Ravensthorpe

I left Esperance this morning and set off towards Albany. I can really see how easy it is to accidentally get stuck when travelling; you find a nice place, meet nice people and the temptation grows to stay put. And that’s fine of course but if you’re not careful, you end up getting into a rut just like the one you left to go travelling. So I forced myself out and onwards. It was only a short ride, just 190 kms to Ravensthorpe

It’s been overcast all day but with a warm wind blowing. I even got splattered with rain as I moved westwards, but nothing serious. Gerty seems to have enjoyed her few days off too and is quite perky with her new back tyre and oil top up.

I stopped at a lake called Lake Monjingup just outside Esperance. It's quite weird how after the Nullarbor and  the outback and all their dryness, I’m now seeing ponds and lakes with a decent amount of water in them. A few crazy trees were sticking out of the water and sand, having lost the battle with the wet stuff, giving the place a bit of a post  apocalyptic look. 

There was some of that Banksia stuff too, one of those plants that needs fire to split its seed pods open and release the seeds as they are so hard. When they do pop, they look like frogs mouths but these were still firmly shut.

Most of today’s route was through pastureland or wheatfields. Not especially interesting and not much shelter from the strong wind that is still blowing in from the Nullarbor.  It was blustery too rather than steady and that always tires me out. It sort of beats you up as you ride. 

I arrived in Ravensthorpe at about 1530 hrs and accidentally stumbled across a great free camp spot, complete with a strong Telstra phone and Optus wifi signal. That doesn’t happen very often, but it was a bit early to set up camp, so I went into town for a look around. 

A nice little place which suffered from closure of the goldmines back in the 1930s.  But look at this - a funky glass statue creation outside the police station! 

Can you imagine that in London? it would have been long nicked or smashed or both. I mean we used to have to chain the Station Christmas tree to the railings on the steps into the nick every year in Lambeth because the locals would try and have it away. And it was huge, but they still tried to steal it every year. And when they couldn't, they'd set fire to it instead. I didn't reckon much on their police car though.

Ravensthorpe did hang on for a while though, with the railway line linking it to Hopetoun on the coast being used to transport wheat instead. There’s a nice little story about the wheat load being too heavy for the train to haul it up and over the hills than lay between here and the coast so the engine would drag half the train up to the top of the hills, uncouple, return for the remaining half, drag that up there, link them up again and then coast down to Hopetoun and the ships that would take it away. A different version of ‘coast to coast’ I guess.

As I rode around, I spotted a sign for a camel farm, and some camel roadsigns.  Not like the effeminate versions on the Nullarbor but real camely signs.

How cool - a real live camel farm so I had to go and find that. And even better, it lay up Dromedary Drive! Ha ha! What a great name. 

But alas, much to my disappointment it was shut although I did see a couple of camels casting disdainful  and condescending glances towards me from the yard.  

Camels are a bit like cats; the really do not give a stuff about anything or anything unless it benefits them, and then only if they feel like it. It was a shame it was closed though, especially as the sign said it was open. So I left........with the hump.

But it was time to camp so off I went, back to my free camp. A couple of vans were already there from earlier, so I ducked in behind them and some bushes and stuck up the new lightweight tent. Then I got stung by a bee; bloody thing. I hope it doesn't swell up like the wasp sting did last week.

The weather is getting a bit autumnal now, which means that its quite dewy in the mornings and that makes it difficult in the swag because there’s only room for me and I have to get changed outside it.  And that scares the roos and its not fun putting on bike gear in the wet. But at least with a small tent, I’ve got a bit more room and I use the swag as a mattress.

And there was the usual evening backdrop to admire as I got sorted.I even managed to cook some grub before it got dark too; I’m getting quite domesticated for a tramp.

To Albany

I’m pleased with my little tent. It rained hard last night and I remained dry. Hurrah. It was a cheapish tent - $90.00 - but still double skinned, light weight and very compact which is essential because it has to fit on the bike. The compromise with it is that it only has a nylon bottom instead of that heavier waterproof base that most tents have. So I put the folded tarp under it and it was as good as.

I was ready early this morning and on the road by 0906 hours. It was windy, but that dried out the puddles and water dripping off the leaves. However, I got top curse the very same during the course of the day as it was head on most of the way, keeping my top speed to a hardly stately 50 kph with the odd burst of 60 kph.

It was 289 kms to Albany, down on the coast, past more pasture and mallee scrub. A few odd things to see on the way, like the T tree. 

