Turning the corner - Augusta to Perth

1. Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, Augusta, Southern tip of the Margaret River area and where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean

2. Brendan by the Indian Ocean - our first glimpse of it at Cape Leeuwin

3. Lost in the Boranup Forest, Margaret River area - the track kept getting smaller and smaller!

4. Surfers Point, Prevelly, Margaret River area. Brendan spent two mornings surfing here.

5. Bad bushcamper angles on the track to Wilyabrup Sea Cliffs, Margaret River area

6. Vineyards in the Margaret River area - there are literally thousands of them!

7. Track to Cape Naturaliste - the northen end of the Margaret River area

8. Us on the Preston Beach drive

9. Following Ina and Nic's bushcamper along the Preston Beach drive

10. Lunch time - bushcamper style. Linda, Nic, Brendan and Ina, Preston Beach drive

11. Sun sets over kite surfers at Trigg Beach, Perth

12. Brendan be-friending the Rottenst Island Quokkas

13. A very friendly Quokka, one of thousands, Rottnest Island

14. Parker Point, Rottnest Island

15. Brendan, Little Salmon Bay, Rottnest Island

16. Little Salmon Bay, Rottnest Island

17. Brendan, cycling on Rottnest Island

18. Linda, cycling on Rottnest Island

19. Sunset from the Bathurst Lighthouse, Rottnest Island

20. Fish Hook Bay, Rottnest Island - the snorkelling here was absolutely beautiful!

21. Brendan swimming at Strickland Bay, Rottnest Island

22. Strickland Bay, Rottnest Island

23. Nancy Cove, Rottnest Island

24. Views of Perth City and the Swan River, from the War Memorial, Kings Park

Turning the Corner (Augusta – Perth)

May 2010

We finally turned the corner just outside Augusta at Cape Leeuwin, and started our journey north again – in search of the warmer weather! The last few nights down here we have been wrapped up in our thermals and people have been telling us that their digital thermometers are reading around about 0 -1 degree overnight. Far too cold for us these days!  The plus side is that the hordes of grey nomads have also started heading north quite quickly, so the crowds have thinned and we are enjoying large spaces to ourselves – or at least not having to share with thousands and their caravans and other paraphernalia!

We spent about four days exploring the Margaret River area and taking every side road and track possible just in case there was a beautiful spot at the end of that road and we were going to miss it – no chance of that happening! We even managed to get ourselves lost (or rather just not exactly sure where we were) in the middle of the Boranup Forest area. We had followed a track down to the beach to check out a surf spot and then decided to take a different track out again (it was called a road on the map!) The problem was that there were many tracks branching in lots of different directions (the story of Western Australia we have since found) and none of them ended up being on the map. The road (read track or forestry path) gradually got smaller and smaller until we thought we may need a trailer load of touch-up paint to fix up the paintwork on the car at the end! After driving for about half an hour and getting no-where we figured that we must have come further than half way, so we should just keep going. Eventually, we popped out on the main road – but we still don’t have much of an idea where we actually went to get there!

Apart from 4WD adventures, Brendan enjoyed a couple of mornings of good surf at Surfers Point, Prevelly where there was a 1.5 – 2m swell coming in, reduced from 4 – 6 metres the previous day (this means there was a 4m face on the wave just before it was breaking). The first good surf since Innes National Park last year.
We admired many of the vineyards around the Margaret River area too – there is a different one every few metres down the road – but decided (the wine connoisseurs that we are) to stick to our Yalumba casks for $15 each. Much better value really!

We then continued up the road to Cape Naturaliste at the opposite end of the Margaret River area and followed the coast around the point through Dunsborough, Busselton and Bunbury – where we ended up meeting our old Bushcamping mates – Ina and Nic – and decided to team up once again for the Preston Beach run, north from Myalup up to Cape Bouvard. This was a bit of an interesting drive. It was a beach on which the tide does not go out a long way, so most of the drive is done above the high tide mark on the dry, soft sand against the dunes. This made for a few interesting places – Linda doesn’t like this sort of driving very much – it definitely requires a two-handed grip on the glove box handle to say the least (and a few persistant squeals added in here and there from the passenger side)!  We did survive though….(Brendan says she should just have more faith in him).

Coming off the beach, we ended up in the outer areas of the Perth/Fremantle area. As always, we drive in and out every road we can find that looks of interest and spotted on the map a big long bridge over to an island. We thought it looked like a good place to visit and set off to find it. As we made the turn onto the bridge, we were stopped at a security checkpoint. The lady in uniform asked “Are you tourists?” (a dead giveaway in the bushcamper really) and informed us that we were about to enter a Naval Base and we needed to turn around where we were. Looks like we weren’t destined to drive over the cool bridge and check out the island on the other side. 

We decided to use the Coogee Beach camground near Fremantle as our base for exploring Perth (although we did spend one night free-camped in the carpark at Trigg Beach trying to escape the high fees charged by city camp grounds! We spent one night at a pub in inner Perth catching up with Craig and Leonie (ex neighbours of Brendan’s from NZ who have spent the last year living in Perth) and getting some of the low down on what Perth is actually like for living. Craig and Leonie were about to embark on a months trip up to Broome and back, so we may see them on the road somewhere in between. We had a good look around Perth city and Kings Park, as well as the Fremantle area (and the Fremantle markets) and decided that while Perth is quite a picturesque city, it actually does just still feel like a big city and we were glad to escape the rat race! 

The highlight of Perth was actually getting out of it and over to Rottnest Island for a night in the backpackers. We were lucky that it is quiet enough at this time of the year for the backpackers to be nearly empty and we had the ten-bed dorm room all to ourselves!  Rottnest was beautiful (as can be seen in the many photos – which are only a very small selection of the many, many more). There are no cars allowed on the island (apart from a few workers), and people must either walk, ride bikes, or use the island shuttle bus service. We chose the bike option and spent two days pedaling ourselves right around the perimeter and through the middle – again checking out every road possible. Our favourite places were snorkeling at Little Salmon Bay and Fish Hook Bay on the far western tip of the island. The water was crystal clear and there were thousands of fish to see as soon as our heads were dipped below the water. There was also lots of shallow reef and rocks to explore. We are really looking forward to the snorkeling at Ningaloo Reef if the quality of Rottnest is anything to go by. We also managed to make friends with some of Rottnest Island’s overabundant population of friendly Quokkas. Quokkas are almost extinct everywhere else (there are a few in the south west of WA) but on Rottnest Island they number around 8 000 – 10 000. See the photos. We ended up back at Coogee beach on the second night, nursing sore biking bums, but it was all worth it!

It was then onto cleaning and pack up day, in preparation for the trek north from Perth to Broome. We are allowing six weeks to get to Broome before turning East again. Bring on the warmer weather we say! 

Hope everyone is well. Take care.

Love Linda and Brendan. xxoo.