I don’t have too many photos for this section of our travels either as my mind has been totally engrossed in the search for, watching of and surfing in the wild WA surf. Of the few pictures I have taken, I’ve somehow managed to lose a few, most notable of which were the photos of the enormous surf at Margaret River. So, see Jenny’s blog for the pictorial version.
From Carnarvan, we travelled south to Kalbarri, where we stayed for three nights. The road in from the North West Highway passes through the Kalbarri National Park and was lined with the most magnificent wildflowers we’d seen so far. Kalbarri itself we both liked very much. It was a sleepy little beach side town that reminded us of a number of our favourite spots “over east”. It was the first WA beach town we thought we could actually live in quite happily.
The most popular and best surf spot at Kalbarri is Jakes Point, which is the headland at the southern end of the Kalbarri beach. I say beach, but as with most of the north western “beaches” there’s not much sand. Most of the beaches up this way are bays cut into rugged cliffs with reefs, coral and rock, right to the shoreline with very little sand covering. Surfing involves mostly point breaks, with waves mostly what I would call largish, breaking into fairly shallow water (sometimes only 2 – 3ft deep) over sharp reef. And they all break left, which is from south to north around a headland at the southern end of a bay. Surfing over here is a much riskier business than back home, but as with any investment involving greater risk, the return on investment is far greater. The surfing here has been magnificent. The one thing that really strikes home here is the absolute raw power that the Indian Ocean serves up. It’s not just evident in the wild coastline, it can be felt in every single wave surfed, even the “small” waves. The consequences of a misjudgement out in the water with these greater risks are of course much harsher than back home. I got away with only my feet being sliced up by the coral and consider myself very lucky. I met a couple of guys at Kalbarri who’d suffered much worse. One of them was still recovering from a wipeout that resulted in 13 stitches in his head and the other had similar injuries to me along with a board that had been smashed to pieces.
Three days at Kalbarri didn’t feel like enough, but with an arrival date in Perth fixed in place we had to move on. From Kalbarri we drove down through Geraldtown, Dongara and Port Denison. From Port Denison, we headed inland along the Midlands Highway where the wildflowers were meant to be spectacular. Sadly, they weren’t really. There were a few along the sides of the roads but for the most part this was sheep and wheat country. We saw much better on the way into Kalbarri. We overnighted at a place called Carnamah and then it was on to an historical settlement called New Norcia. This is a town established by Catholic Missionaries in the 1800s and still has a Monastery and Abbey in place today. It was the usual tourist trap with museums and museum shops. I’m sure the history here was fascinating, but the attraction for me here was more the fabulous lunch served up at the hotel owned by the Monks and the even more fabulous ale brewed by those Monks. This beer was as good as the Vale Ale and Vale Dry beer we’d sampled and bought way back in McLaren Vale, so of course I bought a case of the Abbey Ale here to. Hopefully, I’ll be restrained enough to have some of that case left by the time we get home to Canberra. It would be a shame not to share it with someone.
And then we hit Perth. We loved Perth and would seriously consider moving there if an opportunity to do so came up. It has the climate and very layback feel of Brisbane with the cosmopolitan feel of Melbourne. As well as getting the car and the van expensively serviced in Perth, there was plenty to see and do. We stayed with a friend and former supplier of Jenny’s shop, Carol, who looked after us so well and made sure we really enjoyed our stay. We got to learn much about the history of Carol’s suburb (Bassendean), including the fact that it was where Rolf Harris grew up (we saw his house). The highlight had to be the taxidermists museum where we were able to view all manner of stuffed animals and talk to the taxidermist who was very passionate about his artform. We also met some of Carol’s wonderful neighbours. We’d heard from people all the way down the west coast that when we reached the south west coast below Perth, if we were there during school holidays we would not get a spot in any of the caravan parks, so popular would they be. On telling Carol’s neighbour this, he immediately offered us his on-site van at Dunsborough, just north of Yallingup, to use for as long as we wanted and at no cost. We were blown away. We have met so many wonderful people on this trip and the generosity of spirit we’ve encountered everywhere has been one of the greatest features of this trip. I hope that we’ve managed to reciprocate that to others too in some way.
Anyway, after our few days in Perth we took Steve up on his kind offer, left our van at Carol’s and headed south.