Margaret River itself is a small, not very impressive city, but additionally it’s a region famous for wineries, breweries, distilleries, chocolatiers etc. (a bit like Swan Valley in Perth). We spend the Sunday morning with tasting wines and beer in Cheeky Monkey, another beer and cider tastings in a German brewery (Duckstein). Later we continued with chocolate, jam vinegar, oil, dips, fudge (like the caramel stuff in Toffifee) and so on. Strengthened with all the food, we could hit the road again, since there is much more to see in the region except the treats. There are a couple of caves, like the Lake Cave we had the chance to visit. First we had to go down some steps until we reached a platform where our guide waited for us. After some additional steps we arrived in the cave and there were stalagtites and stalagnites everywhere around a little river ending up in a little lake. The highlights were a “table”, a drake and of course the see itself where we could see spectacular reflections.

After that cave we would have liked to see one of the others. But the entry was really expensive, why we chose to visit only one and we were a bit restricted in time. On the other hand our guide explained us that most of them are quite similar and we chose the best one on his opinion!

Beer and Wine ...

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While driving to Busselton, Tobi got a message from our event company, who needed additional staff for a concert in Busselton. So he could earn a bit additional money for the trip and Kerstin had a night of partying with Vera in Busselton (as far as this was possible in this very rainy, windy and little town). We later slept in the van on the showground of the festival. It was apparently quite comfortable! On Saturday morning we visited the beach, the 1.8km jetty (the longest on the southern hemisphere) and met a friend of Vera who gave us a lot of hints for our next stops. We followed the hints on our way to Margaret River and visited Meelup Beach (where we could see a weeding), Castle Rock, the lighthouse at Cape Naturaliste and Smiths Beach. We stayed the night at a camping ground where we got in touch with a nice Aussie and saw our first opossums!

Busselton Jetty Train

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Finally time has come: after 7 weeks on the West coast we made our way to Australia’s east coast. On our way along the south coast we didn’t want to miss the most important sights. As a rented car itself was not too expensive, but the so called one-way fees were around 2500$ in addition to the regular price, we really quickly skipped this idea. That’s why we were looking for relocations. If someone doesn’t know what relocations are, it’s cars or campervans that are relocated to another city. In our case probably someone drove from Melbourne to Perth and the renting company wants to have this car/van back in Melbourne. And that’s when we took our chance: for the track Perth-Melbourne we found a relocation for a campervan and got 10 days for free and paid for each additional day 85$.

Friday morning, we picked up the van together with Vera and we were really excited about what sort of van we will get. After all the paper stuff was done, the secret was elucidated. We got a Toyota-campervan that comprised 3 places to sleep, gas stove, fridge and sink. Actually not that bad, built in 2001 and should need 12-14 l of fuel. In addition, it came with full equipment like dishes, towels, linen, coffee and tea, all inclusive. Until it was told that it already has 660.000 km and starting the car we have to push the acceleration in order to get fuel in the motor. Knowing this, being actually not a big problem, until we started our trip… The van sounded like a 50 years old tractor and the engine randomly stall when we ganged the gears. Of course we were a bit surprised but also thought it’s just because of the age of the car and we just have to drive a bit until it gets better. That’s why we just started to Margaret River, but first we had to go shopping and made two stops in Bunbury and Busselton where we stayed for our first night.

Route

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Be warned, the post has much text but only a few pictures… J

Week 1:

After we cleaned the car a bit and dropped it off on Monday, we went to the city in order to organize some stuff (e.g. printing of our CVs). In the afternoon we met Michelle (the second couchsurfer, who borrowed us the tent) for a coffee. We were really lucky to meet Mike and Michelle, they became really good friends! Since we weren’t sure how long we wanted to stay in Perth we set an appointment for the following weekend for Robbie’s birthday party, but we definitely plan to meet in Las Vegas for Michelle’s big birthday party in June (apparently we’ll be there during this time anyway 🙂 )

Since we spend some money during the trip around the west coast we wanted to look for a job. It figured out to be not as easy as some people always told us (especially since we were new on the market it Australia). Even for fruit-picking, I’d say a very intuitive kind of job, farmers are looking for staff with experience. Another example: to apply for shelf-stocking in Woolworths, Kerstin had to fill out a huge application form where she spend almost an hour. On the other hand, jobs which would have fit our occupation were first rare and second not for short-term employees. Staff like holiday replacement never appeared on our radar so far or we just didn’t know where to look for it.

