For the first time in the past eight mornings, we woke to find dull grey, leaden skies, instead of the usual sunny brilliance we had become accustomed to. It was not raining, but trying very hard to get started, with some small drops hitting us as a reminder to pack the tent up quickly. While we were packing up the tent, a goat from the neighbouring paddock leaped through a gap and came over to investigate the situation. Diana tried to shoo it away, but the goat was well aware of who had the upper hand and stood it’s ground. The caravan park owner came across and dragged it back into the paddock, went off to do another task, and the goat escaped again, leading the park owner on a merry little chase around for a while before he caught it, put it back in the paddock, and blocked the hole.

Drove to Cape Leeuwin (~8 kms) to see the lighthouse. On the way, we noted a sign directing us to the “scenic route”, so we decided to take that road. We have but one recommendation for anyone choosing to travel down this way - take the main road. The scenic route was very possibly the most unscenic we have driven along for a while, with nothing to look at from one end to the other. Fair enough, the local scrubby trees are technically the landscape and therefore scenic, but we were unable to see past the first metre of scrub on either side of the road, so it was pointless.

Drove to Skippy Rock, but due to the lack of effective signage, and there being more than one large rock in the area of ocean we were looking at, we were unable to figure out which one was the rock we’d come to see.

The Southern and Indian oceans meet at Cape Leeuwin - one of only four places in the world where oceans meet. We were expecting a reasonably distinct line between two different oceans, with waves slapping each other head on, but the weather was not in our favour. Apparently on some days, the line is quite clear where the oceans meet, but on the day we went, the wind was up a bit, and we were only able to see a couple of waves moving in different directions every so often. Climbing to the top of the lighthouse, we did not see any more distinct lines, although we got to spy on some dolphins that were about 20-50m offshore, swimming inside the curling waves, until they were about to break, then turn and leap out the back of the wave. Very impressive to see up to half a dozen dolphins racing along, then all turning and catapulting backward into the air.

Leaving Cape Leeuwin, we drove through tall timber to get to Pemberton, in order to see the Gloucester Tree. The Gloucester Tree is the highest fire lookout tree in the world, with 153 rungs letting people climb to a platform 61m off the ground. From that point, it is possible to spot bushfires during the hot season, and get fire trucks to the scene quickly. Trav climbed up about 15m off the ground, but decided it was “damn silly to go any higher” and climbed down. Diana climbed the tree too - all 2m or so from the ground - in order to get her photo taken.

On the other side of Pemberton to the Gloucester Tree is a Karri tree with a hole right through it. We visited it before we got to the tourist bureau, so thought it had formed naturally, and they had cleaned up some loose bits with a chainsaw. It turns out that someone actually just cut their way through the tree with a chainsaw, taking ten hours to carve a hole. The tree remained alive, and there is an estimated 150 tonnes of tree above the hole. We viewed it more as vandalism than tourism when we realised how it had been created, but I suppose it is done now, so they may as well use it as an attraction.

Our “Stupid Person Of The Day” award went to the CALM ranger on-duty at the Gloucester Tree that day, working to collect the $5 entry fees for vehicles entering the park. When we showed him the Holiday Pass we’d bought instead of having to pay each time we went to a park, he replied that it was no good to him. We thought he meant that the pass was not valid at that park, although so far as we knew, it was invalid on one park in the state only, and this was not that park. We asked him then what the charge was to get in, and he again replied the card was no good to him. Frustrated, Diana blurted out “so what is it that you want?” and he then explained that he got paid more out of the $5 per vehicle fee than he would get from the Holiday Pass $20 fee. Throughout the rest of the five minute conversation, he just kept muttering “that card’s no good for me, it isn’t, you know, no good at all” until we thought he had spent too long in the little 6-foot square ranger station.

