This trip was to North East Western Australia to the large Karlamilyi National Park which is just east of Marble Bar. So it is just east of the Pilbara. The Canning Stock Route runs just the the west of the park. We are travelling with Coates Wildlife Tours in small Toyota 4 wheel drives. I am here for birds and landforms; Helen is here for plants and landforms. The trip was originally planned and booked for 2020 but COVID prevented getting into WA that year and we were cautious about 2021. We are concerned about going through Sydney because of COVID risk with large numbers of people and high chance of lost luggage and cancelled flights. We are flying direct from Canberra to Perth, leaving 3 days before the trip to give luggage a small chance of catching up with us. After the trip, we will spend about a week looking for birds and flowers north of Perth (just NE of Jurien Bay).
This blog will cover the 3 days before the Tour and the 10 days after. The Tour will be on a separate post.
Preparation
We are still wary of COVID risk and hesitated about finalising our bookings.
I bought a new camera – Nikon Coolpix P950 to replace the damaged P1000. The P950 has a reduced telephoto range but will be sufficient for what I want. I could not get the Panasonic Lumix FZ80 to hold a dot point focus, so it always found something else to focus on rather than the bird.
For this trip we did quite a bit of reading – especially about aboriginals:
- The Last of the Nomads by W J Peasley describes Dr Peasley trip into the area just south of Karlamilyi to rescue the last two Australian Aboriginal nomads (Warri and his wife Yatungka) from the desert during an extended difficult drought. Peasley was begged by local aboriginal elders to undertake the rescue and guided by one of those elders. Warri and Yatungka would certainly have died if they had not been rescued as they were very sick and frail and all their water holes had dried up. A very moving story.
- Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. A re-read of this amazing book. Also the disappointing refutation book Farmers or Hunter Gatherers: which , to me, looked to take issue with everything Pascoe said by twisting his words. For example, if Pascoe said ‘some’, Walshe and Sutton would interpret this ‘all’ and go after him because it was not ‘all’.
- Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters. Published by National Museum Australia.
- Fire Country by Victor Steffensen. An extremely interesting book that goes a long way to describing details of Indigenous burning practices.
- Deep Time Dreaming by Billy Griffiths which gives a history of the development of Australian archaeology from 1960s to present – especially how archaeological practices were forced to change as Aboriginal people gained more rights.
- Country: Future Fire, Future Farming by Bill Gammage & Bruce Pascoe. A recap and extension of Dark Emu and Biggest Estate. Very good. Challenging.
- Songlines: The Power and the Promise by Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly. This is a really clear explanation of development and use of songlines (especially Lynne Kelley’s chapters where she explains the parallel between songlines and memory palaces) . Excellent
- Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta. An excellent book that attempts to explain indigenous thinking and how to apply it to the modern world.
Day 1. Sunday 4th Sept 2022. This was a very long day of travel and sitting. Up at 6:30am. Departed Grange at 8:45am and drove 3 hours to Canberra. Stopped at Jugiong for coffee and a break. At Canberra, we had lunch at Pialligo Farm Cafe. We had heard of people spending an hour or more search for a car park at Canberra airport. We took just 1 minute. The outside car park was almost empty. By now it was just 1pm and we were 3¾ hours ahead of schedule which meant a very long wait at Canberra airport. Our plane was almost on time – departing at 8pm, the flight fairly full and we landed almost on time at 10:30pm Perth time. Both our bags came off the conveyor and the ride Helen had booked met us at the door to drive us to our accommodation – European Hotel where we arrived after 11pm Perth time. All our planing worked and we had no problems at all. Just long.
Day 2. Monday 5th Sep 2022. A bit frazzed still today. Yesterday’s long sitting wore us out. Walked around a bit this morning to find our tour pickup spot where we have to be by 7am on Tuesday. It is just 600m away – an easy walk. Much of the rest of the morning was spent moving our gear into the single bag (each) that we are allowed on the Tour. It can weigh no more than 12-15 kg.
Day 3. Tuesday 4th Sep 2022. Day at Kings Park. Caught cat bus to and from. Blue cat is most direct. Spent a few hours walking their Federation Garden walk. Magnificent floral displays. Very few birds. Most of the day was spent sorting our packing. Took our first compulsory RAT for the tour.
The next 15 days is covered in another blog. Go here.
Days 19 and 20. Thursday and Friday 22nd and 23rd September 2022. Recovering and Helen getting washing done. Our brains were totally fogged during Thursday (which was the public holiday for Queen Elizabeth 2). It gradually eased during the day. We could not do much I struggle with a number of computer tasks. On the Friday, we went to Kings Park again. It was so much more interesting because we had been seeing so many of the plants in the wild over the last few days. I’m still left with the question “Why is Western Australia such a plant rich provenance and where did it all come from?” (I thought the hot spot was only the SW corner. It turns out to extend right up into the mallee, 600-700 km north of Perth.) I did not get a satisfactory answer during our trip. Sounds like a topic for more research. Friday afternoon was spent repacking for a few days road trip in a hire car.