We soon figured out that we had to apply for the typical backpacker jobs like waitresses in bars or cafes. Unfortunately we were missing the right references/experience together with the fact that we didn’t want to lie too much on our resumes so far. Therefore the first couple of days were not very successful until everything went very quickly on Thursday. First we got some event-jobs for two events on the next two weekends, which were pretty well paid with almost 26$/h (minimum wage is 17$/h). On Friday we got a call from someone called Sue if we want to do fundraising in the supermarket the next Tuesday and Peter gave us an interview for Charity Door-Knocking on Wednesday. Since we almost wanted to leave Perth on the following Monday we spontaneously decided to stay another week and give it a try.

Like we already wrote in the last post we got two couchsurfers for the first week. The first one was Charlie, we met him on Monday evening and planned to stay at his apartment until Friday. Charlie is very difficult to explain properly, but everyone who watched the TV show “How I met your mother” can compare him a bit with Barney. However Charlie is not a business guy, but a very uncomplicated, funny, and nice Aussie working for the Australian army. He even spent some time in Afghanistan and Iraq… He explained us we should do whatever we want in his house (we had a spare room for our own) and he didn’t want us to entertain him the whole time. Since we were seeking for a job this week, we didn’t got out that much but we had incredible funny chats with Charlie in the evenings (but only if he didn’t have a date, of course 🙂 which “only” happened once in the first week). As we decided to stay in Perth another week we asked him for an extension of our stay which he straight agreed with “no worries at all” (in order to acknowledge we made pancakes for him!). From Friday to Monday, however, we stayed with two other couchsurfers, Tim and Ken. Tim showed us on Friday a very nice rooftop bar and a very good brewery and gave us a lot of hints for sightseeing in Perth. On Saturday they invited us to a barbecue at a friend’s place which was awesome! The discussions with 9 gays about Katy Perry and Rihanna were a bit weird and new for us, but, hey we are here to make some new experiences 🙂

Week 2:

On Monday we returned to Charlie and on Tuesday we started our first job: Fundraising in a supermarket.

From the beginning on, the whole thing was a bit suspect to us. We got no information at all, neither where we will work nor what charity we are collecting for. But we thought let’s give it a try, the worst that can happen is a one day experience and a bit of money. So we had to appear at 7:15 AM at an address in Perth where a scary looking Van was waiting for us. Since there were already some people inside, I texted Charlie where we are (just in case we would have got kidnapped 🙂 ) and entered the Van. Without any new information (neither where we go nor what we have to do) the journey started. After around 15 minutes, the Van stopped in front of a supermarket and we thought we’ll start working, but not at all. The guy who drove the Van just said “Kerstin, come out” took a camping table (no chair), two tins for the coins and both disappeared in the shopping center. After a 2 minutes explanation what she had to do he came back and the others left the supermarket. The concept was quite simple, stay there and ask everybody crossing you for some coins for a suspect animal rescue station (we still don’t know if it really exists or not). Hopefully you noticed how unprofessional the whole thing was and it was almost clear that we’ll quit the job after the first day. After we all were gathered in the evening (which was quite late since all supermarkets were far away from each other) we arrived back in Perth at around 8:30 PM and should receive our payment. We got 35% of the coins we collected which figured out to be 250$ together for over 10h of work each, so we agreed the job has to be quit immediately.

On Wednesday we had the interview with Peter. We did quite well and got the job directly at the next day together with the invitation for a training on Friday. Because of our first fundraising experience we were a bit sceptic, but the whole behavior was way more professional and it figured out to be like that. During the training Peter told us how we’ll get our income and what we had to do for it. We should do door-knocking asking people to sign up for long term donations. The first charity we should represent was the Cerebral Pulsy Alliance, which helps kids with cerebral pulsy (or if you don’t know the disease as we did, it’s all about spastic kids). The whole next week should be a sales training which sounded quite professional at least. In addition we should get a basic income of 100$ per day + 40$ commission per sale. Of course we knew that we won’t have too many sales at the beginning, but 1 per day should be possible and because we didn’t have to pay rent, it should be quite good. Our boss also promised to give us some incentives (bonuses) for the first weeks, so that we’ll have a good income at the beginning. You see everything was quite more professional than the first fundraising experience and much more meaningful, too.

Of course there was more happening this week except working. We attended a couchsurfing event on Thursday and got in touch with Vera from Erlangen (Germany), who would later become our travel mate to East-Australia. We became closer and closer with Charlie and we began to feel more like a colocation with him instead of being his guests. We cooked for each other, e.g. we tried to convince him to allow us to stay longer with potato salad, smashed potatoes, sausages and pancakes. Of course we always refilled the beer in the fridge and he returned the favor with curry and filled wraps. He is apparently a really good cook, even though he usually doesn’t know what the result will be, but it was always delicious. Although, he loves to eat spicy and he has an extremely hot Tabasco sauce (which is assumed to be the 2^nd hottest sauce in the world). Only two drops were enough to produce Kerstin a red nose and tears in the eyes.

