Esperance

 The theme of this week has been sea lions, we've been seeing a lot of them lately, and they've been great to hang around.
After heading from point Riche we headed over to Ravensthorpe, from there we took the bike on a 400K round trip to wave rock.
 This is a huge granite rock that has weathered into a giant wave out next to a small town called Hyden. The wave is really impressive, and the whole rock is too. It is apparently 2.5 billion years old, and one of the oldest surface rocks in the world. It was there before multi-cellular life had formed on earth, back when the moon was a lot closer and 60 metre tides were sweeping across the country.
 Here are some photos;

 This looks like the typical tourist photo surfing wave rock, but I was actually sliding out of control here. Its pretty smooth and hard to stay further up

 Wave Rock

 Hippo Rock - Another granite rock near wave rock

Ornate Dragon - They are all over the top of wave rock. They blend in so well it's pretty impressive. Most of the top of wave rock had a little dam wall running around it to channel run off water into a little dam nearby. Water is scarce in Hyden and they take what they can get. It was a pretty smart idea.

Truck over a cliff... I have no idea what the story is here...

 On our trip to wave rock the bike was making a clacking noise when it was under load, this was pretty worrying for the trip out there, and when we got out there there was oil leaking out of the head gasket, on the trip back it was the same deal, and we also ran out of fuel and just made it to the next servo on the reserve tank.
 I think the clacking noise might have been spark knock (pinking) because I'd changed the air filter recently and now the engine might have been running a bit lean, but thats just a theory. We've taken it into a bike shop for a new head gasket (I'm not going near a head gasket again after the last bike), they took it for a test ride and couldn't get the knock sound I was hearing to happen. They are gonna see whats happening from the inside tomorrow, so time will tell... Hopefully its something real simple, like a loose chain or something.

After Ravensthorpe we headed to Hopetoune and then to Esperance to get the bike fixed up. This is a really nice town, it's the perfect size, its got really nice white sandy beaches and a nice long pier with two resident seals hanging around it.
 The people in this town are all really friendly as well. It's a great place to have engine trouble.
  

Snorkelling under Esperance pier - The water in Esperance seems to always be crystal clear, there's been a good 20 - 25m visibility since we've gotten here

One of the two resident sea lions at Esperance pier, this one was having a great time looping around me. They are such posers for the camera

Sammy, the most famous resident sea lion sits all day right next to the fish cleaning table begging for fish heads. I'm not sure how old he is, there's a statue of him at the start of the pier circa 1991, so I guess he was around a fair while before that. They must live for quite a while when they're well fed

 After staying in Esperance for one night we headed out to cape le grande national park, which was even nicer than Esperance, we stayed on le Grande beach, and managed to get some surfing in, snorkelling, sea kayaking and swimming with some more sea lions. We had a great time out there.

 We almost got into a bit of trouble though, we headed out for what we thought would be a half day (max) kayak to a little rock island a little way off shore, where we'd snorkel/spearfish and then head back for lunch. The trip out there was fine, but after about 10am the wind picked up in a bad way, and in exactly the opposite direction from shore.
 The island was only a little over a kilometre off shore, and maybe 4-5 Km from where we were set up, but it took all day to get back to shore, I think we got back around 4 in the afternoon after paddling constantly and getting nowhere...

 Whats worse is once we got to the island we found out there was a seal colony there. This was awesome at the time, we spent the morning swimming with one of the seals and feeding it fish I speared. It was a great seal, and loved the attention.
 But, on the kayak back, in our flimsy inflatable kayaks, it was hard to get the idea of great whites hanging around seal colonies out of your head while you were paddling flat out and getting nowhere against the wind.
 I was buggered after, in the end I had to hook Rachael's kayak up to mine and tow her back as well. It was exhausting.

 It was a great day though, and swimming with the sea lion really made the day, they are the dogs of the ocean, we were playing seal tag swimming after each other and doing loops round each other. It was very cool, and you could tell it was loving it. It wouldn't leave us alone and stayed with us the whole time we were out there until we got back on our kayaks and paddled back. This was probably because we were feeding it, but whatever.

