Stirling Ranges, via Beverley & Perth

The Grey Nomad get-together at Beverley, WA, was great!  Vic & Carol picked a lovely spot, Owen & Glenda, Bob & Jane and Ian & Gaye added pleasant ambiance and - in the vernacular - a good time was had by all!  Beverley is a small friendly town with friendly cafes, an interesting art centre, an aviation museum and is a centre for a large gliding club.  Our Grey Nomad Happy Hour tended to stretch into the evening, a lunch at the local hotel was substantial enough to carry one through to breakfast the next morning, if not beyond, an outing to the local Council Peak proved it to be a small volcanic cone and a visit  - with thanks to Bob - to the auto museum at the nearby historic town of Yorke rounded out a great weekend!  A welcome change to not get rained on when venturing forth and have people, rather than trees, to talk to!  I'm glad I went.

Then on to Perth and a visit to my niece and her family.  A whole double bed to myself, indoor bathroom, kettle sitting near the sink - a real test to the nomadic life in a HiAce van!  Having a real kitchen at my disposal, I made a large batch of the famous spaghetti & meatball sauce I learned from Mum and a large cherry pie.  I also took them out to dinner one evening to thank them for their hospitality.  The van got a service, I hijacked Julie to chauffeur me around the City where I bought a new camera and some LED lights to install in the van and to Kings Park, to admire the view and have lunch.  Too quickly I was on the road and at a very lonely freecamp along the way to the Stirling Ranges. 

The Stirling Range is north of Albany and is a mountain range rising up from the flat surrounding country:  In reality, it is the harder rock pushed up when Australia was pushed against other continents.   The Park campsite is a credit to the Park Service and the volunteer hosts, Andrew and Deb; it was spotless and comfortable (tho Allan found it best not to park under the tree the cockatoos roost in).  The highest point, Bluff Knoll, has a walking track (Grade 4) to the top, which track proved tougher than me, as I set out along it but soon became exhausted and turned back.  There are other tracks up to various peaks, all equally or more difficult.  I took the Stirling Range Drive through the centre of the Park, including a short climb up to the Centre Lookout.  Emus raced the van at various places along the road; apparently if chased they will run until they drop, thus it is necessary to slow right down until they turn off.  The weather is again a bit iffy, so getting decent photos is a challenge, especially with a tiny camera. 

Years ago I read in the book "Photographing Nature" (author long forgotten, book long lost) 'No photographer is as good as the simplest camera made' and continued to explain about '..the photographer's eye..'   Thus my preference is for a camera I can carry with me all the time in a small belt case:  Digital editing is also another very powerful tool.  Modern digital technology has produced some very versatile small cameras that can take some amazing photos.  A larger camera, being more cumbersome, is often left behind, so having a small camera all the time allows opportunistic photos (parks with grandchildren, shopping centre scenes - in fact, any candid possibility) can be snapped, even if the photo isn't 'perfect'. 

Rains today keep me close to the van thus an excellent opportunity to update this blog.  From here I'll move south to Albany and drop into the Information Centre to plan subsequent travels. 

Esperance and National Parks Nearby

A decent run from Norseman saw me in Esperance in good time. I stopped at the Information Centre, where they gave me enough information to get me so enthused I was halfway to Cape Le Grande National Park before I realised I didn't get groceries.  This only meant variety would suffer, as I had plenty of food, even if it meant using Coffee Mate when I ran out of milk.  Cape Le Grande beach is a long expanse of white sand with gentle waves rolling in.  I soon got the fishing gear out and into it; pity about all the weeds, so my four  State record of yet not having to clean a fish stands.  The Camp Hosts told me that I shouldn't miss Cape Arid NP, 80Km further east, and good advice it was!  It is a fantastic long curving beach of white sand with row after row of breakers beating in.  There is a walk to other beaches in the area so I started along the track but after crossing over the hill to the next beach the rains came in so I turned back.  The weather is more like Tassie winter weather, being changeable, cool and plenty of showers, thus limiting longer walks.

