Flew to Perth and met up with my sister who'd been visiting friends South Australia and flown into Perth a little later. My sister and I hired a car drove up to meet my father and his partner Jennie in Denham, they're doing the grey nomad thing for 6months and are currently travelling with their camper up the west side of Australia. For people not in the know the drive Perth to Denham is a 9 and 1/2 hour one way trip. Needless to stay we stopped roughly half way in Geraldton to get some much needed sleep.
We would highly recommend the Foreshore Backpackers, clean, convenient and as the name would suggest right on the foreshore. It would have been nice to stay longer but we only had a week and a lot of driving to do.
A word of caution, if your hire car beeps at you it's probably trying to tell you something. On leaving the backpackers we discovered the car wouldn't start...why, why, why? Then I ask the dreaded question, did we leave the lights on last night? shoot. Fortunately Hertz had road side assist with their vehicle and by the time we had finished breakfast at the Jaffa Hut on the corner we had been rescued!
Drove straight to Denham with only a quick stop to check out shell beach, which as its name would suggest is a beach made up entirely of shells. They're very literal with a lot of their place names in W.A. In Denham we stayed at Denham Seaside Tourist Village, which is NOT as Jennie first directed us to the Shark Bay Caravan park. The first was an excellent place to stay with good facilities and a great views the second is a tiny, slightly spooky, fairly dialect place in the 'centre' of town. Thankfully we were staying at the nice place. :)
We used Denham as a base while we visited Monkey Mai, where they feed the dolphins, and had a look around the area. At Monkey Mai we got see the dolphins, saw a green turtle, little shark and had a buffet breakfast/brunch.
After we had a walk around little lagoon (managed not to step on a stone fish) and had an up close look at the wind turbines - I love them :) so useful in generating energy and interesting on the skyline. You can't get so close to the ones in Victoria.
The next day we headed in to camp in Francois Peron National Park. FWD access only, so much fun!
On the way in we stopped at the old Peron Homestead and had a splash
in the artesian hot tub before heading into the National Park to camp. We decided on the South Gregories as the place to set our camp for the 3 night's we'd be there. The camp sites were spread out and there were only 3 sites per 'loop'. With South Gregories having two loops. You practically had a private beach.
Dad caught some fish, including a wobbegong (shark) - by the tail, with his hands, after it broke his hook...he be a crazy man my dad. We had some vehicle issues so Wayne camped next door came to our rescue with a jump start (twice) and on the way out dad got distracted chatting with us and the car got bogged, again Wayne, also heading out, to the rescue. So yeah Wayne was our hero.
Saw Skipjack point and sis and I walked the 1.5km Wanamalu Trail down to Cape Peron where dad and Jennie met us with a thankfully working vehicle. Sis almost stepped on a snake (python) at the start of the walk - he was a very chill snake though and just slowly slithered off to do his own thing. She spent the rest of the walk delighting in pointing out snake trails...brat.
On Saturday we said goodbye to dad and Jenni to head back down to Perth, again stopping in Geraldton to sleep (backpackers again and same room even). On the way out of Denham we picked up a couple of backpackers and took them a few hours down the road to the Overlander. They were from Malaysia and aimed to travel right round the county, good on'em. One of them was actually a girl we'd seen at Monkey Mai earlier in the week as a volunteer for the dolphin feeding. Serendipity :)
On the way back to Perth before Geraldton we detoured to Kalbari National Park to check out the Natures Window and view.On the way in we literally drove over a spiny dragon lizard pretending to be a leaf - in the middle of the dirt road. Fortunately he was right in the middle of the car so we didn't squish him. We stopped and shoo'd him off the road. Made the day - so cute, so dumb.
Then the next day we took the coastal road towards Perth and stopped at the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park and had a walk around them. Then lunch, they do some good calamari along the W.A. coast, and home. Our lovely brother picked us up from Melbourne Airport at 11.45pm in the wet and cold. Holiday over.
