Steep Point

We had seen Steep Point on the map and thought it would be great to get out there since it is the most westerly point of mainland Australia. However on closer examination it was not for the faint hearted. There was a 70km drive on gravel and then 40km through the sand dunes. Once you got to Steep Point there was no power, water or any other facilities. We felt it might be a bit much on our own. Then some friends we had met at Geike Gorge, way back in Fitzroy Crossing, arrived at Monkey Mia and were looking for some people to go out to Steep Point with (Jill, Kumar and their 2 kids). We thought it over and by the time we had spoken to a few locals who raved about it we decided to give it a go. We couldn't take our van so had to find somewhere to leave it and take the tents. It was a big effort for me to go somewhere with no facilities! First time we had to pack the shovel for toileting purposes! After some research we found a station called Tamala which was about 45km in on the gravel. We could stay there the first night then leave the van with them. We didn't know what to expect from Tamala but we were very pleasantly surprised when we got there. We drove the van right onto the beach and we had the place to ourselves. Surprise, surprise the first thing the boys did was start fishing. Kumar caught a very slightly undersized pink snapper and Tom managed to catch an enormous fish which he unfortunately couldn't land. The sunset that night was superb.




First thing the kids did when they woke up was to start fishing again and this time Jack had some success, landing a large barracuda.



The view behind him is what we had from the front door of the van.

We packed up and drove back to Tamala homestead and left the van behind for the big adventure. It was a very boring but not too rough drive on the gravel for another 50km or so then we got to the fun stuff. We let the tyres down and followed Jill and Kumar who had their camper trailer with them. They struggled up the first sandhill and we thought we may have to turn around but they tried the method of flooring it in high range and made it easily. The next 40km through the dunes was very bumpy but lots of fun as the scenery was amazing.






That's the track on the left and some of the huge sandhills we passed on the way in.

We finally made it to Sheltered Bay which is where we set up camp. It's about 10km short of Steep Point. We camped right on a really lovely beach.







The next day we drove out to Steep Point. We had made it to the most westerly point!


We drove a little further to check out the other camping area. This is one of the best fishing spots in the country but it is fishing off the cliffs and requires some specialist equipment and know how so we couldn't give it a try.


They use helium balloons to carry the lures out further and to bounce them up and down off the surface of the water. The fishermen we spoke to had caught about 80kg of filleted fish in under a week! They had to stop as the limit is 20kg per person. The mackerel they were pulling in were enormous. Unfortunately we didn't see one caught while we were there. The cliffs they were fishing off are called the Zuytdorf Cliffs and stretch all the way south to Kalbarri.



Very spectacular.




The drive back to the campsite over the huge dunes gave us a great view of Sheltered Bay.




We stayed for 2 nights and considered a third but the wind had picked up and we had no luck fishing so food supplies were running low. And I was keen for a shower and a toilet! On the drive out we made an unplanned detour to a place called Thunder Bay. We are very glad we did because it was truly spectacular. I know I keep saying this about WA but it is true! The photos do not do it justice. Everyone should come out here and see for themselves!



We spent ages watching the enormous waves crash into the cliffs. Jack said it was one of the best things he has seen on this trip. Unfortunately this was our last stop and we drove back to Tamala to collect our van and head back into civilization again.

Steep Point is one of the most beautiful places I have seen. The campsites on the beach were fantastic. It was so good that I barely noticed the lack of facilities and for those who know me and my love of camping, that is a big call! It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. The kids reckon it was their second favourite place! First place is still held by Broome/Cape Leveque apparently. I have to say I agree with them. It is interesting that for someone like me who really isn't that keen on camping (I don't mean caravan camping but REAL camping), the 2 best places I have been to have been ones where we slept in a tent. There is definitely something to be said for making an effort to get off the beaten track. Perhaps we need to trade the van in for an off road camper trailer!

Tom's Fishing Charter from Monkey Mia

When Michael took the boys out fishing in Broome, Tom spent the whole day with very bad sea sickness. So bad in fact that he only touched a rod for about 30 seconds then threw up and had to lie down again! So he has been feeling a bit left out. Since we have been travelling with the McCloskeys who are into their fishing, Tom has developed an interest, or should we say obsession with fishing. He bought a Gregory's Fishing Guide from the op shop in Carnarvon for a dollar and reads it every night in bed and quite regularly through the day too. So we thought it would be good for him to try out another charter. Michael took him out on the Mac Attack boat that went for a half day trip from the jetty at Monkey Mia. Although there definitely weren't as many fish as the Broome trip, some people on the trip didn't catch anything, Tommy managed to get the largest fish of the day. Not only that, he also managed to catch 2 fish at the same time! Here is a picture of his big fish, a Tusk fish (also sometimes called a blue grouper or something like that). He would also like me to mention that these fish are very rare and are hardly ever caught with a line!