An early morning return to Esperance five days later found me at The Coffee Cat, a kiosk on the Esplanade with a reputation stretching as far as Opossum Bay, for breakfast; the coffee was superb!  Next a grocery run, getting the gas bottle filled, a chance encounter with  a Super Cheap shop (and an LED reading light!), a visit to Bunnings AND it was still only lunchtime!  So lunch at the Coffee Cat before continuing west to Stokes NP but the weather here was really poor, the campsite was in scrub next to a large inlet and rather gloomy so I left after two nights for Starvation Bay, as recommended by the Stokes NP Camp Hosts. 

Starvation Bay is another great bay, with walks out to the ocean for more great scenery.  Again, weather iffy and again I got wet on a walk, but saw some terrific seascapes.  Another couple camped here had also come from Stokes Inlet, where, they informed me, the inlet is very good fishing!  sigh.

Continuing west to Hopetoun and to Fitzgerald River NP as per plan but the NP was mainly closed.  What was open could be seen in a couple of hours, which I did and then went to the campsite:  I'd planned to stay for a couple of nights but the campsite was mainly for tents, so I set off to position myself north of the Stirling Ranges, spending the night in the Ongerup Caravan Park.  Having saved a couple of days and being relatively near Beverley, WA, where a Grey Nomad get-together was scheduled for the weekend, I decided to attend it.  Thus, when I left it was to Beverley.

Granite & Woodland

the Granite and Woodlands Discovery Trail goes east from Hyden for 300km to Norseman; it is a gravel road most of the way but a very good road.  A pamphlet describes 15 stops along this road, covering natural features and historical points along the way.   Perhaps the most important fact, however, is that much of the area is still in its natural state.  As clearing for agriculture continued westward, the lands became less suitable, thus a bit west of Hyden is where clearing stopped.  For about the first half of the trip westward from Hyden the land is flat, very low scrub and very low rainfall.  While a virtual desert, over the Millennia plants evolved to establish a very unique and complex ecosystem, belying its rather uniform appearance.  Most plants are short, about one metre or less in height, the exception being the flame grevillea, growing 2-3 metres in height and forming an avenue along the road.  One very interesting stop is The Breakaways, for which description I defer to the photos; in my view it is equal to Wave Rock.  Further on another stop is McDermid Rock and is another granite dome with a walking track circuit marked out climbing to its highest point and generally around the Rock.  There are intriguing small hollows on the dome that hold water, with the result that small gardens have developed in them. 

The Woodlands section, mainly a mallee type woodland (small eucalypts with several stems arising from a single base), is, according to the pamphlet, ".. one of the world's  greatest remaining untouched temperate woodlands."  Now, these eucalypts are a true natural art form, with their bark patterns and unique twisted trunks & branches.  The bark colours of different species vary from a light mottled salmon colouring to a smooth deep nutty brown to shaggy black 'stockings' with smooth grey upper growth.  The harsh environment gives them infinitely varied shapes and in driving past them you get a 3D continual panoramic that I find truly beautiful.

Further along the Trail is Lake Johnston, another mainly salt flat but it did have some water visible on the far side.  An excavation was carried out at some recent stage to provide a water hole, most likely for firefighting:  In the material scooped out were many gypsum crystals, from which I would guess there is a large deposit down just a metre or two.  The last stop is Norseman and from here I intend going to Esperance and then to visit the National Parks along the South Coast. 

Wheatbelt

This is a broad plain which was cleared about 100 years ago to grow wheat.  The annual rainfall is about 35cm (14 inches), right on the lower rainfall limit.  With the normal cycles of nature, droughts are to be expected and hit these farms very severely; one such drought has existed for three years now and many farmers are not going to survive.  I heard on a radio segment that many farmers are getting out but as they cannot realise a decent price for their farm they are leasing it out if they can,  remaining in the homestead but no longer intending to farm to just walking away from it.  As a result, driving through the area one sees dry barren paddocks with perhaps a few sheep picking through what little fodder there may be.  As in many rural areas I have traveled through, many small towns are struggling and the western wheatbelt in WA is no different. 

