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.