Western Australia – the south coast

December 29^th, 2024

So we left our free wild camp near Eucla quite early as with the time change, we were both awake very early.

The sunrise was quite pretty as were the clouds a little later on:

Here’s a pic of a Western Australia license plate:

We weren’t sure how far we’d go today as there are few stops to make and we left so early. We stopped for fuel once at Mundrabilla Roadhouse at $2.33 and just after Caiguna we saw the “90 mile straight stretch” sign – the longest straight road in the country:

We did stop to see two somewhat lacking sites:

Caiguna Blowhole:

This unique cavity was formed by weathering of the limestone to form a cave 0.5 to 1.5 meters (1.6-5 feet) deep. Like all caves on the Nullarbor Plain, it breathes; When the air pressure falls, the cave breathes out and when the air pressure rises, it breathes in.

The Caiguna blowhole is one of an estimated 100,000 blowholes scattered across the plain. It has displayed some exceptionally powerful “breathing,” with measurements of air movement at the cave entrance reaching up to 72 kilometers per hour (45 miles per hour).

and the Bellagnomie:

We pushed on to the end of the Eyre Highway at Norseman (named after a horse!) and were there around 2; we got enough petrol to get us to the coast at $2.05 a litre and parked in the free municipal campground.

Fran over to the IGA for food and it hardly had anything that didn’t need cooking (it was now 34C / 93F so we did not want to heat up Matilda), we decided to fork out the $40 and stay in a campground so we’d get power, could run the AC and cooking wouldn’t be so bad as eating out options were darn slim too.

The Gateway Caravan Park offered us power and water, showers, laundry facilities and no Wi-Fi or dump station – there are two free ones in town.

We got parked and turned on the AC right away as Fran was quite sweaty after her walk to the store even though it was only a klick each way.

Today we drove 727 km / 452 mi. A long drive but we made good time and the Nullarbor is now done.

Due to that darn time change, we were awake early again – like we mean early: 4:30 AM so we hit the road by 6ish. Today we were headed to the seaside town of Esperance – known for it’s spectacular beaches. We tried to get a reservation in the Cape Le Grand National Park with no luck so we opted to go visit the park – see its beaches and then find a place to stay in town – there are six caravan parks and in summer, when it’s busy the town opens the showgrounds up for dry camping with some services so we felt confident we could get in somewhere.

We arrived in town around 10 and first off got fuel for $1.88 a litre (the price is getting more reasonable again) and then went grocery shopping at Woollie’s. While Fran started that Doug went over to the park office to see about getting a park’s pass and see if they could get us into the campground.

Shopping went well – this store had everything unlike that IGA yesterday and Doug got us an annual parks pass for the vehicle. This cost $130 AUD and it’s only for this state: Western Australia. We expect to see several parks so it seems worth it. There is a 4 week pass for $70 but we don’t think that’s enough time.

The animal on the park pass is called a numbat.

The numbat is an insectivorous marsupial. Its diet consists almost exclusively of termites. They were once widespread across the country, but is now restricted to several small colonies in Western Australia. It is therefore considered an endangered species and protected by conservation programs. It is believed there are no more than 1,000 left in the wild. The numbat is the animal emblem of Western Australia.

The numbat is a small, distinctively-striped animal between 35-45 cm / 14-18” long, including the tail, with a finely pointed muzzle and a prominent, bushy tail about the same length as its body. Colour varies considerably, from soft grey to reddish-brown, often with an area of brick red on the upper back, and always with a conspicuous black stripe running from the tip of the muzzle through the eye to the base of the small, round-tipped ear. Between four and eleven white stripes cross the animal’s hindquarters, which gradually become fainter towards the mid back. The underside is cream or light grey, while the tail is covered with long, grey hair flecked with white. Weight varies between 280-700 grams / 9.9-24.7 oz.

As we’ve not seen one as yet (fingers crossed), this is what they looked like:

So around 11 we were headed into the park to check out Lucky Bay Beach. This is touted as the beach with the whitest sand in the country as well as one of the most beautiful.

We got parked and we’ll let you decide based on our parking lot view:

You are allowed to drive on the beach but not to camp on it. We didn’t want to drive on it until we checked out the surface of it and when we saw that the beach is not all that wide and it’s powdery we opted not to chance. We saw no other vehicles the size and weight of Matilda so that confirmed out decision. There were lots of 4×4 SUV’s and trucks and the odd campervans at the widest part of the beach.