Day 21. 24th September 2022. Up at 6:30 because I was not sure how long it would take to finish packing. As it turned out, we were packed and ready by 7:30. The Uber was booked for 9:30. He turned up at 9. A very pleasant man from Somalia who has been in Australia since 1996. A very painless trip to pick up our rental car from No Birds Bayswater. Checking out the car was also painless and we were underway by 9:45. Our first stop was a Woolies that was close-ish to our track north. It turned out to be in a huge shopping mall at Joondalup. Gave us a bit of walking exercise. The car has AirPlay and that makes navigation very easy with a hook in to Apple Maps. Along our way, we stopped for lunch at Gingin – a pleasant little lunch spot at the disused Railway Station. Drive north past mines, chook farms, grain crops and almonds. Along the way, I realised that I did not have an actual map – you know, those hard copy things. We have the sat nav that gives directions to get us from point A to point B, but I have no orientation. I stopped at a couple of roadhouses to buy a map. ‘Sorry, we don’t keep them anymore – no one wants them.’ Further on, after 3 hours of driving, we reached our accommodation for the next 5 nights. We are at Western Flora Caravan Park in a mud-brick ‘chalet’. First impressions are delightful. I looks to be exactly what we want.
Day 22. Sunday 25th September. An excellent day albeit a cold wind blowing. We went for an early walk around the small lake at the northern end of the property. We are right at the northern edge of the Eneabba Heathlands. We then went for a walk to the south along a marked trail towards ‘the river’ – 5.4km return. We took so many photos of plants and birds that we got only about 360 m along before turning back after 2 hours. The rest of the day spent reading. There was talk that people had seen a Thorny Devil along the road in, so we went to search. Unsuccessful. (I ran out of battery in my camera on the way back. That means I have taken ~280 pix with that camera while here.) On dusk I went back to the lake the make recordings of the frogs. Apparently, this lake is famous for its frogs. Rumour has it that Attenborough made recordings here.
Day 23. Monday 26th September. Today our only activity was to walk to the river supposedly a return journey of 5.6km. We walked out 2 km before the track became fairly impassable and turned back. An excellent walk for the first km after that the vegetation almost closed off the walk – very scratchy. We had to keep our coats on to avoid a good scratching. Quite a lot of good flowers within the first kilometre. The rest of the time reading.
Day 24. Tuesday 27th September. A day for a bit of a drive, and everything is so far in WA. We headed for Jurien Bay via Lesueur National Park. Lesueur is a large park just inland from Jurien Bay. It is almost all a very low heath with extensive areas of plants less than half a metre high; taller plants (eucalypts, banksias and acacias) along water courses and in places with a little accumulation of water. We have been a bit spoilt at Western Flora as most of the plants in flower at Lesueur are the same as we’ve already seen at Western Flora. Very few birds so these plants are almost all pollinated by insects – beetles. I have to admit that I am totally ‘flowered out’. A plate of fish and chips at Jurien Bay which is a very pleasant holiday village. We returned via what we thought was a waterbird locale – but could not find it. We did have a walk around Carmellos ‘Carnabys’ Rest Area with many Galahs setting up nesting and protecting nests from other Galahs and Australian Ringneck Parrots.
From: Geology of Western Australia’s National Parks by Peter Lane pages 85-89.
Notice the laterite caps that make the flat-topped hills of Lesueur are gone from the Western Flora/Eneabba area.
Day 24. Wednesday 28th September. We drove an hour west for a lunch at ‘One L of a good feed’ at Carnamah. Drove to Three Springs first which is a rundown dying wheat town with nothing of interest. Just south of the town is a series of pinkish lakes with no bird life on them and dead and dying vegetation all around. An ecological disaster area. Too salty for anything to survive. Even the wheat looks low grade. On to Carnamah which is much more thrive. What is it that makes on town die and another 25 km away thrive. Is it just one person with drive or an interested council? ‘One L of a Good Feed’ was worth the visit. After lunch, we headed back to Western Flora. Along the way, we drove through Tathra National Park and at our one stop found a number of plants we had not seen before. One stop, you ask. Yes, we are both flowered out. At almost dusk, a large swarm of bees arrived and put themselves in two large pipes near the park’s office. The caretaker said that there are huge numbers of bee swarms and hives in the heath and the frequently move into those pipes. They were gone from one of the pipes in the morning.
Day 25. Thursday. 29th September. Away very early for our 245km drive to Wongan Hills our next stopover. Roads very straight and not much traffic. A short coffee break at Moora, a small town that looks to be doing ok. From there onward to Wongan Hills, we were in wheat country proper after all the marginal country along the coast. Several patches of degraded land. At Wongan Hills, we are in a very nice cabin in the caravan park. We’ve come here for the flowers.
Day 26. Friday 30th September. First a walk up the Christmas Rock Walk Trail which has its entrance close to our cabin in the van park. Not many wildflowers out. The walk heads up a slight rise to the top of a granite outcrop. Water collection diversion drains cover the rock to provided water to the town. We then went on a drive looking for flowers. Found almost none. Quite a lot of laterite in the area. The country is mainly given to wheat farming. Those bits that are just too difficult to farm are given to ‘nature reserves’. If those areas are big enough and absolutely nobody wants them, they are National Parks.
Day 27. Saturday 1st Oct 2022. Drove to Perth. Staying at Ibis Budget near Airport. We stopped at Rica Erickson Reserve along the way. Very good wildflowers and well worth the stop.
Day 28. Sunday 2nd Oct 2022. Drove to Bayswater Car Rental and dropped off the car then a lift to the airport. Flew to Canberra on a very crowded flight. Found our car in the long term car park ($250 thank you) and drove to our accommodation at Yowani Country Club. We were very tired. I slept very badly.
Day 29. Monday 3rd Oct 2022. Drove to Wagga with a stop at Jugiong for coffee. I was extremely tired and found it extremely difficult to stay awake.
Helen tested positive for COVID-19 on the Friday after flu like symptoms on the Thursday. She picked it up on the flight or at Jugiong. In iso for a week.