 Lazy Seal Colony - It took a bit of coaxing to get just one to swim with us, after yelling at them for ages and getting blank stares I found barking at them like a dog gets them to come over.

 Sooty Oyster Catcher - These are one of my favourite birds, they are found all over Australia's coasts and make a real funny noise to suit their appearance

 I speared a couple of banded sea sweeps for this seal. It loved them

Seal Glamour shot - they are such posers, it's almost like they know what a camera does.

 The next day after the huge kayak we took it a bit easier and WALKED to a nice snorkelling spot and checked out the marine life.
 It was as good as up at ningaloo reef. Something that has astounded me down south is that even though the water is freezing you still get massive corals. I thought they only lived in warm water. There are a lot of fish down here which would put some of the northern fish to shame too. The western blue devil is probably one of the best, it comes up to you and gets really angry for getting near it's home, which makes it easy to photograph.
 Unfortunately my camera was fogging up, so I had to use Rachaels camera while we were out there, and I have no idea how to use it so the photo's are a bit crap.

 Leatherjacket - The last time I shot one of these to put into a curry, instead of swimming away it swam straight at me and bit a good chunk out of the side of my hand. Serves me right really.

 Bad Photo of a western blue devil - Angry fish, its even frowning in the photo

 Wrasse - It's got a very cool face pattern going there

 I'm not sure what these little birds are, but they are hilarious, you see them running down to the waters edge after a wave to get at the barnacles and crabs and then they'll all run away at the next wave. They only just make it sometimes

 Cape Le Grande Beach

We're back in Esperance now and ready to head across the Nullarbor. Almost ready anyway, I changed the oil on the bus yesterday and found a big hole in the muffler while I was under there.  Its a big hole, which looks like a rock's smashed into it. Its too big to do a botch muffler putty job on, so today I'm gonna fork out for a new muffler.. We have noticed the engine's been a little louder, but its hard to tell, the muffler is so far back from the front of the bus. And its loud most of the time anyway...
 Otherwise though the bus is ripping, and with the new muffler it should be on fire, hopefully it doesn't affect our newly tuned gas condenser too much. It's a pain trying to find mechanics to tune your gas for you on the road.

 

Kayaking around Walpole

 We've been doing a lot of kayaking since the last blog update, and walking through the huge forests of the south west.

  After leaving leaving cape lleuwin naturaliste national park we headed down and into de'entrecasteux national park and the surrounds, where we saw a lot more giant trees.
 I'm not sure whether I'll be able to appreciate a big eucalypt on the east coast ever again after seeing the size of the trees down here.
 We also headed into Hamelin  Bay to snorkel the old pier there. There are meant to be some massive eagle rays in the area and we wanted to see some of these, but we got too eager and headed over in the morning. We found out later that the rays all come in the afternoon to eat all the scraps thrown out by the boats.
 It was a pretty nice snorkel though.

Hamelin Bay Pier - This pier was the site for numerous shipwrecks back when it was in use. The bay is pretty open to swell from the north west and there are boats sunk all around the bay apparently. The pier was eventually closed down due to the constant sinking boats, then someone vindictively burned it. There are still pylons under the water though which are worth a snorkel

 Old Wife fish at Hamelin Pier

 

Fish - not sure what type, but pretty cool looking

 

