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BROOME
In Broome, we have bright sun, temperatures in the 90's, and low humidity. We stay at The Courthouse Bed and Breakfast, which we find is an inspired choice. The house is delightful, open and comfortable. It is the work of our hosts, Shane and Debra, who designed it.
Because it's hot, the pool with its shaded overhang is our first priority. After our swim, we wander around Broome. Most of the buildings, both commercial and residential, are of metal construction and set well back from the street, amid dusty eucalyptus trees. Many are a combination of business and residential premises, part of the town's effort to attract entrepreneurs.
Broome is the pearling center of Australia, and the small downtown contains a number of shops selling pearls, but location does not seem to have affected prices, which are high. More affordable are books from an Aboriginal bookstore.
Since our stay in Broome encompasses two evenings, we are able to fit in the de rigueur sunset at Cable Beach, so named because it is where the first transoceanic telephone cable to Australia was sited. It's a beautiful beach, a huge white crescent, but it has no shade, something, we are going to find it has in common with much of Western Australia.
Cable Beach and Dinosaur Foot Prints
The second evening, we take a hovercraft tour to the south end of Cable Beach and watch the sunset lighting up water pooled in 120 million-year-old dinosaur tracks. This is the same spot where twice a month the full moon is reflected in these same waters forming the famous "Staircase to the Moon."
My husband calculated the distance between Broome and Perth working with maps he downloaded from the Royal Australia Automobile Association website, but he was unable to get maps that provided the distances to the places we plan to visit, all of which are located off the main highway. He estimates that total will be no more than an additional 500 km.
We know that the per/day charge for the rental car will be higher than on the east coast, and while there is no one-way drop-off fee for driving from Brisbane to Cairns, there will be a substantial one for driving a comparable distance on the west coast. What we didn't know was that gas would be nearly twice as expensive in the west (and it's not cheap in the east), and the local car rental company was going to refuse to honor our contract from their American representative giving us unlimited mileage. Instead, we are allotted 100 km/day (60 mi)--a laughable amount given the vast distances--and we will be charged $0.25A for each additional kilometer.
We ask to discuss the matter with a supervisor who says they've had this problem before and had told their American representative to change the information. Bottom line, they will not honor the contract for unlimited miles and we can take the car, and fight it out later with the American company, or leave it.
Of course we take the car.
From Broome to South Hedland
All of this leads to our first and most important piece of advice to anyone wanting to explore Australia's west coast. Don't do it the way we did it.
That's not to say we regret taking this trip. Driving is, after all, the best way to get a true sense of the huge empty distances that are at the heart of the Australian experience. However, given there are only a few highlights widely scattered along the mostly flat coast, we now think a better plan would be to base explorations out of Perth and take on Western Australia in small sips rather than in a single large gulp.
When we leave Broome, however, these conclusions are still 3800 km in our future.
At the recommendation of a helpful lady in the Information Center in Broome, our first day on the road we drive as far as South Hedland. Our accommodation there, which includes three meals, sounds intriguing.
The highway between Broome and Perth is only two lanes. However, given the sparse amount of traffic, it is a "no worries, mate" situation. The road ahead can usually be seen clearly for miles, a good thing since it takes a lot of visibly empty road to take on a 100 ft road-train (trucks pulling three trailers) with confidence.
As we leave Broome, a sign informs us that the next significant human habitation is the Sandfire roadhouse, 257 km away. We quickly learn that when a sign indicates no services will be available for a specified number of kilometers, often a very large number of kilometers, it isn't kidding. In between blips on the map (roadhouses are listed, and the uninitiated might actually think they're towns) there are no mailboxes, no driveways, no houses, no malls, and more to the point, no gas, food, or water.
An occasional dirt road meanders off into the bush, offering no indication of whether one might expect to encounter another human at its terminus in 5, 50 or 500 kilometers. There are also no billboards along any of the highways or byways, and even mileage signs with lists of possible destinations are infrequent. After a while, and it took much longer than it should have given the view was pretty monotonous, we discovered that at 10 km intervals, the stakes that indicate depth of water during the wet were topped with small green trapezoidal markers counting down the kilometers to the next town or roadhouse.
It's the kind of country not to run out of petrol in, although we suspect if we did, we would be rescued by either a truckie pulling one of the 100-foot-long, aptly named, road trains or one of the many retirees from the big cities in the east--Melbourne, Adelaide, or Sydney--who have sold their homes and used the money to buy a caravan (trailer) which they are now in the process of towing all over Australia. After only a few hours of driving, our minds boggle at the idea of spending months doing this. However, we seem to be a minority as roadhouses, which have toilets, showers, food, newspapers, ice cream, and a motel room or two often have large numbers of caravans in line to get petrol.
