Lancelin - Gnaraloo Bay

This post is dedicated to Claire, Jen and Priscilla - expert trackers of Grey Nomads

1. Sand dunes, Lancelin - north of Perth

2. On the dunes in Lancelin with Claire and Jen

3. Beach drive, Wedge Island

4. Lancelin - looking for the continuation of our track which was only found when another car popped out of the bush in front of us to show us the way.

5. Indian Ocean Drive - a new road currently being created. We didn't realise we weren't supposed to be driving on it until we popped out the other end!

6. Sunset over the Pinnacles

7. Mouth of the Hill River - between Cervantes and Jurien Bay

8. Mouth of the Hill River

9. Jurien Bay

10. Linda and Claire - sandboarding at Sandy Point

11. Brendan showing off by standing up

12. But it ended by him chasing his board down the dune!

13. Our campsite at Sandy Point

14. Sunset at Sandy Point

15. Entrance to the Stockyard Gully Caves

16. Inside the Stockyard Gully Caves

17. Linda at Nature's Window - Kalbarri National Park

18. The Loop Walk, Kalbarri National Park

19. Continuation of the Z Bend walk, Kalbarri National Park

20. Extreme Stromatolite viewing - Hamelin Pool. Usually the weather here is lovely and calm - but not this day! (photo from Jen and Claire)

21. Bilbys! (Francois Peron National Park). Unfortunately this is as close as we got to actually seeing one.

22. Sunrise over the bay at Monkey Mia

23. Monkey Mia Dolphins

24. Dolphins

25. Dolphin feeding at Monkey Mia

26. Francois Peron National Park

27. Following Jen and Claire in Francois Peron

28. Us at the red cliffs in Bottle Bay, Francois Peron National Park (photo from Jen and Claire)

29. Us at Skipjack Point, Francois Peron National Park

30. Skipjack Point

31. Tracks in Francois Peron National Park

32. Guichenaut Point, Francois Peron National Park

33. Elephant sized corrugations on the road to Steep Point (though a little hard to see, take our word for it, they were huge!)

34. False Entrance (photo from Claire and Jen)

35. False Entrance Blowholes - Brendan, Claire and Jen

36. Interesting warning signs on the road to Steep Point

37. We thought we'd better let the tyres down just in case...

38. Steep Point - the Western most point of Australia - that makes all four points of the compass complete now!

39. Us at the Western most point

40. Sunset over Shelter Bay, Steep Point

41. Sunset at Shelter Bay

42. Storms brewing over Shelter Bay

43. But they passed and turned into this! Brendan fishing at Shelter Bay later in the morning. We caught six Dart here.

44. Views over Shelter Bay and Steep Point area

45. Uendoo Creek Track, Carnarvon. We didn't know it was going to be muddy and ended up driving further sideways then in a straight line!

46. And then had to spend all day cleaning the mud off the car. The one car wash in town had a sign that read "Bugger Off if you're muddy!" Very helpful when there is nowhere else to go! :)

47. Quobba Blowholes

48. Surfing at Red Bluff

49. Red Bluff, from our campsite

50. Red Bluff campsite - "I wonder what's inside those little huts???"

51. The long drops!

52. Gnaraloo Bay - fantastic snorkelling at the southern end of the Ningaloo Reef

Halfway to Broome (Lancelin – Gnaraloo Bay)

May 2010

We left Perth with a sigh of relief – thankful to get out of the chaos of town and in theory stop spending money again (don’t know if that theory has actually worked out…) We made plans with Claire and Jen (the two English girls who we had met up with again at Coogee Beach) to meet once more at Lancelin in order to take the four wheel drive tracks together through the park to Cervantes and the Pinnacles. We left Perth a day earlier than the girls, so spent our time driving slowly northwards, checking out all the outer lying suburbs of the Perth area and then finding ourselves once more out of the city.

