Ningaloo

Around Two million years ago our ancestors were driven from their home in the sea, and onto crappy mud flats in an effort to escape persecution and consumption by large predatory fish.

 It has been 2 million years in the making, but vengeance has finally come, in the form of a mask, flippers and a speargun.

 And that pretty much sums up the trip so far...

 After Karratha, which was a bit of a depressing town, we headed to Dampier, which was really nice, albeit dead. But we got to see the statue of red dog.

 Dampier Mall - Bustling

 Dampier Port - Very Industrial, but nice in its own way

 Red Dog

 After Dampier we headed down the coast and into the Cape Range national park to freedive and snorkel the ningaloo reef.

 This was incredible. The first day there I didn't head all the way out to the outer reef, and just snorkelled the inner reef, which was pretty cool. Then the second day we headed over to one of the suggested shore snorkels and went to the oyster stacks, which was nothing too exciting. We also did the yardie creek gorge walk which was nice.

 After that I swam out to the outer reef, (It was too windy for the kayak), and It was pretty awesome. I saw the usual sea turtles and reef fish. But also saw a massive wahoo which I've never seen before (but didn't come close enough for a photo) and a lot of reef sharks and trevallies.

 The next day Rachael came for the swim out and we got some good photos on the outer reef, but we kept paddling out and couldn't manage to find where the reef drops off into the ocean (which is where you normally see the best sea life, and where we would find manta rays).

 After doing the obligatory snorkelling it was time to go spearfishing. They are pretty strict on spearfishing on the ningaloo reef as you can imagine, and so I had to take the bike about 20K's down rough road, then push it under a farm fence and then take it a few K's up a beach to get to some reef outside the no spearfishing zone.

 I think its a bit of a double standard that line fishermen can blindly fish along the reef killing their bycatch by hook injuries or from barotrauma, and meanwhile I've got to go to all this trouble... It was worth it though in the end. The reef I swam out to was amazing, after swimming for ages out over only about a foot depth of water over the coral it opened out into about 15-20 metres of steep drop off, and the sea was teaming with fish.

 I hung out there as long as I could. There were huge spanish mackerals swimming right up next to me and big gold trevallies, barracuda's, turtles, rays and all sorts of reef fish coming up. I managed to shoot 6 trevallies in total, but lost two of them to the reef. The whole time I was out there I was followed by big sand bar sharks (I think), and whenever I shot a fish they would dart over and eat it off the spear (In just one bite). Or while I was trying to fend off the shark trying to steal the fish I'd just shot another would come up behind me and try and get the fish off the float line. It was nerve wracking.

 I had to shoot two sharks (non-fatally) over the course of the day just to keep them away. A big queensland grouper also came up and swallowed my entire float, line and fish and nearly dragged me under. This happened twice, and my float and line is pretty ragged now... Still, it was a very cool day.

 It was a bit too much fun and I stayed out too long and didn't get back till dark, which had Rachael pretty worried...  But it was worth it.

 After Cape Range National Park I headed out off the northern end of the cape for some more spearfishing (over a Rocky reef this time with no coral)  You could hear the whales singing whilst swimming out which was pleasant and there were the usual Barracuda's and Tuskfish, along with a lot of reef sharks. It was a good day, but it was a bit murky.

 I'd just got stung by a blue bottle and was going to head back in when I saw what I thought was a white and black shark swimming across from me, but it was moving really weird. Then I realized it was the flipper of a Huge humpback whale which emerged out of the murk and swallowed a school of bait fish I'd been following. It was incredible, It was very fast, and you could feel the water moving as it swam through trying to swallow all the fish at once. It was definitely one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had.

 But no camera...

 Instead though here are about 1000 photo's of fish. This is just an amalgamation of Ningaloo reef in general, we stayed at cape range national park and at Waroora station (A sheep station on the coastline on the south end of ningaloo reef)

  Harassing the wildlife at Ningaloo Reef  - I think that's a young hawkesbill turtle

 Harassing more wildlife at Ningaloo Reef - Not sure what sort of Ray that one was. It was covered in little spines, which I've never seen before

 Hawks Nest - This was taken right next to our camp spot at Waroora Station at the southern end of ningaloo reef (outside of cape range national park). This Hawke was coming back with lizards every arvo. It was a great spot out there, maybe even better than cape range national park

 Flounder - These are weird fish, kind of half evolved from a regular fish so that their other eye has drifted to the other side of their head. Their mouth is still crooked though. Really weird looking.

