Week 11 – Coral Bay to Perth – 1625 kms

Week 11 – Coral Bay to Perth – 1625 kms

Day 71 we left beautiful Coral Bay behind and headed for Shark Bay and Monkey Mia. On the way we detoured into Carnarvon for a quick look, a large service town for the Coral Coast. Finally we reached Shark Bay, a fantastic peninsula with white sands and lovely turquoise water. As time was getting away from us, we decided to only stop at the Hamelin Pool Stromatolites and Telegraph station. Stromatolites are the oldest living organism on the planet. The water in Hamelin Bay is twice as salty as usual sea water, caused by a sand bar across the bay’s entrance and rapid evaporation from the shallow water. Stromatolites are composed of bacteria and algae and animals that feed off these substances cannot tolerate such salty conditions, as a result stromatolities grow here undistributed. They are extremely slow growing and only grow at a maximum of 0.3mm a year. Our stop for the night was the Monkey Mia Dolphin resort, an outdated resort located on a beautiful clear turquoise bay. Thus we quickly set up the van and then watched the sunset over the bay.

Day 72 we participated in what Monkey Mia is famous for, the daily beach feeding of the wild dolphins. This consists of a very orchestrated show, commencing with entry into the water to approximately 40cm depth of approximately 200 people in a straight line to watch the rangers wade in the water being followed by the dolphins along the line for all to see, whilst explain all about the history of the dolphins visiting the beach and the dolphins habits. After approximately 40 minutes of this five people at random, are chosen from the crowd to hand feed one dolphin each. Luckily for Adelaide she was one of the chosen ones. This is repeated up to 3 times a morning depending on how often the dolphins decide to come in. The rest of the day was spent enjoying the resort; playing beach volleyball, riding a pedal boat, watching the dolphins and turtles playing in the water, swimming, participating in happy hour and reading a book, life is pretty tough.

Day 73, again it was time to move on, this time to Kalbarrie. However, prior to leaving Shark Bay there were still a number of attractions to visit. The first was a quick visit into Francois Peron National Park to visit the old station shearing shed and shearer quarters and to learn about Project Eden, a project to try and eradicate feral animals in the area to allow the native flora and fauna to once again thrive. Secondly it was into Denham the only town in Shark Bay, a town that in the next few years I am sure will double if not triple in size to support the increase in tourism. Finally Shell Beach, shell beach is made up of countless tiny cockle shells up to 10m in depth in places and stretching some 120kms. The shells were once quarried and used as building bricks in some of the early buildings.

Day 74 am, was spent learning about the locals wildflowers through a guided tour at the local wildflower centre, which is contained within the Kalbarrie National Park. There is over 8,000 different species of wildflowers in the surrounding area. The afternoon was spent exploring Kalbarrie National Park and relaxing at the caravan. The exploring of the national park took shorter than expected as we are all feeling very gorged and lookout over exposed and given the weather was very warm elected not to even undertaken the short walk to Z-bend lookout. However given that we had driven to the park we did make the effort to visit Natures Window and the Loop lookout. Natures window was well worth the short walk as through a natural rock arch the gorge of the Murchison River below is beautiful framed.

Day 75 saw us all wake up flat, the mornings are cold and today is to be our last night on the road before Perth, which signals the end of our trip. Not looking forward to another long day driving and the approach of Perth we slowly packed up and headed off. First stop on the way to Jurien Bay was the Principality of Hutt River. The Principality of Hutt River is not considered to be part of Australia and has its own ruler Prince Leonard, passport, currency and stamps. Leonard Casley a farmer who was appalled by new wheat quotas, succeeded from the state of Western Australia in 1970. Leonard understood the Australian constitution to a tee and managed to negotiate his way through a number of loop holes to form the principality. Leonard and the other citizens of Hutt River are no longer required to pay any taxes to the Australian Government as they are not considered to be Australian citizens. We were fortunate enough to be given a guided tour of the Principality of Hutt River by Prince Leonard himself and his lovely wife Princess Shirley. Prince Leonard was a very interesting and unassuming man now in his mid-eighties. The children thought this experience was great and loved buying stamps and obtaining the required visa to enter Hutt River. The second stop was the Pink Lakes, the water of the lakes is pink due to the naturally produced carotene in the water. Final stop for the day was Jurien Bay, a small seaside village approximately 250kms from Perth.

Day 76 saw us pack up the van for the final time and head off to the Pinnacles, natural limestone formations formed many of million of years ago contained within a sandy like desert environment in the middle of nowhere. Then it was onto Perth, specifically Coogee Beach, the car and van hand-over location. The afternoon was spent walking along the beach, setting up the van for the final time and watching the AFL grand final, go The Saints.

Day 77, a day spent exploring Fremantle and cleaning and packing up the van, ready for the hand-over to the Jefferies. The signal of the end of the van experience, an experience that hopefully gives all of us, especially the children long lasting happy memories, that’s living the dream.