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lindoig · 7 years

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Days 124 to 132 (Monday 28/8 to Tuesday 5/9)

It is about 3 weeks since I posted anything, but we have had some adventures and things get busy even when travelling. Busy is not the best word, but some days really are busy with all the overheads that need doing – paying bills, answering email, minor maintenance on the car, van and equipment and so on. And we always fill so much of each day that we don’t have time to write much at the end of the day – even if the brain was capable of ordering our thoughts. Nonetheless…….

We were up early on Monday for final loading and connecting the van and with hearty thanks and goodbyes to Judy and Garry, we hit the highway and took the rig to Dometic to have the hinges on the fridge replaced, the door reset and some of the shelves replaced. It only took about 30 minutes, but we strolled down to a lunch shop around the corner and had ourselves some brekky. I also took the opportunity to return a call I missed on the previous Friday from our caravan storage company in Melbourne. It seems they had a major break-in to the yard where we store our van (several things were stolen, including at least one caravan) and they need to reorganise the area to make it more secure – and we may not have a place to park when we get home. This is a really big catastrophe for us and we are anxiously awaiting further information about whether we will still be able to be accommodated in the newly secured yard or not! We certainly hope so!!! (Twelve days later, they contacted me again and assured me that all would be well and our place in their plans is secure – we were mightily relieved and thanked them accordingly!)

We collected the van with an operational fridge/freezer and headed for our pre-booked hidey-hole back at Guilderton. We arrived in time for lunch and set up in a quiet area of the caravan park and I went fishing! Must be at least 10 years since my line got wet. I always think it would be good to give it a go, but it usually seems a lot of work getting ready and I don’t have a clue how to catch fish anyway. It is largely an opportunity to stand somewhere quiet near the water and watch the birds. At least my luck held with my fishing – same as all the other times, I caught nothing. (I tried again the next day with identical results so at least I am consistent.) I had a couple of half-hearted nibbles, but that was it! Next time I might have to try with some bait on the hook or something equally scientific. I did watch quite a few birds, many venturing very close to me – pelicans, Pacific black ducks, welcome swallows, silver, crested and Caspian terns and lots of cormorants flying past. Also saw a couple of kestrels, a little eagle, an osprey, a white-bellied sea eagle and numerous small birds flitting about in the middle distance.

We walked down to the beach a couple of times while we were at Guilderton and noticed how radically different the mouth of the river (the Moore) was from day to day. The river flows out of the estuary, but the tide also comes in – at least the breakers flush large volumes of water back into the river. The first day, the river was winning and the surf was strikingly brown from the tannin in the river – you can see less 50cm into the water it is so dark! Next day, the sea was winning and the waves looked sandy and the river was a little clearer – and well over half the sandbar where I went fishing was under water. Nature never ceases to amaze us and there is a lesson every day if we just take the time to observe and think about the differences and the reasons for them.

Heather did a lot of cooking while we were there and we are enjoying the spoils as a result – delicious! We have also caught up with email and our blogs are more current than they have been for weeks. I went out to explore what seems to have been an old sand quarry on Wednesday. It is just a couple of clicks out of town and it is mainly yellow sand that has obviously surrounded dozens of odd-shaped sandstone rocks. They have mined a lot of the sand, leaving a fascinating landscape of yellow sand and white sandstone pillars. There were lots of invisible birds there – plenty of bird-calls, but it was outstandingly hard to find the birds – but I also enjoyed finding wildflowers. In particular, I found an area of donkey orchids, lots of cow-slip orchids, some snake creeper, one lonely kangaroo paw and a variety of other exquisite flowers hidden away out of sight. The quarry is perhaps 400 x 100 metres and just off the road. I saw a memorial plaque hidden way in toward the back for someone unknown – but I noted a sign saying that the area had been replanted (by a well-known funeral company) as a memorial park in 2001. I guess very few people would ever take the time to visit it, but I was delighted with my hour or so there and would like to go back for another walk around. While I was out in the car, I explored a bit more of Guilderton and discovered that it had more to offer than we thought with access to Silver Creek (a minor tributary to the river), with more water-birds to see and more river to explore.

The downside of my sand quarry excursion was that I scraped an invisible post near the caravan as I was leaving and bent the passenger-side side-step/running board and that will need replacing at some time.

