Fern Pool

Tuesday 28th
We decided to walk to Fern pool which was just a little on from Fortesque falls in the morning as that shouldn't take long.

On the way to Fern pool we found ferns growing out of the rocks. Manning and Kimberly don't seem as excited about this discovery as I am!!!

Then we came across this massive tree that had branches heading out in all directions but it would keep putting roots down to the ground that would support the branches, like new little trunks. All the kids except Manning are in the tree.

And there were bats in the tree just where you get into the water at Fern pool. One urinated on Ethan and one pooed on Baylee! Their wingspan was about that of a black crow, so quite big. They were very noisy for animals that are meant to be sleeping during the day!

And there were fish where you climbed in. One nibbled on my leg!

This is Fern pool. With Maiden Hair Ferns all around the outside!

Again the waterfall was warmer and a nice massage!

We are running into this very friendly German couple that we met at Bullara station. We are known as "The family" to them and this is him trying to encourage his wife and Zane to come swim over to the waterfall. They are funny. We have a lot of people recognise us from different spots. I'm not so good at remembering faces and I know a lot of the time I have my head down, tending to the family but people are very kind to us and look to talk and help us in letting us know what is good to see.

After lunch we headed off on a 3 hour walk along the bottom of Dales gorge to end at Circular pool. We found some amazing rock formations on the way. How is this holding up? You did all the walks in your bathers as you had to swim at the end of the walk!

This is Circular pool. Pretty but very cold and we couldn't stay in the water long.

The kids doing something they love but we weren't meant to jump or climb!

The kids played in the pools on the walk back. We took the easy option and walked back along the top of the gorge.

Dales camping ground

Monday 27th
Breakfast with the gallahs!

They were so funny. The one on Baylee's shoulder just kept looking but never got anything. He would look at Baylee then down at the bowl then back at Baylee.

The gallah "Is there something in your teeth old chap?"

A close up of the clever Corella using his feet to hold the apple while he ate it. The pigeons were very friendly too.
Anyway after being entertained at breakfast we headed to Karijini National Park. We found a spot at Dales camp ground, had a little rest then headed to Fortesque Falls.

These are the steps that we negotiated on a regular basis as it was the only way down into the gorge to the pools. At the end of the day Manning would say that his legs were broken and he would stand in front of a big step on the way up with his arms in the air and wait for super mum to pull him up onto the step. Super mum tried the same thing, arms up, but there was no lifting up!!!!

Amazing terrace the rocks have made. It is quite slippery on the rocks in the water so the kids are crawling out here. Baylee and I on the rocks in the background.

The waterfall was a lot warmer than the water in the pool.

Baptist Church Tom Price

Sunday 26th
I got loads of washing done before we headed off to the Baptist church. As we walked in they were singing songs we were very familiar with and had to unpack a heap of chairs for us of course! I really enjoyed the music as the guy on the keyboard really let loose and made the songs heaps easy and fun to sing. The kids really enjoyed kids church too and the leaders were very generous and gave the older kids little bibles that are good travelling size. All sorts of age groups. They were very friendly and reminded me off the church in Kalgoorlie, funny as they are both mining towns and they are probably use to people coming and going. They were all very helpful telling us what we should go see. When we got back to the caravan park we went for a swim in the pool. A little chilly! Also I got all my washing dried and put away! For another day.

Tom Price

Saturday 25th
As we were getting close to Tom Price there were hills and rocks but still red. Then all of a sudden the town Paraburdoo comes out of no where.  We stopped for lunch and the kids had to test the trees out.

We got to the caravan park and had company very quickly.

They were very friendly and loved the  dry 2 min noodles that the kids were eating, or should I say sharing with the gallahs!

Sitting on knees!

There were also some corellas in the flock and they loved apple. If you can see through the middle the corella has an apple in his foot.

Mt Stuart

Friday 24th
We packed up, stocked up in Exmouth and headed on the road. We stayed next to the road near Mt Stuart which had a river next to it.

Mandu Mandu Gorge

Thursday 23rd
It wasn't as windy so we decided to head to Mandu Mandu Gorge in the morning.

