This website was started four years ago so that I didn�t have to write the same email to everyone, and also to avoid jamming inboxes with unwanted pictures. With Europe, friends and family still fresh in memory, here�s WA part 2:
Minutes before I left Holland, there was an email from the employers: I was to be stationed in the dusty bush of WA, instead of in the pleasant seaside towns we�d agreed on. Very miffed and jetlagged I landed in Perth and called Carnarvon with the suggestion that I get an unpaid job in return for no work until a real job became available. With this as a bargaining chip the original plan was resurrected: Esperance on the South coast, followed by Carnarvon on Shark Bay and then on to Exmouth, on the Ningaloo reef. I spent my time in Perth buying a car - Caramella has been rolled, wrecked to half her size- and visiting friends. And the voids in the agenda were easily filled watching the kitesurfing.
Dorre Revisited
Continued WA wanderings
It took about a week to get the car and administration sorted. I headed North to Carnarvon. Meeting friends, windsurfing on the Fascine, and I borrowed my old boat to take out to the islands. The usual gale didn't pick up so Mark and I motorsailed for seven hours to get to Disaster Cove. Sounds boring, but Shark�s Bay is crawling with wildlife. Pods of dolphins and lots of whales. Sometimes as puffs and splashes in the distance, sometimes too close for comfort. We must have seen forty or so without even trying.
And it is such a beautiful place... we moored, Mark went wandering and I snorkelled around. A few years back an old, gnarly fisherman told me: 'WA is brown, dusty and pretty ordinary. Until you stick your head below water, because that is where the colour and life is'.
With the speargun in hand I prowled around, found an edible fish, pulled the trigger and that was dinner taken care of.
After a year in Europe, I'd forgotten about the stars. The winds come straight from Antarctica, and the nearest city is a 1000 K's away. No pollution, light- or otherwise. Millions of them.
The next day I wandered over to The Gap. There is a big tidal pool with oyster-encrusted limestone formations. I don't much care for fresh oysters, but Mark got a good feed out of them. The landscape is vast, but a lot of beauty is in the small things, tiny corals, fish and molluscs in the pool.
Good to be back. Off to Esperance next, which I've been told is very pretty.