I have just realised that I completely forgot to mention an important detour we made on the last day approaching Perth. We visited Cervantes (quite a pleasant little burg) and went to the stromatolites that fascinated my Mum when she was alive. We took her there in the caravan after Dad died and she really enjoyed that – but it is now very different. Instead of just stopping on the road and pushing through a few bushes for a squizzy, it is now built up with an extensive parking area, picnic tables, a boardwalk, signage and a 2-kilometre circuit around the lake. We were as fascinated this visit as we were last time and did the circuit – with many stops for photos and closer examination of plants as well as the stromatolites and thrombolites – even checked out some birds along the track, but there were not many of them.

We took advantage of the picnic tables and ate our lunch there while working out some more details of our next year’s travel plans. I don’t pretend to understand a lot about stromatolites, but the idea that the things we were looking at are so many hundred million years old, with perhaps billions of generations of micro-organisms living and dying to produce the columns and mats of living cyanobacteria we see today (along with a few small fish) quite astounds me.

After two and a half delightful days at Guilderton, we set sail for Moora on the Thursday – but spent a couple of hours detouring around Guilderton before really putting the foot down. We went back to the places I had found on the previous day and I think Heather enjoyed them as much as I did. Silver Creek was nice, but we spent at least a couple of hours wandering around the sand quarry again. Lots more photos, a few birds and other creatures – and we even got quite wet when it rained on us, but didn’t slow us down. We found a couple more memorial plaques hidden around the rocks and bushes – even a tin pooh-bear – who knows who or what he commemorates.

We thought we would camp at Moora that night (we had to go there anyway to collect the mail), but arrived earlier than expected so decided to put a few more kilometres under the wheels and set off on the Miling road, intending to follow the Great Northern Highway. Unfortunately, someone moved the road (or hid the turn-sign) and we ended up quite a few clicks up on the Coorow road. We had to back-track a little, but eventually found our way through to Dalwallinu via some odd twists and turns and camped in a really nice quiet van park there.

Next day (Friday) was a really interesting one. We headed north to Payne’s Find and bought fuel and ate our lunch under a tree near the old gold battery. It was open to tourists and we spent a fascinating hour or so with the woman who runs it. It has been in her family for over 100 years and she still does a bit of crushing, processing and refining in the only privately-owned battery in Western Australia. She is also the only woman ever to run a battery in Australia and she does all this at an age I suspect is at least 5 years more than mine! It was a great tour and we had a good look at everything and got a lot more information about hands-on gold processing. Once I told her about Dad’s time in the mines, that opened a whole new stream of discussion. Very interesting and educational to boot. We had not really planned to go in there, but we were really glad we did!!

From Paynes Find, we did a major unplanned detour 200-odd km to Sandstone. We had been trying to organise a rendezvous with some friends from Melbourne. Barbara was the key government person we dealt with while at LACVI; and her husband, Jeff, is an artist who has just completed illustrating the Australian Bird Guide: a wonderful new Fieldguide that we purchased prior to publication and that is sitting on our table at home. We have met with them socially a few times and were looking forward to having a ‘home away from home’ with them whilst we were pursuing our respective travels in Western Australia. We had arranged to meet them at Nallan Station near Mt Magnet, but timing wasn’t quite perfect so we decided to catch up with them at Sandstone instead – but being out of mobile range, we couldn’t tell them of the change in plans.

The map showed the road to be potentially dodgy so we asked about it at the Payne’s Find roadhouse with somewhat lukewarm results, but it turned out to be in superb condition, easily the best dirt road I have ever driven on. A great drive with lots of changes in scenery – a really enjoyable day all round.

We had a wonderful night in yet another gravel pit, 101km from Sandstone. It was only one day to the full moon and we camped a couple of hundred metres from the road in a very safe and comfortable place, well isolated from the two vehicles that passed (like ships) in the night. I found a few birds and at least one flower we hadn't seen before and we had a wonderful fire that we kept going for several hours. We sat out under the stars to have dinner (another great Dream Pot meal) and discussed life and all sorts for a couple of hours before retiring to a movie on DVD. The silence of remote places, with only the occasional bird-call, a gentle breeze and the friendly crackle of our fire is simply beautiful, romantic, exotic, even erotic, but completely wonderful, irrespective of the adjectives.