We also explored other parts of Perth, even though we were very busy. Charlie gave us a hint for Heirison Island: it’s a small island in the middle of Swan River through Perth, where wild kangaroos live. After around one hour of seeking we were close to give it a miss, but then they became awake and more and more active. That is to say they were eating the whole time, but some of them came close enough to get a pad.

Week 3:

This was the start of our door knocking experience and we were even a bit excited. Like promised the previous week, there were two trainers from Sydney and Newcastle in the office, who should help us to get good salesmen. Everything was very professional and we had a two hours training in pitching and objection handling. It was quite interesting to attend such a training and learn sales methods, even though we both will most probably not become the best ones. This became the big buzz word of the following weeks. Sales, sales and sales. Sometimes the very good cause of the charity became too secondary for both of us. Just one example: we were not allowed to sign up people under 21 and over 70. The reason for under 21 is quite easy since it is permitted by law. The reason for over 70 was, however, really weird for us. What they call a “quality-sale” is a customer who supports the charity for at least two years. People over 70 are assumed to have too few money or will die shortly, so they can’t become a “quality-sale” and we wouldn’t have been paid for signing up people over 70. We both found this rule very stupid.

However that be, we accepted it and started our first day. At the beginning we just followed one of the trainers to watch him and understand the concept, which is quite simple. Every doorknocker gets a block of around 80 houses, he should knock at. He will go through this block 2-3 times, always noting not opened doors and returning to these later. Each person that opens the door will hear the pitch and the salesman tries to handle the objections, which are most likely “no money”, “no time” or “already support another charity”. These objections are handled and the customer is tried to be convinced of the charity. Since we would never sign a contract at the door, this was the part of the job we didn’t feel comfortable with, but it was the most important one…

The next two weeks remain almost the same, but we never became really good and we didn’t reach the 2 sales per day regularly which would have made the job quite rentable. However, we didn’t earn too bad so overall the job was ok. But of course something else happened this week 😉

There was a big barbecue in Charlie’s house, with his two female neighbors and one of his friends (apparently he’s called Harry and looks quite similar to Prince Harry 🙂 ). We were super happy, as the day was very successful. Even though the week of fundraising started quite good (Kerstin had two sales the first day) we didn’t have more than 1 sale together until Thursday. Like promised, our boss promoted incentives for the day. We were separated into teams of 2-3 persons and if the team will have 3, 5 or 8+ sales we would get extra 10, 20 or 30$ per sale. We both had a good day (Tobi 3 sales, Kerstin 2) and our teams reached the 5 sales landmark. So we did 500$ together in one day!!!

So yeah, we were very happy and the barbecue was awesome! Charlie’s friends were very nice and we might have had some beer, wine and/or bourbon. One of his neighbors (of course) stayed at the house for the night, since the way home would have been a bit far and dangerous in the night 😉

Saturday was our first roster for the event company and we worked at the Red Hill Auditorium (an amphitheater in the hills surrounding Perth), which has a bombastic view on the city! There were some Kiwi reggae, pop and rock bands. Nearby we had to assure that the fridges with alcohol never get empty. It’s amazing how much alcohol is going to be drunken during a single day, even though the prices are extremely high. That’s the main reason why fridge stocking was a quite hard job together with the fact that we had the fridge most far away from the cooling room. To cut a long story short, a lot of running, carrying boxes with drinks and open them. It was still a quite funny experience and we made a new friend during the festival. Candice organized us a lift to Red Hill and we immediately had good chats with her. She is the same age as we are, lived in Berlin the last 6 years for studying art and came back to Australia recently. It’s quite funny that we had to travel 15,000 km to meet someone who lived “only” 800 km away from us. (Most probably our relationship to distances will be damaged after this trip anyway…). Past the festival the bar-manager gave us the already opened champagne bottles we drunk with Candice during the drive to Perth and had a lot of fun 😉 Since we came back very late (Charlie, of course, had a female guest 😉 we slept quite long. Anyway we visited the Bell Tower in Perth, which is said to be the biggest instrument in the world. It’s a tower with 5 floors where you can watch up to 20 people ringing the bells with human power.

Week 4:

We hoped to get some more sales during our second week of door-knocking. Unfortunately the week didn’t start very well (one sale per person for Monday and Tuesday). The Wednesday was very shitty since it rained the whole evening so we stopped working sitting under a tree waiting for 6PM… Thursday we finally decided to quit the job and told our boss who was really appreciative. We are just no natural sales person and felt still uncomfortable. Would it have been easier to make even a few more sales we would have thought about doing it another 1-2 weeks, but so we were excited to start our trip to the east 🙂 It was definitely not wasted time as we found a new French friend, Maxime (who is the best example of a French car driver), and a new experience in selling, which is maybe not the worst. Additionally we got like 2 weeks of non-paid English lessons.

