Home again; Thursday

Last breakfast.
Last time packing the car.
Last walk along the Swan River.
Last pictures taken.
Last drive with our now beloved battle ship.
Last time taking up fuel.
Last taxi ride.
Last time paying with Australian dollars.
Last look on Australian ground from the plane's windows.
Last everything here Down Under.
What a sad day.
Will I come back? You can bet on that.

Fremantle, Wednesday

Our last complete day in OZ.

Holy shit , where did those four weeks went? We had a really lazy day, wandering around, looking for the Kulcha, Fly By Night and Sail And Anchor, visiting the WA Maritime Museum, spending some time on the beach, reading, gathering strenght for the evening. Last opportunity to have some Australian beers and maybe even spot some of Tigh's list.

So around 7.30 we went out to have dinner at Cicerello's (yummy seafood, Harald had a grilled Barramundi that was stunning). The first time I was given a pager that peeped and blinked to indicate that our food was ready and could be picked up and a red bucket with ice to keep our bottle of wine cool. Lovely sunset in the harbour and , apart from those pushy seagulls, a serene dinner.

After that we were ready for a pub crawl. We started at the Sail and Anchor and tried our way through some of their homebrewed stuff. The Brass Monkey Stout has to be my favourite. Then we trundled through some others whose names I can't remember but where I finally found and enjoyed Redback Wheat beer until we landed at Rosie O'Grady's pub which had live music and where we finally let the evening die away. I had more than my share and was dead tired, so we went back to our room for what was left of the night.

Yep, really a place where you could spend a few days.

Up north again; Tuesday

We carefully planned our trip to arrive in Yarloop on the appointed time and made a good job of it as we entered the locality in exactly the half hour I had announced our arrival. Mike seemed to have expected a phone call nonetheless (in case we got lost? I have no idea) but that couldn't be helped now.
I have to admit he is very handy. Again not what I had expected, but very pleased. It was a pleasure to meet Rhonda as well as two of the kids later on who didn't seem to be able to make hand or foot of us being there. Mike had the BBQ going and treated us to a wonderful lunch (thanks again for that!!).
Again, I commited a blunder. I am completely disappointed with what the Aussies call 'bread' in this country. It consists of 50% air, 30% water and 20% something, offers absolutely no resistance to your teeth and messes up your digestion completely. So I was more than pleased to spot "real" bread on the table, with a crust that deserved the name, something substantial. That made Mike burst into a laughing fit; he said that just the once when they'd have german guests they wouldn't dare to bring out the plastic bread. And so on..... he could hardly calm down again.
Anyway, it was a lovely afternoon; we chatted till we really had to go if we wanted to reach Fremantle during daylight. I finally got to hear some of McGills songs plus others I liked quite a lot and I have a vague idea now what Mike is doing in Egypt when he is supposed to work....
The afternoon was all too soon over and we parted again, leaving him a bit puzzled after I had delivered the kisses I have been asked to give him. I apologize if that came a bit surprisingly, but I'm reliable in my deliveries. I was asked, so I did. Maybe we'll meet again some day. I do hope so.
This time the predicted time we'd need for reaching Freo was not only right but it took us even longer. There was a fire in the BP Oil Refinery along the highway and we had to take a large detour to reach our destination, just in time before dawn.
But oh my god, what hostel did we land in again. So far we had all possible combinations of clean,big/dirty, small bedroom, well/bad equipped,clean/filthy kitchen, working,clean/sleazy bathroom. But this one outtook most of them. It was big (for one the handrail was not sticky and that was the best feature...) and the managers didn't seem to give a damn about it. The kitchen was .... I won't go there now, I just had lunch....... absolutely sickening.
Two showers (in various states of deterioration) for the whole floor and I won't tell about the giant cobwebs/spiders in the loos. At least our bedroom was kind of ok, but since staying there I have a nasty rash that is still itching like hell a week later and I have no idea where that comes from. Though I have a wild theory......
The town itself was great. Would be even nice to spend a week there and usually I'm not for towns. Very lifely, interesting night life and some nice beaches to spend the days sleeping.
Just the right place to relax a bit on our last day here.