Conto Beach Cliffs

While we stayed in the forest national parks of the south west we kayaked a few rivers. Its getting to be a good area to go kayaking with heaps of rivers around with a lot of water in them (due to the constant bloody rain).
 We generally just paddle upstream or downstream for a bit and then turn around and come back, but a while back we thought we'd do a full downstream paddle and dump the kayaks upstream then park the bus downstream and then bike back up and paddle down.
 We chose a 24Km stretch of river where we could get into a campsite and relax back at the bus after a long paddle. When we got in though we saw some time estimates on how long it will take to get down stream. They were pretty liberal with the times, saying it will take 7 hours with the first 17 K's to some waterfalls then to camp there (where there is no road access) and then to take another 7 hours with the next 7 K's.
 We figured this was the same as when you go out on walking tracks, where, for the sake of the grey nomads they say a 20min 1Km walk will take you 5 hours.
 It wasn't at all like that though... We got into the water around 8:00am, then cruised down the river at pretty good speed, it was a good kayak for some parts, but with a lot of giant fallen trees across the river and a few bits of rapids which were too shallow to kayak down and so we would have to walk. We were going pretty quick though and we thought we were doing pretty well, but as the sun started going down after midday we started to get worried. After paddling pretty hard for ages we reached the falls, and when we checked the watch it was 3:20, it took us over 7 hours to do the first leg...  We didn't pack a tent so we were pretty worried we'd have to either kayak down through the rapids and fallen trees (and huge spider webs) in the dark or sleep in our wetsuits and brave the mozzies...
 We couldn't stop for lunch, or to admire the view and kept paddling the rest of the day and into the evening to get to our campsite.
 We were so tired by the end, the last leg was a horrible stretch, every 10 meters there was another fallen tree across the river, which you had to climb onto, drag your kayak over then get back on your kayak and paddle to the next tree blocking the way. We thought we were goners.
 We got back at 6:20pm and it was just starting to get dark in the Karri forest when we could smell some people camping near us cooking undersized marron from up the river (which were delicious, they gave us a few to try).
 We were so happy to get back. NEVER AGAIN!!

 It was beautiful though, and I think after that we might be ready for Franklin river in Tasmania.

 Here are some photos;

Squeezing under one of about 500 trees on the Deep River

 Picturesque Deep River

 Weird Foam build up on the deep river. It comes from the Karri trees I think, it was pretty cool to cruise through, it made a really weird snow wake effect which would fly right up in the air, the photo doesn't really do it justice

 

Some Rapids at Deep River

 

Going under yet another giant tree (at least you could get under it, it took a long time to get over them when they were a few feet lower to the water... not so good when the suns going down fast)

 We've also gone and seen the regular tourist things, we went and saw the giant Tingle tree (the biggest eucalypt in the world) it was a pretty impressive tree. We also went and saw the tree top walk at Walpole. We've since headed to albany, and out to a cool place called Point Riche.

 I was quite surprised when we got there that there is coral found around there next to a fairy penguin colony. I went diving whilst out there, but my camera died, so no photo's unfortunately. It was a monster walk so I didn't bother going out again, you'll just have to take it from me the coral was actually quite impressive. It was the photosynthesizing variety, and was a bright green colour. There was some great fish life around there too, I'm pretty surprised, it had fish that looked like you'd only find up north. It seems like there's more to the south coast than you'd think. I didn't even know you could get coral down south.

 

 Big Karri Tree

 

Flies - This is a photo I took of my arm after walking out to Point Riche. We've stayed in some places with a lot of flies, but I've never had so many going for me before, there must have been thousands on my back. Suckers couldn't follow me under the water though.

 Rachael next to yet another large tree - What do you know eh

 

Another tree... There really are a lot of trees in south WA

 Albany - a lovely city

The Biggest Eucalypt in the world - The giant Tingle has been hollowed out by bushfires but is still alive, its got a girth of 24 meters. It really was an impressive tree

So, as far as the lemon is concerned, she's going better than ever. Since getting the engine tuned up and the crappy tyres replaced we are using way less fuel than before and we are sitting comfortably at 90kph even up hills!!!

 I couldn't be happier with the bus' performance at the moment. (Famous last words).