We were intending to continue through to Walpole and go on a tree-top walkway through the forest canopy, but realised we would not make it before it closed for the day, so took a leisurely drive through the trees, following a trail known as the “Great Forest Trees Drive”. It had interested us when we read about it because there are several points where they have installed radio transmitters in the tree, and whenever you see a sign to turn the radio on, you could tune to a frequency and listen to the narration. However, the narration had nothing to do with the forest. Or the trees. Nor was it that great, although we did hear some old bloke recalling when his family walked some cattle through the area in the 1860’s. Still, given that we were stopped at a place with a boardwalk called Snake Gully Lookout, we figured it would be a radio message about what to look out for on the walkway, so it was rather disappointing.

On the way to the Great Forest Trees Drive, we’d passed through a town called Northcliffe. Just outside the town there were some roadworks happening, with a man holding a stop/go sign at each end. Despite the fact we’d not seen a vehicle in the previous five kilometres, nor the fourteen kilometres after the roadworks, we still had to stop. The flagman watched us approach, made us stop for one quarter of one second, let the car go out of gear, then waved us through. There was no need to stop us along that section of road, given we were already travelling under the speed limit as we approached the roadworks, so he could not even pull us up on the grounds we would have driven through too quickly. We invented a new award for “Miserable Bastard Of The Day”, and this man won hands-down.

Just outside of Walpole, it began to rain for about five minutes, and seeing as Diana had come down with a cold and had been sneezing all day, suggested we might look for a cabin for the night, instead of tenting. Diana was most pleased with the idea, having no desire to see how waterproof the tent was. First stop was the caravan park we were intending to stay in, but they had no cabins empty, so we went back into town and tried a budget accomodation place called “Tingle All Over”. Had a look at the bedroom, shared bathroom, kitchen and TV room for $38, but decided to check out the other places, to see if that was a reasonable price or not. Next door’s motel was $89 for a single room, so it certainly seemed cheap, but we thought we’d try the other caravan park as well.

When we arrived and asked about a cabin, the strange old man behind the counter looked into the ledger book and read down the column for no less than five minutes, then announced that they did in fact have one available for $48 per night. Why it took him that long to read the column of “full or empty” is beyond us, but he struck us as very odd anyway. We decided to check it out and see whether it was worth $10 more or not seeing as we were already there, so looked inside and all seemed quite good. Nothing special, but a decent amount of space to live in, but given we only wanted it for the night, we decided to save $10 and go back to “Tingle All Over”. As we walked in the door, the bloke told us we were too late, and that we should have made our minds up earlier. There were no extra cars in the park, nor extra people around, which confused us. We figure he must have just not liked us comparing the cost to other places around town - still, his loss. We returned to the $48 cabin, and went for a walk in the last remaining hour of daylight.

When darkness fell, we went to cook dinner and realised that the stove did not work (later, the owner told us they’d turned them off because people were leaving them going all day by mistake, so he’d made sure they could not work any more - would have been good to tell us this, we think). We also found that the bathroom door did not shut, the blinds did not work in the bedroom, a small trail of ants was wandering across the wall of the bedroom, and the dishes had not been done from the previous tenant - the electric frypan smelling like vomit from the old food left in it. Went to get our money back, which he gave us without a hassle, and then returned to the very first caravan park we went to when we arrived and asked for a tent site. By this time, it was pitch black, so we set up the tent by the car headlights, and stumbled around in the darkness where the tent stopped the light.

Went to cook tea on the electric BBQ and Trav began to clean a couple of leaves off it which had fallen onto the hotplate. As he touched the hotplate, it seemed warm from the sun, because it was spotlessly clean as though nobody had used it that night. Problem was, it was not hot from the sun, but instead, there was a pilot light for the gas just underneath one corner of the hotplate, which was heating the rest of the metal up. When Trav accidentally touched the section with the pilot light, the skin on his fingers instantly blistered and his hand had to be run under cold water for several minutes.

All in all, we finished off the day with lots of driving to find accommodation, ended up setting a tent up in the dark, cooking tea about 10:30pm, and burning Trav’s hand in the process. Even toasted marshmallows later didn’t really compensate for that day, in Trav’s eyes.

Onward to Albany tomorrow…

Categories: Travel, WA 1999