But it was also a very good reason to finally make the drive to Western Australia. The rego sticker did not come in time so I just left without knowing Paul (the hostel owner) would inform me when it arrived and send it after. The first two days were quite boring. I've seen that part of the country already in previous trips so I didn't bother to stop very often. But once passed Ceduna, SA you'll enter the Nullarbor desert. 1200km of nothing until Norseman, WA, except a couple of roadhouses where petrol was really expensive (+ $2/L). You don't see much wildlife during the day, except the lizards crossing the road or sometimes it looks like they're just sunbathing on the tarmac. At the end of the desert you'll drive Australia's longest straight road. 90 miles dead ahead. I didn't have the proper tools to verify this, but as far as my compass and GPS were telling me, that seemed to be pretty correct. :) It is also an area where the coastal line is 
impressive. Cliffs up to a 100m high where the waters of the Great Australian Bight are undermining the lower parts of soft rocky cliffs, so you see a lot of warning signs not to walk to close to the edges. In a way it's very similar to some parts of the Great Ocean Road but on a scale from 1 to 10, the GOR scores a 4 while these views score easily 7 (or 8 if the weather is good). But then again, the cliffs are not as white as the ones we see every time we cross the Channel. Before I left I decided to take the long route to Perth, following the south coast all the way to Cape Leeuwin and Cape Esperance. A lot of people seem to forget that the south coast of Australia has been discovered and explored by the Dutch first. Luckily everyone is reminded of this when they drive through the country. Arnhemland and Cape Leeuwin are just a couple of examples. Once passed the desert the landscape changes a lot. About every 200km it's different. There is the treeless plain, the Great Western Woodlands, the coastal areas which in itself are already very diverse; plenty to see, but not very much to do except for nature walks. So while driving through the vast Australian lands, time was ticking away slowly. Eventually on Monday morning I was looking for a town with mobile internet coverage. It seems very common, but it isn't. Which is good, I don't have the need to be connected all the time, on the contrary. Once in a while going completely off the grid is not bad. It makes you feel and experience things differently. Or maybe it is just because I'm really on my own then, unreachable for anyone except the people I meet on the road. No matter what on Monday mornings, I really need an internet connection to update the duyster website. That particular morning I ended up in Esperance, WA in a small park looking out on the ocean. A bright morning sun reflecting on the water in the bay, it was the perfect spot to stop for a while and work a bit. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320"]
High St., Fremantle[/caption] It took me another 3 days to reach Fremantle, kind of annoyed by the Australian way to ask money for some rather minor tourist attractions like both capes I mentioned above. $20 entrance to enter the light house grounds and another 10 to enter the building. I don't have the need to go see the inside of the buildings, but denying me the view of the cape itself unless I pay for it, is not very fair –imho. And these situations happen quite a lot here, but then again there are a lot of National /State/Regional Parks free of entry fees and you can even camp for free. Kokerbin Nature Reserve for example. I've spend 3 nights there. It's the third largest monolith in Australia (Uluru is the largest). The whole area 50km north of the south west coast is quite rocky. So the second largest is also located in that area in WA. The view on top of that rock is quite amazing. A great camp spot, but apparently the camp spot will be moved 6km away in a couple of months. I've met an Australian couple there that was already on the road for 6 years and never went to the northern states. They were travelling by RV (a converted 30 seat travel coach built in the early 90's) through Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. They said they've seen things changing over the last years. Yes, the facilities (water, toilets, fire places, shelters, tables, etc.) are being improved but at the same time a lot of camp sites are closed down or moved to spots where they don't bother day tourists from the city. Kind of the NIMBY effect… Regrettable, because a lot of those camp spots are really beautiful and it is a shame not
to open them. Most campers do have the responsibility to clean up after them. That camp spot at Kokerbin was as clean as can be. The way the handle fires is something else… I do believe Australians are a little bit too careless when leaving camp sites. Their fires are mostly still burning or at least glowing. In areas where the gum trees and other dry materials are lying around that can result into real disasters. The fire warnings and restrictions are obviously very visible everywhere. I didn't like Perth that much, I didn't spend that much time in Perth either. For some reason the bigger cities in Australia are not much of interest to me. Is it because I've been living in Melbourne and because of that have been spoiled a bit? Anyway, I did like Fremantle. The city itself is actually not a real convict city. Before the prison was built there was already a small whaler settlement which was later, when the whaling business went down, expanded to what we now see. For some reason Freo is the only city/town I've seen that managed to keep his old Victorian-style building dominating the city centre. Difficult to describe and the pictures are not always a good representation of the reality. It is just very difficult to catch the atmosphere in a photo. You can't see the heat reflecting from the brighter parts of the buildings. Or the way a faint cloud is changing the sun light which in his turn affects the colours you see. You can only experience those tiny but oh so important nuances when you're actually physically there and see it happen right in front of your eyes. And up until now I'm not aware of any technological device capable of capturing this (well, at least not in my budget). While driving around in WA I've put my car up for sale on gumtree (a local ebay variation, owned by ebay). Sales competition was pretty hard. And although a couple of people were interested in buying the car, I did not manage to sell it. So I decided to drive it back to Melbourne and seeing what would happen then. Eventually I found a Dutch couple that bought the car for a reasonable price although under the market value. But I could not take the risk not to agree because I was leaving 3 days later. Anyway, my time's up here. Back to Belgium, looking for a new challenge in IT. And may be some more travelling in the future, you'll never know… [googlemaps height=395 width=600]
posted via: http://www.dew4chter.be/blog
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