After meeting the girls again, we spent a long (but fun) day exploring the Lancelin tracks – a high sand dune area popular with four wheel drive, dirt and quad bike enthusiasts. As usual we couldn’t find any good maps for the area and the one that the information centre did give us was fairly useless, so we just followed our noses and stopped and asked people for directions along the way. (At the far end of the track, we did find a Department of Conservation Office with a very good map and a girl who was very surprised that we had actually managed to find our way without one – there are that many different tracks veering off in different directions all over the place, just to keep things interesting). Anyway, Lancelin was beautiful – we made it to Wedge Island and then drove along the beach to where the track again turned inland. However, just before the track headed inland we came to a standstill where the upper path along the beach had been cut out with the high tide, leaving only a narrow strip with a large cut out underneath and the lower path still had tide sweeping over it and felt quite soft underfoot (we are still very cautious about beaches after our Coffin Bay experience). We decided that it wasn’t worth the risk to drive over that section and were contemplating turning all the way back to Lancelin and taking the highway. We decided to have one last look in the dunes behind us to see if we could find a different path around. This was without much luck and after enjoying the view, we had resigned ourselves to a long backtrack. But! Saving us! Another 4WD chose just that moment to come out of a hidden track behind a dune from the other direction showing us the way through. (The presence of ten-thousand different tracks does have it uses!)

The Lancelin tracks finished up at the Pinnacles (an area famous for its unusual limestone pillars) where we stopped to explore and watch the sunset before setting up camp for the night.

The next night we found ourselves at a beautiful beach front camp at Sandy Point, just north of Jurien Bay. We got lucky here when a couple of tour buses pulled up to spend half an hour sandboarding in the dunes near the camp area. We decided to ask if they had any spare sandboards and were given two old ones to play with. Linda, Brendan and Claire had fun getting absolutely covered in sand while Jen (sensibly) decided to be chief photographer. (Talking to the tour guide with the group, we found that they were taking 10 days to get to Broome – where we still had five and a half weeks stretching ahead of us – making us feel very superior! )

From Sandy Point we left Claire and Jen for a few days and decided to take a short inland detour to the Stockyard Gully Caves. These were interesting caves which we could explore independently with a torch. The main tunnel was about 300m in length with smaller tunnels veering off from it. When wet, the whole cave system fills with water, but when dry you can walk through it, reminding us a bit of the Undarra lava tube tunnels in North QLD.

Our coastal route then took us on up through the twin towns of Port Denison and Dongara and up to Geraldton, (the last town with more than 15 000 people in it until we reach Alice Springs!) and then further along to Horrocks, Gregory and Kalbarri. Kalbarri is the centre for Kalbarri National Park, an area of beautiful coastal and river gorges. We spent two days here, one exploring the coastal areas and another looking at the river gorges. They reminded us again of the gorges of central Australia, around Kings Canyon, Palm Valley and the West MacDonnells – with the red, white and blue colours coming alive! Coming out of the National Park, we camped at a free roadside rest stop, Galena Bridge, meeting up with Claire and Jen again. This rest stop was like arriving in the middle of a gypsy camp with trailers set up all around! There must have been at least fifty different groups of people here – caravans, camper trailers, 4 Wheel Drives, tents, vans, buses etc etc. A trailer park in the middle of the Australian bush!

Shark Bay, Monkey Mia and Francois Peron National Park were the next destination, so again with Claire and Jen we pushed on. First stop in Shark Bay was Hamelin Pool which people visit for its examples of Stromatolites (living rock or as the guide book describes “colonies of microbes organisms millions of years old”). On a nice day, I’m sure this area looks like the pictures in the books, but on the day we hit it, the wind was blowing a gale and heavy showers were passing over, on and off. This turned our Stromotolite viewing experience into an extreme sport, where we had to try hard not to get washed out to sea as we peered off the little jetty into the water! We decided to leave the Stromotolites to themselves and push on up to Denham and Monkey Mia.

The Monkey Mia campsite was like pulling up in the middle of a carpark for backpackers. We were told that there was lots of room in the unpowered section when we called to check, so we didn’t need to hurry. When the four of us pulled up, we took about the last two carparks in amongst lots of camper vans and station wagons that looked like they had seen their best days at least twenty years ago! The other sign that we were in the middle of backpacker territory was the state of the bathrooms – but these are the things we have to put up with for location. The campground was located right on the Monkey Mia Beach where Bottlenose Dolphins arrive each morning for their daily feeding sessions. The dolphins are fed the first three times they arrive each morning (strictly monitored by Department of Conservation workers) – and the time frame for this is strictly determined by the dolphins and their stomachs. We were up and on the beach at sunrise to make sure we didn’t miss them! It was definitely a “tourist” experience, but one that was nonetheless worthwhile in order to see the dolphins up close and personal.

