10.11.09

Oh, whoops, I forgot to write about Coral Bay and now we’re nearly finished at Williambury, aah well, here goes then.

Coral Bay was a nice little bit of civilisation, it was good to get showers again, use a washing machine and get out of the wind a bit, we didn’t move much, just relaxed. We spent a couple nights just hanging out with our friends, a few drinks and good conversation. Halloween was spent at Coral Bay and we had a little bit of fun with the kids planned, they had to fish snakes out of a bowl of flour with their mouths, Simone was a witch and scared them and they needed to scare Belinda to get their treat from her, Mark & I made pizza and pastas for dinner.

Leading up to dinner us guys decided a bit of fishing at the marina was in order, the water was amazingly clean but the fish weren’t interested. I was trying to get a photo for the EOS Photo comp. And had my rod sitting down behind the other guys when next thing Darryl saw it fly over his head, a seagull had tried to take the bait and gotten tangled.

So I’m over the other side trying to set up my tripod in the howling wind when Kenny runs up yelling to me how a seagull has flown off with my rod and now it’s stuck in the harbour. Believe me when I say I was less than impressed and said some words a nine year old boy probably shouldn’t be exposed to. I packed up my camera and ran over and sure enough there’s my rod hooked up to a seagull still trying to fly with the line tangled round it’s leg (from where I stood it looked like it had swallowed the hook) and getting further and further away. I watched it, debating if it was swimming out to it or not, finally it was off with the shirt and around to the cliffs on the other side of the harbour (not far) where I scaled down to the water level again so as to be closer for the swim. When I got there I was lucky in that the silly bird had managed to get to the base of the cliffs with it and release itself so I got the rod and made my way back around. I managed to take my photo before the sun went down then went to the edge of the pier, I spotted a reef about 80m out from where I was and went for the big cast out to it, as my sinker very satisfyingly landed right where I was aiming I jammed my thumb on to the reel to stop it spinning. There was no line there, I’d cast it so far my whole line had come off, my fishing was done. It took the other guys about half an hour more to realise there was no point and we went back for beer and dinner.

Our last morning in Coral Bay was spent on the beach, snorkelling and lazing basically. Coral Bay has not been protected anywhere near as much as the rest of Ningaloo and it is really obvious. Where as our last week or so I’ve diving had given so much variety in coral and fish life, most of the corals at Coral Bay have died off and so there is less fish. Don’t get me wrong the snorkelling is still great, it’s just that %99 of the coral is one type of soft coral that looks kind of like a giant cabbage, all the stag horn corals and stuff have died. I’ve since discovered that it’s only been in the last few years that boats have been stopped from mooring on the beach, apparently it was very common for people to smash their propeller on the coral, now it’s all protected and I’m sure one day it will be spectacular once again. After our morning on the beach it was with some excitement that we said our farewells and headed for Williambury.

Williambury.

220km from Coral Bay, 100km south and 120km west along a gravel road, we were very relieved to find a dirt road that we could drive on for a change, smooth, wide and compact, no corrugates – YES! We actually enjoyed the drive, Lachlan asking every time we crossed a cattle grid if we were on Williambury land now, eventually we were.

The owners of Williambury are lovely people, unlike the big stations in NT most of the stations in WA are owner operated rather than big companies, Williambury is no exception. A family owned property of 700 000 acres (have I mentioned that once or twice before?) it is really quite beautiful and surprisingly we really like it here, after ten days I’m not all that keen to keep moving, none of us are. John and Rachael are really fabulous people about our age with two kids, Digby (11) and Mathilda (7), John grew up here, spent time in Perth at school and Uni before buying into the property , now his kids are growing up here and doing school of the air. As well as the family there is Hye Young, a Korean Wwoofer and Hayley a Jillaroo who have both been here about two days longer than us.

Our arrangement here has been we work for food and keep, we eat breakfast and lunch separately but everyone comes together for dinner at the homestead. We have a little 3BR cottage to stay in and the other two have staff quarters, it all works very well. Lachlan has been doing school work with the kids, Rachael teaches them and they do one “air” lesson per day, air lessons are now done over the internet which I am told is far better than the old radio system.

I started the first day with some cattle work, which was great fun for ½ an hour until Johnno grabbed me and got me started on all the little carpentry jobs they needed doing, that took up my Monday until I ran out of gear and also noticed a late afternoon storm coming. With the storm coming the light became beautiful so I grabbed my camera and tripod and climbed the hill behind the house (the hill is actually just millions of rocks piled up, everything is here) Luck was on my side and was caught in a dust storm. When the dust first whipped up I nearly turned back but decided to persevere and try for a shot, in the end I managed to take what has turned out to be one of, if not the best photos I’ve ever taken, it’s saleable so wont be going on flickr.