Albany; Monday

The first day with really bad weather. And Graham isn't even anywhere near us. Heavy winds, rain showers, very uncomfortable. We headed for Albany, having intended to spend an easygoing day at the beaches of Torndirrup National Park. No way. We drove to the most outstanding features like the blowholes, the Natural Bridge and the Gap, but as it grew colder and colder we turned around, driving to our hostel to warm up again. At least to some degree.
Monday, 17th was St.Patrick's Day, right? So we were at least looking forward to a moist and merry evening in one of the local pubs. When we went out for dinner we already spotted some weirdly dressed blokes in green shorts, shirts and giant plushy hats, which assured us that there would be some sort of celebration later on. But when we looked for it around 9pm there was....nothing. Zilch. Nada. We found two (TWO!) pubs in a city of 30000 (we only looked in the city itself, but hey, even so the result was poor) and both were almost empty, no party, no music, no nothing. I was not in the mood to start one for myself, seeing that not many people were out having a ball. They were more the type of serious drinking "I'm not doing this for fun" guys. So what, we went home again and that was about it. Strangest St.Patrick's day we ever had.
Only highlight was phoning Mike and discovering that his voice was completely different to what I had expected. As far as I understood him we made an appointment to meet the other day on our way to Fremantle. So that was a thing worth looking forward to.

Bibbulmun Track; Sunday

We left early in the morning and drove a few kilometres to the Tree Top Walk, a giant steel construction on which you can take a stroll through the crowns of some of the most astonishing trees in the world. The walkway goes up to 40m above the ground, which gives you a kind of "squirrel sight" on the forest; we made it three times as I couldn't part from it. The bridges were designed to swing with the wind which was a delight to me, but obviously not to some elderly people who looked a bit distressed...

Next to it is the Ancient Empire Walk, a grove of impressive veteran tingle trees, some over 400 years old. They are endemic to this area and only grow on some 1600 ha. Most of them are affected by a fungus that has eaten away all the core wood and when there was a fire it burned all the rotten wood away, smouldering for months sheltered from rain through the outer bark, until it reached living, moist wood and went out again. This way most of the trees are hollow to some degree which makes for some interesting cavities. This giant tingle is so huge that you could park a pickup in his trunk. It makes you feel so small to stand beneath it, watching through the gaps in his bark, wondering how on earth it can still be alive. But he is doing exceedingly well. We took part in a guided tour through the Ancient Empire Walk and the guide told us that 1937 and again somewhere in the 70s there were massive crown fires sweeping through that area, going on an incredible speed (no chance of keeping out of its way..... ) and burning vast expanses. But even if these trunks are almost completely destroyed, they still live on and regrow from shoots lying just under the thick outer bark. We saw trees, completely hollow and burned to a bare minimum, hardly holding to the soil, but surrounded by four, five "new" trees emanating from the original trunk, growing strong and green.

These "walks" barely covered 5km altogether, almost nothing. So we decided to tackle a part of that famous Bibbulmun Track that covers almost 1000km from Perth to Albany. I have been told that it is similar to the Appalachian Track in USA, of which I have absolutely no knowledge at all, but others might. So there were more trees to marvel at (no hugging, sadly; on one hand they are simply too big, and on the other hand, huge as they might be, they are also very fragile with shallow roots that are easily damaged when you step on them and they don't like to be touched. They might survive a conflagration, but the guide showed us where people had constantly touched the bark of some red Tingles and how it had damaged the bark, forming large podgy humps like scar tissue. Sigh.).

I "see" with my hands and I love touching things. In German 'to reach for' and 'to understand' are closely related ('greifen' and 'begreifen') and that's how I work as well. It was hard not to touch all the new things I found in this country, but my encounters with nature have been very painful at times in the past, so with all the poisonous stuff here I was fully aware that I'd best keep my hands close by. Not to mention sniffing/trying things as I usually do.

But even so it was a rewarding walk for several hours. One day I'd love to spend at least a week on one of these long tracks, here or elsewhere in the world. That should be serious fun, spending all day outside, sleeping in the woods and all. Even if it rains.

Walpole; Saturday

After a short side trip to the surf beaches of Prevelly and a walk across the dunes we resumed our zoom towards Walpole, a tiny village at the corner of the Nornalup Inlet. Though zoom is a bit imprecise, as it was more like meandering. Street signs on minor roads are a mess here and of course we got lost despite our map and took a large detour over Nannup instead of heading towards Pemberton directly. Another 100km, who cares by now....

