WA #2== Northern expedition
After we returned from Lyn and Jims we spent one extra night in Perth and returned to sample the wonders of the chinese foodhalls- less than three quid for six different types of chinese food piled high on a plate! Full of monosodium glutemate and fat but delicious- everywhere should have them! We had a particularly good run of luck that day as we booked two dorm beds but when we go there there didnt seem to be any free. By the time it came to the evening and we still couldnt find any free beds they gave us a double for the same price!
We spent ages looking for a car to hire and managed to get a huge beast from Avis - a holden commodore, 3/1/2 litre v6 without realising what a big car wed reserved. However we were soon glad of it as I had to do all the driving since Marks under 25 and all the driving eventually turned out to be 4500 kms in 6 days!!!
We drove up to monkey mia on the first day- a place where dolphins are guaranteed to come up to the beach every monring. Following our dissapointments at Bunbury we thought we had to make the detour! We drove all day the first day(10 hours aaaaagh) and arrived in Denham at 830 to get some dinner. Normally we wouldnt view this as a problem, 830pm, but we realised how far into hicksville wed gotten when all the restaurants were shuitting and we had to practiacally beg them to take pity on us. Since it was apparently so late and the dolphin viewing was first thing in the morning, we slept in the car - again glad that our huge hire car was big enough for such an eventuality. It seems to be quite the done thing here though- we saw many people getting out of their cars in the morning to use the toilet block, with their camping chairs and thermos flasks!!
The dolphins were more than on time at 7am and we soon went to see them swimming around in the water in front of us. It was quite a tourist trap as theyre so famous and they get fed so we went on a boat trip on a former racing catamaran and saw more dolphins out at sea- one even swam between the middle of our catamaran! We also saw dugongs - similar to manitee. Apparently the mermaid myth is based on them. ITs quite rare to see them and we were apparently very lucky as we actaully saw two mating!
That afternoon we drove another couple of hundred kilometres to arrive in Coral Bay, where the Ningaloo Reef is only 100m from the shore in places! Its supposed to be bigger and better than the Great Barrier reef and far less over touristified. In particular its famous for being the only place in the world where you can regularly see Whale Sharks- up to 15m big I believe, the biggest fish in the world. They actually run boat trips to swim with them from late march onwards. The reef has a mass spawning event 10 days after the first full moon in march , and the fish feeding attracts the whalesharks. It being around the 23rd at this time we assumed it must be time already but were told it didnt start until the next monday! WE did however manage to book ourselves onto a wildlife tour that was essentially the same thing but with no guarantee of see whalesharks and therefore not(quite) so exorbitantly expensive. We decided if there was any chance of being able to swim with them we should take the plunge because it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Unfortunately the whalesharks didnt agree and were nowhere to be found (they had spotter planes looking for them for three or four hours but no luck.) So we missed out but at least we tried. We did however manage to swim with Manta rays which was really impressive, so that made it kind of worth it.; And on our snorkelling sessions I did see two different kinds of reef shark and a tiger shark as well as a plethora of brightly coloured shoals of fish and an octopus and many many turtles, so it was a good day.
After coral bay we retraced our footsteps and headed back to perth, via the kalbarri region of rugged coast and not much else and the Pinnacles desert which was really cool, tall yellow rocks as far as the eye can see, it looked like stonehenge on a huge scale.
We didnt actually go back to Perth but hit the Eastern Highway once we got close(were talking days later as there is thousands of kms of absolutely straight road involved) and headed another 600 ks east to the goldfields region and Kalgoorlie Boulder, which is still thriving with the biggest open cast goldmine in the world. We went down inside a disused gold mine on a tour with an old miner and did gold panning(I found 3 bits, mark nil) and watched gold pouring. Then we went to see the SuperPit in the Golden Mile, 3kms by 1.5kms! Very different to the little tunnels that we were shown on the tour!
The town of Kalgoorlie was particularly interesting- with the gold discovery, obviously the economy and population boomed, and as our tour guide kept telling us the miners were earning bucketloads of money, which they enjoyed spending in various legal and illegal ways. Prostitution was a large part of the town, and still is- the two Youth Hostels are actually right next to the still fnctoning brothels- on the same road as the police station! Apparently they arent allowed to solicit on the streets any more but otherwise they have an unspoken agreement to keep going- you could see them standing inside the doorways int he evening. Funnily enough they now even run tours during the day for tourists! The all male mining environment also involved mens only bars, lots of gambling and what the lonely planet described as "scantily clad barmaids" So imagine my suprise when we went in a perfectly normal corner pub and I slowly realised thaat scantily clad meant a g-string, bunny ears and nipple tassels! Mark was quite keen to stay and asked what I wanted to drink but I felt a bit uncomfortable and we didnt stay!!!
We did try to go to the museum but realised it was good friday- the only day other than xmas that it wasnt open! However we had already seen a lot about the goldfields as well as getting quite a good feel for the nature of the town so we drove back to Perth as we had to catch our flight to Melbourne the next morning.
We did well over four thousand ks in total, even with day trips and museums etc thrown in so I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it. Adding to that the fact that there are no catseyes on these vast expanses of road, kangaroos get killed by the trolleyload and we saw many hopping about precariously close to the highway after dark and I actually killed two birds when the flock inexplicably dive-bombed the windscreen for no apparent reason. Luckily they didnt damage the car as I was quite worried about that as well as feeling quite guilty that theyd chosen my car to commit suicide onto. So all in all it was quite stressful road trip, very boring for hours on end as theres absolutely nothing to see and perfectly straight roads for miles on end, but the highlights were definitely worth it and we really enjoyed it.
Jenny, 7/4/05
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