We started off on Monday 23/11/2009 afternoon and we just drove down to Busselton and camped not far behind the town on a quite nice spot right on the beach. Unfortunately the rangers came around midnight and fined us $100,- for illegal camping. Shit. Ok, so rangers really do that and you can't get away with cheap excuses (nor with a bribe, hehe). Good to know!
Next day, we stopped at Cape Naturaliste, trying to spot whales (unsuccessfully, poo), had a swim in Meelup (lovely little beach), had a snack in Yallingup and ended up in Margaret River.
Margaret River is pretty famous and I believe worth spending a few days, but we just wandered around the centre for a while and then took a nice walk along the river.
After that we drove to Prevelly Park for a swim. We chose The Rivermouth Beach, a famous surfing spot, and it turned out to be a good choice. After a short swim in great big waves, we joined a silent party that was happening at the beach at that time. Silent party is an interesting concept, you get wireless earphones, chose one of the 3 channels of dance music and jump into another world. I'm still not sure what to think about it - I found it quite interesting but I don't like the isolation that the earphones create. In any case we all enjoyed that one because of its spontaneity and randomness, really friendly people and heaps of firesticks, juggling balls, hula-hoops and other toys to play with.
We didn't want to risk another fine, so we drove to a proper campsite at Conto's field for the night. I slept outside, but it started raining in the middle of the night, so I squeezed myself under a wooden table and benches. Don't think it really helped.
Next day (Wednesday, 25/11/2009), after we visited beautiful Conto's Beach, we arrived to the Lake Cave, absolutely gorgeous, spectacular cave with a shallow lake inside (with amazing reflections of the cave ceiling that make you think it's really deep). In the middle of the cave, there is an amazing massive stalactite hanging just a few centimetres above the lake. It's definitely worth visiting. And you should hurry up because the water level of the lake is lower every year. It's estimated that in about 5 years, it'll be gone. How sad!
We passed by Pemberton (bought pretty yummy local wheat beer Jarrah Jacks) and continued through a very central-european-looking landscape (forests, hills, meadows, lakes, rivers...) towards Gloucester Tree, a 60m high fire-watching tree (still in use) that is open to public so you can climb up to the top platform. Fire-watching trees are very important for a quick elimination of bush-fires. Of course we couldn't have missed it and made it all the way up! What a great fun, how amazing views!
We decided we want more tree-climbing, so we drove towards Dave Evans Bicentennal Tree (in Warren National Park), which was even better than the previous one - it was 75m high and there were no people at all! Even though it was raining a bit which made the iron pegs pretty slippery, me and Vanessa couldn't resist and climbed up on the platform (Gun decided to be a pussy and stay safe on the ground). Shit that was scary! First 30m were perfectly fine but then my breath speeded up, my hands started sweating and became stiffer and my legs started shaking, so I was pretty happy when I reached the platform.
The views were just incredible!
I couldn't help myself, opened the roof door and climbed on top of the roof... Little bit dangerous but amazing place it was! And considering the number of inscriptions carved to the tin roof, I wasn't the only one with such an idea. I even found an inscription "HONZA", hehe! So I added my own too...
We decided to camp in Warren Camp on Heartbreak Scenic Drive, which is a lovely camp right on a riverbank. I pitched my tent on a wooden platform right above the water, yummy! The whole day was pretty cold and rainy, so we hit the sack quite early.
Next morning (Thursday, 26/11/2009), we stopped by The Giant Tingle Tree, an amazing huge tree with massive empty trunk,
had a little snooze on the rocks around The Circular Pool (very relaxing),
drove around Nornalup Inlet (very pretty) and ended up in The Valley of the Giants. We took the Tree Top Walk, which sounds better than it actually is (although still worth doing once in a lifetime). It's just a massive steel construction, kind of a bridge, above the canopy. The park next to it (called "The Ancient Walk" or something like that) was pretty cool though, full of tingle trees.
In the evening, we visited VOGO - Valley of the Giants Certified Organic Olive Grove. The owner, a Swiss guy, was very friendly and we had a nice chat. After we tasted all his olive products and wines, we bought some nice tapenade and oil. Before we left, he recommended us a good calm spot for spending the night - Conspicious Cliffs - and as he said, it really was a great place - gorgeous beach, dramatic sky, rough sea. It was really windy, but the car park was well protected. And I ended up sleeping in a wooden shelter anyway.
Next morning, we drove a few kilometres further to the east to visit Elephant Rocks. Again, beautiful place and so much fun!!! It's a quite large area of big boulders, so you can climb, jump from one boulder to another, jump to the sea... it's awesome! So we climbed and jumped a lot and even swam (even though it was bloody cold that day)!
After the elephants, we dropped by Denmark (yes, that's the name of a town), which was quite nice but pretty boring, and ended up in Albany.
Albany is a picturesque town with one amazing thing - there are public showers right in the centre (at the Stirling Tce/York St intersection) for free!! Isn't that awesome? There is a beautiful old ship Brig Amity too.
I can also highly recommend driving up on Mt Clarence - you'll be rewarded by great 360-degree view over the town and the bay.
We spend the night at the east part of the Cosy Corner Beach. Not bad but way too many people.
Early morning next day (Saturday 28/11/2009), we quickly stopped by The Gap and The Natural Bridge (pretty spectacular but you'll see many places like that in Australia) and then rushed to Stirling Ranges.
We picked Toolbrunup Peak (second highest and apparently the most difficult one) to be climbed. Luckily the weather gods were kind to us that day - sunny all day long (after a few rainy days), so after pretty tough ascent (steep slope covered by unstable rocks), we could enjoy spectacular views. The only little bad thing about the summit was an incredible number of bugs of an incredible number of different species. Some bit.
We decided to spend our last night at Moingup Spring Campsite. The last day was dedicated to driving back to Fremantle.
No comments:
Post a Comment