Kalbarri, Caves and Foreign Countires

Well, it's only been a week and I've already managed to fail at my self imposed blog update target of Sunday and Wednesday... That's why I didn't quite post it on the page yet - I knew I wasn't quite at that discipline or organisation level. But, it's still Wednesday somewhere, so I can just make the once a week secondary target if I post in the next few hours! So here we go...

Overground, underground and foreign ground

Kalbarri's calling! So we decide to do the sensible thing, and ignore the tourist information advice and do the 9km Nature's Window trek in the rather warm Western Australian summer heat. So we got there nice and early (only 36C at 0730 in the morning) and had plenty of company for the walk in the guise of hundreds of flies. 500m from the car park is the main and often only destination of this hike - a lovely natural rock arch called Nature's Window, for obvious reasons. In this time I managed to drain my camera battery, go back to the car to get a charger, get back and promptly break my cord - so not many photos for me this day.

Nature's Window

There was a lovely view admittedly, but thought we could improve on it slightly before setting off for the remaining 8.5km jaunt in the now 40C heat. 

There were some fantastic views along the way (see accompanying album), a nice little scramble along the river, a wee swim in the river (on purpose) and plenty of flies and heat. By the time we got back to the car, we were all very grateful for the air con and the slightly less fly-filled car - though this required a complex and hard to master 'fly dance' in order to get rid of all the flies and run into the car with as few still on you as possible - unfortunately we never recorded this moment. The rest of the day was a spent as a well earned break after what I liked to now refer to as the 'fox's anus walk'.

Nature's Peep Show

On the way out, there were the breathtaking red bluff, mushroom rock, eagle gorge, natural bridge and island rock. These are possible to do as a 5km walk or so or driven to separately. They were many tempting times where I wanted to get down onto the cliffs, but thought the access without ropes was a bit dodgy so I resisted this time.

Mushroom Rock - shaped like a mushroom, funnily enough

After a nice scenic morning we took an off-road detour to another country. Here we learned about the country's war with Australia, it secession, shook hands with a Prince and learnt that gravity does in fact propagate instantaneously across any distance - a fact known by this king for over 50 years, and yet somehow still being searched for by the scientific community, even though this paper is posted publicly on a billboard. 

This country is of course: Hutt River, run by HRH Prince Leonard Casley. The Principality of Hutt River is the oldest micronation within Australia which seceded on the 21st April, 1970 and is now an independent nation of 75 square kilometres. HRH Prince Leonard decided to separate from Australia when he got very annoyed with the government in 1969 during the Wheat Quotas allowing the Casleys a quota equivalent to 100 acres of wheat after many years of consistently producing 13,000 acres. After being told there were to be no compensation and the government tried to illegally reclaim a large portion of his land, Leonard decided to announce his secession. After a complex argument and legal battle with the government, Hutt River finally managed a legal Sovereignty by declaring a state of war. Three days later, Leonard declared the State of War over, and through the Laws of War, Sovereignty goes immediately to a Government undefeated in a State of War. HRH Prince Leonard has now had a rather illustrious political career, with many foreign dignitary visitors and gifts and now happily gives a personal tour of the country and a stamped passport or visa for $2.

Last stop on the update this time is Stockyard Gully Caves. These caves are located about 90 minutes south of Gerladton near Eneabba. They form an part of an underground river system that has carved out the limestone with many caves in the area, unfortunately only one open to the public. This is a 300m easy walk through the caves with various side passageways and nooks you can go exploring in. There can be bats in there if you're lucky and there are definitely feral bee hives (it is in the Beekeepers National Park after all) at the entrances so be quiet and careful! The hives were incredibly interesting in that the honeycomb was hanging directly from the cave roofs and not inside any kind of hive.

Painfully tempting

The caves are 4WD accessible only (from the south is much better access than from the north), and we managed to get George bogged after foolishly not dumping him by the side of the road. So we spent a little while digging him out, putting him to the side of the track before Claire happily continued on the soft sand track. From the car park, where you get general and safety information, it's a short hike down to the cave entrance along the river bed. Be aware that if it's due to rain or has rained recently, you should not enter the caves, flash flooding can occur and there is a sign showing the exceptionally high flood levels from back in 1998 on the way down from the car park. These caves were awesome fun and I'd really love to go back to have a play in the less easily accessible ones. Unfortunately, time, equipment and personnel made that impossible on the day. 

Onwards and southwards back towards Perth.

Until the next time.

The New and Improved Family

And we're off!

This first week (and a bit) has gone rather quickly. We spent the first three days driving straight up the coast (with a day in Carnarvon - more on that later) to Exmouth, in order to meet a very good friend of mine and his girlfriend for a few days of sun, sand and shenanigans around the Ningaloo reef. 