 Whirlwind seen while driving south - There were a few of these at once which were very cool to watch. Was a bit worrying driving through them though

 Blue Fish - No idea what these are

 Clarkes Anenomefish - Seen everywhere

Damselfish  - not sure what type

Some other Damselfish

 Some Emu's in Cape Range National Park. - The park was very barren, but it was full of wildlife, there were a lot of Kangaroos and more Emu's than I've seen anywhere

 Grey Nomads With a Roo

 Furry Legged Hermit Crab

How to spot rock lobsters - Look out for anything which looks like a stick or a piece of string poking out from under a rock.

 Ornate Painted Crayfish, easily spotted using the above technique.

 Great White Shark - (Actually just a reef shark, but a blurry photo)

Unknown shark - Notice the juvenile golden trevally hiding around it's fins. (smart fish). He was a bit of a dude this shark, and was enjoying pats from Me and Rachael

Lined Soapfish - Seen everywhere

 

Male Black Boxfish

Weird fish

Ningaloo Reef

Posing with the weird shark

 Angry shrimp

 A days spearfishing

 Hawkesbill Turtle

Yardie Creek Gorge

 Adult False eye grubfish

 Resident Kangaroo - This Kangaroo seemed pretty friendly at first until we started eating some apples in front of it, then it got up on its tail and started growling at us and getting aggressive. It doesn't seem very big in this photo, but it was when it stood up, and had very sharp claws (It clawed my hand). I threw my weight belt at it (with four lead weights on it) and it didn't even flinch at it. They are tough animals. Rachael threw her thong at it after that, and it got distracted by the green thong and tried to eat it. That let us get inside. What a jerk...

 Some kind of cat shark. Maybe even a new species, the book I've got doesn't have any cat sharks listed for WA. I'm naming it Shanks' ornate CatShark.

 Eagle Ray from Behind

Front Shot of an Eagle Ray. This was a big ray, and very cool to swim with.

I guess that's all, we've headed down to Carnarvon now, and finally have internet reception so can update the blog.

  Tomorrow we're heading out to the blowholes which should be pretty cool.

As far as lemon news is concerned we got a flat tyre a while back (no idea how long ago, might have been since Darwin...), I just noticed the rear right wheel needed a bit of air in it, and when I went to pump it up it was full, but bulging...

 This was because the other right tyre was completely blown with no inner tube left in it... It's hard to tell when you've got four rear wheels, luckily we picked it up before a long drive. (Not cheap to replace though....)

 Also we've installed the new solar regulator (which is way cool), and everything else is great. The fridge is loving the cooler weather, and we are too really, although the water's a bit cold.. I still have no idea how to fix the gas tank gauge.... We've picked up the new bearing kit for the bike too, and I'll put that in tomorrow.

Kununurra to Karratha

 It's been a little while since updating, but we've done a lot since then, I can't believe it was only 2 weeks ago when we were at Derby. The trip has been getting progressively better every day since then.
 Hitting the coast again was definitely a big factor. I can't believe it but I had started to forget how good diving and spearfishing in clear water was. It's still a bit tricky this far up the coast (still big tides, even as low as Karratha) but it's been getting better as we go down.
 One thing I can't believe is there are apparently salt water croc's down this far south, and even as far as shark bay.
 I've been blatantly ignoring the warnings though and haven't seen any crocs. If you can survive diving around Darwin I'm guessing they aren't going to bother you this far south.

Trapped in the Derby Prison Boab. This was actually used to house aboriginal prisoners back in the day. There seem to be a few of these prison boabs up north. Probably not the best time to be an aboriginal in those days...

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Bus Buddies at Port Hedland - Can you guess which one we're driving? (It's not the size of the bus that counts, it's what you do with it)

Rent is way cheap in Port Hedland. Notice thats $500 a week for a room in a share house, not a whole house...




The first real taste of the west coast was when we stayed at a cattle station about 120Kms south of Broome, (Barne Hill Station) this place had a small reef coming off 80 mile beach which I kayaked and swam out to religiously over the two days we stayed there. I even managed to spear a little tusk fish for dinner which was nice.
 Also saw a very big olive sea snake one day which was very cool (couldn't get a photo though as I was spearfishing). These are meant to be quite aggressive for sea snakes but they seem very placid to me, this one didn't even look twice at me.

Barne Hill was a cool little campground, It had a really nice feel staying there. We met some new friends on the road (a Belgian couple who work in Belgian T.V, I'm pretty sure they are some sort of celebrities) and have run into them since so it will be good regularly catching up with some more people closer to our age. There was even a band playing from one of the local aboriginal communities who were surprisingly good.
 All in all we had a good stay there.