On Saturday (both of us) and Sunday (only Kerstin), we did fridge stocking again at Stereosonic, a huge electronic festival directly in Perth. This time it wasn’t such an exercise because the bar was much bigger and better organized. Additionally we were directly at the main stage and could listen to all music. The main acts were Calvin Harris and Tiesto, whoever knows them. On Sunday, Tobi didn’t get on the roster and so Kerstin had to work hardly alone 🙂 This time, it wasn’t close to the main bar, but far away on the other end of the festival area, in a small bar, that was badly organized and so Kerstin had to run for 7 hours in a row without break. In between Tobi was lying on the beach. 😉

Also in the 4th week we lived with Charlie and it became funnier and funnier. On Wednesday he told us that he is going to fly to Sydney for the weekend but three couchsurfers are going to come on Monday and we should let them in. Later he accepted another request of two girls from Germany and France for the weekend so we were seven (!!!) people in the house, without Charlie.

Week 5:

As already mentioned, the week started quite funny, because there were 7 people in Charlie’s apartment. He came back on Monday evening and of course, we started to drink beer and everybody was introduced to him. Unfortunately, including Charlie we were 8 people with only 7 places to sleep. No problem for Charlie, he just sleeps on the floor. First, he wanted to be a good host, he is anyway, and second he is used to other things in the army. Talking to him and proposing some options didn’t succeed, cause: “It’s comfy on the floor”.

On Monday we also started to plan our crossing of the continent towards east. The plan was to drive with a camper to Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney. We also had a few relocation offers (camper for 1$/day), until we decided to take a camper from Perth to Melbourne for 15 days. On Monday we had a casting, because we wanted to do our trip with additional 1-2 people to share the fuel costs and of course the more people the funnier it will be. At the end, an Italian guy and the already mentioned Vera wanted to join us. Unfortunately, we only got a camper for 3 people, so we had to refuse the Italian guy (he became then a bit grumpy, so Vera was definitely the right choice as travel mate).

As Vera could only start on Friday, we rented quite spontaneously a small car for 50$ and drove Wednesday and Thursday to Wave Rock. The drive was, as so many in Australia, mainly LONG. We just drove 380km one way to see a stone looking like a wave, well, we can afford it. It was a nice trip in any case and Wave Rock is really quite spectacular, although we expected it to be longer. The wave is really huge (15-20m high), but only 80m long. According to the brochures, the wave seemed to be a few km long. Summary: good to have seen it, but only a small highlight on our trip.

As we came back Thursday evening, we just had to grab our stuff and say bye bye to Charlie (was a bit sad 🙁 ) in order to pick up the camper Friday morning. It should get an adventurous trip…

Charlie and his beloved teddy bear - Charlie und sein geliebter Teddy

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After an exceptional short drive (3 hours) we arrived in Denham at our next Couchsurfing host Paul and his young labrador bitch (we didn’t know this meaning of the word) Birra. First some words about his “apartment”: It looked like an old fabric building with a container in the back for office and sanitary. This container is Paul’s home and the rest of the hall is filled with 4-5 boats and a couple of cars, not the worst to have so much space. We could even chose one of the three guest rooms. Unfortunately the house has a power problem but Paul didn’t want to explain us the details. That resulted in a long cable from his neighbor’s house to the apartment with a switch for all electric tools in the house. This was, however, quite funny as we had to unplug the light to make a toast or boil some water. Not surprisingly, the shower was only cold. But also some words to Paul… In German we say a water bear. He is the manager of a pearl farm and in his spare time he goes fishing a lot. So he spends almost more time offshore than onshore (which hopefully explains the German word…). But don’t get us wrong, he is an exceptional nice, uncomplicated, funny and happy host! Again a wonderful Couchsurfing experience, it really starts blowing us away!

But now let’s come to the highlights of Shark Bay:

Denham is in the middle of the world heritage area close to the national parks of Monkey Mia and Francois Peron. Shark Bay is one of only 5 places in the world fulfilling all 4 criteria of a world heritage area: earth’s history, active evolutionary processes, natural beauty and habitat of threatened species.

Earth’s History: Shark Bay comprises one of only 2 populations of stromatolites worldwide (well, that’s what was written on the information board). Stromatolites are/were one of the first forms of life on earth, which contributed in creating the earth atmosphere (for more details, please read the Wikipedia article, we are not a lexicon…). These bacteria died off almost everywhere, as they are an easy prey for predators like fishes. They only could survive here, because the water is so extremely salty, that no other animal is able to survive there. That may sound very interesting and exciting, but in the end, stromatolites are optically nothing else than hard, dry stone-like mud hills.