But mostly it was just riding and trying to survive road train turbulence. It doesn’t usually hit me much but today it did, probably because the air was already swirling. But only those going in the opposite direction; as usual those overtaking me were easy. I watch my mirrors and when they’re about 100m behind me, I flick the right indicator and then move over as much as I can, slowing a bit if I can see solid white lines ahead. They always toot or flash thanks, so it works well. And I get to coast on their wheels. But this was the biggest thing I saw all day; massive! I had to pull off the road so as he could pass.

I stopped for fuel at a place called Jerramungup at about 1130 only to find a collection of bikes and vehicles on the forecourt and their respective drivers/riders standing around aimlessly. There was no power, which meant no fuel could be pumped, and worse still no coffee could be made. Neither is what you want to hear when you’re cold and running low on petrol! But then this little fella trotted up. One horsepower.

But we were all stuck, the garage bloke reckoning it would be back on by 12 noon but then 1530. The nearest fuel was 60 kms away at Boxwood Hill, fortunately in the direction I was heading. Only trouble was, what if there was no power there either? But if the worst came to the worst, I had food and water plus somewhere to sleep until it got put back on, probably on Monday morning. A quick look in Gerty’s tanks revealed that I still had about 100 kms of fuel left, but would that distance still be achievable in the strong headwind? I decided to give it a go, but the bigger bikes and vehicles were all stuck, not having enough to get them to Boxwood Hill.  

But I made it, and the headwind became a sidewind as I turned off south towards Albany. More roadtrains, more mallee scrub, more pasture, and more Roman roads, then it rained and became quite cold. But I reached Albany OK and was very glad to be staying in the YHA again tonight.

We even passed the Stirling Ranges on the way, albeit from a distance. I would have liked to have ridden through them on way to Albany but there was no fuel that way.

Gerty is all tucked up under a waterproof cover that somebody gave me a few thousand kms ago, and parked at the back of the carpark. We’ll go off exploring again tomorrow, unloaded, to see what we can see in the area. But I think its going to tip it down.

Staying in youth hostels is good sport because its mostly all kids here and first time travellers. Then I come along and don't fit the template of what they expect. For a start, I'm usually 100 years older than the eldest and they don't quite know what to make of me and can't quite understand why I'm here.

" Shouldn't she be in a 5 star hotel or on a cruise or something?". " What about if we smoke weed; will she disapprove?". " Is she a management spy or something?" 

No people, none of the above. I've been travelling since before most of you were born, I've done the weed/drink/ other naughty stuff thing and grown out of it, I'm not a spy or a nark and I don't really care what you do, but if you piss me off, I will tell you upfront; none of that getting a third person to do it for me. to soften the blow. Yes I do travel by motorbike, yes I can ( and do) ride bigger bikes and have a full unlimited licence to do so. And I also drove lorries for several years, including road trains across the Nullarbor between Freemantle and Adelaide. No I have never been on a cruise nor do I want to, and the 5 star thing is not my thing. And yes, I can understand French, quite well as it happens, so I know what you're saying, particularly when it comes to me, which lets face it, is how I know all this stuff. So leave me alone please unless you have something interesting to say. I'm happy to chat to anybody about most things but understand that many people have already done what you're now doing, long before you did it, and without the aid of gap year companies, mobile phones, email, twitter, Facebook, digital cameras and wifi. And before we did it, people did it before us so it's not new. Get over yourselves.

Last day in Esperance

I decided to spend another day in Esperance. It's such a  nice place here, Violet, Barry and Carol, the YHA people are great, and there is no pressing need to move on. Its very relaxed here with its own brand of security.

It also meant that I could do the various little jobs that I keep meaning to do but never actually get around to. Like replacing Gerty’s back tyre. It was getting pretty bald and there was no reason to keep carting the new one around, so that’s what I spent three hours this morning doing. And lubing her chain, topping up her oil, taping the wheel rims and generally farkling her.

Barry gave me a bit of timber to support her while I took the back wheel off. That was actually a great help as the ground around her is sandy and no matter where I parked her, she kept sinking into the ground.

When I was riding yesterday, I noticed that the footbar was moving a bit. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that one of the four bolts had dropped out, whilst two more were loose. So I nipped them up and will get a replacement for the missing one when I reach Albany. Its not essential, just something that I will do as and when, but when I checked them again today, they were as good as.