Entering the Southern Forests was a kind of revelation. I love trees of all sorts and I'm guilty of hugging some of them from time to time. And no, I'm not crazy. Try it, it feels.....special. Consoling.

Anyway, there they were, enormous, mighty, stately trees, almost the same circumference from root to top, greyish-red or silvery or yellow bark; hundreds and hundreds of them! Yeah, silly, that's probably why they call it a FOREST....

Most impressive and I was grateful that Harald was driving that morning as I was fully occupied gazing at the trees and would have steered us directly into the shrubs at some point. Just look at them, aren't they gorgeous?

Best of all, tomorrow would be spend wandering around beneath and around them, something I was very much looking forward to.

When we arrived at our hostel in Walpole I was pleasantly surprised. A very nice, clean, familiar and best of all, quiet hostel with a lovely couple running it and guests that were as much into hiking as we were. So we spent the evening cooking together and exchanging tips on were to go/what to see and a good time was had by all.

Walpole Inlet/Frankland River+Nornalup Inlet

Margaret River; Thursday+Friday

Another lengthy bit of driving down to Margaret River again. North of Perth driving on the Brand Highway was almost relaxing, but finding our way through/around Perth and then the endless suburbs further south was harrying. More traffic than we had the last four days together, all those traffic lights....it took us ages to get past Mandurah.

Having seen so many dramatic landscapes by now, the sight between Perth and Margaret River was a bit disappointing. Australia got us accustomed to the spectacular and now it wanted to fob us with the ordinary? Come on, you can do better than that. No? Alright then, I hope the wines will make up for that. In Cowamarup we stopped at the Margaret River Regional Wine Centre to ask for a guided tour to some wineries. Good gracious, they have some nice drops there, about 95% of all wineries are presented and we could have started a tasting there and then, but....you know...think of drink and drive? Think again.

They pointed us towards the Visitor Centre in town to book such a tour which we did (better let somebody else do the driving) and resorted to our hostel.

What a hostel...... I have seen some while travelling but this was.....in some way outstanding...kind of. I immediately decided not to cook in this kitchen, in fact we didn't even had breakfast in there but went to a café, this filthy it was. In the night some drunken guys had a go in there, left the light on plus the fans in both kitchen and bathroom so it was pretty loud.

I'm not fussy, but there are some basic rules that make a thing like a hostel work and one is to show some consideration for your fellows. Which they didn't. When the party noise finally subsided, I woke up again due to the lights and the rustling of the fans and made the big mistake to enter the kitchen barefooted to switch them off. Bad idea, as someone had flooded the kitchen floor with I-don't-know-what and I stepped right into it. Uurrgh.....

Of course no one bothered about removing it the next morning but when they got up at 5am to go to work they merely spread the puddles evenly across the whole room.
I am not sure if there ever was a major epidemic starting from this kitchen but I was not eager to find out. So it was a no-go area for me from that point on.

Thank goodness we had that winery tour to look forward to. After an early lunch (the worst Fish&Chips I ever had, but it was a solid base for the tasting) we were picked up by Dave, a former High School Teacher, for the tour. A group of about 15, some Kiwis, some Aussies, some Poms, a French and a German girl, a Canadian couple, all quite enthusiastic, greeted us on board and off we went.
The first winery we visited was a small, family-run one only founded 8 years ago. The guy doing the tasting with us was a professional seller who would jabber till your ears bled if you let him. But he offered us some really good wines, especially the Chenin Blanc was a real treat. So we bought some, not yet knowing how we'd bring them home safely. But we were to be in the country for a few more days, so who knows what might happen.