South West Coast

 We’ve made it a long way since the last update. We've passed Carnarvon, and Shark Bay and even Perth and now we're down at Margaret River. We've done this section of the coast a bit quicker than normal to meet up with family in Perth, but we're in a really top spot now. Since leaving Carnarvon though it has rained so much. I don’t know if we’ve just forgotten what its like or whether it’s an inordinate amount of rain for the west coast, but it hasn’t stopped. I don’t think there was one photo from this last leg with a clear sky in the background.
 Not sure if I can fit everything we’ve done into one blog post, so might split it up while we’re still in civilisation.

 After heading out of Carnarvon we headed up to the blowholes, we were lucky and got a day with a decent swell and got to see some pretty good blowhole action.
 Carnarvon is a bit of a fruit mecca for the north west coast, with a lot of great cheap fruit and veg, so I took advantage of this by trying to shoot a Tangerine out of the biggest blowhole there. It didn't work though.
 The blowholes themselves were really cool, but the campsite there wasn’t too crash hot. Lots of people we've met on the road have told us the blowholes are a great place to stay, so we had high hopes for the camp ground, but when we got there we were severely disappointed. There were caravans everywhere squashed in next to each other, and we had to pay for the privilege of squatting next to some derelict lobster fisherman’s shacks, it was very disappointing.
 We were out of there the next day.
One up side of staying there was we met another coaster driver with two huge dogs who gave us a 20 watt solar panel he wanted to get rid of, which we have now hooked up on the roof, giving us a bit more solar.

 

 The Blowholes

 After the blowholes we headed south at a reasonable pace to a beautiful little spot called Gladstone. This is basically just a pier on the very eastern coast of the shark bay area, it had an old pier they used to use for loading wool onto small boats to get out to the big ships.

 With decent roads though it was made obsolete. It was an alright spot for snorkelling though and I had a crack (and failed) at shooting one of the big Queensland mackerels which would shoot through the pier from time to time. We stayed there a couple of nights, it was deserted because of the short dirt road you had to take to get in there. Just like we like it.

 After Gladstone we toured shark bay, we stayed at Denham a few nights and didn’t bother going to Monkey Mia as it looked like a huge tourist trap. You actually have to pay just for the privilege of entering the town. How crazy is that! Its main attraction is the dolphin feeding anyway, and I’d rather swim with them somewhere than watch tamed ones come in for free fish.

 From Denham we saw all the sights of shark bay, including the shark bay aquarium, which I think was well worth the visit.

 Shark bay was pretty cool, but there is a lot of sand in the bay, and very shallow water, which makes for lousy snorkelling. I did have a crack at swimming out from Denham harbour to an outer pylon at one point, it didn’t get deeper than about 3m the whole way. But, on the swim I counted 16 sea snakes, I’ve never seen so many in one place before. One of them took a bit too much interest in me and followed me for a few minutes which was a bit unnerving, They seem to do that sometimes, but I’ve never let one get close enough to find out what they do when they get to you. I shot a nice tuskfish on the swim too.

Really at Gladstone and Shark Bay I was only interested in seeing a dugong, but after a long time in the water, there were no dice.

 They are apparently pretty shy creatures, and probably wouldn’t have been around the areas I was snorkelling.

 This is a shell stone quarry from the stromatolites in shark bay. The beaches down that side of shark bay are covered in little cockel shells which are native only to the salty shark bay waters. These compact and form some really cool looking sandstone which was quarried in the old days to make some funky looking shell bricks

 Shell Beach Shark Bay

 Feeding sharks at shark bay aquarium. The one in the photo is a sand bar shark, you can tell sand bar sharks pretty easily because they have the huge dorsal fin in the photo

 The Bus at Shark Bay

 The Shark Bay Stromatolites - I've been looking forward to seeing these for quite a while. These bacteria (with others) converted all the CO2 created by volcanic eruptions and the like into the oxygen rich atmosphere we're now breathing. This is before plants evolved. They form the towers by secreting a sticky biofilm which sticks any sand or whatever to it, forming a coral like pinnacle.