There was no water and we walked along the river bed on very white smooth rocks which was a colour contrast to the quite often red walls of the gorge. We also saw some black footed rock wallabies which were very clever at jumping along these steep gorge walls.

This is our half way stop as we climb up to walk back along the top of the gorge.
After lunch we headed back to Turquoise Bay for our last swim there.This time there was even more spotted dart fish!

You can only just see a heap of them swimming down near the sand next to Zane. They kept looking at us just in case we had some food for them.

As I followed this spangled emperor I felt something touch my feet and turned around and there were a group of spotted dart fish following me. They all stopped and looked at me then as I swam away they followed me. It was funny.

Manning spent a lot of time looking at these fish.

A school of fish that just swam by.

A couple of wrasse eating.

Another different wrasse I think. Tim, Kimberly, Ethan and Josiah went out for the last time before we had to go and they saw a huge cod fish which would feed us for a week. They think it was about 1.3m long and very deep. The most exciting thing though was the white tip reef shark that swam past them, had a look at them, and then swam off. They said it was at least 1.5m long. Everyone kept calm but the whole beach heard about it when they walked out of the water! They had a lot to tell us.

Turquoise Bay

Wednesday 22nd
Something that we found unusual here was that the wind would start at about 5am and build up so that the mornings were quite windy but by the afternoon it was dead calm! Also everywhere we were swimming, the water in the shallow was cold but as you swam out deeper it got warmer. Opposite to what we are use to.
Due to not driving anywhere and doing a lot of swimming we had not been doing a lot of school work so we took the windy morning as an opportunity to do some school work, in the caravan. After lunch we headed for Turquoise Bay, apparently another great snorkeling location. There were again a lot of fish, blue spotted fantail rays and these fish in the sand shallows that even Manning and Zane could swim with called a dart fish with spots on it's side. They were about 30 to 40 cm long.

These were very funny fish that just followed you everywhere. There was a lot to see here again and you could go out deeper and there were a lot of fish around big lots of coral. I swam over a blue spotted fantail ray but he/she just didn't even care I was there. That was the amazing thing, swimming with sea creatures that were so use to humans that they went about their day eating, just making sure they didn't get hit by flippers, but all was just another day to them.
On our way back to the caravan we stopped at a tap in the middle of nowhere that was put there for people to fill up their drinking water, but look what we found there........

....an emu sitting there drinking. I guess the sign didn't say "no emus"! Anyway Tim had been telling the kids all the stories about what you can do to get the emus attention and it will come over to you, so the kids begged us to stop and let them try these out.

So as you can see the emu was put off his water and started to walk away, then it stopped, looked at the crazy humans, wondered whether they had an illness or convulsions, thought without hands it couldn't really help these humans so it wandered back to the little puddle of water to finish it's drinking. The enthusiastic humans gave up on the first myth and tried the second.

Some tried to walk like an emu and others, though you can't see, had hats on their hands to make the emu think they were emus. We must have struck the only intelligent emu in Australia as it had had enough of these games and decided to leave these weird humans to their games.

Ned's Camp

Tuesday 21st
Yardie Creek was right at the end of the national park so we asked if we could move up closer to the top and they kindly found us a camp right up the northern end, near the swimming beaches. The camp was called Ned's Camp and we had a nice spot under Athol trees, even though we needed sun for solar and it was a spot that you weren't allowed to use generators so we had to keep putting our freezer on the car while we stayed there. A little exercise for Tim and I. The kids promptly put the hammock up and made themselves at home.

The legs you see in the hammock are Kimberly's as she gracefully falls backwards out of the hammock onto the ground! This happened many times while we stayed there and many laughs were had!
After a while most got into their bathers and tried the beach at Ned's Camp. It was mainly seaweed with big black fish that came out of holes at you. So we had lunch and headed for Lakeside beach. Even though Lakeside was said to be good for families there was a bit of a current which made it a bit tiring swimming and also hard to stay still to look at the fish. Not as clear waters but Ethan spotted a shovel nose stingray which got a few of them very excited. The kids also played in the sand and bushes but was stopped by Josiah exclaiming that Baylee had a huntsman spider on his back. Not much was done until we realised it wasn't a joke, then I told them to flick it off with a stick, so everyone happily picked up a stick and started whacking Baylee. Baylee didn't complain as he was hoping that the job was getting done and it was. The heros were very proud of themselves but no one played in the bushes again!