We got some sunscreen lathered on, grabbed our sun hats and went to walk the beach. The water here is cold like Alamonta Beach but you seem to get used to it faster.

We walked along the water’s edge and there was, as usual, quite a wind. We stopped often to take photos and were just in awe – this beach was gorgeous! All it was missing was palm trees and the wind could have been less.

The dunes along the side with the soft sand in front that the cars drove on:

We went all the way to the other end of the beach where this is a lookout:

Here Fran managed to cut her big toe on the base of the stair case in three places, one quite deep so it was a bit of painful walk back to the rig. This beach stroll took us nearly two hours.

We wanted to sit on the beach but there is NO shade and the wind was too strong to put out an umbrella. We saw none and the people who had some short of shade covering, we saw it being blown around quite a bit.

We spoke to a fellow in the parking lot while making breakfast, who told us about the other beach we were already planning to check out next and he said the wind was not quite so bad there.

So after eating we went to see the views of this beach once again before moving on to Hellfire Bay Beach.

It was equally as lovely but smaller and there was still a breeze but we felt the umbrella could handle it. We went back to Matilda, changed, grabbed out Kindles and drinks and set up on the beach. The temperatures in this area were in the mid 20’s C / high 70’s F so not hot but the breeze kept us cool enough that we felt no need to go into the water – just to enjoy the view.

We sat enjoying a cold beer reminiscing about what a great year we’ve had and our hopes for an even better one next year.

Happy 2025 all!

After about an hour, the wind picked up more and it wasn’t safe to keep the umbrella up so we packed it in. We also did not want to get back to Esperance too late so as not to get a camping spot. We didn’t need power as it was not hot but there are lots of signs saying “no camping or overnight parking” so we felt we had to get into a campground of some sort. As we left the park we spotted two emus but they ran a bit further away and could not get a good photo.

Fran checked out one of the caravan parks on the beach and they wanted $78 a night! We didn’t want to pay that unnecessarily especially when we didn’t need services so we opted to just head over to the municipal showgrounds where they have overflow camping / parking. We saw lots and lots and lots of RV’s of every type parked here – had to be a couple of hundred and we drove in, were told to park and line up to register and yes, there would be room. Seems they just keep cramming in more and more people.

Today we heard from some overlanding friends of ours, Yianni & Rochelle, who were currently in AU nearby us so we’ll head over to visit them next week. He is Greek and she is Australian and we met them back in Colombia back in 2017. Yianni is the one who got us interested in KEGS as he had been there in its early days and knew Lucky.

The cost here is $20 pp per night and there are toilets, showers and drinking water available and quite centrally located and but of course, we got put far from the entrance/central area. We found a spot, parked and then went to walk to check out the town and some shops.

Doug had seen a cool shop this morning and wanted to check out shirts and stuff so we went over to “Anything and Everything Esperance” and browsed for a good 20 minutes. We left with a small towel showing a kangaroo lounging on Lucky Bay beach and some beer cozies. She gave us discounted prices on them too.

We then went for a beer as our “evening” NYE celebration as we knew we were not adjusted to the time and we’d been lucky to stay up till 9:30!

The walk back was quite windy and cool and we were glad to get inside away from the wind. What a great NYE day we had at the lovely beaches and we’re afraid the beaches might be all downhill from here! We are already beach snobs and this is contributing to that even more!

We had a quiet night and were again early once again. We were on the road by 7 and left the showgrounds. First thing we wanted to do is the “Great Ocean Drive” just outside the city limits.

This takes you past several beaches and a few lookouts:

It was a nice drive and the beaches were lovely but although the water colour was on par with yesterday, the sand was not quite as white. The road follows the shoreline/dunes so often you can’t see anything until you pullover.

After Ten Mile beach, you drive inland and skirt Pink Lake for a while before you can stop and actually see the lake which is no longer pink.

So we enjoyed our time here and despite the number of rv’s we saw in campgrounds, none of the beaches were crowded; seemed like most people did like we did and just spent a couple of hours at each location and moved on. We never had trouble parking or finding space on the beaches.

In case you didn’t see enough photos above, check here for more.

As mentioned earlier, it’s school holidays right now so we did expect it to be worse. But we think booking campgrounds is going to be needed more for the next few weeks. We tried to book for tonight yesterday but got no answer until this morning and got a spot at a campground near Hyden where the next thing we wanted to see was located. Hyden is a small town inland nearly 380 km / 267 mi from Esperance so we dumped our cassette in town before leaving, filled the diesel tank again and headed inland. It was a longish drive through not the most scenic area (lots of nothing and then we entered “wheat country”) and saw lots of brown fields and no wildlife. However, during the drive, our son, Josh, kept us entertained on WhatsApp with updates of the Men’s Ice Hockey Juniors game between Canada and the USA. That passed the time nicely and he was trying to stay up till midnight anyway with the grandkids.