Once a week the mail truck comes out, it brings everything, hardware, food, fuel, whatever and it only comes on Wednesday so I had no supplies to build with on Tuesday, so I got to have some fun and help out with the cattle, a bit of yard work and then onto the motor bike to run them out into the paddock, it’s been so long since I’ve done it and I had so much fun. The country out here is seriously made up of red dirt, red gravel (50mm stones), red sand and red boulders, at the moment there’s very little grass, lots of trees (small and stunted, but they’re what the cattle eat) and not much else. Keeping in mind the make up of the paddocks you can imagine how much fun I had mustering on the bike, lots of wheel spins and slides, it was sooo much fun. Belinda and the kids followed along behind the mob in the old 4x4 keeping them moving, I watched the rear, left flank and back of the right flank, Hayley led the mob while Johnno watched the right flank. It was a well oiled machine I tell you and I was disappointed that there was no more to do.

Wednesday, I was fixing a fence in the morning when Johhno came and asked if I wanted to come check the windmills with him, “come for a fly” he said. I jumped at the chance, checking the windmills means going up in their two seat airplane, when he told me it was a two seater I imagined seats up the front side by side, reality was a shock. When I say light aircraft, I reckon three people could lift it up, the pilot sits in front and the passenger sits right behind, feet on either side of the pilots chair. It’s a single prop jobby with a very good motor, so I’m told, and you can feel every bump and wind gust that ever goes past. I was in the air for about an hour and a half with a landing at one of the windmills, it was great fun and finally I got an appreciation of just how big 700 000 acres is, very big. Admittedly during the first ½ hour I couldn’t help but think about my mortality a few times, the 2nd ½ hour was spent absolutely rapt in the experience and the final ½ hour was wishing it could be over while I concentrated on keeping my breakfast in my stomach, I was glad when it ended.

During the flight I got quite a fright when the engine seemed to stop and we started diving down, it was all planned and we were just swooping down to check the water troughs and windmill at the first point. After that I knew what to expect and the rest were just sickening rather than frightening until we started to fly really low, just above the trees, quite scary until I realised we were landing (pretty scary in itself when you see the runway) near a mill that wasn’t working properly. As we came screaming down (or was that just me?) onto this rough dirt strip with two emus racing us to get out of the way, I couldn’t help but laugh at the madness of it all. We had just landed on a short, potholed, cow and emu littered red rock strip out in the middle of nowhere, the southern boundary of their property which just happens to be the Kennedy Ranges and a really spectacular place. A quick fix on a pipe then back to the plane for a short take off and head for home via a few more mills, over clay pans and mountains (stay down breakfast, look at the horizon for a bit) and over the driest rockiest place you can imagine. Lachlan and Belinda both got flights later in the week, Lachlan a quick 5 minutes and Belinda a bit longer, Lachlan also got a ride in a road train on Tuesday or Wednesday.

After such a fun start to the week the rest of our time has been unremarkable, we’ve been working around the house mainly, me doing carpentry, Belinda the gardening and anything else she could do although on Saturday night we went to a neighbouring station for a bit of a gathering. A country style gathering that was a lot of fun, home killed steaks, home grown vege’s and good company. Johnno, Hayley, Hye Young and I stayed quite late and drank to much, Belinda, Rachael and the kids went home early and woke up better, in saying that, Johnno and I left early enough to get a good sleep and wake without hangovers, the other two stayed out all night and slept all day.

On Sunday Johhno took us out to a place called Wendy’s Waterhole, it’s a lovely little gorge on their property with lots of aboriginal artifacts and rock art, the rocks are deep red and it’s a nice shady spot but it only has clean water when there is a lot of rain. Although the creek was not running there was a couple of pools left and as we sat near one with the kids throwing rocks in I happened to notice a big male kangaroo watching us from up on the rocks. We called the kids up to sit with us and the big buck cautiously made his way down the rocks, stopped about 1m from us and checked us out very closely. Once satisfied he was safe he went passed us and started drinking from the pool, checking us out every so often to make sure he was still safe. When he was at the pool the only way out was to come back past us, he finished drinking, watched us closely for a few minutes then casually made his way past and back up out of the gorge. I’ve seen lots of kangaroos and lots of wildlife, not only on this trip but I’ve been lucky in a lot of the places I’ve lived to be in unspoilt places but sitting there watching this big fella sneak past for a drink was a really nice moment, not the least because the kids were all quiet for once.

Today we are leaving and I must be honest and say it’s one of the hardest days of our entire trip, although we’ve spent most of the time around the house with a few really exciting or nice moments it’s been awesome. We have all found something here that has gone beyond the fun of the trip, All the people here, the family, Hye Young, Hayley are all just real genuine easy people to be with and there is just something about the country life and country hospitality. It’s really hard to explain, not like people from town or the city are any less nice, genuine or hospitable there’s just something really simple and down to earth about these guys out here, It’s kind of like the country is so harsh and everything is stripped back to basics there is no time for complications amongst people, I don’t know, it’s just really hard to leave but it’ll be good to see our friends on the road again and we’re coming back next year.

Today we head for Carnarvon and the last week or two of our journey to Perth, I’ve started applying for jobs and in some ways that’s pretty exciting, It’ll be good to hang with Amber and Ross again but we’ll really miss our friends that we see while travelling, it’ll be nice to stop moving for a bit, but gee normal life is going to be hard to live again.