The Coral Coast, WA

Before departing from Point Samson, we took a couple of day trips. One was to Cossack, an historic town where gold was discovered briefly, but pearling became it’s prime industry. The delightful little museum in a solid ironstone building built in the 1890’s, displayed stories of key figures in the establishment of the town. Malays, Aboriginals and Japanese people exerted a strong influence on the survival of the town, which at one stage had 3000 people. However the pearling industry lost out to Broome’s larger businesses, and the death rate amongst the Asians who dived for shell was particularly high, so the town declined to just a few families. I appreciated the display cabinet with broken crockery, not what your normal museums would show off. The mother-of-pearl buttons was a memory from long ago.

Another day trip was to Karratha, a large regional town that even had traffic lights. It was Sunday, so the town was quiet. I wanted to go to Murujuga National Park on the Burrup Peninsula. I knew it was threatened by mining expansion. In 2020 it was added to Australia’s World Heritage Tentative List, “the first step to have the unique cultural, spiritual and archaeological values of the area internationally recognised.” Before venturing into the Park, we had a  cuppa at Soak Cafe in Dampier, a very civilised town with red dog featuring at it’s gateway.

Then on to Murujuga. What an eye popper…the most massive Woodside gas plant was on the west shore of the narrow Peninsula, on the east was the NP and a beach we could access. From the shore we could see the gas flame peeping over the sandhills. The walk to the apparently thousands of rock art was a little underwhelming. They were petroglyphs, etchings into the rocks, but only a small number were obvious where the boardwalks were. I really hope the status of the Park’s art works is high enough to justify the World Heritage rating.

Leaving Karratha we had about 500kms to get to Bullara, so free camped amongst the gum trees on the first night. Bullara Station stay is a well oiled machine, catering to probably 200 campers at a time. There’s a terrific cafe for homemade cakes, scones, bread and meals, they serve dinner every night. We were parked out on the back boundary, next to a 1951 Austin truck wreck, much to Nick’s delight. He sneakily salvaged a windscreen wiper motor from the truck which will fit perfectly in an 80” Land rover! The wind blew, the dust permeated everything. We’d planned to spend a day in Exmouth and Cape Range NP, but alas, a truck with LPG on board crashed on the one road into Exmouth, closed the road for 24 hours. That was that!

Bullara to Coral Bay was about 250kms, mostly past dry dead looking scrub, flat country with no charm at all, except the occasional red sand dune. So coming into Coral Bay was like walking onto a movie set, it felt unreal. Here was a very small enclave of houses, shops, caravans and restaurants, nestled into white sandy dunes with a vivid turquoise bay complete with fishes, coral and turtles. Just burying my feet in the fine white sand as I walked to the warm water for a swim was heaven.

We stayed 4 nights here and relaxed fully into a seaside holiday mode. Bill’s Bar did an excellent meal one night and the Bakery had all the vanilla slices and cheesecake that Nick loves with his coffee. 

We took a 2 hour tour in a glass-bottom boat to view the coral and fishes. Snorkelling was also part of the tour. Nick declined – too cold he said. I had one of those experiences Julia Baird talks about while snorkelling, one of awe! The massed tropical fishes and the diverse collection of corals was a sight to behold. I couldn’t get my GoPro to work so I have no photos, but I have the richest of memories to call on. 

We spent a couple of hours in our kayaks on Coral Bay, but the wind had come up and I was a little wary about venturing too far off-shore. Just lolling about on the sand, people watching, is an easy pastime on such a lovely beach. But once again we had to move along, heading south, knowing we wanted to be in Fremantle in 20 days time. 

The drive was once again dead boring, flat country, no trees, and shrubs not as high as the car, most of them appeared dead, although I suspect they perk up when it rains. But now we were seeing carpets of wildflowers. I’m lucky that Nick is happy to stop when I yell STOP.

We arrived next at Quobba Station, a rundown ex-sheep property, perched on a red rocky cliff above the Indian Ocean, which was pounding the cliffs. The Blowholes nearby are blowing mist high above the sea, just like the whales off-shore, who are loving the rough windy conditions. The wind was most annoying, but gave us an insight into the power of the sea on this remote shore.

Hamelin Pools Caravan Park was our next stop. What a place! Very close to the 3.5 billion year old Stromatalites. These ancient landforms slowly grow on the tide line in the highly saline bay. Unfortunately, a cyclone had wrecked the boardwalk to view the stomatalites, and a view from the beach behind the wire barrier didn’t cut it. But the experience at the caravan park was unique. It was formally the Telegraph station for communications between Perth and Broome, and is now the only remaining station on that line. The museum housed many and varied dusty old relics of pre mobile phone days. The delightful old dear who ran the park had a shop for supplies – imagine an overstocked Mullumbimby Op-shop. Another quirky feature of this park was the shell block quarry. In the early days, buildings were constructed with these blocks but nowadays only historic buildings in Shark Bay use them.