We arrived at Wave Rock Campground before 1pm, got settled and had showers. It was HOT outside today: 38C / 100F and we pretty much stayed inside in the AC for the afternoon. We’ll go out and check out the park around us tomorrow in the morning! We paid $90 for two nights; they have a large covered seating area, a pool, laundry, camp kitchen, bathrooms and on and off Wi-Fi (which we needed as the cell reception was not that strong here about 5km from the town of Hyden itself).

We spent most of the afternoon and evening inside trying to stay cool. Storm clouds came by but deposited very little on us. We could hear thunder and our neighbours said they saw lightning but it must have burst over some other area.

We managed to sleep in some on Thursday morning – till 6ish! We wanted to get out and do the Wave Rock park this morning before it got too hot. The entrance is right at the back of the campground and entrance to it and the salt pond about 2km away is included in our campground fee.

The Wave Rock is a cool formation:

Then you can walk around the side and up on top where the town reservoir is located with a wall around the top to stop people from falling off and probably to catch rain water to drain into the reservoir:

Next it was some cool holed out and cracked boulders after a rock garden:

Then we walked over to the “Hippo’s Yawn” at the other side of the park – thank goodness the walk was mostly in the forest (sparse as it was) to reduce the amount of sunlight we were in. We wore hats and were grateful for our fly nets as they were quite pesky.

notice we’re wearing fly nets – we were grateful for remembering!

we passed a signboard about Australia’s Rabbit Fence (if you recall from earlier posts, rabbits are not native to Oz and a European brought a few over and as rabbits do, they proliferated to out of control numbers):

The State Barrier Fence of Western Australia, formerly known as the Rabbit-Proof Fence, the State Vermin Fence, and the Emu Fence, is a pest-exclusion fence constructed between 1901 and 1907 to keep rabbits and other agricultural pests from the east, out of Western Australia’s pastoral areas.

There are three fences in Western Australia: the original No. 1 Fence crosses the state from north to south, No. 2 Fence is smaller and further west, and No. 3 Fence is smaller still and runs east–west. The fences took six years to build. When completed, the rabbit-proof fence (including all three fences) stretched 3,256 km / 2,023 mi. The cost to build each kilometre of fence at the time was about $250 (equivalent to $42,000 in 2022).

When it was completed in 1907, the 1,139-mile (1,833 km) No. 1 Fence was the longest unbroken fence in the world. (Now that honour belongs to the Dingo fence we saw back east.)

Upon returning to Matilda, we packed up to drive over to Lake Magic and the Salt Pond. Lake Magic was kinda scummy looking – it supposed to be quite clear when its full.

But the Salt Pond enticed us in. It’s about 20 m across with a pile of slick “mud” in the middle and around the outside are small cabanas for change rooms, showers and toilets. It appears they are also building a few more.

We changed in Matilda and walked over to take a dip after showering first.

The water temp was quite nice; the bottom, when you could touch was uneven and a little slippery but we wore our water shoes and that helped. It has a very high salt content and floating was quite easy – they claim it’s saltier than the Dead Sea.

We didn’t stay too long as there is no shade but it was a nice refreshing dip after our morning hot walk (loop was 3.6 km / 2.5 mi).

We then drove into the town of Hyden for petrol at $1.81 (we should have bought it yesterday when we read it was 1.69 on the app!). We stopped at the town’s Sculpture Historical Walk and learned about the settling of this region.

We were back at the campground around 11, got plugged in, turned on the AC, Fran made breakfast and we cooled off. Today was 40C / 104 F and much windier. The campground was having a bit of a power issue in the mid afternoon so we hope it’s sorted now. We did go for a dip in the pool to cool off while it was down. We had power issues a couple more times in the evening; it seemed someone just had to trip or walk over the cord and we lost power. The power point here has four different sites on it so it’s in a well used area.

After dinner, there was a thunder storm and it rained very hard – so hard we couldn’t hear the sound on Fran’s laptop during a show! It only lasted about 15 minutes though.

The night was quiet and hot so we were grateful for our AC once again. Next morning we did some chores, Doug went for a walk before it got too hot and we left the campground just before check out at ten. It seemed somewhat cooler today – like it was fresher after last night’s storm.