Together with Claire and Jen, we left backpacker city and headed into the 4WD territory of Francois Peron National Park. The National Park definitely did not disappoint, especially near the tip of the peninsula at Skipjack Point and Cape Peron where the blue of the ocean against the red of the sand dunes and cliffs was spectacular. We stood at the viewing platform at Skipjack Point in the afternoon and managed to spot large schools of fish, a couple of dolphins, turtles and an Eagle Ray – all in their totally natural environment and definitely surpassing the tourist experience of Monkey Mia. We spent a night camped at Gregories campground and the following morning explored Herald Bight and Guichenault Point before heading back to Denham.

A couple of days earlier we had made ourselves a booking to head out along the Useless Loop Road and track to Steep Point – the Western most point of Australia. This track goes down in our top three most corrugated roads in Australia (up to this point) – the other two being the Mereenie Loop near Kings Canyon and the Battlecamp Road at Cape York. After apologising profusely to the bushcamper for rattling her to bits and making her take us to all these places located on bad roads – we checked out False Entrance beach and blowholes and arrived at Shelter Bay and Steep Point. Standing at Steep Point completed the four points on a compass for us of North, South, East and now West. The campground at Shelter Bay was in a beautiful spot right on the beach front and we decided the place was among our favourites in Australia (on a good day that it – the morning brought with it some stormy weather and didn’t look so promising but it did brighten up during the day). We went fishing the next morning off the beach in front of the campsite and managed to catch six Dart to keep us going for lunch and breakfast.

Unfortunately, while at Steep Point, Claire and Jen received some bad news from England and had to leave hurriedly, returning to Perth and their families in England. This meant some rushed farewells and back to our own company again. We are thinking of you guys and hope things are going ok for you at home.

We took the Useless Loop track back by ourselves in the late afternoon, after being warned of some bad weather approaching and the road being likely to close if it rained too much overnight – and set up camp for the night on top of the White Bluff lookout on the road to Carnarvon. The next morning we continued on into Carnarvon, taking a small detour out to Bush Bay, New Beach and Uendoo Creek on the way – unaware of how much it had rained in this area the night before! The road (which was not even meant to be a track) was so muddy that we spent more time sliding sideways than driving in a straight line and as it gradually became worse and worse we decided to turn around and go back rather than push on any further. Covered in mud, we tried to find a car wash in Carnarvon to clean ourselves off – but the only one in town displayed a sign reading “Bugger Off if you’re muddy!” Very helpful – a car wash which you can use only if the car is already clean!

From Carnarvon, we found a couple of detour routes to take before moving any further north. The first took us out to Point Quobba and the blowholes which were (aside from Brendan’s experience of the Punakaiki (Pancake Rock) blowholes in NZ), possibly the best blowholes we have seen. They were shooting jets of water about 20m in the air and kept us (and a lot of others) entertained for quite some time. We kept following the road on up then to Red Bluff – to watch the pounding surf – and Three Mile Camp – to find the most expensive campground in the whole of Australia ($20 each per night for a bushcamp!) – so it was backtracking to Red Bluff again as we refuse to participate in that kind of extortion!  The next morning we went on to Gnaraloo Bay where we spent the best part of the day snorkeling on the southern end of Ningaloo Reef – right off the beach in the bay. It was beautiful!

After a couple of nights at Point Quobba, it was then back to Carnarvon for some cleaning and cupboard stocking up. We are now out in the Kennedy Ranges to the East of Carnarvon, enjoying some more hours of rest and relaxation (and a few short walks). Tomorrow it is back to Carnarvon for the third time in a week before leaving it behind and moving onto Ningaloo Reef and the Whale Shark experience.

Look after yourselves,

Love Linda and Brendan. xxoo.