Monday March 10

Well and truly time for an update now that we are back with internet connection, so here goes!

When last heard from a week ago, we were about to trek to Bremer Bay, which we successfully managed , so on Tuesday and Wednesday we were camped across the road from the Bremer River estuary and down the road from yet more beautiful beaches. Bremer Bay is a lovely little place, popular for holidaying and fishing and we can well understand why. The Point Henry Drive Trail took us to two of the lookouts in Bremer Bay (one of which was used to spot salmon when the industry was in its heyday) and to some absolutely superb beaches - the whole coast is just a succession of these!

Bremer River and bay

Native Dog Beach

The waves at Native Dog Beach were awe-inspiring!

One of the most exciting things about Bremer Bay for me was the birds in the estuary, which could be seen really well from the Estuary Walk Trail.  My Christmas tripod allowed for lots of playing with the camera (and resulted in lots and lots of photos to sort!), whilst a couple of local fishermen added to my excitement when they fed the frames of the many bream they had caught to the Pelicans.

A proper feeding frenzy!

Black-winged Stilt

Red-winged Avocet

I can't think of many more graceful sights than an Egret taking flight

We decided that we would spend the next two nights at Quaalup Homestead which was built in 1858 by the Wellstead family, who had settled Bremer Bay. It is now a 40 acre property, which along with five neighbouring properties, is surrounded by the Fitzgerald River National Park.

Before entering the park, we made use of the wash down station to ensure that we were not bringing contaminated soil into the park, as some of the parks in the south west are badly affected by die-back.

Quaalup turned out to be a bit of a strange place, but it did allow us to have a look around the western side of the park without having to drive back into Bremer Bay each night.

Quaalup Homestead

A bit of four wheel driving along the Gairdner River on , brought us down to the Gordon Inlet and the estuary, which has not been open for some eight years, so we had a long walk into a fairly ferocious wind to get to Trigelow Beach. Having arrived, we didn't tarry too long as it was not terribly pleasant.

An exhausted walker!

On the way back we got a bit more serious about the 4x4 stuff and made to down to the river for a spot of fishing – no luck though!  Did see a great monitor on the way down.

We decided that we would make the trip out to Point Ann early the next morning to see if we could beat the wind and I was only momentarily distracted by some Fairy-wrens which were hopping around whilst we were having breakfast. I initially thought that they were Blue-breasted Fairy-wrens as that is what we had been seeing at Hopetoun, but after further consideration I am wondering if they were not Splendid Fairy-wrens. The big problem is that we only saw females and one male which I presume was still developing his breeding plumage, so it was no use at all to rank amateurs such as us! We are going to need advice from our bird expert friends, so here are the photos I managed to get:

Our journey to Point Ann was not wind-free despite the planning, so we enjoyed the views a great deal without feeling any desire to go and sit on the beach and be sand-blasted. From July to October, the Southern Right Whales come into this bay to calve and apparently it is not uncommon to see 40 whales close to the shore from the Point Ann observation platforms - another reason to return!

Point Ann Beach, looking across to East Mt Barren 

One bit of excitement was rescuing some people who had become bogged in the very soft sand as they tried to get onto Point Ann beach – we are still horrified how many beaches have cars tearing up and down on them.

Driving through the park had us exclaiming yet again about the amazing beauty of the Royal Hakeas, the foliage of which on some was the brightest yellow. Not sure if this is the new growth – more expert advice required please!

Flowers coming!

Some of the other plants growing here also have fascinating foliage – who needs flowers when you have things like this to look at:

New growth on a Dryandra plumosa

Cauliflower Hakeas grow round like this and those leaves are SO tough and sharp!

Back to Quaalup Homestead via West Mt. Barren - it was very hazy across the park, so the photos do not have that incredible colour and sharpness that we get a bit spoilt by.

Driving towards West Mt barren

Finished our day with the ‘Nature Walk’ at Quaalup Homestead, which we presume was established by the previous owners of the property. We spent a very enjoyable ninety minutes or so following a botanical trail on which many of the plants were labelled. As we have been quite frustrated in the parks by a lack of information which would allow us to identify more of the pants we are seeing, this was wonderful and added a whole extra dimension to our time in this heathland ecosystem.

Possum Banksia - so called because the 'dead' flower
becomes really large and looks hairy (you can see a bit
of one below this flower)

 As we drove away from Quaalup Homestead along Devils Creek Road, early on Saturday morning, we disturbed a really large flock of endangered Carnabys Black Cockatoos and what a truly majestic and awe-inspiring sight it was to see these huge black and white birds all around us - their slow, deep wing-beats lifted them up and away in what seemed like an almost laconic manner.  Thinking about their decline because of land clearance and habitat loss made me seethe all over again when I recalled Tony Abbott's comments of a few days ago about there being too many national parks. These people will not be happy until we have exploited every creature and ecosystem in this country to death and old travellers like us will have nothing of worth left to visit so as to replenish our souls and our spirits.

We are now enjoying a few days in Albany, so will add some photos of our time here before we nick off on Thursday.