We decided to drive to Steep Point, the most westerly point in Australia. It was 154km from Hamelin Pools – let’s do a day trip we thought as we packed the thermos and sandwiches. It was overcast and very windy. Off we set, managing quite well for the first 100km, then over the causeway onto Steep Point. Tyres deflated, we knew it was going to be rough….hell, not that rough…the corrugations were monsters, it was doing my head in. I wanted out so we turned, about 40km short of Steep Point. Nick was disappointed, the car was delighted. We went over to the Blowholes and False Entrance and called it our mostly westerly point of the trip, even brought out Priscilla to celebrate, like we did at Cape York.

We booked 3 nights at Denham on Shark Bay, could have stayed more, it’s such a lovely little town. The ghastly wind had dropped and the azure blue seas were calm. The Discovery Centre Museum in town was excellent and gave us a good start to explore Shark Bay, apparently named by Dampier because of all the sharks he saw!

It was AFL finals and the Dees played, and lost, to Collingwood. There was a fabulous community space at the Seaside caravan park, with large screen TV and a couple of comfy couches. We sat in the back row on chairs, some crusty old fishermen/locals sat on the couches. Nick was a bit disappointed losing the game. Anyway, next night was another final, there on the couches were the same people. And again for the two other games the next day. We asked them who their team was…”we don’t have a team, we just like watching footy!” Reminded us of the old codgers at the bar in ‘Jack Irish’ who followed Fitzroy. A young girl came in one evening, a bit like the lolly girl at the pictures, offering free cockles she’d collected and cooked with her dad…yummy. Such a nice atmosphere.

Anyway, first morning we got to Monkey Mia by 7.45 to watch the dolphins being fed. Quite a large crowd, very regimented experience, absolutely no touching the dolphins, who were only given one fish and told to go off and find their own food in the wild.

In the afternoon we kayaked on Big Lagoon, in Francois Peron National Park. The lagoon was multi shades of turquoise, white sandy beaches lined the shore below the red ochre cliffs. We had the water to ourselves. Such a special time.

Next day was the bigger drive to Cape Peron at the top of Shark Bay. Some road corrugations but not too bad, very sandy though. What a thrill to be there though, the colours were vibrant, the day was calm, warm, perfect. From Skipjack Point we watched fishes, a shark, stingray and maybe a dugong swimming in the crystal clear water. It was very hard to leave there, but we went to South Gregories beach, parked on the sand with our lunch, and swam, all by ourselves. And to cap off a great day, we found some Desert Kurrajong trees as we drove back. We’d read an ABC article about them and had been searching the landscape for these trees, with lime green leaves more like maples than an Aust native.

The 375km drive to Kalbarri from Denham was reasonably smooth considering we weren’t stuck in a headwind. More and more wildflowers appeared, especially along the road into Kalbarri. Our campsite was close to the Murchison River.

We took a drive out to the Skywalk and Nature’s Window, in Kalbarri National Park. It was a hot day, the landscape was almost treeless, but the wildflowers and shrubs were prolific. I must have jumped in and out of our car 30 times to bend down and take a photo of a flower, my body was wracked that night, but my heart was filled with joy.

Kalbarri has an awesome coastline, wild, rocky and pristine. Early one morning we launched the kayaks to explore the Murchison river. The river was mirror calm, fish were leaping, I felt very peaceful paddling until my flippers got stuck in a sandbar. But now I feel confident to fix the situation on my own. Later we drove to and explored many of the coastal inlets and particularly loved the Blue Holes, rock pools with many fishes and sponges that is a designated Marine Reserve. Our friends arrived this afternoon and stayed in the same park as us. We dined out for Julie and Nick’s birthdays at Finlay’s, a quirky seafood/brewery restaurant, a great night for us all.

Today the weather has turned. It is the first time we’ve seen rain, since Cairns, 4 months ago at least. Nick washed the car in the rain. The wind is gale force, so I’ve taken advantage of being stuck inside our little rocking van to write this blog.

This might be the last blog for sometime, maybe not. We are heading inland of Geraldton in search of wildflower meadows and orchids in a couple of National Parks not far from Kalbarri. Then we reach Perth next week and end our months in the little caravan while we stay with relatives. Thanks for all your comments, I do appreciate them and am aware of the struggle wordpress presents to some of you.

Love from us both

Jen & Nick