Somewhat reluctantly we left T-Bone Bay and the Cape Range National Park, stopping over in Exmouth to stock up and fuel up. We dined on rather large and delicious prawns and found one that looked as though it might like to dine on Vin Rouge!
Travelling due south for the first time we left the Exmouth peninsular, rejoined the North West Coastal Highway and crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. For the first time in weeks we’re out of the tropics and into the sub-tropics.
Southward over the 26th Parallel we officially left the North West for the West. Nothing much changed. The road was long and straight with the usual scrubby bushes, but slowly we noticed change. Spring flowers were appearing, sometimes just a few of them, sometimes great swathes of colour, yellow, magenta and white contrasting strongly with the red earth. Most noticeable were the abundant lilac-coloured Mulla-Mulla which we understand translates from the local Aboriginal dialect as “pretty but useless”.
We stopped briefly at Coral Bay but found it not to our liking – too much commercialism and crowds of people – and continued to Carnarvon, a run of almost 400 kilometres, which is about as far as we really want to travel in a day. Here we struck it lucky. Acting on a tip from the tourist office we arrived at the Outback Oasis Caravan Park to be warmly welcomed. We vote the Park as the best we’ve experienced on our travels. A good site, excellent amenities and the friendliest of staff. Well done all.
The next day finds us once again piling on the k’s as we make for the Shark Bay peninsula and the little town of Denham. Denham has a friendly seaside atmosphere. Even the sky put on a show for us.
It’s the most westerly town in Australia and the Shark Bay Hotel, more usually known as The Old Pub, is the most westerly drinking spot. Of course we paid a visit, enjoyed a hearty meal and a couple of drinks, celebrating that were about as far from Brisbane as it’s possible to be whilst still in Australia. The outward bound part of our adventure is complete. Now we’re on our way back home.
The area abounds in oddities. Firstly there’s cockles. Not your usual cockles that we’ve eaten soaked in vinegar, but tiny Fragum Cockles, less than a centimetre across. Millions of these creatures survive in the waters of Shark Bay, which is twice as salty as the surrounding ocean because the sea evaporates rather than ebbing and flowing. With no predators the colony has built up over thousands of years forming deep layers of shell that fuse together with the mildly acidic rain. Blocks of the stuff, known as coquina, have been quarried for building. We rather liked the restaurant, built by one man over a period of four years early in the twentieth century.
Another oddity is Stromatolites. We can’t claim to really understand what they’re all about, but suffice to say that they are one of the earliest and most primitive forms of life (a bit like that Toyota driver really!). To us they looked like black rocks. I’m sure a geologist would be much more excited. Hamelin Telegraph Station is where all these are to be found, together with another more modern oddity. We enjoy the occasional scone and the ones served up came with the usual strawberry jam and cream. However, we’re remain to be convinced that a background flavour of cheese was really to our taste.
We were impressed with the memorial to the ship and crew of HMAS Sydney, sunk in 1941 by the German Raider HSK Kormoran, disguised as a Dutch merchant vessel.
Dolphins visit the strangely-named Monkey Mia, a short drive from Denham and we watched as half a dozen of these graceful creatures gently took fish from the hands of
willing volunteers.
So far we’ve clocked up over 15,000 kilometres. It should be a shorter trip back.
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