Wednesday, January 7th

Coastal Explorer

It finally couldn’t be avoided any longer. I had to stop in town and buy post cards. It took me some time to find a place that actually sold them, but eventually I guessed correctly that the visitor information centre would. Or, if not, they surely would have been able to give me further instructions.

Thus it was past ten when I slowly rolled out of town behind a convoy of vacationers with too much time at their hand. I was heading south again, along the way had come yesterday.

Just outside of Margaret River a sign announced the Shell Museum. There was about three different things this museum could have been about and that was only the ones I could think of on the spot. I should have stopped and checked, but then, it was probably the most boring option and about sea shells.

In Karridale I kept aiming south and soon enough arrived in Augusta. What I first thought of as a cluster of businesses along the road into town turned out to be the town centre or CBD, central business district, as it is known in acronymic Australian. The mistake was easy to make since the street was missing its sheet metal arcades, thus could hardly qualify as main street.

The most popular venture was the Augusta Bakery and Café. It was so popular in fact that the arriving cars created a rather impressive traffic jam over the few available parking spots.

The centre was cunningly placed at top of a hill. Diving down, onwards to the south, the ocean came into view in all of its usual white-rimmed aquamarine splendour. Leaving town, the landscape became one of bushy hills and eventually grew a lighthouse.

This was Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse. It was slender and tall and completely white. The road ended a few hundred metres before the lighthouse at a rather too small parking lot and a ticket booth. In order to visit even the grounds of the lighthouse, one had to pay. Even though that included a self-guided audio tour, I wasn’t quite convinced. As a further incentive, the entire Cape Leeuwin was roped off with an angry looking fence. So, no walk to the southernmost tip, then.

For the cheap tourist there was an old water wheel to visit. It had been built a long, long time ago to pump fresh water from a nearby spring to the lighthouse. The spring water came along a wooden chute, drove the wheel and at the same time got pumped into a pipe. Of course, this contraption had fallen out of use. But the water, very rich with lime, kept flowing and encrusted the wheel in a thick, now impenetrable layer. It took quite a bit of imagination (and convincing by helpful signs) to see a wooden wheel.

Having run out of other options, I headed north again. Beyond Augusta, the rush-hour of the bakery now over, I turned into Caves Road which promised to long run a few miles away from the coast and offered the odd excursion to the shores.

First, though, it brought the excited tourist to Jewel Cave. I had already seen the cave on postcards in Margaret River and drove on. Instead I turned off to Hamelin Bay. The map head promised a shipwreck, but there was nothing of it to be seen. Instead, visitors were warned that rays, those flat, winged fish, were protected in the bay and one better not catch them.

There were people out on the bay kayaking, certainly a good way to have a look at those rays. But whether you could rent a kayak or if this was a BYO operation, I forgot to check.

But even the beach itself was rather busy. There were sunbathers and anglers. Already back on Munglinup Beach I had spotted plenty of fish in the shallow waters near the land. Sitting on the beach with a fishing rod was a popular pastime around here.

Not interested in fishing and, sadly, not having someone to go kayaking with either, I decided to drive on and soon entered into the enchanted Boranup Karri Forest. For miles the asphalt wound through the shades of the tall Karri trees. There were more caves: Giants Cave, Mammoth Cave, and, at the northern entrance to the woods, Calgardup Cave.

North of the forest, wine country started in earnest. Margaret River is a rather famous Australian wine region. There was vineyard after vineyard. Most, if not all of them offered visits to their cellar. For the serious wine ponce, this was a road to bring a dedicated driver.

Ever on the lookout for quiet corners, I spotted something called Ellensbrook Homestead on the map and turned towards it. There was, of course, a beach there. The homestead or Ellensbrook House, however, was set back a little from the sea, perhaps half a mile, on a meadow by a creek. It had been erected in 1857 by Alfred Bussell, who had come to settle here in this year. He named the creek Ellen Brook for his wife. Together, they ran a busy farm for many years.

Their house first was a simple wooden one-room shack but over the years they extended it to seven rooms with stone fireplaces and other amenities of their time. It remained in its 1870s state and is now maintained and run by the National Trust. Except, the trust was on holidays. That was as well, since this way I was the only person in this wonderful place.