I stayed two nights at Tressie's Museum and Caravan Park in the town of Karlgarin, 17km west of Hyden, and one of the best caravan parks I've stayed at.  A tornado-like wind a while back lifted his backpackers unit and hurtled it through his park, destroying the unit as well as many of the trees and infrastructure in the park:  In the town of Karlgarin it took the roofs off most of the buildings, with the result that the town may not recover.   The Museum does a guided tour and I found it fascinating!  It is a private museum assembled over many years as indicated by the number and variety of display material, generally illustrating settlement and past life of the area.  The museum also has a gem of a gramophone collection including working models of the early cylinder gramophones, the first I'd ever seen and heard working!  From a collection of 78rpm records, you can request a selection and if they have it, they will play it:  Many years ago my favourite was "The Strawberry Roan" and sure enough, Merv selected it from his racks, placed on one of the wind up gramophones and played it for me!  As a boy, we had this 78 and it was one of my favourites:  I accidently broke it, and while Mum was displeased indeed, no more so than I was.        

The time soon went and so did I, to Wave Rock.  At various places throughout the broad plains, granite domes appear, which originated as granitic extrusions deep under the then surface and from the large crystals in the rock, a very slow cooling mass.  Over time erosion has exposed them to their state today, with one edge of Wave Rock being eroded to the unique shape of a huge wave.  It was relatively unnoticed until 1963 when a photo of it won an exhibit in New York, and today it attracts many tourists to the area.  There is an interpretative trail up to the top of the dome, which is both interesting and an excellent viewing point where the flat landscape is visible for many miles around.  Visible in the view are lakes, many of them dry salt pans with little water.  Another interpretive walk takes you around a nearby walk and explains the recent changes due to land clearing, the main one being the rising of the water table producing these large salt lakes.  

Goldfields

In Norseman, after discussions with the kind lass in the Norseman Information Centre I planned a circuit up to Kalgoorlie & Coolgardie, traveling east & south to Hyden to see Wave Rock and then return to Norseman via the Granite & Woodlands Discovery Track.  So north to the Goldfields!

Gold was discovered at Coolgardie in 1892 and Kalgoorlie in 1893 resulting in the Gold Fever which went on to develop the area:  Of course, a substantial amount of gold helped keep the fever alive.  It is a formidably dry area so water was actually more valuable than gold, the local saying "You can live without gold but not water" being very true.  A pipeline supplying water from Perth to Kalgoorlie was established in 1903, the long distance requiring pumping stations along the way .  The result of water and gold resulted in quite a boom, as evidenced by some very grand buildings in Kalgoorlie/Boulder (Boulder was a separate town close by and today is virtually amalgamated with Kalgoorlie) and to a lesser extent in Coolgardie, where gold ran out a while back.  In Kalgoorlie/Boulder is the Superpit, a large open cut gold mine, but before 1985 the situation was many underground mines competing with each other, with profitability suffering.  Alan Bond started buying up mines to lead to the formation of  the Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines -  http://www.goldfieldstourism.com.au/Destinations/KalgoorlieBoulder.aspx?gclid=CMa-1Ymk-bYCFSZdpgodZxEARw  -  which was able to implement  the more efficient open cut system.

A tour of the main streets of Kalgoorlie, Boulder and Coolgardie reveals some fascinating architecture, especially those buildings surviving from the boom times.  Mine views were also a must, although the Superpit guided tour wasn't available the few days I was there.  There are very interesting museums and I visited one in Calgoorlie which had a world class bottle collection as well as other topical dispalys of the area:  The iconic Coolgardie safe was displayed, of course!  The National Heritage Warden Finnerty's Residence  - http://www.nationaltrust.org.au/wa/warden-finnertys-residence  - is another worthwhile visit, having been built in 1903 by the contracting firm Bunnings, the fore runner of the national Bunnings chain today.  While driving about Coolgardie, I went into the local Health Centre to inquire about a flu shot:  They aplogised, as I would have to wait about 15 minutes as the Dr was seeing a patient at the moment!  I was expecting to have to make an appointment, IF I could get the vaccination at all. 

Leaving for Wave Rock I headed east and as the Wheatbelt was only slightly further east, I decided to travel through it a bit also.