 

80 mile beach at Barne Hill Station

 We also headed over to Karijini national park where we ran into our Belgian friends again.
 In a lot of peoples opinions this is the best national park in Australia. I was very excited about getting to Karijini, and have been excited for a long time, but was a little underwhelmed after all the hype about it. It was a really nice national park, but because it is so accessible and has such easy walks it was full of the usual swathes of elderly four wheel drivers which was a bit annoying.
 It was pretty good though all the same. I'll let the photo's do the talking though.

 Dales Gorge Karijini

 Fern Pool Karijini

 Me at some chasm in Karijini

 Some kind of lizard in karijini

 Rachael traversing a chasm at Karijini

Wood pigeons in Karijini are weird.

 I can't really remember what we've been doing since Karijini, but we've spent the last 4 days at cleaverville beach near Karratha.
 This has been fantastic. There's no water or anything there, but there's an island nearby with great snorkelling. I took 2 trips out there on the inflatable kayak. The first time I went without Rachael (I was the guinea pig to test whether you could get out there easily with the strong winds) and saw heaps of fish. There were black tip reef sharks, other big sharks which I don't know what they are, heaps of sea turtles, kingfish trevally, and all sorts of reef fish. It was great. I took my speargun out though and not the camera, so no photos... On the way back in I also ran into a shark in really shallow water which was pretty cool. I tried to get a good photo but the camera wasn't working too well. The shark came right up to the kayak in the murky water, then realised how big it was and shot off really fast through the shallow water. It was very cool.
 
  The second time we headed out we both brought our cameras, but we must have put them in the housings in humid air, because they both fogged up really badly in this cold southern water and we couldn't get any good photos...

 Fish Guitar with two mangrove jacks caught at the island. Very tasty fish

 The paddle out to Dixon Island (about 2/3rds to go)

 The shark. It got a lot further out of the water, and came within a foot of the kayak. But the Olympus strikes again...

 Sturts Desert Pea on Dixon Island

Ornate Painted Crayfish were EVERYWHERE.

Crayfish and Mudcrab Dinner - We O.D'd on crustaceans at Cleaverville. Have to change to fish for a while

That is all. We're in Karratha now, which is just another mining town. We'll check out nearby dampier tomorrow though which looks nice. It is very nice being back in society with fresh water on tap.

as far as the lemon is concerned we've had a few regular issues. We headed out to a free camp north of Broome and the front left grease cap on the bearing blew again. We were driving on pretty heavy duty corrugations though so I can understand.

 What I can't understand though is how difficult it was to get the part. I rang almost every toyota dealer on the west coast and had no success. So then I rang Cairns where we got it last time and the dude there was all like 'we can't get that part' even after I told him I'd got it off them before.

 It took a lot of arguing to get the part. All that for a little bit of plastic...

 We've also had the water pump break on us (which I was waiting for... It never sounded too healthy) and the solar regulator stopped working (it was $12 on eBay, so I should have expected that...) Also the auto gas meter is now always saying it's full... (not sure how to fix that)

 Also after the bungle trip one of the chain tension adjusters on the rear wheel of the bike had come loose. This has caused the rear wheel to turn at a bit of an angle, which has resulted in the rear bearing getting a bit damaged and having a bit of play so I'll need to replace it soon...

 The usual dramas really, but nothing too expensive or which we can't handle.

The Kimberlys

It’s been an interesting trip so far. We stayed at an old RAAF quarry a few days ago (which is a really nice spot) and woke up to see the whole place was on fire…

 There were two couples from the Netherlands staying near us and they’d lit a campfire next to some of the Spinifex and the whole lot went up. We had to spend the morning battling the fire which was getting pretty out of control.

 I breathed in so much smoke I’ve been coughing all morning. Its hard work fighting fires, I was breathing really heavily running to get buckets of dirt and rocks from the quarry and then you copping lungs full of smoke when you get to the fire.

 I lost a lot of leg hair as well. We managed to stop the fire though, luckily the wind was going away from the Spinifex tinderbox. It was a close call though.

 

Burnt Campsite at the old Quarry - There definitely wasn't time to get a photo when the fire was going, it was starting to get pretty big though. It was really hot.

The Quarry - 40K's west of Fitzroy Crossing then up 10K's of dirt road on the right, one of the best camp spots we've stayed at (not in the Australia camps book)

So, since Kununurra we’ve headed down to the Bunge Bungle ranges. This is meant to be tough 4wd only dirt road to get into. We stopped at a free camp just across the road and set up the bike, and my god, every grey nomad in the town had to stop and comment about us going in on our crappy dirt bike.