Natural Beauty: Well, the word says almost everything. One of the main reasons for shark bay to get this distinction is Shell Beach. A kilometer wide beach, existing only of little shells (no sand at all). These shells were early even used for building houses 😉 Additionally to Shell Beach there is the colorful coastline of Francois Peron National Park, which is only accessible by 4WD, unfortunately.

Active Evolutionary Processes: In Shark Bay it’s said to be possible to watch the Evolution in live, whatever this may mean. One of the reasons for this distinction is, however, the diversion of life form in the sea and on land. One example is the huge amount of sea grass along the coast, giving dugongs a natural habitat (one of the last on earth). In addition, there are hunchbacks, dozens of different turtles, dolphins, countless different kind of fishes and of course the typical kind of land animals of Australia. The enumeration also explains the last point biological diversity.

Monkey Mia

We also saw the “world-famous” Monkey Mia. Like you heard a couple of times, there is an animal which is fed by the people living there. In this case it’s dolphins. Three families of dolphins come daily to three feedings, which are strict controlled. Only 5 chosen dolphins of the around 25 of them are fed and each of them gets only 500g per feeding (a dolphin eats around 12kg of fish per day). These rules are necessary, since the dolphins should continue hunting by themselves. If they don’t, their children will never learn hunting. Earlier at the beginning of the feedings a couple of young dolphins died just because their mothers didn’t show them how to hunt as they were always swimming to the feedings.

Since we both are curious and don’t like to get facts without explanation, we asked ourselves why only 5 of the dolphins are fed. That’s why we asked one of the scientists of Monkey Mia (yes research is going on here, not only feedings 😉 ), who gave us a quite funny and unexpected answer: Obviously and not surprisingly the number developed historically. The dolphins which were fed before were continuously fed, just better controlled. Another reason is, however, that it seems to be quite difficult to train a wild dolphin to be part of the feeding program. Once they tried to include another dolphin into the program, by giving it a fish. The dolphin took the fish, but came back later with an even bigger fish as a gift for the scientists… 😉

There are only three feedings per day before 12 o’clock, another rule of the program. If one dolphin comes only to one feeding in the morning, it will be fed only once, even if it comes back later in the afternoon. During these feedings, some lucky visitors (we heard during the main season there are sometimes more than 800 people at one feeding) are allowed to feed one of the dolphins. Kerstin was lucky enough to get chosen at our second feeding! However, the picture turned out totally badly (but the remember stays anyway 😉 )

But there is more to see at Monkey Mia except the feedings. It has a wonderful beach to stay there for the day. Some dolphins come to the beach during the day, even out of the feeding hours. If you’re lucky a dolphin will cross you while swimming or snorkeling (touching them is, however, strictly forbidden). One may notice that they try to accommodate animal protection, research and tourist attraction (the entry is apparently quite expensive). Having a look on the rules for tourists and the fact that the dolphins don’t have to appear for the feedings this seems to work fairly well. The scientist told us the dolphins understand the feedings and the appearance at the beach as a social event, they may attend or not if they wish to. The feeding itself is obviously very touristic, a fact we didn’t like too much (even though it was a little highlight!)

Francois Peron National Park

Of course we didn’t want to miss the national park, but it figured out to be accessible by a 4WD only. It’s even so difficult to access that people are asked to reduce the tire pressure at the entry. Paul told us that a lot of tourists enter the park and have to be rescued as they often undervalue the track. Since we couldn’t access the park with our car, Paul asked us to take us on a trip with his boat around the national park. Unfortunately the weather was too stormy the next day why he had to withdraw the offer.

However, the remaining parts of Shark Bay heritage area are worth to visit as well. There are a lot of beautiful beaches (e.g. Little Lagoon) and lookouts where one can see wales and even dugongs if he is lucky (we didn’t have so much luck…)

Paul invited us to a bowling match on Friday. For all of you who are not used to the Australian way of Bowling (we didn’t have any clue) it is more a combination of advanced boggia with little bowling balls (just ask Wikipedia if you’re interested in the rules). It was apparently a lot of fun, since most of the people were dressed with Halloween customs (some girls even had a bavarian dirndl). Additionally Paul asked us to taste a Shark Bay oyster which are definitely a matter of taste (Kerstin loved them, Tobi not so much… 😉 )

We also visited the Ocean Park in Denham, which includes only animals of Shark Bay. Some of them are injured and will left back to freedom if they become healthy enough. While we were there they hosted a turtle which ate a plastic bag. Poor thing! 🙁 Another one lost a foot, but our guide told us it has very good chances to recover. The tour itself was unexpected good and informative and crowned by a shark’s feeding!

