Iain Plank

My initial plan before coming to Australia was to fly into Darwin travel down to Alice Springs / Uluru etc then fly to Cairns, travel down the east coast and finally fly out of Melbourne. Total travel time – 6 weeks. I ended up being in Darwin for 5 weeks, I just couldn’t get away from the place. I detected that a subtle change of plan may be required…. and then decided to simply throw away the old plans and to start again. What about the west coast ??

Go west young man…
I got a lift, heading west, with an English girl called Ally, a Swiss girl: Ramona and an other brit: Adam. The plan was to spend 3 to 4 weeks driving down to Perth.
We left around midday on the Monday and got to a small town called Kununurra at Tuesday lunchtime. There Ramona and I did a 2 hour scenic flight over Lake Argyle, the Argyle Diamond mine and the Bungle Bungles a strange collection of sandstone rock formations. We’d wanted to do a trip to the Bungles but the cost was prohibitive and also a lot of the tours had already finished for the wet.
In Kununurra, as we made enquiries about the flight I noticed an ad asking for volunteers to help a tour company dismantle their camp in the Bungle Bungles – 3 to 4 days in the Bungles with free food,
accommodation and a chance to see the infamous rocks close up. It was too good to be true. After much debate Adam and I took the last 2 places. We left the following morning.

The Bungle Bungles
There turned out to be 7 of us all together: Katy and Pauline, two English girls that were travelling together, Shelley another English girl, Steve an English guy and Nicole an upbeat Canadian girl with a penchance for saying “Good Job !” and “G-o-o-d M-o-r-n-i-n-g Good Morning !!”. Little did we realise that 5 of us (Adam, Katy, Pauline and Shelley and I) would be travelling together for the next 6 weeks !!
It was along journey to the Bungles with over 3 hours of 4WD but we had quite a laugh and the work was fine. As well as seeing the Bungles generally we got to go to Cathedral Gorge (names for good reason) where two German girls decided to sing “Hallelujah” – sounded amazing! We stayed in the Bungles for 3 days.

Broome & Bush
After Kununurra we went to Broome with its infamous Cable Beach -kilometer after kilometer of white sand and turquoise water. Time for a top up to the tan ! Whilst there, we also visited Eco Beach (“Echo beach, far away in time…” I know that it doesn’t match – I just couldn’t get the song out of my head) which is a set of amazing beaches about 130km south of Broome. Just Beach after beach of beautiful white sand and absolutely no-one around !! On the way there, we had our first experience of bush fires. The road passed through bush and we could see clouds of black smoke off to one side. On our way back the bush that we had seen that morning was a mass of charred trees and some fires were still raging as we drove passed. The colours, as the sun set, were amazing – the photos don’t do them justice as all.

Exmouth
Exmouth is a paltry 1200km (750 miles) south of Broome. The road in-between in amazing because it isn’t. Long straight sections of road with nothing to see except bush and scrubland. The distances in Australia are beginning to become clear. Everyone says that its big but until you start travelling around you never really appreciate just how big !!

Exmouth is famous for a couple of things: one was being destroyed by a Cyclone early last year and the other is for its diving. In season there are Whale Sharks and Hump Back Whales but the dozen.
Unfortunately the season wasn’t when we were there ! Katy and Shelley wanted to do their Open Water Diving Certificate and the rest of us wanted to chill (yes, it was still possible to be even more chilled than we were) and so we ended up staying a week. The diving on the Ningaloo reef was quite amazing. Turquoise bay, on the other side of the Cape, was not only beautiful but had some amazing snorkeling: Sharks, Turtles, Stingrays etc just 20m off shore !! At night, the beaches around the Cape became the nesting grounds for turtles. Amazing to see.
For a couple of days Exmouth became Hollywood !! The place where we were staying consisted of an Hotel, Backpacker place, Dive centre etc and had decided to have a TV ad done to inform Western Australia of its services. As Backpackers we were all asked to take part and to behave ‘normally’ in one of the shots. We weren’t too sure about it but the free beer helped to make the decision that little bit easier. The next day myself and Pauline were asked to be a ‘couple’ in another shot advertising one of their apartments. All we had to do was to sit on a sofa and chat ‘naturally’. I don’t know if we made it to the final cut but it was a good laugh.

