Back to the big smoke - Yanchep to Perth

21st July 2014

Driving in suburban traffic seemed very odd today!  We have decided to stay Caversham, an outer suburb of Perth in the Swan valley.  There are vineyards all around.  Caversham is handy to Guildford railway station for a 30 minute trip into Perth city, but also handy to a large range of national parks to the east which we plan to visit if and when the rain stops.

Set up for the next week or so

Rain showers on and off all day today so we just made a quick visit to Guildford which was originally a town in it's own right but has since become a suburb of Perth.  Guildford was established on the navigable Swan river in 1829.

2 room cottage in Guildford in which a family of 13 children was raised!

The land was fertile so it soon became an important hub for agriculture and industry. Later in the century the Midland railway was installed running right through the centre of town, bisecting it. I don't know why this happened rather than routing the railway a bit further south.

Yanchep NP

20th July 2014

Cold and a bit drizzly this morning but we had a great day enjoying Yanchep NP.  This park is close to Perth so is popular and not as 'natural' as other parks we have been in. However we enjoyed some walks among the tuart trees and in the limestone caves.

Tuart trees in collapsed cave

Crystal Cave

The limestone here is unusual as it is not formed by coral reefs but made from calcified sands.  The sands were ground coral and sea shells which formed into dunes about 500,000 years ago. Rainwater percolating through the dunes dissolved the calcium carbonate cementing the grains together into rock.

The caves have formed through the action of water and stalactities and stalagmites have formed within them.  The caves used to have water running through until about 20 years ago.  Unfortunately the water table in the Perth area has dropped and they are now dry.  The drop is partly due to the demand for water as the city grows and also a large part of the ground water is taken up by pine plantations to the east of the city.

The park has a small koala enclosure in which slumbered about half a dozen animals.

Koala in Yanchep NP

After this we went to the beach in Yanchep where the stormy weather created interesting effects on the headland and the water.

Yanchep beach

Gingin Gravity Discovery Centre - Jurien Bay to Yanchep

19th July 2014

Tonight we are 60kms north of Perth, so there is a lot more going on along our route.  We visited the Gravity Discovery Centre during our drive south today, which was very interesting.

Gravity bending light simulation

The facility is a research station for detecting gravity waves, one of 6 in the world.  An education facility has been opened next to this with some very interesting experiments to do. One of these is a 'leaning tower' which approximates the leaning tower of Pisa from which Galileo conducted gravity experiments. From the modern one the experiment is to drop water filled balloons of different weights to see they drop in a straight line and hit the ground at the same time.

Long way down to the sandpit from the top of the gravity tower.

There is also a cosmos observatory but tonight would not have been good for stargazing as it has been a bit stormy.

Beautiful flower in the nearby bush

Desert column enigma - Nambung NP

18th July 2014

Nambung NP covers a coastal strip which includes several interesting places.  The coast is beautiful, there are saline lakes and a few kms inland, a desert area with strange limestone pinnacles surrounded by kwongan heath.

Pinnacles at Nambung NP

There are many theories about how the pinnacles formed; some scientists believe they are fossilised tree trunks, others say they are a dense mat of fossilised plants which held the dunes together. No one really knows.  What is clear from looking at some of them is networks of fossilised roots and stems.  After the plant matter became fossilised, sand was blown east from the coast and covered them completely.  At various times in the last 500,000 years the columns have been exposed then covered over again.  There are many more below the current ground surface.

The contrast between the yellow sand around the pinnacles and the fine white sand of the coastal dunes is stunning.

Pinnacles amongst the heath and coastal dunes

The sand on the coast is so white it looks like snow.  It is also extremely fine unlike the coarser coral sands further north and we had a great walk along the beach at Hangover Bay.  We can only speculate how the bay got it's name but it should be renamed Eden Bay.

Snow white sand and turquoise water at Hangover Bay

Lake Thetis is one of a string of lakes behind the coastal dunes running down this coast.
 

Stromatolite at Lake Thetis

About 4,000 years ago the connection to the sea was blocked by sand and as the water evaporated it became very saline, a condition in which most life cannot survive.  However, stromatolites which we have already encounterd in Shark Bay thrive in these conditions and the lake is full of them.

Lake Thetis

Lesueur and Stockyard Gully National Parks

17th July 2014

We visited 2 fantastic national parks today.  Lesueur NP is a bio-diversity hotspot with many species of plants growing within the 27,000 hectares known nowhere else on earth. Some like the one pictured only grow within a tiny area of the park where the soil and micro-climate are just right.

Djanda flowers in Lesueur NP

We were fortunate as the wildflower season is just starting and there were many drifts of different colour blooms.  I have been photo cataloging all the flowers we come across during our travels and in a 2 hour walk today I photographed at least 30 different plants.

Kwongan heath, Lesueur NP

The park is a kwongan heath community. Kwongan is an indigenous word describing the diverse range of flora and fauna in the area. Within the park are several mesas, which are flat top mountains that have resisted the erosion of the surrounding areas.  We climbed to the top of Mt Lesueur which was cold and windy but had wonderful views.  From here we saw wedge tail eagles soaring on the thermals.

Mt Michaud from Mt Lesueur

After this we ventured on a 4WD sand track to Stockyard Gully NP which is a series of limestone caves.  In between the caves are steeply sided gullies, which are collapsed caves.  These gullies were used by stockmen as a natural stock yard to contain the cattle and sheep they were droving down to the coast.  The cave we walked through was about 300 metres long and pitch black in the centre.  No water at present but it can flood after rain.  The trees around the gullies were filled with hundreds of screeching Carnaby's Black Cockatoos.

Entering Stockyard Gully cave

Whilst in the area we came across some guys also exploring the caves.  Turns out one of them is a sky diver from Jurien Bay who knows my sister Jane [and her husband Del] who lives in England! Small world indeed.

Bay at Green Head

We finished off the day driving to the coast at Green Head and climbing up a coastal lookout.  There are a series of very pretty bays around the headland with unusual wave patterns due to the underlying rocks.  The bays are formed by eroded limestone ridges.

Coastal walk in Jurien Bay

16th July 2014

Warmer and less windy today with just a couple of showers in the early morning.

Jurien Bay

Jurien Bay

We walked south along a foreshore trail and enjoyed some of the coastal dune wildflowers which are starting to blossom.  Other than that, nothing much.

Unfortunately we have been staying too long in the last few places but had booked ahead because we were concerned camps might be booked out due to the school holidays which end on Friday in WA. This was certainly true of Kalbarri but everywhere since then we should have decided after arriving as we usually do.

Into the rain - Dongarra to Jurien Bay

15th July 2014

This morning we were able to pack up before the rain set in, and to set up at our destination in the dry too. There have been squally showers since arriving, which is apparently quite usual for this part of the coast in the winter.  Unfortunately the caravan park does not have really good sites so there are quite a few puddles around.

Jurien Bay harbour

There is a good foreshore walk in Jurien Bay so we managed to walk the northern part as far as the harbour in between showers.  The coastline all along here has a fringing reef dotted with many islands.  This is the remains of a limestone ridge which has flooded when the sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age.  The reef and islands protect the shore from the pounding seas and the islands, being feral free are also the last refuge of some endangered species.  One of these is the delightfully named dibbler, which is a rat sized marsupial.