That was our two weeks west coast tour. At the next day we drove back to Perth. The rented car was all good, even though there was some red sand remaining in the car, but the guy who inspected it didn’t look too detailed 🙂 Since we already found two couchsurfers for the following week, there was only one thing to do next: Job Search!

Stromatolites

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From the Karijini National Park back to civilization it’s around 700km. We decided to go to the “city” Carnarvon, as people told us it’s so pretty and because s the whole way to Monkey Mia would have been too long. There are not that many attractions, but anyway there is a very beautiful beach, the “famous” 1-mile-jetty (a one mile long jetty 😉 ), which leads over a dry riverbed. Australia has a couple of these rivers, since they are feeding a water reservoir in the middle of Australia once there is a lot of rain during the rain-season (so around every 2-6 years).

Canarvon is very well known for its fruit farms, mainly banana and mango. Therefore it’s not surprising that there are some inventive ideas for snacks. One of them is the frozen banana, here you are the receipt if you’d like to give it a try:

• One takes a banana, remove the peel of the banana and take it into the freezer until it is totally frozen.
• Once it is frozen, take the banana out of the freezer and coat with melted chocolate and put it back in the freezer.
• Once the chocolate is hard, enjoy your frozen banana 🙂

At the camping ground we got in touch with some Frenchmen (there are almost as many of them as Germans here in Australia) and we exchanged some experiences about job seeking in Perth and Canarvon.

The next day we visited a banana and mango farm attached with a nice little café (River gums café) before we continued driving to Denham and our next couchsurfer in order to visit Sharks Bay the next MUST in our travel plans.

One Mile Jetty

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We arrived at Karijini after an approximately 8 hour drive. As soon as you leave the coast and drive inland, it’s getting hotter: 40°C during the day and even in the night still around 27°C. With the first steps in the red sandstone of the national park (which would later cause quite a headache) we had to organize a site for our tent. A word and a blow! Nevertheless, the nice ranger giving us the site feared us (especially Kerstin) a bit, as he warned us of the snakes: “Now it’s the time of the snakes, they are active day and night. And at night it’s becoming dangerous, so use a torch and look where you step on. And if you see one, it’s very probably highly toxic…” What a start, especially because our torch had a slack joint…

However we rode out the night (hot but still comfortable) and got up early in order to complete the first 3 hour hike before the midday heat. All tracks in Karijini have a similar layout: First, one has to climb down to the gorge. After you did that you can admire beautiful waterfalls and gorges. At the end you have to climb up the gorge again, of course. During our first hike, we could marvel at the Fortescue Falls as well as a water hole (Fern Pool) which is a holy place for the aborigines. Therefore we were told to be calm and observe a couple of parrots and lots of bats, whose sounds resounded in the gorge. Having seen these two highlights, we had to search the way to the Circular Pool. I chose the word “search” consciously, because the ways weren’t always ways, very often we had to cross water/a river, sometimes only with a few stones in the water. In addition, it’s got a few parts where we had to climb a little bit. Really a small adventure, which became even more adventurous during the day… Arrived at the Circular Pool, we were definitely ready for a cooling down in the water. Clear water and surrounding rocks mirroring in the water, amazing! We started our way back to the other parts of the NP.

Arriving our car, we drove to the second part of the park. The camp site and our first hiking tour was in the south entrance and now we had to go to the western part, the starting point of Weano and Hancock Gorge. Btw, only a 100km drive (or 42km with a 4WD on a very bumpy road). 14km out of the 100km were still on one of our beloved rolled sand streets, but here way better and less bumpy than in Kalbarri. Unfortunately, also extremely dusty and therefore our pretty silver rented car was completely red and stupidly the dust went in every small gap (also under the seal of the doors). This wouldn’t have been a big problem, but Hertz asks for 170$, if you drop off the car in an “exceptional dirty” state. That’s why we tried within the next days to clean, which worked out quite well, because the Hertz-staff didn’t get it immediately, so we got our deposit back. 😉

However, back to the two gorges: both of them provide hikes, both partially with a difficulty of 5 (out of 6). Just as a comparison: Level 6 is only allowed with an official approval of the ranger or with a guided tour. That’s why we weren’t so sure, if we are able to complete level 5 completely, as we are definitely not climbing-experienced, but in any case we did a trial because again a great pool for cooling down was promised.