This is another reason I like to do my own servicing. I ride this bike all day, everyday, and I’ve got used to her little ways and funny sounds. So when something is amiss, I notice, and when I’ve worked out what it is, I know to keep an eye on it.

I had a good old chat with Barry whilst I was fixing Gert. He and Violet and both maoris from NZ and Carol is their sister in law ( was married to barry’s brother Charlie, who died) Really nice, fun kind people, all three of them. Barry is also a bit of a whiz with cars and he’s got a few parked here which he’s bought from backpackers. But the best one is this scooter which runs on solar power and which he’s fixed up to carry tools and bits of crap around the site.

Having put the postie back into working order again, I rode into town where I bought a few bits that I needed, and immediately met Julie who wanted to know how far I’d ridden and where I was going next. Her husband is a biker but is currently crook with a damaged spine, following a bike smash 22 years ago - exactly the same injury as I have - damaged L3/4/5 vertebrae, only his sounded more serious than mine. Hopefully, they’ll be able to do something for him and he’ll get back to doing whatever it is that he wants to do. Back injuries are shit because they affect everything; standing, sitting, laying down. There is no not moving that bit as it hurts business; your back is central to everything and its such a nasty bugger when something goes wrong with it.

Twighlight Bay is the next bay along from Esperance, and its beautiful. 

I followed the road along the cliff top as far as Observatory Point which is where two French ships, the Recherché and the Esperance  anchored in the deeper water back in 1792. And how incredible that must have been for the french sailors who landed. After months at sea, they finally set foot on land that as white men, was a first. New plants, new land, new everything. And the thing is, with the exception of the road that I'd just ridden along and a town several kilometers back, little had changed, no buildings, so signage, no phone masts or anything. So what I was looking at must have been very much what they looked at 222 years ago. The only difference is I had a camera  and took photos whereas they had to describe through writing.

Hopefully, they didn't really look like this

The coastal geology is more huge granite boulders, rounded and shaped by the ocean, as well as calcified sand and roots making up the top soil. Where it had been worn away by the sea, the rain and the wind, vast segments of fossilised roots have been exposed, and little cave like holes have appeared in the upper layers. 

And the beach is like a mini moonscape as bits of outcrop have been weathered by sea water. 

I’ve always found the sea mesmerising and fascinating, so I spent a couple of hours wandering about, climbing over the rocks and just watching the water crashing over and through them.

me being mesmerised and fascinated

And odd point ( I was going to write climax but I wont in the circumstances) to this afternoon was the man I met at Observatory Point who told me he’d been watching a couple have sex on the nudist beach round the corner and enquired whether I would like him to show me where they were. No thanks, I think I’ll leave them to it. Well would I like to watch him do things to himself then? Er, no thanks, I’ll leave you to that one too. Can’t risk you getting stage fright and getting booed off stage can we? Anyway, I’ve got things to do in town right now in fact; nice meeting you. Bye.

I think Observatory Point must double as a dogging - or maybe dingoing - pickup location. But who are these people and where do they appear from? He  just materialised yet he can’t have seen me from the road because I’d parked Gerty alongside the hedge and not in the main car park. And he was just an ordinary looking bloke who wouldn’t stand out in a crowd, yet he clearly frequented the place and his approach was quite bold, but he was completely unfazed by my disinterest. It was as if he’d walked into a shop and asked for something we didn’t have and he’d been told to try the shop across the street. Maybe  he  propositions everybody the encounters there, working on a scatter approach basis, or maybe I inadvertently give off dogging vibes. Guess I’ll never know. Woof.

Cape Le Grand National Park

It was a bit calmer today, with no wind, and so it was also a bit warmer.  And the sky was beautiful early on. Why is it that I'm always up and ready on days when I don't have to go anywhere, but on ride days ( which is most of them) I'm not?

I took a punt out to Cape Le Grand National Park today, a 50 kms jaunt to the whitest beach I've ever been on, and better still, I got to ride along it, legitimately. 

The ranger said I could, and a few other vehicles came along after me and did the same, so it must have been OK. Actually, its a proper route between two of the bays, subject to tide and sand conditions.

It was beautiful down there; white, white sand and beautifully clear aquamarine water, backed by some very weirdly eroded hills. 

This area all used to be underwater millions of years ago and the peaks would either have been completely submerged or just poking out of the water. One of the info boards down there reckoned that the water was deeper by 300m. And that's a lot of water.

I stayed down there for a couple of hours, doing nothing in particular other than just looking at the sea and wandering along the beach. It was nice to have some down time, particularly after the past few days of hard riding.

