Friday 18 October 2013

Carnarvon

After a few lovely days in Coral Bay we headed off south to Carnarvon which is a largish town on the Gascoyne River. The road was pretty boring, with monotonous uninteresting countryside on both sides of the road. The only thing to see was the odd termite nest. Very exciting!!

We stopped at the Manilya Bridge Roadhouse for a coffee. It was your usual type of roadhouse, dusty and offering the usual types of food and goods to buy, such as attractive singlets and stubby holders printed with the name of the roadhouse. However this one had some interesting old pieces on the grass nearby.

On closer inspection I was excited to find that the traction engine was a Marshall, the same make as the one we have at Mt Victoria.


Anyway it was good to arrive in Carnarvon and find a well established town with a lot of history. The town is on the Gascoyne River which they call the upside down river as most of the water is subterranean and the nearby plantations tap this water for irrigation. Unfortunately at the moment, the actual river hasn't run for almost three years and the underground water is so depleted that it mostly cannot be used anymore because it has become too salty.

The dry Gascoyne River bed. Its huge.

As soon as we arrived it became apparent that it gets a bit windy here!! 



The town is flanked by huge plantations growing all sorts of fruits and vegetables including, bananas, mangoes, pumpkins, passionfruit, spinach, corn, zucchini, and tomatoes. The Gascoyne region provides a huge percentage of the fruit and veg for WA. I'm not sure what happens when the water runs out though.

Many of the crops are protected from the dust and wind by shadecloth enclosures.

After setting up the van at a nice park near the town centre we went out to the '1 Mile Jetty'. Its soooo long. About 1500 metres long. It was really windy when we walked out onto it, especially at the end.

It was built in 1904 and widened in 1912. It used to have a cattle race all the way down the side. They had holding yards on the shore and then walked the cattle and sheep along the race all the way out to the ship to be loaded. There is a little train still operating which will take you out to the end but we just walked. You can see where the trains terminated at the end.


Many of the boards on the jetty need replacing. I was a bit dubious about walking on it. It is looked after by the local historical society so I guess they don't have much in the way of funds. It would be an expensive job to replace all the dodgy planks.


The next day we backtracked a little and drove out to see the Blowholes on the coast just north of Carnarvon. What an amazing place. Just before we reached the coast we went up a steep drive to a lighthouse to see the view.

And a great view it was. Thats a huge wave crashing onto the rocks.
Kiama has really got nothing on this place. The blowholes blow every wave. The spray carries for miles and its a bit scary it you get too close. We were warned when we arrived with the big sign below.

There is this enormous roar as the water is pushed up through the holes in the rock. Its exhilarating!

This is before....
and after!
The coastline was spectacular and so dramatic, as you can see.

Its incredibly rocky and very hard to walk across. (That tiny spike in the background is the lighthouse. )
Some of the little pools in the rock were full of salt which had accumulated from the spray from the ocean. The water in Shark Bay is extra salty hence the nearby location of huge salt mines.


After the Blowholes we went to Quobba which has a beautiful beach and some great areas for snorkeling and exploring the rocks. We came across a couple who were feeding fish in a secluded spot. We climbed down to where they were and took some pics of the fish but they are really hard to see under the water in a photo. Mike went exploring all over a rocky outcrop which was separated from the beach by a sandbar on one side and oyster covered rocks on the other. This posed no problem to Mike as he is a bit of a billy goat and very good at climbing on anything. So I left him to it and he was able to see some great sights.

Hundreds of swirling seaguls

Amazing rock formations
Shells hiding in a cave
Purple coral
Beautiful clear water and more coral
Oyster covered rocks
The oyster covered bridge back to dry land!
We also visited the memorial cairn for the HMAS Sydney which was lost at sea with all 645 crew members after a battle with the German ship the Kormoran on 19 November 1941.

There is also a memorial drive in Carnarvon itself which has a plaque for each crew member who was lost with their name and position on it. There is also a palm tree planted behind each plaque. It must have been devastating for all those families and a huge blow to morale when this terrible event occurred. Such a waste.

Before we left the area we had one more road to investigate and to our surprise we found a little shanty town. All the 'dwellings' had numbers painted on them. None of them looked like they had been occupied recently and it was a bit creepy. A good place for a movie set perhaps?


It was a very strange place but in a lovely location just near the beach.

The coastline in WA is largely unspoiled which is really lovely. Its great that you can still enjoy such places in their natural state. We have seen so many wonderful natural wonders on this trip!

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bronwyn, Another wonderful post of fabulous adventures. Thanks for sharing it with us.

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