So they thought it would be safer to get buried in sand with only their heads showing!
Thus ends another great day at the beach!

Exmouth

Monday 20th
We packed up and headed to Exmouth.

This was as close as we were going to get to a whale shark as it would cost us each about $500 to swim with them. This is Zane being gobbled up!

Now Manning is lunch. Zane is helping the whale shark eat him!
After filling up with fuel we headed around to Cape Range National Park to stay near some more coral reefs. We stayed at Yardie Creek and walked up the gorge there.

Bullara Station

Sunday 19th
Again we missed church as we are out in the never never! So we washed clothes and again they dried in minutes.

The kids started to turn into natives and tried their hand at carving sticks into sling shots and swords. They got quite good at it. I didn't know how I was going to pack all of these items.

And Tim has turned into a bush mechanic, not having the right funnel to put his oil into the diff he made one out of hose!

This is the toilet at the station which I thought was great. No roof, tree trunks going up through the middle.

Great idea!
After the morning of being creative we headed to Coral Bay again but it came in wet but not really cold. When we got back to the station the girls were trying to put bridles on their horses and I went over to them to see if I could help. I helped them get their bridles on but they didn't do much riding as they talked to Kimberly, Manning and myself. They were meant to be getting their ponies fit for a gymkhana at a neighbouring station in 9 weeks. Little shetland pony Pepper didn't mind her rider talking and not working. They got 1 round done before tea so not much fitness happening!!

Coral Bay

Saturday 18th
Having had such a great day at Quobba we headed to our next coral reef at Coral Bay. As we were driving to Coral Bay we crossed over the Tropic Of Capricorn but felt the same! Another thing that happened was that termite mounds started appearing everywhere!

This was a small one but no termites home.
We got to Coral Bay and promptly started swimming. It was deeper and we got to see some bigger fish.

The water was a lovely greenyblue.

The wrasse were so loud as they ate the coral. You could hear them crunching!
So after swimming again all day we headed to Bullara Station to stay the night. As we were driving there we saw the cows that we were warned about by so many signs.

Like the sheep and goats they just kept eating. Not many trees and red rocks with not much rain. As we pulled into Bullara station we were greeted with kids riding horses, pet sheep and dogs and brumby horses cantering after the horses that were being ridden. It was a fun place to stay.

Blow Holes at Pt Quobba

Friday 17th
We headed to the coral reefs and out of the land of technology signal. First we came to the blow holes which were pretty spectacular and we could see how they could easily claim a life, which they had in the past!

The water comes up under the rock and gets forced through this hole in the rock and it easily got double the height that is in this picture. Behind you can just see little bubbles of water through smaller holes with not so much pressure. We watched from a distance for ages. Manning's holding on tight to big brother Baylee.
After that we drove around the corner to Point Quobba to start snorkeling.

This is the Point Quobba beach and in the distance is an island that Tim, Baylee, Kimberly, Ethan and Josiah snorkeled over to. The water was warm, warmer as you got deeper! Different to the beaches we normally swim at.

So the dark parts of the water in the picture before are the reef and this is what you see under the water, all these blue fish. It really was like swimming in an aquarium! We got to see nearly all the fish off the movie "Finding Nemo" and they weren't scared of you. As you swam around they just went about what they were doing. It was a good beach for all the kids to see the fish.

There were a lot of clams.

The water was just full of fish and as you swam you just hoped you didn't hit one. A lot of these yellow and black fish.

Tim found a clam shell when they swam to the island.

Ethan's pile of clam shells.
It was very hard to pull ourselves away from this beach but we had to head for our next camping spot on the North West Coastal Highway.

Our camp spot with very red dirt, flies, and clothes dried in what felt like 5 min!