In which our Intrepid Explorers skim the surface of Western Australia
By Marc Ethier, Gather Correspondent
Chalky sands and turquoise waters. Red-earth hills and an ocean of spinifex scrub rolling to the horizon. Blue, cerulean blue skies unbroken by cloud.
Lot to see in Western Australia. Don’t leave yourself only a couple weeks if you have a choice.
My wife Lisa and I, on a world trip since August, had no choice. Southeast Asia awaited, nice and cool and dry this time of year. So to wrap up our two months Down Under we hopped a flight to Perth and threw darts at the coastline.
The result was an agenda including rock monoliths, rock icons and a rock concert. And a visit with our adorable cousin of the sea, the noble dolphin. Plus a whole mess of driving, because the distances out west are vast even by Australia standards. We covered some 2,000 kilometers in just under three weeks.
Perth itself would be hard to sum up in one story. Try to stay in Fremantle, just to the south, which has become a hip destination for the latte-sipping crowd. There’s a great weekend market as well.
From Rock to the rocks
After catching some tunes at the Southbound Festival, we picked up a rental in Perth and drove up to Cervantes, a tiny beachside hamlet quietly tucked into the desert coast 250 km north of the city. Near there we visited the man-high limestone columns of The Pinnacles, a collection of short spires arrayed like headstones across a yellow desert.
When the Dutch first came here they thought The Pinnacles was the ruin of an ancient Aboriginal city. In fact it has a very Stonehenge feel. The rocks have been sculpted by wind and smoothed by rain and seem almost consciously arranged.
Kangaroos are common here, emerging in the late afternoon from their shelter in the brush.
Also near Cervantes is Lake Thetis, one of the few places for viewing stromatolites, and a long stretch of white-sand beach at aptly named Thirsty Point. The sea water is clear but the tap water isn’t potable. Stay at the Cervantes Lodge and enjoy an Emu Beer at the local watering hole.
Rocking the boat
Steering wide of the road trains – massive three-car semi trucks that can be 35 meters long – we headed north once more, along the Coral Coast, passing through Dongara-Port Denison, Geraldton and Northampton, then on through yellow-and-grey desert to Hamelin (more stromatolites) and Denham. There we hunkered down on the beach at Shark Bay for a few days rather than pay the exorbitant cost of staying at the busy resort in Monkey Mia.
The weather was in the low-40s (C), and the blue-green water was like a gently billowing sheet. We didn’t see any clouds. There was no wind on the Indian Ocean. Monkey Mia is famous for its dolphin and turtle viewing and our catamaran excursion on this pristine day was no disappointment.
There are always plenty of dolphins – playful horny beasts by reputation – but also dugongs old and young: they congregate here, and in a protected zone nearby, in abundance. Many are scarred from encounters with sharks: tour guides and conservation officials identify individuals by their scars.
A few hours at sea are enough to see this and more, a virtual zoo. There are cormorants, pelicans and sea snakes, occasionally manta rays. And there are tiger sharks; the locals are proud of this statistic: no one here has ever been attacked by the notoriously aggressive sharks, which prefer to go after the smooth-swimming turtles, also here in numbers, or a fat mouthful of dugong.
Rocky road
We got off the boat and back on the road, heading south, often failing to resist the temptation to speed. Distance, sun, the straightness of the road, the tempo of traffic – you try dawdling at 130 kph. Can’t be done, I say.
Picking up a newspaper we read a story on a great flaming rock, McNaught’s Comet, careering over the Indian Ocean in the twilight. The next night we spotted it, a dramatic addition to the already stunning colors of the western sunset.
The trip back to Perth was made more memorable by a stay in Australia’s only functioning monastic town, New Norcia. The Benedictine monks, who now number just seven, make bread and olive oil and oversee a sprawling operation across 23,000 acres of red loam clay that includes growing barley, making wine, and raising and shearing sheep. There’s an aviary and an orchard and several stucco churches and whitewashed stone classrooms and dormitories – New Norcia was once a thriving school. In the Eighties several of the town's invaulable paintings were plundered in a daring daytime robbery; all were later recovered but one was damaged beyond repair.
Now the whole operation almost seems too much for so small a crew of monks, one of whom is 97 and none of whom are younger than 50. (Rumor, though it may be just that, is rife of new initiates.) The once populous grounds have a deserted, forgotten feel, a sense of belonging to the past.
Most impressive here is the hotel, a grand old hostelry with high ceilings and rich ornate carpeting, intricate woodwork, artistic plaster, heavy curtains, antique paneling, stylish if dated artwork decorating the hallways. There is a wide creaking veranda upstairs and down, each level comfortably shaded, peering out of an arched stucco façade onto a parched yard of red earth and trees filled with squawking cockatoos and galahs. A fine place to relax with a drink.
The New Norcia Hotel is an inexpensive place to stay and well worth a look, with a bar and restaurant of equal character downstairs. Interesting note: I flipped through five pages of the hotel register and didn’t see a single American.
Rock on
With only a few days left in country I had a promise to fulfill to a friend. Lisa and I returned to Perth, turned in the car and hopped on the 30-minute train to Fremantle (Freo in the native parlance).
Our first step was to ask directions. Finding the Fremantle Cemetery wasn’t so easy: it isn’t marked on any of the tourist maps. Once located, do yourself a favor and don’t walk. Take the bus. We didn’t and it was a long uphill slog in blistering weather. Some cross country was required. A character-building exercise, we decided.
Exercise, undoubtedly. The goal of our sweaty march was the grave – a National Heritage Site – of Bon Scott, Freo’s favorite son. I’m not AC/DC's biggest fan, let's just say there was a period in college when I greatly appreciated their work, especially the Bon Scott years. That period never quite ended.
The fact was, Lisa and I had never been on a Rock Pilgrimage. Never been to Graceland, never been to Liverpool, never poured beer on Morrison’s grave in Pere Lachaise. I think I sat under the tree in Fiji that Keith Richards fell out of, but I can’t be certain.
A colleague who has always been a Bon Scott devotee, probably the biggest fan I know, mentioned Scott’s grave. We thought we’d have trouble finding it because the blank space on the map where people assured us the cemetery was seemed awfully large. But once there we found a special entrance: Bon must have had a lot of visitors back in the day.
The grave itself is a small plot amid several others, bearing his and his family’s names, unremarkable except for the flowers and other attention it is used to getting. Another group preceded us on this sparkling Saturday but otherwise the cemetery was empty.
It turned out to be a somber moment. The other group left. I examined the objects by the plot. A half-filled bottle of Melbourne Bitter. Flowers. Graffiti. I wished suddenly I'd brought something to leave. Others came. We snapped a couple photos and left.
Rock Pilgrimage completed. We walked back to town and said goodbye to Australia.
Marc and his wife, Lisa, sold their home outside Washington, D.C., quit their jobs and embarked on a yearlong world trip in September. They have visited Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia and will continue to India and Europe through September 2007. You can find all of the Global Nomad articles at www.twoheadedturtle.gather.com. Read more about their adventures at www.2headedturtle.com.
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And I've got patches on the patches
On my old blue jeans
Well they used to be blue
When they used to be new
When they used to be clean
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