Geraldton to Esperance.

Leaving Geraldton, going south is an historical village...a street with housing facilities for the clergy of different denominations,the police station and jail,schools etc and of course the churches...They mustve been 'holy' people in those days ..

Took this photo inside the Catholic church...they must've all had basically the same 'decor' because I remember kneeling in one that looked very much like this, as a young and gulible girl...going to confession and before entering trying to think of a sin that I had been guilty of and then making some up so I had something to 'confess'!


Our next destination was the Cervantes and the nearby famous Pinnacles..
What an amazing 'trick' of nature!...That these structures have formed over hundreds and hundreds of years...a truly awesome site and spread over a huge area...the drive in the car around the different view points is 3kms long.





Hugging a Penicle!!!
From there we made our way inland again and stayed the night in York...the oldest town in WA (1862)and where Brian Bell, whom we stayed with was born...

What a quaint place!...none of the buildings and shops have been modernised...
Stayed at the Settlers Inn..Fully restored rooms to that period...The Settlers in was where the soldiers stayed and each 'suite' was named after a soldier.

Travelling further south again through Beverly, Pingelly, Narrogin, Wagin... beautiful countryside..Wheat fields interspersed with Canola fields in flower, blossoms on the trees and the occassional ruins of brick farmhouses... Jonquils

Camping in this area is restrictive as everywhere you get either the 'no camping sign' or if you are permitted to camp then you are not allowed to have a fire...You just got to have a fire at this time of the year as its soooo cold at night...especially the way we camp...Whilst driving through the countryside we decided to go via a back road towards the area known as the 'Valley of the Giants'...where huge Karri and Tingle trees grow...in conversation Hans said, "wouldn't it be neat to find a bush cabin or hut somewhere to stay a night or two?"...

We were driving through Mt Franklin National Park and saw a sign to Fernhook Falls...It wasn't far off the road so we thought we'd check out the Falls....There was a camping area there and lo and behold two bush cabins with small pot belly like fireplaces in them, that were available for use in this beautiful spot for a small fee of $6.50 each per night....there was no one else around...only 'strange' people camp out in this area at this time of year!..So we moved in and made ourselves comfortable. It had it's own rainwater tank as well so beautiful clean water on tap.

We were all set up when a 4wd vehicle came into the camp at speed...and drove straight up tp our cabin...The guy got out ...he was not happy Jack...he explained that he didn't believe that anyone would even consider camping in the area that night and that he had planned to use our cabin and the other one to accommodate 20 teenagers celebrating a birthday party that night!Well we weren't to know were we!?
Anyway...he eventually calmed down.The party went ahead that night with our peaceful night disrupted with the 'head banging' music that teenagers seem to be into, playing loudly till the wee hours of the morning...We hung our hammocks wall to wall...

Travelled through to Walpole and visited the Giant Tingle Tree...thats Hans standing inside its trunk...these trees adapt to repeated fires and injury hence many of the trunks have 'holes' in them...

Hans did the Giant Tree Tops walk...before we moved on and had lunch in Denmark!..Then onto Mt Barker where alongside the road were beautiful wild freesias...the smell of them divine and brang back memories of earlier years...We picked some of course and they stayed fragrant for days on the dash.
We had been looking in earnest to find a red and green Kangaroo Paw along the road...the state flower of WA...We found a small patch where several were growing and thankfully stopped and photographed them because we haven't seen them anywhere since... Isn't it an striking flower?

Just south of a place called Borden we came across a Dutch Windmill in the middle of a canola field! It was called 'The Lily"... and she was grand...although not open at this time of year she still grounds flour that you can buy....


Had me looking at the map... a couple of days ago we were in Denmark ...were we in Holland now?
On to Hyden and to visit the famous Wave Rock...another amazing creation of Mother Nature!

This Sandstone 'Rock' is 15 metres high and 100 metres long..the colours a result of different minerals seeping for years as the rock formed.

We then went off the beaten track taking a road less travelled through to Norseman.
Traversing the road in this area you often see blue tongued lizards...stumpy looking lizards with 'attitude'...

When they are not happy with your close presence, they try to scare you by opening their mouth and sticking their tongue out at you!

Then there is this little fellow whose smaller in size than my hand...He's known as a Thorny Devil...A road worker driving a roller stopped whilst we were photographing him in the middle of the road and after a chat put on his leather gloves to move him onto the verge so he wouldn't get run over...
Saw a sign to a place called The Breakaways in the middle of nowhere and went to have a look...

Wow what an awesome place...and it had 5 camping areas that you could use and there was nobody there! One camp was situated in the curve of a sandstone wall so we picked that one...sheltered from the wind and you wouldn't even know we were there unless you walked into it.

Firewood is hard to find in camping areas such as this, as any wood around the immediate vicinty has been used by previous campers...so you have to go away from the area to collect..its too hard to carry it all back and we have limited space in or on our vehicle so Hans improvised and towed some back to our camp.

So we had a rip roaring fire going that night which we needed as our thermometer told us it had got down to 4 degrees!

We had been sound asleep in our hammocks for about an hour, when we both woke up on our arses!...as the branch we had secured our hammocks to, had split from the rest of the tree at the base and fallen off! That was a bit of a rude awakening!
After re attaching the hammocks again to the same tree we managed to get warm enough to get back to sleep eventually.

View from above the camp.

Moved on again and reached Norseman early afternoon...met up with one of the tractors we'd seen at the beginning of our travels around the top of Australia..they had come down the east coast whilst we had come down the west!...stopped for a chat...they are raising funds for the Royal flying doctor service.

And now we are in beautiful Esperance for a few days....beautiful beaches with white sand and turquoise blue water and big waves...The temperature here at present...15 deg puts swimming and sunbathing on the beach out of the question!

Even Sammy the local sea lion that lives down by the pier doesn't appear impressed with the weather!

Till the next exciting installment!!.....