We drove on to Sandstone next morning and booked into the caravan park, in a site almost opposite Barbara and Jeff. Of course, they weren't expecting to see us until two days later and 300km later so when I did my 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume' thing, it was a big surprise to them. We were welcomed most warmly and once we set up our van, we shared some victuals - Barb's tea, coffee and scones and Heather's fruit cake. That took a couple of hours and we shared lots of stories from our respective journeys and a good deal more. Later in the afternoon, we headed out in Barb's car, 50 clicks up the road to where Jeff thought we might see one of his major quarries: the Western quailthrush. Finding and photographing this species is a big deal for Jeff, so it was a bit disappointing, but it was fun tramping around the bush looking at other birds and photographing flowers. As it turned out, he caught a couple of distant glimpses, but none of the rest of us saw so much as a feather. Back at camp, we indulged in some bubbles and more and ate our respective dinners together, with more chat and laughter before retreating to our caravans for sleep.

They left for Mt Magnet a bit before us next day and we agreed to try to meet up again at Nallan Station two days later - they were booked in there for three nights. On our way in to Mt Magnet, we saw 12 wedgies and would you believe, a female western quailthrush flew across in front of our car and settled no more that two metres from our car. I was unable to stop, but still got a good look at it and was itching to tell Jeff. We had a minor problem 100km from Mt Magnet when a warning light came on in the car, telling us (again) that our fuel filter was clogged and needed replacement. Not a big deal, but we didn't want a lot of crap feeding through our injectors so decided to stay overnight in Mt Magnet and get it replaced on the Monday. We ran into Jeff and Barb again as we were driving into town and they were driving out so I got to tell him that we saw the illusive quailthrush that he was still chasing.

We booked into the caravan park on Sunday in time for lunch and caught up on the washing and I had a delightful couple of hours wandering along the river photographing birds, including a couple of new ones for us, as well as some flowers - all while the washing was drying.

I was down at the local mechanic's place by 8.30 next morning and by nine, the fuel filter was replaced and I had had a lesson in how to do it in case I needed to do it myself next time. We carry a set of filters with us in case we need them along the track, but knowing how to fit them is a bonus.

We had quite a bit of restocking to do at the local IGA and then we were off to Nallan Station a mere 12 km further north. We camped across from Jeff and Barb and we were the only people there. It was wonderful!!! Nallan is a working Station and has showers and toilets and easy access to potable water, but it is rustic and really quite delightful - just our sort of place. Not quite 3-star, but quite lovely with free lemons and grapefruit thrown in as a bonus. The grapefruit are/were the yummiest I have had anywhere. Delish!

Plenty of birds around, including some not often seen and we could wander anywhere we liked around the Station. We spent the day with Barb and Jeff - Heather mainly with Barb and me mainly with Jeff, but we also all did a bit of exploring on our own. Just on dusk, we all went out to a waterhole where some Bourke's parrots were supposed to visit. We had good views of a few birds, including some mulga parrots, but by the time the 30-odd Bourke's came in, it was really too dark to see them, even with the full moon. We did see yet another fabulous sunset though.

We returned to camp and lit a roaring fire that we kept burning for a few hours. Heather had cooked our meal, but Barb cooked their sausages over the coals. I suspect that they ate semi-raw snags, but we spent a few more hours enjoying their friendship, chatting around a perfect campfire. I think the time we spent with them changed our work colleague and birding authority relationship into one of real friendship. They are both lovely people and we enjoyed every minute of our time together and hope there will be many more similar times.

They were off to Walga Rock next morning so we said our goodbyes soon after Jeff gave up trying to find some white-browed babblers. We stayed on for an hour or so and enjoyed some interesting birding - including seeing Jeff's missing babblers.

Then it was on to Cue and Meekatharra, both interesting places, particularly Cue. This trip has taught me a lot about WA geography. More importantly, it has untaught me a lot I thought I knew about where places were, how big and/or important they are or were. I always imagined that Cue was out near Leonora, rather on the Great Northern Highway and some of the other towns we have seen or bypassed are hundreds of kilometres from where they should be according to my childhood mental map. It has been very interesting to learn so much about the State I grew up in and to encounter so many places, rivers, ranges and other landmarks that echoed 60+ year-old memories and evoked thoughts that hold a wealth of forgotten romance for me.

We had a magic bush camp that night, just off the road about 28 clicks south of the Kumarina Roadhouse – another fantastic night under the stars.

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