It's not only the vast expanses of country involved in the caravaners' trek that boggles our minds, but the expense. In Australia petrol is sold by the liter (approximately 1/4 gallon) and it takes ~65 of them to fill the tank of our Toyota. Driving along Australia's east coast we had adjusted, barely, to paying nearly as much for a liter of petrol as we had been paying for a gallon of gas in the U.S.
But Western Australia is, in many ways, a whole different country. We do some quick math. It is now costing us approximately $100A for gas to drive 1000 km (600 mi). Estimating that the caravaners get half the mileage we do, their cost to drive 1000 km will be at least $200A. Given that Australia is the same size as the U.S., a "Guess what, honey, we managed to spend the kids' inheritance," could well be the conclusion when a caravan couple finally return home.
After six-and-a-half hours of driving, punctuated by stops at the Sandfire and Pardoo roadhouses, along with supplemental stops at the enviro toilets--though waterless, they're odor-free, amazingly clean, and comfortably located in-between roadhouses--we arrive in South Hedlund.
Our accommodation turns out to be a garden-variety motel. What's extraordinary about it is that it's nearly full. And the likely reason for that is a one-night stay garners the visitor three full meals. The food is not the best we've had, but it is adequate, plentiful, and of a wide variety. Everything is set out buffet style, and nobody asks us to prove we are guests, or attempts to limit our intake. In the morning, we finish breakfast, and then pick up several of the plastic containers that are provided and fill them with fruit, lunch meat, bread, condiments, and cookies for a picnic lunch on the road. We look around at the crowd of people doing likewise and decide the owner of the motel is either crazy like a fox, or just crazy.
South Hedlund to Ningaloo
We eat our South Hedlund picnic across from the Fortescue Roadhouse at one of two roadside picnic tables. It's hot, but the tables are shaded and for the second day there don't seem to be any flies.
The countryside this day has been more interesting, with mesas and hills, some flowers, rare stands of white-barked gum trees, and even an occasional green area relieving the monotony of the first day's mix of grayish bushes dotting the scarlet earth.
As our trip continues, we notice a number of commonalities linking the days.
A whole lot of empty: Driving mile after mile across a red landscape that offers little variation beyond the height and density of it's vegetation gives a truer sense of the vastness of this mostly empty continent than can be appreciated from 30,000 feet.
Sounds of silence: The radio picks up signals only sporadically, so it's lucky we brought along CDs.
Termite mounds: Termites form large earth mounds, many of which are decorated, by someone with clearly too much time on his hands, to look like a race of squat, alien beings with large noses and droopy ears.
Roadkill: Animal life visible from the road consists mostly of red cattle, an occasional emu, and scores of dead kangaroos and wallabies. The latter correlate with the common sight on Aussie vehicles--an additional large bumper arrangement designed to prevent an animal from coming through the windshield. Such bumpers are considered essential for cars driven after dark.
But all of this is simply the background music, the necessary preliminary to The Highlights, those elusive sights we came all this way to experience...
The first Highlight is Ningaloo Reef, 1200 km from Broome. This is the largest fringing reef in the world and second in overall size only to the Great Barrier Reef. "You'll love it, mate. It's the Great Barrier Reef without the barrier," is the comment we hear every time we mention Ningaloo as a destination, or even when we don't.
Access to Ningaloo is from either Exmouth in the north or Coral Bay in the south. On our downloaded Royal Automobile Club map, we see Exmouth is located west of the main highway. When we reach the turn-off, we receive our first hint that our calculations of how many kilometers this trip will involve may be in grave error.
But since we've already paid for a room in Exmouth, for three nights as a matter of fact, we ignore the fact it's going to add $90A to our car rental bill and make the turn.
Exmouth and Ningaloo
The area around Exmouth is covered by short grey vegetation of various shapes and sizes and is some of the most barren country we have seen to date, although its competition for that honor has been stiff. The town, though small, has the necessities--groceries, bottleshop, and quite good restaurants.
Exmouth was completely flattened in 1999 by cyclone Vance, so the fact there's anything here at all is impressive and even more impressive is the fact that there are no obvious signs of cyclone damage. Our accommodation, the Ningaloo Lodge, provides us with a private bath and a room almost completely filled by the double bed. What makes the idea of spending three nights in this tiny space more than acceptable, is the fact it is bright and clean, and there are several comfortable communal areas for guests--a living room a few steps down the hall, a large kitchen, and a games room in a separate building.
Arriving in early September, we are too late to enjoy the experience that the Ningaloo Marine Park is becoming most noted for...swimming with the whale sharks. These large, and most important, peaceful, plankton-eating animals, arrive in Ningaloo in April and hang around until July before disappearing until the same time next year.