This is the first fish he caught, a snapper, but it was too small and had to be thrown back.




This is a picture of all the fish caught for the day, Tom's 2 fish on the left and then one of Michael's next to it. The smaller ones they caught are blue lined emperors I think.



Tom is now very happy with the world again and is looking forward to our trip to Steep Point which is apparently the best fishing in the world! Big call so we will see. A lot of people balloon fish off the cliffs which we won't be doing so hopefully there is still something to catch off the beach.

Even more from Monkey Mia

As part of our boat cruise package we also got to go on a morning wild life cruise. So we all boarded the Shotover again and went looking for sea creatures. We were followed by dolphins again and saw a couple of enormous logger head turtles on the way out. We got to see lots of dugongs which are very strange looking animals. They are also known as sea cows as they spend all their time eating the sea grass from the bottom of the ocean. They surface every so often to breathe which is why you can see them quite easily. They can grow to about 3 metres which is too big for the sharks to bother with. However the sharks do manage to eat about half of all the babies born every year which keeps the population to sustainable levels.
On the way back we got to see a Leopard Shark too. I was a bit slack with my camera on this boat trip, too much time sitting back and relaxing, but I did manage a few shots.









The kids spent lots of time below deck on the beds for some reason. Charlie has decided he wants to be a boat driver when he grows up. So I guess he was getting in practice.

You would think that after a morning spent on a catamaran that the kids would spend the afternoon resting. No way, not the Brookes brothers. Instead they talked Michael into letting them hire a glass bottom boat and they all spent an hour sailing around looking for pearl shells.






They found lots of pearl shells but no pearls unfortunately. However they do like eating the raw pearl meat so that kept them from asking for food for a few more minutes!

We have met up with a family that we met for the first time on the Geike Gorge boat trip back in Fitzroy Crossing. They are planning a trip out to Steep Point which is the westernmost point of mainland Australia and asked if we wanted to come with them. It is a very long and tricky 4WD track out there which would mean leaving the caravan at one of the stations and then taking our tents. They don't want to leave until Thursday but I am pretty sure we will wait for them and give it a try. A lot of locals rave about the place and it is about time for another adventure in the tents. Since we have been to the southernmost and easternmost points before it would be great to get to the western one. It is also one of the best fishing spots in the country so if we don't manage to catch something out there we never will!

Francois Peron National Park

Since we had caught up to the McCloskeys again at Monkey Mia, we thought it would be a good opportunity to check out Francois Peron National Park together. The drive to the homestead is a 2WD road but the rest of the national park is 4WD only with a lot of deep sand. We always feel safer tackling that kind of thing with another family. The homestead was built back in the days of sheep farming. The land was bought by the government in the early 90's and turned into a National Park. The kids were very excited to try out their natural hot spa using hot artesian bore water. It is about 40 degrees so a bit hot when it is over 30 degrees outside!



We then drove for about an hour to get to the northern area of the park and have a look at Bottle Bay. It is spectacular as the cliffs are red and the sand is either white, red, orange or even black in some areas.









Dion found some rock oysters and the boys tried them and decided they like them now. They are developing expensive sea food tastes on this trip. Tom requested red emporer fish for his dinner the other night at $65 per kilo! And Jack wants crab and crayfish to try as well. Even though it is all caught around here it doesn't make it any cheaper. Maybe just fresher.

We then got back into the car and had a look at Cape Peron and Skipjack Point. Beautiful scenery again and we saw enormous stingrays, lots of fish and lots of cormorants diving for fish from the look out.













We then went back down the sandy road to Herald Bight.



Beautiful clear water and a bit more sheltered from the wind but unfortunately no fish. The kids made another city for the toy cars but with no fish biting we decieded to head back to Monkey Mia. Really worth the long sandy drive to get in here. You can camp here and it would be a lovely spot to spend a few nights in a camper trailer or tent.

More from Monkey Mia

We had quite a busy first day in Monkey Mia. After the dolphin feeding we went to have a quick look around Denham. On the way we stopped at a place called Little Lagoon. It is almost perfectly round and is connected to the sea by a tiny channel. It looked so beautiful that we wanted to swim but there are lots of stonefish in the area which are nearly impossible to see and can kill in a couple of hours if you step on them. So made the lagoon a bit less inviting. At least you could see a shark or a croc coming for you up north!




It didn't take very long to look around Denham as it is a small town. Very pretty and it had a great Visitor Centre with lots of information about the area. Jack filled in a questionnaire that they have for kids and Tom and Charlie spent the time fighting and throwing tantrums. Too many late nights I think.

We then drove to Ocean Park which is the aquarium. We had a look through various tanks and saw lots of fish and other creatures. However I think the highlight was the shark feeding. They had a big outdoor pool with lots of Lemon and Sandbar sharks.








