Mount Tom Price and Karijini

It's a bit of a drive out to Tom Price but then again it's a bit of a long drive to anywhere out in these parts. But I did do my bit to cut 50 klicks off the trip from Coral Bay to Tom Price by taking a dusty detour around the back and therefore avoiding Paraburdoo, not that it impressed Amanda much as everything got covered in red dust and it was a little bumpy in parts. Still it was an adventure and the scenery was awesome, lot's of hills made out of iron covered in red dust.

Above is a picture of my feet and Mount Nameless in the background. As you can see it is fairly steep, Amanda will tell you all about when we return because her car drove up almost to the top although her eyes were closed for some of the descent! Fun, adventure and good view from up there.

Tom Price is quite an oasis, very green and full of young people, I think I was the oldest person there. About 800 people of the 2,500 local population work at the Rio Tinto mine. There are about 500 FIFO's and it has one pub and one petrol station. So in effect the town has one iron ore mine and two gold mines. 

Callam made some friends in the camp groung. We had been feeding Galahs and Corellas until I saw a sign saying not to feed them. Apparently they are a real pest around town and that have expulsion weeks where they let off sirens to get rid of them. Anyway they were fun for a while.

We all went down to the mine on a tour. Here we are nice and clean before the tour.

The tour itself was very informative, of course, so much so we only remember snippets. Tom Price was an American who took a helicopter ride out here and said "Wow, look at all that black stuff sticking out that mountain...it's pure iron." When he told the Australian government they said "Yeah, so what mate. It's miles from bloody anywhere you can go and scrape it off the mountain." Tom Price died before the mining started in the mid sixties, we named the mountain after him but not a nearby mountain called Mount Nameless. Rio Tinto owns the mine and the railway that runs 236 wagons of iron ore rock and fininings out to Dampier each day. Rio Tinto don't like Twiggy Fortescue so they won't let him use the railway so they have sole use of it. Twiggy has loads of four wagon road trains that run up and down the road from his nearby mines to Dampier every day. It's very hot and dusty at the mine and there is quite a bit of very heavy and big machinery. Look at these pics.

Finn and Cal sizing up an old Tonka.

The boy and girls that drive the big trucks like to beep their horns long, hard and often as they pass.

The red dust gets everywhere and it wise not to lean against anything. Look at Marley's leg.

They dig big holes up here as you can imagine.

As impressive as the mine was for all the human ingenuity that goes into its workings there was also the natural beauty of Karijini National Park to visit as well. The park is the second largest national park in WA and the little part of it that we decided to visit was the Dales Gorge area. It had an excellent visitors centre which is that well designed that it blends into the environment, we only found it because Finn hit it with his head whilst searching for somewhere to pee. From the outside it looks like a huge rusting ships hull, on the inside it is full of really interesting stuff. The video commentaries by the local indigenous people are great as are the stories that that explain the lanscape and some of the star constellations. 

It was nice in the aircon of the visitors centre but we had a trek to do. "Not far" I said "Quick walk and a swim and back for a picnic at another swimming hole." 2 and half hours and five 5km later we had walked along the top of the gorge, clambered down a cliff, swam in the beautiful circular pool and trekked down the bottom of the gorge and had a swim at Fortescue falls. There was a twisted ankle, a bloodied shin, an unplanned slip and swim and some hot faces but by crikey it was a good adventure.

Ahhhh, the swim after the long climb down. 

It's lovely Dad, but it's hot.

Are we there yet?

Just prior to our second swim.

Macho macho men.

The kids decided that this pool would look good in our back yard, scaled down perhaps.

Surely this has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Shark Bay to Coral Bay

It's a long way into Shark Bay from the main highway that threads north to Port Headland and beyond but it is well worth the effort. A couple of travellers tips though, make sure you stop off for supplies at larger places before you stop in Denham or Monkey Mia, and if you are thinking of camping in Denham bring a drill in order to get the tent pegs in the ground. I recall looking at three tomatoes for sale for $4 at the local store in Denham with the same stunned disbelief that I had looking at bent peg that I had been bashing into the ground an hour before. The next day I was stunned again when we saw emus in the sea at Monkey Mia. One could say it was a stunning experience all round. Callam covered off very well the experience that we had on the Shotover catamaran in the previous blog but I will add a photo of the crazy emus.