Hancock Gorge and Kermit’s Pool

We directly started with the level 5 trail, which was only 800m long. In the beginning it’s got a very nasty climbing down, but as there were also ladders, it wasn’t a big deal. But then, we discovered what is meant by level 5. There is no guided way, you just jump from one side of the river to the other. Then, the next feature of level 5: also if you can get wet feet in level 4 if you don’t take care, it’s not possible in level 5 to arrive at the finish without wet feet. First, we had to go through knee deep water. Afterwards, we passed a 50m long thin gorge filled with water. We discovered that it was around 1.60m deep, so keeping the camera dry was challenging. In addition, we crossed the water holes barefoot and couldn’t get much grip on the slippery moss-covered stones. We then arrived at the first part of the trail, the “Amphitheatre”, passed the “Spiderwalk” (the name was definitely not chosen randomly, as can be seen on the pictures) and arrived at “Kermits Pool” (no idea if there is a link with the frog). A wonderful water hole, with around 2m deep clear water. Another small walk and we arrived “Hancock Gorge”. Unfortunately a level 6 trail led into the gorge so we could only see the gorge from far away. Of course we had to take the same way back, in any case a really exciting trail and level 5 not at all a problem for everyone who is not afraid of water.

Weano Gorge und Handrail Pool:

As we now knew what to expect of level 5, the trail to “Weano Gorge” was no problem at all. Additionally, as the trail consisted of 80% level 2, neither the way down nor the trail itself were hard. The small part of level 5 shortly before arriving the gorge included only a little climbing, ending up in the gorgeous “Handrail Pool”. A small water hole, ranging in a gorge and another pool, which could only be reached by swimming and without camera (no pictures….). On our way back, indeed a snake was in our way. It had the same plan as we had, because obviously she wanted to go into the same direction. And as she slowly moved forward in a narrowed way which was around 1m, a carful-passing it, wasn’t really a good thing to do. After the ranger’s warning and my (Kerstin’s) biological instinct (“The smaller ones are always the most toxic ones”), we tried by loud trampling to drive it forward, until it finally hid under a stone. We passed the stone with climbing around and as much distance as possible. Anyway, the next wild Australian animal. As we already heard from a few people who were in Australia for 6 months and hadn’t seen a snake at all, we already saw a snake after 2.5 weeks being in Australia. WHAT AN HONOR!!! 😉 Back in Perth, we heard that it could have been a brown snake, approximately one of the most toxic snakes you find in Australia (Wikipedia says: toxic effect: the poison of the eastern brown snake is extremely effective – the Ld50-value for mice is at 0.041mg/kg body weight, wherefore it belongs to the most efficient poisons of snakes that is known.). In addition, it is nervous, very aggressive and if it bites, then several times in a row. However, we survived it 😉

So, the day was nearly over. After passing another time the sandy street, we drove to the next camp site and continued our journey the next day to Carnarvon.

We had to go down there...

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After an exceptional short drive (nearly 2 hours) we moved to our new hosts. This time it was a married couple around 50 years old with their 3 years old son Kevin. Of course it was a different couchsurfing experience than the once we had before but definitely not worse. They welcomed us very warm and took us with them for fishing in the evening. But before we went fishing there was a bit time to plan the next day in the national park around Exmouth. In addition we finally decided to go to the Karijini national park and cooked a dinner. This sounds like a very unnecessary fact, but during the dinner Kevin realized that he can animate Kerstin to play on the tablet with him. She regretted the question “what do you play” very fast… Kevin was fascinating good in navigating through the games on the tablet, without being able to read even a single word of it. Later when he recognized that Kerstin couldn’t resist him, she became his new best friend and she had to play with him whenever we were there. Since he didn’t want (or couldn’t) remember her name the question “where is my friend” was all around (btw. the last day he remembered her name 😉 )

While fishing, there was not that much action (I mean it’s still fishing you’re sitting there waiting for a catch, you know^^. I’m sure it won’t become one of our favorite “sports”…). Of course Kerstin was busy most of the time, because she had to play with Kevin on the smartphone. However, close to the end of the evening, there was more action! First we could only hear them, but then they came close enough to be seen in the torch light… DOLPHINES!!! Additionally, it wasn’t even close to be the last highlight of this evening. Another fisher (yes, apparently there was more than one…) had something (too) big at the line. We never thought that fishing could be that action filled. However, the fight with the fish became quite funny. Unfortunately, there was nothing at the line when he finally could get it out, but the “experts” said that it most probably was a little shark. The catch of our hosts was actually quite rare, not to say not existing, but we had a bit of not expected fun 😉

The next day was scheduled with the exploration of the Cape Range National park. It is famous due to its nearly endless beaches and bays, but let’s go step by step. We started the day with a hike in the Yardie Creek, which takes its way some km from the sea towards inland. We hoped to see a wallaby, but like their bigger relatives – the kangaroos – they are night active and in addition very shy.