In my mind these are really the proof that global warming isn't a conspiracy. If it took these clusters of bacteria 3 million years to change our atmosphere over from an aerobic one, then 9 billion people with however many cars and power plants could probably reverse the process a lot quicker than it took these bacteria...

 Smaller stromatolites - You can see the cart wheel tracks still present in these stromatolites from where wool farmers used to wheel their carts over the stromatolites (which to them just looked like rocks) and onto skiffs to be loaded onto larger ships. This was in the 1900's, which shows just how long it takes for even the little stromatolites to grow back.

After shark bay we headed down to coronation beach (a lovely spot) and through to Geraldton, where we decided to dive the Batavia shipwreck. We got there though and found out that it had been taken by the Perth Shipwreck museum (bastards).

After that we headed to Cliff head (another lovely spot), Coal Seam national park (not really amazing but nice), and down to Perth. Over this period it did not stop raining…

Geraldton Lighthouse

 Greenough historical church - This was a pretty cool historical town which was abandoned but restored by volunteers. You could go into all the buildings and see what life was like for wheat farmers back in the day. (The oldies all loved it, the visitors book was full of comments like 'it's not the same these days'  ...I think they might have forgot about the lack of power, food and medicine back then...)

 Alpacas at Greenough

Rachael and some Coal Seam NP wildflowers

 We stayed at cliff head for a while which is a great free camping spot on the beach and checked out the surrounds.

 There were some beautiful coastal towns around the area. When we inevitably ran out of water we headed over to port Denison and stayed there the night to take advantage of their hot showers and clean water taps. We were getting a bit of cabin fever at this point because of all the rain, and for some reason we headed over to the hardware store and decided it would be a good idea to paint the entire bus’ interior a lime green colour.

 I’m still not sure why we did this. It looks pretty hideous… And it took 2 days to finish…

 A Hive of Bees dangerously close to where we parked...

 We then headed down to Jurien Bay, where we blew another tyre… This was a real blow out. We had noticed a kind of squelching noise coming from the back left tyres for a while when the tyres were cold, but I couldn’t figure out which tyre it was coming from, and couldn’t feel any separation in the tyre.. It was there though, and our outer tyre (thankfully) exploded.

 When I tried to put the spare on we also realised we can’t get the spare out without the tool for lowering it from under the car. (which you can’t buy anywhere apparently)

 So we had to strap it on to the bike and I had to ride to Jurien Bay to get a new one.

 This would have been fine, except for some reason I didn’t wear a jacket, and pretty much after I left for the 130Km return ride it started raining. It was really cold

 It just never stops raining... I miss Darwin.

 Tyre Blowout - It might look all sunny and promising in that photo, but that is a lie...

After getting all that sorted we headed to sandy cape recreation park, which was really nice, except it wouldn’t stop raining…

The bus at the Pinnacles - I've got to say I wasn't that excited about the pinnacles, but it turns out they were pretty impressive, even with all the rain.

After that we headed to a couple of other spots and down to Perth, where we stayed for a couple of days at Fremantle.

 Perth was a pretty nice city, it reminded me a bit of Brisbane, it was surprisingly big. We went to the museums and the cbd and did the usual tourist crap, but for some reason I didn’t take a single photo… Looking back on the photos we’ve taken we’ve been pretty bad with photographing lately..

 Probably the best thing we did in Perth was to go on a tour through a decommissioned submarine. It was huge, and pretty cool how they cramped 80 people into a steel tube.

 We also finally got to see the Batavia shipwreck. This was very cool to see and read about. It sunk off Geraldton before captain Cook came through, apparently it was deliberately steered off course by a shipmate who had it in for the captain. After that the captain took his upper deckhands and officers off the island they were stuck on to find some water.

 After not finding water on the mainland they didn’t even bother going back and headed for Jakarta.. In the meantime the mutineers went crazy and some serious lord of the flies started happening on the Abrolhos Islands, about 250 people were tortured and murdered..