And I suppose now thinking about it after seeing kangaroos on the beach in Cape Le Grand it does seem to make sense to have these two beach loving animals as part of our national emblem.

We were lucky enough to arrive at Monkey Mia for the third feeding of the dolphins and as luck would have it Marley was lucky enough to be chosen to feed one of the dolphins.

I stuck the Go Pro in the water....and as luck would have it a mother and calf swam past. But because video is a pain to upload here are some photos of those cheeky creatures.

And I better not forget these two sea dogs we saw out and about.

Overall Monkey Mia and Shark Bay were well worth the visit. We were fortunate enough not to compete with crowds of people and we saw a lot of sea life.

Coral Bay was  our next destination. We stopped off in Carnarvon for supplies, it looks nothing like Carnarvon in Wales BTW. This place had bent gum and palm trees that seemed to have been bent by the strong winds the place tends to experience. They grow a lot of tiny bananas up here which are quite delicious, they even have a little big banana on the road out of town which commemorates "The home of the lunch box banana." I was too stuuned/lazy to take a shot of it so you will have our word for it.

Coral bay is approached through some very arid country dotted with termite mounds and red earth. It is surprising then to get out to get out of the car and get hit by the humidity. It we were primarily in Coral Bay for snorkelling, fishing and swimming with whale sharks, sunburn was just an added bonus. The good thing about Coral Bay is that you can walk into the water and in a few metres you are swimming amongst some beautifully colourful fish and coral. Finn was very excited by all this and found a confidence that was to encourage him a few days later when he went out snorkelling in the open sea on Ningaloo reef proper where to his delight he saw some even bigger coral formations coral and two Loggerhead turtles, his squeals of delight were hilarious.

Marley and Captain Macca

The boys with brother Jim

Unfortunately Finn was just a little too small to dive with the whale sharks but he did manage to see one from the surface. The rest of us managed to get into the water up to five times each to see two whale sharks up close and although they were reasonably "small" at 6 -7 meters thy did appear to be very large and majestic.  

A view of our boat out on Ningaloo reef

The whole experience was made possible by Captain Macca and Callam and Finn's new brother, Jim.

Another great experience we had was out on the boat Seaforce reeling in all sorts of snapper , cod and the occassional Red Emporer. Cal and I did pretty well catching the biggest two fish of the day , a Gold Banded Snapper and a Red Emporer. For those that are interested we used two hook baited with sardines and squid on a hand line dropped to 100-110meters. Cal did the long haul up with a couple of fish including a 2kg Honeycomb Cod, it was the best fish he had ever eaten. We had so much fish we had to give some away.

Our two big ones which other people also had their photos taken with them! Fibbers.

Our box of fish.

Well we are in the Pilbarra now and will update soon on our Karinjini Dales gorge experience and our trip down the Rio Tinto mine. Cheers for now.

 

Animals in the Sea at Monkey Mia by Callam Thomas

We went on a big boat in Monkey Mia called the Shotover. We saw a manta ray, it was really fast and big. A tiger shark came to us. Tiger sharks can eat people if they want to.

Here I am lying on the net of the Shotover

Finn and I met some cool people from Brasil

We saw a massive squadron of sting rays . Some sting rays can look like a shark, they have a head like a shovel but a tail like a shark and they are called shovel rays.

Here is a Loggerhead turtle

A squadron of rays

The dolphins that rode with the boat.

A turtle bobbing to the surfce.

A crazy sea snake was twisting and turning. Sea snakes are not harmful unless you really annoy them. We also saw a pod of dolphins that nearly hit our boat.

There were funny turtles that stuck their heads out of the water. They can live over one hundred years.

We saw sun burnt dugon with a sunburned back.

And the sunburned dugong.