Afterwards we explored the countless beaches and that were the highlights:

Oyster Stack: A quite little piece of stony coast, but flooded with crabs and oysters. Even though they are relatively shy, you can’t miss them because there are so many of them.

Turtle Bay: An almost empty beach (and also not really spectacular). However, every year turtles come here to lay their eggs. Unfortunately, we were one or two weeks too early in order see this in live.

Little Lake: Caused by high water in the previous years, a little lake was formed. This left some really weird formations in the sand, but some animals – especially bird – seem to like this and nested there.

Bird Hide and Mangrove Bay: This location has a little jetty leading through mangroves to an observation area for birds. A really beautiful place and we could observe some pelicans.

Turquoise Bay: Definitely THE highlight of the park. First an endless wide sandy beach, ending in a turquoise bay with white sand and crystal clear water. Both are amazing locations for snorkeling, but like at Coral Bay the corals near the beach were mostly dead. For better observation a boat or diving equipment would have been necessary. However, Turquoise Bay finished second on the ranking of the most beautiful beaches in Australia, according to TripAdvisor 2014.

Close to the end of the day on our way back home we finally saw the kangaroos close to our car. There were so many, that we had to take pictures the whole time and had to drive really slowly.

That’s almost everything we saw from the park. Of course there are a lot of more amazing places there, but they were only accessible with a 4WD or we didn’t have enough time. Remember, we decided to go to Karijini wherefore we had to start driving early in the morning, because Karijini is another 750km away from Exmouth (and to every other “city” around it)

Lighthouse with coast lookout

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After staying another day in the car (we really underestimated the distances) we arrived at Coral Bay. After visiting the city (2 campgrounds and 1 hotel) we went to the beach: a beach with white sand and amazing crystal-clear turquoise water and corals. Unfortunately the corals reachable by swimming were dead and only a few colorful fishes were seen. In order to see nice colorful corals, we would have to take a boat to go further offshore. But we didn’t have time to do so, because around noon we had to continue our journey towards our next stop: Exmouth

Coral Bay in the evening

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Finally we arrived at our very first national park. Kalbarri is a little fishing village, mainly consisting of hotels, hostels and camping grounds and of course a supermarket. But of course this concept exists everywhere where tourists appear so it was neither the first we saw nor the last one we’ll see. There is another funny characteristic of the villages along the coral coast. Most of them seem to have their own tradition in feeding one specific animal. Usually it began in the 40’s or 50’s when fishermen fed marine animals with the remaining of their caught and by the time research centers and a touristic attraction developed. The chosen animal in Kalbarri are the pelicans, which come every morning at 8:45 to be fed and seen by almost all guests staying in town. However we skipped this “event” and were obfuscating the pelicans in the evening without interruption.

To cut a long story short we arrived at the camping ground at Kalbarri in order to start exploring the national park. By the way, camping grounds in Australia are usually well equipped. All of them where we stayed had a Camper’s Kitchen with Barbecue, stove, microwave, water boiler, toaster and fridge, which is very comfortable if you stay there with a tent like we did.

Ok so now the national park (I know, finally 😛 ): We already heard from people that some national parks have unsealed roads or can only be explored with a 4WD. That’s why we asked the park ranger if our vehicle would survive in the conditions of the park. She told us “it’s fine, just a bit bumpy”. Maybe the biggest understatement EVER!!! It’s hard to describe how we felt driving on a rolled sandy road with potholes everywhere. We nearly stopped and often thought about giving it a miss, but we crawled over the road with 10-20 kph always hoping the car will not simply break into pieces. Finally we arrived at the “Loop Walk” (a sealed car parking area :-/ ) and were inspecting our car for damages. Luckily we couldn’t find any of them (Hopefully the car rental company won’t find any as well, since unsealed roads are not included in the insurance). However, it was definitely worth going there and the return was much easier with the knowledge that other similar cars also did the road without damages.

The national park itself can be summarized shortly and hopefully the pictures will do the remaining. Ages ago a river cut a gorge in the sand stone which curls through the park. It built some extraordinary formations such as the “Loop” (a loop like part of the river) or the “Z-Band” (a nearly perfect formed Z with nearly vertical edges). Another one is the “Natural Window” a formation in the stone – like the name implies – forming a window to the “Loop”. The Kalbarri NP is an impressive huge bush land. You can’t even imagine the end even if you are staying on a high lookout.

The next day, there was another drive on the schedule, going to Coral Bay (appr. 700km), let’s see how the story continues…

Oops, I nearly forgot something: By the time of arriving in Kalbarri we saw the first viable kangaroo!!!! In fact there were three of them, eating from the waste….

The "Pink Lake" right on the way to Kalbarri

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