The next one was a complete disappointment. The owners looked like they were their best customers, the estate was built in a kind of Australiana Style (?), lots of corrugated iron and wooden planks, and the best thing about the whole winery was this cutie called Sam.
All the wines, the Chenin Blanc, the Sauvignon-Semillon blends, tasted like biting into freshly mown grass ( and , no, Mike, I have never tried freshly mown grass, it was just the way it smelled that brought up the image ... ) and after the third wine I uncoupled from our group and let the following glasses pass from me. Even the port they served at the end was barely drinkable. I felt a bit sorry for the guys when I saw that I was not alone in my opinion; most of the others used every unobserved moment to get rid of the contents of their glasses as well. I wonder who drinks this kind of stuff? Surely they must make a living from it, they have been around for quite some years and their equipment looked pretty new. It's a miracle to me.
The next one made up for everything again. If anyone ever comes across wines from Churchview Estate, Margaret River, give them a try. Excellent. Nothing less.
They surely make you pay for that quality, but most let you pay even more for a lot less. Their unwooded Chardonnay even convinced me (and I'm a kind of ABC-drinker) and the Semillon-Sauvignon Blanc had such subtle fruit flavours, ....
Although the region is not famous for their red wines, they make a good enough Shiraz as well. The owner himself showed us around and did the tasting and did a brilliant job with it, talking about the fermentation process, what barrels they use and why, about the advantages of screw caps ( I wish some of the customers in my father-in-law's winery could have heard him....) and he provided me with some really good arguments that I can use for myself now.
After that we went to see a chocolate factory again ..... and a cheese factory ( well....so lala) before heading for the last winery of the day, a former sheep farm. This sheep poo must be a good fertilizer; good on them that they changed the use of their land, man, they had some wines......
But it was good that it was the last one, I would have not been able to cope with a single more. So we called it a day and Dave brought us back to the hostel were we took a quick shower, changed clothes and headed for the "Settlers", a pub in Margaret River that has a lot of live music on almost every night and some good food as well.
So how does the saying go : Wine upon beer is a very good cheer. Beer upon wine you'll repine.
I can't confirm that. I was fine with it, and boy, what an evening we had.

Pinnacles, Wednesday

It was worth getting up this early. At first I was not at all pleased because the sky was covered in thick dark clouds and it was drizzling when I got up but miraculously when we came to the Pinnacles the clouds parted and though there were more coming from the sea right above us there was sun peeping through. The light was brilliant and we were the only ones there so could take our time walking around instead of using the car track, leaving it to get better shots; it was still fairly cool and ... no flies!
These rock formations are something special indeed.
We decided to return once more at sunset to compare light qualities and spend the rest of the day on the beach.
Which was a bit of a problem at first because I keep forgetting at what time the tide comes in and the beaches we had a look at the evening before were all more or less flooded or covered with sea grass and algae. Given that Harald is still a bit panicky about jelly fish and stingrays we didn't actually enter the water but were content to take a stroll along the beach, sun bathing, watching birds, before returning to the Pinnacles.
A hearty serving of Spaghetti and meatballs I prepared earlier in the afternoon ended a wonderful day.

South again; Tuesday

Forget about sharks, snakes, spiders, sea wasps or blue ringed octopusses. The most disturbing animal in Australia is without doubt ..... the common flie.
If you have never been tormented by hundreds of tiny flies trying to get to your eyes, into your ears or nose, you don't know what a nuisance is. I think .... I think I even inhaled one .....
On our way back to the Brand Highway we stopped at Hamelin Pool to cast a glance on the Stromatholites there and from the moment we left the car till we got back into the same the flies were upon and surround us. It does look silly when you walk around waving your hands frantically around your head and for the first time ever I considered those netted hats to be a really good idea. You are a stranger anyway, no one will remember you or how stupid you looked. Next time around ....
When we finally reached the beach the wind coming from the sea at least blew the flies out of our faces; they were content to sit in dozens on our backs which was fine for me.
Stromatolithes are the kind of thing you look at and think: Alright, and exactly what for did I cross the continent now?
They are not very exciting, not at all. But when you keep in mind that these rocky structures resp. the cyanobacteriae in them produced the first oxygen in our athmosphere and made this planet a livable place for other life forms then you start looking at them with different eyes. There might even be a trace of gratefulness creeping in your mind when you inhale the next breath of fresh air.
For a split second.
Until, on your way back to the car, the flies start teasing you again.
We stopped just twice more, once on Shelly Beach to marvel at the millions and millions of tiny white shells forming a splendid beach and another time in Geralton to stock up food, wine and petrol before we drove to Cervantes, a small village at the edge of Nambuk National Park. Nice Hostel, and close to the Pinnacles, which was very important as I wanted to be there at sunrise.
Bloody early, I know.