Yesterday we got a booking at a municipal (shire*) campground about 150 km away so as not to have a long driving day. There wasn’t much to see enroute as this area is still wheat country and we’ve seen no wildlife. Kinda reminds of driving across Saskatchewan but it’s a bit hillier.

We arrived in the tiny town of Pingrup (and we mean tiny) we didn’t see a soul except inside the gas station when Doug walked over to get a drink.

This campground is $20 a night and is such good value. There’s power, water, dump, camp kitchen, bbq’s, toilets, showers and laundry as well as an excellent 5G signal! There was only one other guest in one of the ten spots here and we never saw them. The most life we saw was lots and lots of galahs and parrots squawking and flying around.

Doug went to put out the awning and a HUGE spider crawled quickly along the top of the door and went up over the outside light! We were glad he wasn’t inside! It happened to fast to get a photo.

After doing some googling, we figure it was a huntsman spider – one of the harmless ones.

Huntsman spiders are large, long-legged spiders. They are mostly grey to brown, sometimes with banded legs. They have rather flattened bodies adapted for living in narrow spaces under loose bark or rock crevices. This is aided by their legs which, instead of bending vertically in relation to the body, have the joints twisted so that they spread out forwards and laterally in crab-like fashion (‘giant crab spiders’). They are venomous, but their venom is not very effective against humans.

Huntsman spiders are famed as being the hairy so-called ‘tarantulas’ on house walls that terrify people by scuttling out from behind curtains.

Here’s what they look like:

Fran went to get some steps and walked over to the town’s silos about a mile away. First she came upon a dead tree painted blue. Now we’ve seen a few of these in Australia so she googled it cause, hey it had to mean something, right?

Initially starting in Western Australia, the Blue Tree Project has grown to become a national initiative, using dead trees painted blue to raise awareness of the mental health cause: By spreading the paint and spreading the message that “it’s OK to not be OK”, we can help break down the stigma that’s still largely associated with mental health issues.

The silos are situated right beside the wheat storage and she saw trucks dumping off loads and driving away. Here’s one pile of the more than a dozen of them – many of which were covered.

Here are the three silos painted by a Dominican artist from Miama, FL.

We wanted to sit outside and read since the temps were bearable (high 20’s C / 80’s F) but the flies were incessant so we took our chairs and sat in the camp kitchen where it was quite a comfortable temperature out of the sun (it was partly cloudy today). No one joined us overnight so it was quiet and in the morning we took advantage and used the hot showers before setting off.

*Note: here in WA they call what we would call municipalities or counties, a shire:

Here’s the link to more photos of that part of the journey.

We drove through the Stirling Range National Park hoping to see one of the small numbers of quokkas that live here but not too hopeful and no, we didn’t see any. There is lots of hiking in the mountain range here.

Then we continued on to Porogurup National Park to do the hike to the Granite Skywalk on Castle Rock (558 m / 1831’).

This was described as moderately challenging and it had a great deal of steps; it’s 2.2 km to the skywalk and it’s cool how you reach it. The temperature was good for hiking (around 20C / 70F) with a slight breeze under mostly sunny skies. The hike is through a forest so lots of shade most of the time.

At the end there are giant granite boulders you scramble over with hand holds and then a 7 m / 23′ high ladder to climb to get to the walkway with panoramic views of the countryside and you can even see the ocean in the distance.

The walk down wasn’t pain free for Fran but she did it with her collapsible cane and was pretty sore the rest of the day but it was a good hike overall.

We moved on south to the city of Albany for lunch; Fran had been craving a Denny’s style full breakfast for a while and we found a cafe that offered more or less what she was looking for and we both had a big lunch.

This link will take you to more photos of the national parks.

There was a wild camp on iOverlander at a sailing club outside the city with a boat ramp and we drove over there and it fit the bill. A large paved lot with no services but a good 5G signal. We were not bothered at all and other than few people dropping by, most of the boat trailers were gone by late afternoon and we had a few dog walkers in the morning.

There was a pelican overseeing the place on a light post:

We had made a plan to meet up with Yianni and Rochelle on Sunday in the town of Denmark near her father’s homestead and after shopping at the local IGA (the grocery stores in Albany didn’t open until 10) we met them and went to a cafe for an hour or so and then showed them Matilda. They too are planning to return to South America down the road to finish it up like we want to do so maybe we’ll meet again! It was so awesome that they remembered to take a photo with us – Thanks Rochelle!