Perth and Fremantle

Seven days gone in the blink of an eye. The hurly burly of Perth is some 800k away from Coral Bay which is where where we are now. The pace of life could not be in more contrast. Finn is enjoying turning six today and we are letting him decide what is the agenda for today and for the moment it is Mario Kart and some Harry Potter game on the Nintendo at the moment. Whilst he does battle with that I shall try and recall some of the events of Perth and Fremantle that we experienced.

Perth is a big place, 1.7m people with about the same amount of cars which are constantly choking its highways. All the houses look new and there some extraordinarily rich people that live in houses the size of shopping centres. Fortresses built out of mining and engineering wealth. Kerry Stokes' pad looks like a corner shop compared to some of the mansions that border the shores of The Swan from Perth to Fremantle. Houses in Fremantle are smaller and the traffic is less but very large container ships are parked on the high street. Fremantle also has a statue of Bon Scott, a functioning brewery and a prison that now functions as a museum. It also has a rather good market that operates Friday and Saturday and in it there is an Indian man with an Indian take way shop that sells the best deep fried Indian delicacies in the world. Each one of these deep fried things have unpronounceable names (I did recognise samosa though) but my recommendation would be the the stuffed sweet chilli, heaven on a stick.

Finny in front of the magic shop

Not sure whether it was a reflection on Perth or not but we spent three nights there but two days in Fremantle. Perth is a nice enough place, very clean, good air, nice park and beautiful river but Freo has vibrancy, salty air, deep fried food and a brewery. It also has an oldish lady that walks the streets picking up everyones rubbish, I was going to take a photo of her but I just watched her in stunned admiration, maybe she had an obsessive compulsive disorder or maybe she just liked her city to be clean, whatever her motive she deserves an award.

We enjoyed a trip down the Swan from Battery Point to Fremantle on a cruise boat. It just gave us the impression that there are an awfully lot of very rich people that live in Perth in big palaces next to marinas that have very big expensive white boats in them. There must be poor people somewhere but we could not see them. Perth sprawls forever and on the way out north the freeway reduces to to a un-signposted roundabout, but that is another story.

The long walk to Freo prison

Here are some pictures from Perth and Fremantle.

Using the amenities in the yard

The legend

Checking out the digs in 3 division

A giraffe and a camel at the docks.

Little Creatures.

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And the markets

Bare feet beer feats

Not sure if I can describe the following as true feats, but there were one or two pictures that were pretty tricky to take, especially the Denmark one where I almost fell five metres off a bench and that was before I even ripped the lid off the first beer for the day. I realise however that I must sacrifice for my art and even though there have been some close calls and the occasional bit of heckling I have persevered in order to prove to the world beer, scenery and feet can (pun, can ha) push the boundaries of art...downwards at least. 

The pictures/art do involve real feet, bear sometimes semi, but there is always beer involved. Consumption to date has been a little alarming considering the quality not so much the quantity but i'd say two 30 blocks of West End followed by two 30 blocks of Emu Export within the space of fours weeks cannot be that good for you.  I think I may have possibly swung away from my road to perdition and am heading slightly for Damascus, metaphorically of course in the epiphany sense because no amount of beer would put me in Syria right now. The epiphany occurred in the Little Creatures brewery where I realised one good honest beer beats at least six Emus or Pet Shop Boys. This is turning to drivel, look at the pictures now....there is no particular order

Meeting our old mate Cerro,  who was in Adelaide town doing some horse trading. 

The Crazy Gang in Esperance the day after we travelled almost 1000km from Border Village across the Nullarbor.

If you are offended by pornography do not look at this picture. It does show The Great Southern Ocean on the background from Adelaide Shores.

It was very cold in Pemberton so we lit a fire. Here I am supersving children in the class room.

This one was on the beach at Busselton, another danger shot where I fell off the chair and spilt beer on myself. Crazy but true.

Little Creature sampling in a caravan park in Perth. Notice the cheeky artistic licence  I took with the  Little Creatures sticker tucked between my toes!

Having a relaxing ale looking out over Lincoln bay (nobody there calls it Port Lincoln).

