Albany, Esperance and Perth

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Trip Start Nov 01, 2005 Previous
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  Perth, Australia
Saturday, November 26, 2005

[Addendum - I forgot. We also visited the ancient Karri trees near Walpole while we were staying at Moombaki. Some of these huge Eucalypts are around 400 years old, and you could possible drive a car through the middle of them. A severe bushfire 50 years ago took all the top branches off some trees, and others were hollowed out (since only the outer inch or two is actually alive). A tree-top walk allows you to go 40 metres up into the branches, but we really liked the Valley of the Ancients where you could get close to these giants, and even walk through them.]

After a great time at Moombaki, we headed east along the coast.

First stop was Albany (pronouced Al-benny, not All-benny) [Why do Australians change the pronunciation of everything? - Amanda], where we visited "Whale World". Not to be confused with something like Seaworld, where you see whales playing happily(?) for the crowds, this was a whaling station, where they cut and sawed up 14000 (I think) whales up until 1978. There's an old whaling boat (chaser), and photos of them cutting up these huge mammals. And you stand on the places they used to cut them up into small pieces, to feed into the boilers to make 3 tonnes of oil. Quite disturbing, but well worth the visit.

Onwards to somewhere a little happier - Esperance. Gorgeous white sandy beaches, little coves and lagoons, and Sammy the Sealion. Sammy seemed to live under the jetty across the road from our beachside hotel, and happily ate anything the fishermen would throw him. Very cute.

Unfortunately, the weather was quite overcast, and the water really cold, so no beach swimming. *sigh*

After a couple of days in Esperance, we took the long drive back to Perth - 500km through scrubby bushland. The highlight of this drive was nearly right in the middle of the drive - the iconic Wave Rock. I was very impressed, probably because many people had said it was a disappointment, so I didn't have high expectations. The "wave" is actually just one side of a huge chunk of granite, rather than a free-standing rock, as the pictures always seem to indicate. But I found this great to walk on and explore, and see th old waterhole on top where kids used to swim when there was water.

We arrived in Fremantle just in time to see the sun set over the ocean, exhausted after such a long drive but happy to be back by the coast.

We spent a lazy day pootling around the markets in Fremantle, and ended up at Little Creatures, a brewery on the harbour which makes some great hoppy ales, and serves scrummy chilli mussels. A very nice evening to leave Western Australia on.

We returned the car, after driving a total of 2600 kilometres.

Tomorrow we fly to Alice Spring, where it says it's currently 37 degrees. Hmm. Quite warm. I hope we have air-conditioning.

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03 Hollow Karri	04 Sammy The Seal	05 Esperance	06 Wave Rock   Comments!
07 Dogs in Utes	08 Fremantle Sunset

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