 They really can’t handle anything out of the ordinary, I think it’s boredom that makes them come over really, but after a while you get over all the helpful comments.

 It was pretty easy getting in there in the end, and actually a really fun road, there were about 7 shallow creek crossings which the bike had no problem with, a fairly corrugated road for the most of it, which the bike also handles really well, and heaps of little hills which you could shoot over, it was a heaps fun ride in, and not a terrible road, we’ve definitely been down worse. Definitely not for 2 wheel drives though for sure.

Here’s Rachael at the Bungle Bungle Ranges

Picaninny creek, normally this is an overnight hike, we just went for an hours walk though. It was a really nice walk, there were some cool formations in the rock on the creek bed, and of course the bungle bungle rock formations as well.

Cathedral Gorge, it looks like it would be a great place for a concert. Good luck getting it in there though.

Here’s the entrance to the echidna chasm walk. The chasm is a very narrow crack in the cliffs which goes up for ages. It’s a nice walk to do during the heat of the day

The start of the chasm. It was pretty unnerving walking through the chasm, if a rock had fallen down off the cliff it would have been a pretty serious thing. The cliff was a good 6 stories high, but it was impossible to get a photo showing how high the chasm was in the dark

 

The northern end of the park is a lot different to the south. The south has all the beehive domes, while the north has more of the classic Kimberly range type of stuff which you see through the drive across the top end. The entire highway is amazing, some of the views you get are really incredible.

After the bungles we headed down to Halls creek, and then down to old Halls creek town (which was remade into new Halls Creek due to constant flooding) to camp out for a bit and maybe strike it rich finding some gold.

 This was about 13 K’s of corrugated dirt road which the bus handled fantastically. It even made it down into the riverbed and didn’t get bogged.

 Having four tyres on the back makes a huge difference with traction, we have only bogged the bus once, and that was in my front yard at Coffs Harbour, when it sunk after about 6 days of non-stop rain.

 The riverbed camp (Caroline pool) was a great spot. I only found some fools gold though panning for gold. We got there on a Saturday, and didn’t realise that being a weekend it would be a popular spot with the locals, there were so many Aboriginal kids running around, they were hilarious; they wouldn’t listen to anyone when they called them, and just ran around all day attacking each other. It was a great spot to camp.

 After that we took the bus on some more serious 4wding to the china wall (we were too lazy to take the bike off for a 2Km road)

 Caroline Pool

 

The China Wall & the bus in the background

The China Wall. It went on for ages, but I couldn't get a shot of it all, there were too many trees in the way and when I stood on top of the wall I almost got blown off (It was really windy)

Off road driving

After that we headed to the quarry, where the fire was, and headed another 60K’s up dirt road on the bike to Tunnel creek. This is just like the name describes, a long creek which has tunnelled through the range behind it.

 It was a great walk through pitch black, with cool stalactites hanging down, and some interesting fish, bats and even a fresh water cave crocodile in a hollow up the side of the cave.

 As usual though, it was full of grey nomads! They were EVERYWHERE!!! I couldn’t believe it, I thought we were way off the beaten track.. I found out later that the Gibb river road ends at the turn to tunnel creek, and so a lot of people heading down to Broome head down that way..

 It was a great walk though.

  

Some Stalactites in the Tunnel Creek

 

Inside Tunnel Creek  - As you can see you had to bring a torch to get through to the other side, photos were pretty difficult inside the tunnel but it was pretty cool

Cave Crocodile

 After that we headed pretty much straight over to Derby where we are at the moment. It’s a nice little town, and the town with the highest recorded tides in Australia (a whopping 11 metres). For that reason (along with all the crocodiles) spear fishing is off the cards here.

 We’ll just have to wait until Broome. The marine life around there won’t know what’s coming.

 Old Boab Tree

 

The visibility at Derby. Pristine visibility for Diving and Spearfishing

 

 As far as lemon news is concerned the bus is going great. There haven’t been any problems, which is a first. I’ve learned not to get too complacent though. The poltergeist still hasn't come back in the dash and the wheel hubs don't seem to be getting hot after cleaning all the crap out of the hubs.

 Rachael’s done the budgeting for our trip, and we’ve gone way over budget already. We can’t afford to have any more break downs. Or, at least we can’t afford to go to any more mechanics. Which is probably a good thing considering our track record with mechanics.