo art at Newdegate, which unfortunately then made me take another detour along 60 kilometres of red dusty dirt roads.

Until I reached Wave Rock.  TICK!  It was just like I imagined, just with a lot more tourists.  But if I'm honest, it was a little disappointing since the Pildappa Rock near Minnipa in South Australia is just as good.  But Maggie and I walked around the rock, posed for photos, got patted by lots of tourists (Maggie, not me) and then headed off to camp at Kondinin.

Our delightful camp at Kondinin ... and green grass!

A very cute little town

But it was time to catch up with Phill and Liz in Albany so I headed south again.  This area is the wheat belt and there was only really two kinds of scenery ... rolling hills and plains of wheat stubble, ploughed fields and the small green shoots of the next wheat crop or stunted and dying teatree sitting in saltpans, full of fetid water, salt and dead wood.  It sounds quite depressing but was strangely beautiful.

Statues Lake, near Kondinin

Hard to make out but this was an arm coming out of the water ... a person swimming.

Wheat fields, ploughed and seeded

The silo art at Pingrup

Near a town called Kulin, I followed the Tin Horse Highway.  It was a hoot!  It was also a little bit dangerous since I kept stopping in the middle of the road to take photos of tin horses!  It's lucky there wasn't much traffic.  There was 15 kilometres of brightly painted tin horses, depicting everything from a horsy femme fatale to fox shooters.  But when I reached the turn off for the Kulin Bush Races track, the tin horses stopped and I could finally get on my way.

And so to Albany.  Our beautiful weather had started to disappear but there was so much to see and do here.  I guess everyone goes to the old whaling station and I did too, while Phill minded the illegal Maggie. And I saw whales.  OK, they were quite a distance away but they were showing off (or playing) as whales do.  Tick!

This was AMAZING!  Whale stomach juices forced through glass because of the huge pressure when the whale dived.  

Albany was fighting to stop 7 day trading - there were petitions everywhere and shopkeepers were mentioning it often.  We left on a Sunday and the place was dead ... hardly anything open.

Maggie and I did find the best coffee and almond croissant ever!

A laughing turtle-dove, very pretty but unfortunately an introduced bird ... introduced in Perth in 1898!

Black-shouldered kite

And we were back to the beaches, this time in Denmark.  Maggie was very happy because the entire beach was dog-friendly and we could have a lovely long walk there each morning.

Trying to save the surf clubrooms from washing into the sea.  The digger was often well out in the waves, scooping up sand to make this temporary wall.

There were some lovely walks around the Denmark area.  This was the view from the top of Monkey Rock

Elephant Rocks on a wild and windy day

And then there was Walpole.  By now, the weather had really turned on us and we were warned that the next weekend was going to have days of 50 to 70 mm of rain and gale-force winds.  Ah well, we are from Victoria ... we can cope!  So the rain and wind didn't put us off going on the WOW Eco boat tour.  Now this is a MUST!  It was fantastic!  Gary Muir, our captain/tour leader/entertainer/history buff/local legend talked for two hours and took us on an amazing river tour where we learned all about all things Walpole.  There was Tolstoy and Oscar Wilde, French lawyers and shipwrecked sailors, Arthur Conan-Doyle and Moo Cow Mitchell.  The stories wove into one another, but kept coming back to ... Walpole.  And we ate lemon-drizzle cake where the lemons were planted by his grandfather, squeezed by his father, picked by him and cooked by his niece and grandmother.  I can't explain just how amazing the whole experience was but the highlight for me was a tree, alone on an island (which his family had owned) that is thought to be one of the oldest trees ever.  It's being tested but they are thinking in the thousands.

The tree, an enormous paperbark.

So now we are heading west then north.  There's terrible weather coming but I've got a lot of books to read and Maggie needs a rest after all those beaches.