The first day was rather short - setting off in the evening, picking up Zoe and then stopping by Kim's best friends place for a very civilised cheese and crackers and slightly less civilised game of cricket with a 5 year old and crawling around the floor with a 10 month old. After a slightly longer stop than planned, we high tailed it a whole 30 minutes to a camp site at Moore River. I did the obligatory group photo day 1 and had a little play with my camera which resulted in a picture I'm quite happy with:

Obligatory first day group shot - a "before" if you will permit me

Happy snappy night time shot

The next three days were rather uneventful with all the driving, so I will swiftly move on to the new introductions. First up, I will introduce you to Claire:

Yes, Claire is a car...

I've had this car for a little over a year now, but it was only on the drive up the coast last week that I finally named my trusty Rav 4. I decided to name my car Claire after a very good friend of mine for a multitude of reasons. I bought this car at about the same time the human Claire came into my life, they're both very strong and fully capable no matter what anyone else may say and despite their misleading demeanor and of course they're both gold (though my Rav 4 is slightly more on the beige/champagne side). So I've decided that Claire will help me get around Australia for the next couple months as human Claire has helped me this past year.

Next up, is George. Or George Aslan II to be precise:

A refined name for a slightly less than refined trailer

This little(ish) bugger is the reason we got stuck in Carnarvon for a day after only two hours of driving. We very quickly realised that we weren't going to have quite enough space in the car as Zoe was already cuddling a lot of the gear in the back and we were going to have a fourth permanent person on this trip when Sam joins us in a couple weeks, let alone two extra temporary family members for the next week or so when we meet up with Will and Sam (different Sam). So we hit the internet to find out the best option for extra storage space, between a roof rack and a trailer. We managed to pick up George here for a mere $100 (down from an advertised $800!), but then had the very fun job of getting him road worthy as he was currently unregistered - and so it begins... First up, poor old George has been sitting in a back garden unloved and unused for a few years - so he needs a new plug, so we head to the local garage who promise to call us back within an hour when it's done - 2.5 hours later, I give them a call - oh yes, it's been done for ages... Alrighty, so next up we go to the post office to try and organise a change of registration - they send us to the bigger Department of Transport office down the road. Drive on down there: yep, here's a form to fill out with all yours and the sellers details on, and by the way, you need to have it inspected, but not at the normal garage, at the registered Toyota dealership just out of town. Back to the previous owner's house for a bit of a sit down form filling session and then off to the Toyota dealer. 

"Yep, we can inspect it, have you got a weight certificate?"

"A what now?" - Apparently, trailers are registered and taxed by weight in WA, but this garage and the other one don't have a vehicle scales, the RAC a bit more out of town does... So down the road we go. Something else was on the scales and unmoveable at that time, so a couple hours and $35 later (yes, $35 to put a trailer on a scale and print out a piece of paper) - back we go to the Toyota dealer. Inspection takes about 10 minutes, for which my assistance was required and involved a couple tape measurements. 

"Great, come back tomorrow to pick up the documentation."

"What!?" Apparently the documents need to be faxed to Perth, checked and returned, and apparently, at 1530, the people required to make this happen have already left the office... But at least it should be done by 0900. So 1100 rolls around - no phone call. I call them up, and once again, apparently they've had the documents back for a couple hours... great. Another $40 down the drain for another bit of paper and 10 minutes of someone's time to take some measurements. Back to the DoT. Finally after about 24 hours, I finally drive away with a legally registered and slightly cleaner trailer. I'm pretty sure it would have been cheaper and easier to not do the right thing and just pay the fine for an unregistered trailer...

So we load up George and off we head for Exmouth, and 6.5 hours later we arrived in time to set up the tents, chilled out in the pool for a bit and had dinner with a cider that didn't feel quite as well deserved after the debacle with Goerge and then to bed to get up very early to head to the airport to pick up Will and Sam.

Which segues perfectly onto the introduction to the two new temporary family members:

The intrepid explorers

Will is a very good friend of mine back in the UK and Sam is his girlfriend. We spent a few days in the National Park on Ningaloo reef enjoying the amazing snorkelling and relaxing before they had to head back to Perth for Sam to get back to work. More on those few days in another post!

Which brings us to the final new member of the gang: John. He's a bit sensitive and is currently head deep in a tub of guacamole so I can't currently upload you a photo of him. But I will paint a picture - John is a lit bit twisted (literally), and a little bit hairy as he tends to catch a lot of fluff on his head, he's also a spoon (literally), and Zoe found him in the middle of a dirt track on one of her jogs. She felt inspired by her older brother to name it John.

There was one other very temporary family member:

I have no idea what it is, and it didn't survive long enough to name, but it looks like a giant flea. If anyone has any insight - do let me know!

And so that sums up the new editions to the travelling family. I'll close with a cheesy silhouette photo!