But there is still the reef, and as avid snorkelers, we're anxious for our first look at it. To do that, we have to drive another 40 km to the Cape Range National Park. "You can do a beaut drift snorkel at Turquoise," the ranger assures us. "Only 30 km down the road from here." Pointing to the map, she adds, "There's a fair current runs across in front of the beach. No worries until it gets to the sandbar." She draws a line representing the northerly direction of the current, and at the sandbar, her line curves sharply and heads out to sea. I interpret this to mean if we get lost in the wonder of the reef and drift too close to the sandbar, we're toast, or maybe sharkbait, given the Aussies dislike of having to rescue folks who've gotten into trouble as a result of their own stupidity.
Still we've come this far, dragging along a large bulky suitcase filled with wetsuits, flippers, masks, and snorkels, so we decide to give it a go. A very careful go.
We watch other snorkelers for a time, and not seeing anyone being sucked out to sea, we finally enter the water. The rocks and coral are about 100 feet out from the shore so we swim straight out until we reach the first coral formations. As soon as we stop swimming, we find ourselves being pushed sideways at a brisk pace. In fact, the current is so strong, it is impossible to make headway against it. We let it push us until we notice the sandbar fast approaching, at which point we swim frantically toward the beach. It works, and both my husband and I, uncertain swimmers at best, step out a hundred feet to the good, on the correct side of the sandbar.
We've been a bit too nervous to really enjoy the experience, so we walk down the beach and try it again, swimming a curving route out and then back in before the infamous bar.
The snorkeling is as spectacular as promised. The water is crystal clear, the fish are large and plentiful, and the many coral bommies are colorful. But the beach has no shade, and shortly before noon, the wind begins blowing so strongly, it's unpleasant.
We leave Turquoise and check out some of the other beach areas. This entire part of the coast is a series of scallops, bay after bay, filled with crystalline water, some with camping areas. But except for Turquoise and Oyster Stacks, the reef is too far out to swim to. At one beach we talk to a man who has just been windsurfing. "It's absolutely brilliant. Water's so clear, I saw a turtle," he says.
As we drive to and from the park, we see emus nearby, and in the afternoon, kangaroos lie in the shade cast by the short bushes along the roadside. They're not easy to see, but once we spot the first one, we're able to see more.
Although it's early spring, and the water is cool enough to make wetsuits worthwhile, if not essential, it's quite hot when the wind dies down. The downside of the wind is that it's strong enough to kick up the sand, the upside is that while it's blowing, the flies are grounded.
Leaving Ningaloo and Exmouth, we have to retrace our way to the highway in order to continue south. There is a shorter route from Exmouth to Coral Bay via the Park road, but it involves crossing a soft sandy beach at low tide, something we consider potentially more costly than driving the extra kilometers.
Shark Bay World Heritage Area - Hamelin Pool, Shell Beach, Monkey Mia
Our next Highlight is located 150 km west of the Overlander Roadhouse, the Shark Bay World Heritage Area. In this area, narrow peninsulas jut out into the Indian Ocean and within their confines are located the Shark Bay Marine Park and the Hamelin Pool Marine Natural Reserve. We stop first at Hamelin Pool, where the oldest life form on the planet, the stromatolite, can still be found. Only recently discovered, perhaps because they look like rocks, these organisms, a type of cyanobacteria, form
their rock-like abodes in the shallow areas of salty bays, somewhat akin to the coral reefs found in deeper water. A boardwalk has been constructed a short distance over the bay and is posted with informational signs explaining that the oxygen releasing ability of the humble stromatolite made all other life on earth possible. Looking carefully, we see bubbles still rising, making the stromatolite the oldest living optimist. Seeing their quiet, unassuming industry, we in turn feel both delight and some optimism of our own.
A short drive from Hamelin pool is the aptly named Shell Beach--roughly a mile long by a half-mile wide, by forty-five feet deep--all of it tiny white cockle shells. It is one of the few places in Australia where shell collecting is not either discouraged or forbidden. Since cockles continue to deposit on the beach, and given there are already a few gazillion there, poultry farmers are allowed to carry off large amounts to grind up and use as a source of calcium for their chickens. In areas where the shells have been sufficiently compressed and welded together, blocks have been cut out and used for building.
From Shell Beach we continue further out the peninsula to Denham, where we spend the night. In the morning, we're up early for the half-hour drive to Monkey Mia where wild dolphins come into the beach to be fed. When we arrive at 8:15, the dolphins are already at the beach for the first feeding of the day. Four rangers with aluminum buckets containing fish move into the water, followed closely by a crowd of sixty or so visitors. We're asked to stay back and told not to touch. The rangers choose people at random to feed a single fish to one of the four dolphins in the feeding program.