 The last piece of the Batavia ship. This is only a tiny part of the back lower section, there was another level on top of this, the actual ship must have been huge. The arch in the back was found all around the wreck, apparently they must have been using it and some bricks as ballast. No wonder it sunk...

 After meeting up with my Brother and Mother in Perth we all headed down south. From Perth we stopped a few places until hitting the Margaret River region. This has been a fantastic spot to visit. It’s full of sleepy coastal towns, great surf, superb spearfishing. There’s also great food inland, we’ve visited wineries, cheeseries, fudgeries, choclataries, nougateries and breweries around this area. There is so much good food and wine it’s hard not to blow our budget staying in a place like this…

 In order to help conserve finances we’ve stayed away from too many temptations in the Lleuwin Naturaliste national park. This has been a beautiful spot to stay, close to a great surf beach and some great deep dropoffs next to the shore (getting down to about 15m in some spots) which are good to go spearfishing at. I don’t really want to leave.

 Most of our days we’ve been taking the bike in to the surrounding towns to check out the area, then surfing or spearfishing in the arvo. The ride out of the national park is fantastic, it is a tight winding road through Karri tree forest. These are some of the tallest trees in the world. They grow to around 80m tall, whilst the tallest (the American Redwood) grows to about 90m. They are actually the tallest hardwoods in the world, and are very impressive to ride through. After riding through the dense forest depending where we are heading it usually opens out into rolling grape fields or ocean views. The scenery everywhere is fantastic. Sometimes we just ride around for the hell of it. It’s a really excellent place, after this trip I think we will be getting a few flights over when we can, it’s just too good.

 I’ll let the photos do the talking though, because this has been a long post...

 Busselton Pier - Meant to be a scuba dive site, but in only 8m of water its much better for snorkelling.

Crested Morwong Busselton Pier

 Blowfish Busselton Pier

 Another Blowfish Busselton Pier

 Kingfish Chasing some yellowtails around the pier

Samsonfish looking for something to eat

 No idea what this fish is, they are all over the west coast and they get really big, might be a sergeant baker of the western variety maybe?

Some spotted cod - Busselton Pier

 Margaret River smoked cheddar has been my favourite cheese long before going to Margaret River, It was so good at the cheesery. No idea who that is in the door...

 65 Metre Karri Tree. - This one has Rio stuck in it so you can climb to the top. It doesn't look that high up, but it was a pretty long climb. Rachael refused to go up.

 My Brother Michael and I at the top of the tree, it was a great view, and very cool when it swayed around in a strong breeze

Bobtailed skink - These lizards are everywhere, on the roads, in the bushes, I even found one in the beach toilets. They think they are all that too, I didn't think there were any lizards with more attitude than a blue tongue

 Heading out spearfishing on one of the few days the surf was not massive.

 Samsonfish - I was pretty excited when I caught this thinking it was a nice tasting kingfish, after putting it in a curry though it was definitely not a kingfish...

 I was lucky to get this fish right in the head, otherwise it might have taken my little cressi 75 speargun. So far all the big fish I've caught have been with that little cheap speargun, it just goes to show that something being more expensive doesn't prove its any better

Heading surfing at conto beach on one of the calmer days

 As far as Lemon news is concerned, we’ve had the tyre blowout, and also the gas needed a tune up badly. We were at the point where the engine was bogging out at anything faster than 60Kph. I had a crack at emergency tuning it again with the help of google, and managed to find one site which can get you out of trouble. There is almost no information on the net on tuning lpg converters yourself (because most people don’t have to) but this site was very useful http://www.fordmods.com/post597545.html

 Using this we could travel on gas at 80Kph again, but we eventually caved and got a mechanic (god forbid) to do it properly with a gas meter. It’s going great now though. We also decided to change the front right tyre. It was looking pretty cactus, with flat spots on it after the right wheel was locking up way back up at Kununurra, and whilst one of the rear tyres going is fine, if we lost one of the front two I’m pretty sure we’d just flip over.