We then drove down to the coast a few kilometres to see the Elephant Rocks and Greens Pool in William Bay National Park. We lucked out finding a parking spot, had brekkie and then walked down to check the sites out.

Elephant Rocks :

Greens Pool:

Both were quite lovely and although we saw people in the water, it was very windy and the temps were only around 22C / 74F so we opted not to sit on the beach with our umbrella and we knew it wasn’t warm enough for us to get in the water.

Next was the Valley of the Giants – to see the red tingle trees – about the only place in the world they still grow.

The red tingle, is a species of tall tree endemic to the southwest of Western Australia and is one of the tallest trees found in the state. It has thick, rough, stringy reddish bark from the base of the trunk to the thinnest branches, egg-shaped to lance-shaped adult leaves, flower buds in groups of seven, white flowers and shortened spherical to barrel-shaped fruit.

It is a type of eucalyptus tree that typically grows to a height of 8-45 m / 26- 148’ and has thick, rough, stringy and furrowed grey-brown or red-brown bark. The bases of very old, heavily buttressed trees can have a circumference up to 24 m / 79’. The crown is dense and compact, forming a heavy canopy.

The trees often have shallow root systems and grow a buttressed base. The red tingle is often compared to the other two species-the yellow tingle which is smaller. The red tingle can live for up to 400 years.

This is located in the Walpole Nornalup National Park and the Ancient Empire tree walk is free. There is a paid attraction called “walking the treetops” but we chose not to do that.

You take a 500m mostly boardwalk trail through the forest with signboards and lots of tingles to see.

It was a nice cool, comfortable walk where we saw lots of Tingles and a new tree we’d never seen “she-oaks”. The bark sort of looks like cork and it has needles like a pine tree because it actually is a pine native to Australia and the south Asian countries.

We figured we’d done enough today and found a large rest area just outside the national park boundary – there are several in this area, mostly forest, with no entry fees but also no free camping.

We were the first ones parked as it was only mid-afternoon. By morning we saw that another ten or so had arrived overnight. Despite the numbers, it was not noisy at all.

Fran spent at least an hour online that night trying to find a place to spend the next night or two, and after several dead ends (either they were full or had a 4 night minimum this time of year) she finally find one that allowed two nights. She snagged it and so Monday we drove about 230 km / 143 mi through a half a dozen more forested national parks to the small city of Augusta where the Blackwood River meets the sea – almost exact the southwest corner of Australia.

It was a pretty drive – so different from the outback and Nullarbor plains.

We arrived at Turner Holiday park around noon and got settled for two nights. The park is situated right on the river that leads to the ocean and has the usual amenities like power, water, dump point, showers, toilets, laundry and 500 MB of free Wi-Fi per day per device. We paid $108 AUD and although that’s the most we’ve paid so far in Australia, we saw caravan parks that were more than that.

After brekkie, Fran went for a walk along the river to the ocean. There were many people along the river playing, swimming, kayaking and fishing – there are many big trees for shade and a bit of a river beach. She reached the ocean and was not too impressed. The beach is full of dead sea grass and no one was on it. Then a little further on, the beach on large rocks so they might be keeping the seagrass off the sand.

On the way back, when she got back to Serina Bay that the campground is located on she spotted, three dolphins, five pelicans and a large ray.

Doug went over to the river later and saw five rays!

Tuesday morning, Doug went for one of his marathon walks and Fran got a bunch of stuff done that’s easier to do when she’s alone. Laundry, floor/carpet cleaning, stripping and remaking beds and the like. She also spent a good solid hour trying to find us a place to stay for the next two nights – almost impossible these days. We are hoping come next week, when the busiest weeks of school holidays are over, it might get easier. We are meeting up with overlanding friends near Perth for a couple of nights over the weekend so that helps too.

It was cooler today, didn’t get much over 24C / 76 F and it was windier than yesterday. We hope it stays like this for a couple more days because the spot that we did find for the next two nights has no power!

Doug was back around one and he vegged some; Fran tried to read by the water but it got too windy and the sea gulls were making a heck of a racket for some reason.

We left the Turner Holiday Park campground in Augusta on the early side as we had further to go than we had hope due to the lack of camping options and we had a reservation for a visit to the Underwater Observation Jetty ? At 2pm and we had lots of short stops before that.

First we went to Cape Leeuwin to see where they say the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean but we now know that’s not really true. Just before arriving at the gate, there was a turn off to an old historical water wheel so we pulled in there first.