A path followed the creek upstream. It wound through the charred remains of long dead trees, then through an alley of tall green grass and eventually into a thick forest that felt almost tropical. The stream had moulded caverns into the limestone, out and around of which spooky plants grew. After half a mile, the path ended at Meekadarabee Falls. It wasn’t really a waterfall, rather water pouring over the face of a large, overgrown rock hidden away in a similarly overgrown pond in the forest. To the first people of this land, this was the Place Where the Moon Baths.

I stood there for a while, listened to the water and the song of the birds which, in Australia, is strange and new. When I returned to the farm, a family had gathered in the shades of the trees behind the house for a picnic, the kids noisily running around. For a moment, I wondered if I had fallen into a time trap, hadn’t it been for the brightly coloured, modern cloths.

Back on the main road, it suddenly hit me, why it was called Caves Road: all the caves, of course. Yes, sometimes I can be embarrassingly slow.

I came by Cheeky Monkey, not a winery but a brewery. I actually had enjoyed their Pale Ale the night before. There were two more breweries soon amidst the approximately thirty million vineyards.

Yallingup was my next excursion to the coast. The map made it out to be a larger village and that surely meant coffee. As I rounded the last bend the coast appeared, steeper here, with cliffs beyond town. They weren’t really grand, though, and left room at their foots for sandy beaches. The village was placed at a gap in those cliffs with easy access to the water. It was a busy collection of upmarket holiday homes. At its heart was a parking lot and, lo and behold, a little café.

I waited for my coffee to be prepared and then wandered off to the beach for a bit before driving on to my last rendezvous with the sea along this stretch of land.

Outside town the local police were now targeting something new: seat belts.

I followed the road towards Cape Naturaliste, the northernmost point before the coast turned east, forming the Geographe Bay. Much like Cape Leeuwin, its southern companion, Cape Naturaliste has a lighthouse, this one stubbier but still unreasonably white. What it doesn’t have is fences. Instead there is a variety of trails to choose from. One of them, the 135 km long Cape to Cape Trail arrived all the way from Cape Leeuwin.

I picked a somewhat shorter option and wandered off. A sign cautioned of snakes and suggested to look out and leave them alone. Fair enough. But it wasn’t this sign that soon made me abandon my afternoon walk. It was, once again, the flies. Around here they were of the most annoying Crawl Into Every Orifice variety.

A consultation with my map, back in the safety of the sealed motor car, let me decide on Bunbury as the destination for the day, roughly an hour away. I returned to Dunsborough, a maze of roundabouts all alike, and onwards towards Busselton. I had returned to civilization proper. There was hardly any spot of land left untouched. Outside Busselton, the frenzy died down for just a little while, but instead there was a sudden row of religious camps on the left side: the camp of the Seventh-Day Adventists was followed by the Catholics and the Christian Brotherhood and various other churches.

I circumnavigated Busselton on its infamous Busselton Bypass (I made up the infamous bit to entertain myself) and ended up on the main northbound road. As it was rush-hour now, there was plenty of annoying traffic. I decided that I rather have two hundred kilometres of lonely outback road than twenty kilometres of this.

Outside Bunbury, I came across the first traffic lights for days. The last set must have been in Kalgoorlie four days ago. Of course it was red. So was the second set. Maybe there is something to be said for roundabouts after all.

But Bunbury was not only big enough for traffic lights, it also had a city centre instead of a town centre. What it didn’t have was one of those handy information displays at the entrance. Having started to rely on information rather than just aimlessly driving around looking for accommodation, I decided to pay a visit to the visitor information centre. The lady their kindly provided me with a map and marked options appropriate for my budget.

She indicated a few properties right by the ocean, I went to have a look, and chose one. I now only had to cross the street for another sunset. Tonight, there was not a single cloud in the sky.

As I stood there, I had to think of the closing lines of the memorial which stood at Ellensbrook Beach. It remembered Chris Boyd, who had been killed nearby by a shark a little over a year ago:

As you gaze at the ocean, reflect on the pure joys in life and the love of your family and friends.