Australian Advertising
Australian TV advertising is actually quite amazing. Some of it is quite brutal, like Drink Drive adverts: “If you Drink and Drive then you’re a bloody idiot”. They also sometimes have wrecks of cars by the side of the road with signs saying “Don’t drive if you’re tired” and markers to show where accidents have occurred: red for injuries, black for deaths.
At the same time, though, some of their adverts are classic. Many of them appear to be “Home made” and advertise individual shops. They say things like: “For all your sporting needs come to Sports World, High Street, Broome.” The fact that Broome is over 1000 miles away doesn’t seem to bother them.
The best adverts, though, are the Toyota ones. They seem to have popularised the word “bugger” with millions of everyday Australians. It’s so big now that other companies are making parodies – even McDonalds has an advert where the dog says “bugger” at the end. Toyota win the day, though, with their end of year sale called, unsurprisingly,: “Toyota’s Big Bugger of a Sale !!” – Inspired !

Coral Bay
Coral Bay is a bit further down the coast and also has some good snorkeling. There’s a natural lagoon, which acts as a shark nursery. When we were then there were over 30 small black tip sharks just 5m off shore in the knee deep water.
Here’s one for the divers and biologist amongst you. Did you know that Trigger Fish if stressed can give off quite powerful electric shocks ?? Neither did I – I do now though !! Whilst snorkeling we found a small (30cm) Trigger Fish that has become ensnared on a discarded fishing line and hook and decided to try to rescue it. I gently held it while Adam tried to remove the hook. I was just about to say “Be careful they have teeth” when Adam screamed in pain, too late – Oh well !! Whilst removing the hook the fish gave of several electric shocks – I was more surprised than in pain. Unfortunately for the fish though they didn’t have the desired effect. We managed to cut the hook and release the fish virtually unharmed.
So if you happen to be snorkeling in Coral Bay and meet an extremely pissed off Trigger Fish – thats the one.

Kalbarri
A good few hours down the coast and you come to the small town of Kalbarri. It’s a nice, relaxing place with Pelicans – not much more to say really – a good place to relax after the strains of travelling.

Pinnacles and Stromatolites
Even further down the coast is the small town of Cervantes which is just outside the Nambung National Park. The central point of the park is the Pinnacle Desert.
The Pinnacles are columns of limestone that emerge from the desert floor creating an almost surreal landscape – almost like gravestones in a cemetery of sand. They were formed on the ocean floor in the dim and distant past, then the sea level slowly lowered, the elements eroded the soft rock leaving the harder limestone and voila – a tourist attraction. They were pretty cool actually and we watched the sun go down behind this bizarre landscape.
Other bizarre ‘things’, also just outside Cervantes, are Stromatolites. Huh ?? For those of you not in the know Stromatolites are, and I quote:

“Rocks made of layers of calcareous material formed by the prolific growth of microbes….Their evolutionary history spans 3.5 billion years – right back to the dawn of life on earth”

Impressive stuff huh ?? Unfortunately, during those 3.5 billion years it never occurred to them to evolve into anything approaching interesting (I know, I’m a philistine). In fact after going to see them, we had to find a photo to make sure that we actually had seen them and not missed anything. – We hadn’t.

Perth & Freo
We reached Perth on the 26th November just under 4 weeks after leaving Darwin. Perth is the capital of Western Australia and has 80% of the states population. It’s very clean city with a good feel about it and is on the shores of the Swan River, which at Perth is more like an enormous lake. The views from Kings Park, which overlooks the city and water, are stunning.
It was Adams birthday the day that we arrived and so a perfect opportunity to dress up and check out the nightlife which around Northbridge consists of an abundance of good restaurants and bars. A good time was had by all.
We spent a few days there catching up with post, email and friends and then moved on to Fremantle, or ‘Freo’ as its known locally.
Freo is an extremely laid back port that was redeveloped for the Americas cup a few years ago, when Australia were hosting the event. Again, it’s got a nice feel to it and was a good place to walk around, go
water-skiing and to generally relax.

What next ?
With Christmas and the New Year approaching time was of the essence for our further travels before everyone headed off for their seasonal rendezvous. What did we do ? Read the next update and find out.

Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

Iain