The road to the park passed through a tree farm, various lots of uniform gum trees all planted in neat rows. The lots varied in height from saplings to fully grown big trees, all as straight as, and being cultivated for commercial purposes. 

But most curious of all along the same road was a full reproduction of Stone Henge. Known as the Esperance Stone Henge, its actually a homage to the original in Wiltshire, UK and is billed as one of the area's attractions. But why would anybody build something like that in the first place, but more to the point, why in a field outside a town on the south coast of Australia? Bizarre, full on Disney and too perfect. And no, I didn't go in; I've seen the real one, many times.

I had a poke around Esperance itself, and found another claim to fame - second only to the repo Stone Henge - is that it was the site of Australia's first wind farm, built in 1987.

To Esperance

Yet again, despite getting up and showered early, I was late setting off, largely because I got talking to Phil and Marilyn who had camped next to me. Originally from the UK, they’re from Brisbane, and touring round in a small panel van which Phil fitted with a bed and storage space. 

We had a good old jaw about travelling and how you just have to get on and do it, and not be swayed by other people's doubts and expectations. They originally came to Australia in 1972 but then went back to the UK by land, taking public transport, which took them nine and a half months. I always love hearing people’s travel stories, particularly when they are unusual or tortuous or just not done.

In turn, they were interested in what I am up to and how little we all need to live. Definitely fellow devotees of the ‘ go and do it and do it with what you’ve got’ club.

I also picked up a hitchhiker - a stick insect who coasted all the way to Esperance with me.

After the last few days, and in particular, the mammoth distance yesterday, I was after a shorter, easier day, as was poor old Gerty. She did so well across the Nullarbor that I felt almost guilty starting her up again this morning and expecting her to carry me 200 kms southwards to Esperance. But that’s exactly what I did, although we did stop quite a bit just to look at stuff, take pictures, or just because we did.

Before we left,however, I booked a place at the YHA in Esperance. After last night’s campsite rip off, I decided to take a bed there for $28.00 instead of a patch of gravel for $33.00. It also took the pressure off having to find a place to sleep upon arrival, and as Esperance is a seaside holiday type of place, it was unlikely that there would be many free camps for a swag at least, nearby. Good call that one because there weren’t and the campsite was even more outrageous - $34.00. Bugger that. So I booked it for two nights so that I can explore tomorrow.

The tin camels are just down the road, so I had a quick butchers at them. They represent the camel trains that used to be the main beasts of burden here and up through the arid areas in the days before road, rail and air freight. I presume it means that several people now have camel shaped holes cut in their roof as corrugated tin seems to be the common raw material round here.

The route down here was just straight highway, passing through the usual dried lakes, gum trees, and further south, grassy pasture. 

The Bromus Dam lies just off the highway, south of Norseman. 

It was constructed so that steam trains would have water as they chugged between  Esperance and Kalgoorlie. It disused now, except by the March flies and a few fish.

It follows the railway line, and at one place there was a whole heap of freight carriages strewn alongside the track, upside down, on their sides, all skewed. At first I thought it was a rail junk yard but theses were big old trucks and the way they were scattered suggests that it was actually a train that had been derailed some years earlier and been left in situ.

Very odd. But there were also a few small towns along the way, such as Salmon Gums, where I stopped for a drink. 

I wandered into the local store and it was like stepping back 40 years.

Homemade wooden shelves, stock which looked very dated, and a delightful old man from Newbury, Berkshire behind the counter. I bought a ginger beer from his fridge and drank it while he told me all about how he and his wife had arrived in Australia in 1966 - along with the metric system, and had only been back to the UK once, and that was to his mother’s funeral. He’d apparently worked in central Sydney for years but moved to Western Australia when his wife decided to run the post office for her sister who had married a farm worker who had been moved to a farm 200 kms away. he joined his wife after he retired. Now she’s tied to the house as she has kidney problems, and was on the dialysis in the back room as we chatted. All this information in the space of 10 minutes and a small ginger beer; a lovely gentle old bloke but I wonder what he would have told me over a pint. 

I eventually got the Esperence by mid afternoon. 

It was quite windy and a bit cold as a result of being right on the ocean.  Its a fair sized town spread out along the coast with the whitest of white sand and an archipelago just off the shore - the Bay of Isles. Depending on the weather, I might have an explore out that way tomorrow, but I’ll have a poke around the town a bit first.