Tempting place to throw naughty children!

After Ocean park we went back to the resort for a rest then went on a sunset boat cruise. We were on a catamaran called Shotover which was lovely. The wind was up so we were sailing along pretty fast with plenty of spray. Not very easy to drink on though, we all kept spilling them!



Michael helped with raising one of the sails.



The kids enjoyed sitting on the net as we were sailing along.



The sunset was really beautiful too. We even had a few dolphins swimming along behind us.

For those of you who watched a tv show called Farmer Wants a Wife a couple of seasons ago, we kept sailing past the Pearl Farm belonging to one of the farmers!

Feeding the dolphins at Monkey Mia

I was very excited about seeing the dolphins at Monkey Mia. It is something I have been hearing about for many years so it was really great to be here. The whole interaction is very carefully managed by the park rangers. You have to get to the beach by 7:45am and wait on the boardwalk then finally you are allowed down to the water's edge. The dolphins are there from about 7:15 or so and you can see them swimmimg arund waiting for their food. We werer lucky enough to have a baby dolphin at the moment called Piper who is 3 weeks old. Very cute!










Because it is breeding season we had to stay out of the water so that the dolphins don't come right into the shallows. If they do it can mean that their babies are not able to feed. There were 4 wildlife volunteers each holding a bucket with a dolphin's name on it. Each bucket contained only 4 fish as they are careful not to overfeed and have the dolphins rely too much on the food. The volunteers pick people out of the crowd to come into the water and give a dolphin a fish.

Jack and Tom were very lucky to be picked out of the crowd and have a turn of feeding a dolphin. They got to feed Surprise.







On the way back from the dolphin feeding we very nearly bumped into some more emus who were just wandering around the caravan park!

Carnarvon to Monkey Mia

From Coral Bay we drove to Carnarvon. We were planning on calling in at a place called Point Quobba for a couple of nights before we got to Carnarvon but we had discovered a broken shock absorber and needed to get that looked at if we wanted to go off road. Repco fixed it very promptly and at a reasonable cost for WA so would recommend them if you ever need a mechanic in Carnarvon. We stayed at a Big 4 Caravan Park which had a jumping castle. It kept the kids entertained all afternoon so we were very happy. Really friendly people running the caravan park for a change so I would also recommend this as a place to stay. The McCloskeys arrived later that afternoon after spending an extremely windy night at Point Quobba. They left the next day to go to Monkey Mia but we thought we would stay another night in Carnarvon and have a look around. Carnarvon is well known for it's produce so we went to a farm called Bumbaks and had mango smoothies and chocolate dipped mango icy poles. We picked up some strawberries and other fruit and veg from the Coral Coast Strawberry Farm. We also got some whiting and red snapper to eat from the fish shop.

On our way out of Carnarvon the next day we stopped at the One Mile Jetty for a look. Unfortunately it had been burnt a few weeks earlier by some disgruntled fisherman who had their illegal catch confiscated but it was still worth a look.







We also stopped at a place called Pelican Point to let the hermit crabs go. The boys had cared for them really well but we were worried about taking them too much further south. Plenty of tears as they said goodbye but the promise of a chocolate covered banana ice cream cheered them all up!

The drive to Monkey Mia was long and very very boring. Took about 4 hours or so. We made one stop on the way in at Hamelin Pool where you can see the stromalites. For those like me who didn't have a clue what they are I will do my best to explain. They are the earliest form of life that occurred on the planet many billions of years ago. They are these algae rock like things that produce oxygen, hence the beginnings of life on earth. They thrive in Hamelin Pool due to the high salt levels. Very hard for the kids to get their heads around. Here are some pictures.












They are extremely slow growing, only 0.4mm a year so these ones are very old. I think Tom was more impressed by the old shell quarry that we saw at Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station. They dug the compacted shell out and used it to build a church and houses many years ago.













We finally made it to Monkey Mia and checked in at the Dolphin Resort. Looked like a great place and we were really looking forward to meeting a few dolphins the next morning.

Coral Bay Part 2

We didn't do much else in Coral Bay other than swim and snorkel and eat birthday damper! However Tom has been carting a box around for ages wanting to make a diorama, as you do when you are travelling around in a caravan. I kept saying no however Tom and Jack got together with Jade and after pooling their resources came up with one.






They did a really great job and were very upset that I wouldn't let them take it with us!

One of the tours available at Coral Bay is a ride on a quad bike. Since we spent so much money on boat trips we had to give it a miss but the boys got to sit on one anyway.



It was very hard to get Charlie off!

After a week in Coral Bay it was time to move on again. We really enjoyed it here and would love to come back and swim with the whale sharks one day. On to Carnarvon and hopefully some cheaper groceries. WA is expensive but Coral Bay wins so far. I bought 2 litres of milk and some Kraft mayonnaise and it was $11!