This is Streaky Bay just up the road from Lincoln. Nice place, full of Queenslanders.

Not happy with this shot as I was sitting on the ground near lots of road trains, some were moving too. A bit of a danger shot but bad because I cut off Roo 2's head.

Not forgetting the big danger shot from Denmark. It was a big drop but I did it unaided.  I'm shaking just looking at this one.

I cannot honestly take all the credit for my shots without saying a big thank you to my artistic director, mentor and confidant Mr Finn Gwynfor Thomas. Here he is trying to drag me away for a swim. 

Pemberton and Busselton

Hi there, it's been well over a week since I have been in touch. This was partly due to laziness and partly due to Emu Export and partly due to a Lee Child book that I picked up in a kitchen in Denmark. So I will have to give a quick summation of events since the last update which I just viewed and was about whales and dinosaurs and stuff. Well we are in Busselton now, about to leave tomorrow and have also enjoyed a stop over in a rather wet and foresty (not a real word) Pemberton. 

Pemberton has a magnificent IGA, a good pub where pints are $5.50 and a camp site with very friendly parrots and low flying ducks and bastard kookaburras that wake you up at 5.12am every bloody morning. And no yabbies (marron) set the traps for three days got nothing.  Marron sell for $60 a kg over here but they are just roided up yabbies, blue in colour thugh and quite fascinating, upon reflection I would have preferred keeping the one we bought for $14.57 as a pet rather than eating it which no one was impressed with, it was blue after all..kind of a funky weird little thing it was but tasted like and old prawns uncles thong. We all agreed shark tasted better.

Anyway forgot to get a picture of the Big Marron so I cannot paste it in here. But the very friendly parrot vid is here.

at pemberton there are some tremendous drives through the tall timber Karri forests and also an "opportunity" to climb one of the old fire spotting trees. They don't use these any more because most fire spotters are fat and lazy these days, drink too much Emu Export and basically can't be bothered climbing trees, they use planes instead to locate fires. However, they still allow tourists to climb the trees which we did, Callam, Marley and I that is. The children were at the top in a heart beat, I was a little slower and regrettably using only my left leg to push up with, I was to regret this for the next four days as my left quadracep was in extreme trauma because it had never been abused in such way before. Here's a picture of those pesky kids making it look easy.

The tree was called the Gloucester tree named after some chinless tosser that came to look at it from England in the 1930's but I have a different name for it which starts with a capital B and ends in a capital D. Anyway I was to have revenge on those kids in Busselton.

Not sure about the history of Busselton, basically because of the the lack of time I  have applied to to researching it, mainly due to the Lee Child book I had been reading and trying to come to terms with why I have bought a second 30 pack of Emu Export expecting it to taste better than the previous one. It does have a very long pier/jetty which is 1.8km long. A short walk when you need to think about bad choices in life, like buying two cases of Emu Export, but very long if you are a bored child. As I told Marley and Callam, think about it like that tree, just longer an flatter. Credit to 'ol Finny, he did't complain he just marched on...with no shoes, but he did jump on my guts later.

Anyway at the end of our trek they did seem to find energy for climbing and bouncing.

And I did meet a guy with a message on his hoody which I am still not sure what it means. Work it out yourself.

Well to be honest the Geographe coast from Busselton through Margaret River to Augusta is great. There are crazy bashing waves especially at Margaret River and Yallingup but also some beautiful protected bays to snorkel in.

There is also this random picture of a natural bridge from near Albany that is not in context at all but deserves a look.

And because this area is so full of limestone it is riddled which caves, some of which we went to visit at Ngigli. Much like most places we have been it has been so much more than we expected, I am sure the kids will love to tell you about the Tunnel of Terror when they return. Here is a picture of one of the caves.

Sadly we leave here tomorrow as we are off to the big smoke of Perth. I have still not visisted a brewery but my resolve will be stretched in Freo I am sure. Brief as it is, this is the update I will leave you with one final sunset shot looking west from Busselton jetty. Cheers.