Taking food this way is an unnatural behavior for a wild dolphin, but it appears nobody has informed these particular dolphins. They come in close and nudge at rangers who are not dispensing fish rapidly enough, although, one of the dolphins, Piccolo, seems more interested in eyeing us than in eating.
The human rule is that dolphins are fed up to three times each day, between 8 and 1:00. The dolphin rule is that they get to pick the times. The day we are there, they finish off their ins and outs by 10:30.
the feedings are completed, we leave, returning to the Coastal Highway. Because it's spring, as we drive south, we begin to see swaths of magenta, yellow, and purple wild flowers that spill around the clumps of blue-green grass and flow amongst the ghost gums.
Kilbarri to Geraldtown - wild flowers to stoplights
The Overlander turnoff it is only ~150 km to Kilbarri. We arrive in early afternoon to discover the town is filled to the brim with visitors who have come for the spring wild flowers. We get the last motel room, and feeling much relieved, begin exploring.
The memory of the long flat vistas of the past six days fade as we drive along cliffs and stop to walk to overlooks. We watch huge green breakers sweeping in from Asia meet scarlet cliffs covered with low brush and wild flowers. It is a wildly beautiful place with trails for both the casual walker and the more serious hiker, and we are sorry we don't have more than a day to spend here.
In the morning, we continue south, and as we leave the cliffs behind, we begin to see dunes and rolling grasslands where we encounter our first mob of sheep after 2500 km of cows. We're sorry to see that we have also left behind the wild flowers that so delighted us the last two days.
In Geraldtown, we encounter our first stoplights since Broome, accompanied by numerous, prominent signs reminding us of their function. Geraldtown is considerably larger and more modern than Broome, with a much greater population density than we've become accustomed to in the past week.
Cervantes - The Pinnacles
From Geraldtown we drive 180 km to Cervantes, which is so small our motel is the only place to sleep and eat. The next morning, we get up shortly after sunrise for the short drive to the Pinnacles, sandstone formations reminiscent of Bryce Canyon, Utah. When we enter the park, too early even for the fee taker, we find we are driving on a hardpacked trail of tan sand that circles through the Pinnacles in a 3.5 km loop.
After reading the description of the Pinnacles, I'm not expecting to be very impressed, but I'm in for a surprise.
The park is mostly deserted and as we drive the loop, stopping periodically to get out for a closer look or a short walk, we are struck by the quiet, beauty, and peace of this unusual landscape. The pinnacles themselves are mostly small, many under ten feet, but the number makes for constantly changing vistas that at sunrise and sunset include interlaced shadows.
Although we have seen a number of amazing things along the western coast, for me, the surprise answer to 'what did I like the best' is the Pinnacles.
Cervantes to Perth
From the Pinnacles it's an easy 245 km drive through the Swan Valley, as lush and green as its name implies, to Perth. Although the green is welcome, I find I miss the broad vistas of bare, burned red earth interspersed with brush, grass, and carpets of flowers.
Our trek down the western coast of Australia has added 3800 km (2440 mi) to the odometer of our rental car. That's 2700 km more than our rental price covers and 1600 km more than my husband's estimate. Still, we have had a once in a lifetime experience that few other people, even very well-traveled ones, will have. And that, as they say, is priceless.
SIDEBARS:
The most cost- and time-effective way to visit the western Australian coast is to fly to Perth--easy to get to, and with Qantas Boomerang Passes, inexpensive--rent a car, and visit the Pinnacles, Kilbarri and Shark Bay (Monkey Mia, Shell Beach, Hamelin Pond). That round trip is ~1700 km. Returning the car to Perth eliminates a drop-off fee ($600A). In order to visit Ningaloo, use a Qantas Boomerang Pass and fly to Exmouth.
Phone Home - As not all motels in Australia provide phones in the rooms, a Telstar phone card is a good idea. It will allow you to make calls from public Telstar phones (the orange and blue ones). The card is required to access 800 numbers for making reservations for accommodations and tours. A small denomination card is adequate as a short call to the U.S. costs about $2.
Driver in the Middle - Driving in Australia will quickly remind you that although these blokes speak English, you're no longer in Kansas, mate. All rental cars have signs with arrows reminding you to drive on the left, but since driving is an automatic activity that we usually do without thinking, such advice may not be the only crutch you'll need. More helpful is to remember that the driver should always be in the middle of the street or highway. Even more helpful is empowering your traveling companion, if you have one, to let you know (soft tones only) when you have drifted to the right or turned into the wrong lane. You will also quickly discover that the turn signal and windshield wiper controls have been switched. Relax. You'll remember after a day or two!
A whole lot of empty!
