Coming off the Nullabor we were glad to see some beaches again. One of the first beaches we got to was Lucky Bay in Cape le Grand Natonal Park which was absolutely stunning! Apparently one of the whitest sand beaches in Australia and I believe it. Unfortunately by the time we pulled In the campsite was quite full and extremely windy so we headed into Esperance and setup at the more protected but far less scenic caravan park in town.

Lucky Bay, Cape le Grand

We stocked up on supplies and hit the road again, the first stop we came to not a hundred Km’s from Esperance was Stokes Inlet which was a nice spot protected from the wind so we stopped, setup camp and stayed there for a couple of nights. It was good to have a bit of down time rather than having to pack up camp in the morning and sit in the car all day. It also gave us a bit of time to pull put the fishing rods and setup camp properly rather than just the quick overnight stop type of setup.

Camping at Stokes Inlet

Once refreshed we got in the car once again and head towards Albany, with a lunch stop in the Stirling Ranges under Bluff Knoll. We hadn’t really researched this area so had no idea what to expect, but figured since the contours on our map go from 250m almost straight up to 1100m, we figured it must be something pretty special to look at and did make a great lunch spot. Would love to do the hike to the top of Bluff Knoll one day, but on this day we were running out of daylight. On the other side of Albany we found a little free camp on the beach called Cosy Corner, which was exactly as the name suggests.

Leaving Cosy Corner the following morning, we followed the southern coast of WA For a while and into the Valley of the Giants for a Tree top walk – a 40m high catwalk amongst the canopy and also around the bases of the red tingle eucalypts, which has buttressed bases that are more than 14 m in circumference! This place was amazing and reminded Tee of the trees in Vancouver at Capilano which she visited with Fizz.

When cutting a shortcut through a back of the National Park, we stumbled across a thing called the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree. It’s a replica of the fire trees they had in the area, this one was built in 1988. It has a series of metal pegs hammered into the tree which spiral up and act as a ladder to climb to the top. Tara made it to the first platform at 25m and decided that that was enough for her. I came back down to the bottom with her but the challenge of conquering this tree as too great for me to let it be, so off I set climbing the pegs right to the top of the tree, 75 meters above. We’re not quite sure how this tree gets by all the public safely regulations, let’s face it whether you miss a peg from 25m or 75m you’re screwed either way! Somehow it’s allowed and I’d be interested to hear if there have been any incidents in its 24years of existence.

Dave climbing the Bicentennial Tree

We left the tree with adrenaline still pumping and were heading for our planned campsite in D’Entrecasteaux National Park when a truckie signaled to us to turn back – extremely confused until rounding the next corner and saw a bush fire heading our way so we turned around and high-tailed it out of there and instead head into Augusta with a quick look of the Cape Leewin lighthouse before setting up camp in a fantastic little caravan park right on the beach. If anyone is ever in this area, thoroughly recommend the Sandy Bay Caravan park, the lady in the office was lovely! We also ran into a guy that we saw back at Cosy Corner who we had a chat to for a good hour or more. He (Peter) also gave me a few pointers for fishing (he probably figured pretty quickly I had NFI what I was doing!) and he even gave me one of his special “barra” lures for when we get up north. We then saw him again the next day as he was booked into the same cave tour with us, so we’ve nick-named him “sneaky pete”. He doesn’t know this yet (Hi Pete if your reading this!)

Breaky on the beach at Augusta

We then wound our way up through the Margaret river for some wine tasting, Cape Naturaliste, Bunker Bay, Busslteon etc for a couple of days and followed the coast up to Freemantle for lunch at the Little Creatures brewery, a walk through town, past the old gaol and into “smithy’s” to spend the night with Graham and Vera, our very kind and accommodating hosts at Mt Pleasant.

Tee, Graham "Smithy" and Vera

With the weather still pretty rainy in Perth, We did a fairly quick look around the city and through Kings Park and up to an old friend Nicole’s house. It was great to be able to catch up on some old times over a glass of wine and meet her husband Brad and new (9month) Baby Isla. We also got a whole lot of great tips for places to go see while heading north as Brad has spent a fair bit of time exploring the area for both fishing and surfing trips.

Nicole and Dave

More pics of Southern WA available here

Dave