Telegraph Track

Eyre to Esperance October 2005

Trip Leader

David Poultney

Telegraph Track Eyre to Esperance

15th to 29th October 2005 Day 1 – By Mary 444 Kilometres travelled Everyone met at the Gravel Pit at 8.30am, except us (with the trip leader) who arrived some time later. Well some of us had a bit of emergency shopping to do, including a bucket among other things, so obviously someone was feeling a bit seedy in our car. Never mind, we (David, Mary, Molly and Lauren) did eventually arrive to find Alan and Robyn (the

Clancys), Kent & Kay, Brian, Carol and Aileen (Carol’s Sister visiting from UK), and Peter, 5 cars all to-gether. “The sun is shining, the sky is blue with a few clouds, and we are off on our adventure, the air and the people “on the air” filled with ex-citement. As we head towards Borden the

Stirling Ranges look magnificent. There are wattles flowering on the side of the road (this ‘ere’s a piece of wattle, the emblem of our land, yer can stick it in a bottle, or ‘old it in yer ‘and). It’s all just magnificent.” David gave an interesting explanation of the geological history of the Stir-ling Ranges. Thirty odd million years ago they were islands and the north side was where you could go surfing if there weren’t any tetradactyls (and your mum said you could). The south side of the Stirlings is the “new” bit, and this is where the vegetation today is like no other place on earth, very unique and precious. The convoy stopped at Borden for morning tea. Yum, we had some of Molly’s cake, and Lauren made a sudden recovery, albeit short lived. On to Jerramungup (and Lauren made a giant step forward in her recovery after eating a nice big greasy chicken sausage) and a fuel stop before trav-elling further east and turning north into Mallee Road. Kay asked us to keep an eye open for Mallee Fowl as we travelled along, and we learnt that Aileen had flown out from the UK last Tuesday. We stopped for lunch

before making our way into Lake King. We all agreed to go the 5 kms west to have a look at the Lake King causeway before travelling east on the Lake King-Norseman Road. Although a formed road, there were plenty of potholes to watch out for. David found that out after he had been rubber necking at the wattles when bang!!** ##, and all this brown mud came over the spiffingly clean Toyota, completely obliterating any forward vi-sion until the strained wipers managed to do more than they were de-signed for and smear the windscreen clear – “ Er, there’s a pothole there to look out for guys as you come along”. So it was for the rest of the day as we headed eastwards, slowing down to miss the potholes as we travelled along. At least we’ve left civilisation behind for the time being, and the day has been perfect weatherwise. A camp site is found early among some tall trees. The campfire is soon go-ing and we gather for some nibblies and claret or two before tea. Molly had a delicious tea for us all ready to go and it seems everyone has some pre-cooked food for tonight. Later the full moon came shining through the trees, lighting the camp area brightly. How magical to be out in the bush, absolutely wonderful, and everyone is enjoying the start of our trip.

Day 2 - By Robin & Alan 254 Kilometres travelled We had camped about 20km west of the 90 Mile Tank on the Lake King-Norseman road. The threat of rain in the morning lead some of the party to do some hurried pack-ing with the result that they were ready to leave an hour before scheduled. Others did not beat the rain with the result that some damp camping gear was packed away. In the event, that was in-consequential! We were all packed up and ready by 8.00 am any-way and got underway, 30 minutes earlier than planned. A short time later we turned into 90 Mile Tank for a look at the tank and the outstanding assortment of wildflowers that flourish in the immediate vicinity of the tank. Kay helped us to identify the various verticordias (Morrisons). With rain threatening, we continued eastward, breaking our trip for a look at a telecom relay station. Another

short stop to admire and photograph a wonderful grove of golden/yellow grevilleas just past the turn off to Peak Charles. Being ahead of the rain again we continued our dusty journey until morning tea time. The rain caught up with us so we pressed on, in and out of rain and dust until we turned left onto the Esperance-Norseman Road. By the time we reached Norseman it was raining steadily. At Norseman we decided to go our separate ways and to meet at the Road-house at the beginning of the Eyre Highway for a 1.30 p.m. departure. This gave those of the party who had not been to Norseman before to have a look around before lunch. Some of the group had a hot shower, some had hot soup and some had both! Still the rain pelted down. We were on the road for our next stop, Balladonia at 1.36pm. Still raining!

A couple of hours and 200km later we arrive at Balladonia for a look at the museum, a leg stretch and coffee. Not raining yet but the sky looks threaten-ing. About 30 minutes later we are ready to leave and it is raining. It was hard to decide whether to drive on or stop and camp in the wet. In the event we decided to continue east in light drizzle (and griz-zle) and after a couple of ‘looks’ chose to bush camp on

the track to Bilbunya Dunes about 80km east of Balladonia. We had about 10 mins to set up camp before (you guessed it) it really started to rain. For most of the rest of the night we had lighting, thunder and heavy rain. Our guestimate was between 80 and 100mm of rain overnight. This weather revealed the waterproofing deficiencies of some equipment and how flat our camp sites really were. Wet bedding and swags, flooded tent sites and Kay, Kent and Lauren sleeping in the cars. We awoke to the gentle patter of more rain!

Day 3 – Kay (rest day) Sleeping in a nest of blankets on the front seats of the Jackaroo seemed far from the worst option for Kent and Kay on the second night out. After all, the wide screen lightening show was amazing, and the red wine & choco-late sedation worked really well. A blazing Bonfire burned all the next day as gear was dried and the whole camp was reset. Overnight, trenches had been dug to divert the flooding 3 inch deluge. With radio reports of crop damage in Lake Grace being 85% on some farms we were lucky to have

camped at the swirling extremity of the storm. Fashion stakes were high by the Bonfire, with gar-bage bag designs being the trend-setters. The ele-gance of the stra-pless gowns achieved by the ladies was over-looked in the vote for the best design. Narrowly beating the dark Hagar the Horrible model Kent devised was Dave’s flashy orange number, a neat little shift accessorised by gumboots. Carpets of bark strips were laid about the campsite to keep our feet out of water until it soaked into the fine red dirt. The Bonfire provided a drop-in centre for bedraggled homeless to dry bedding & clothing. Dave took the opportunity to re-organize his camp of three residences, while Robyn bus-tled about in her designer kitchen. The dry Stehn tent was unfurled from the car and set upon a freshly collected deep base of bark strips. Brian relocated the Tipper girls’ tent and his saturated swag. The day was one of chatter and settling down, taking stock of possessions, and slippery walks along kangaroo trails. Robyn and Peter cooked the first damper for the trip, a tasty Bree and Olive bread enjoyed by all. Night fell with a light drizzle on an early retiring, but more comfortable camp.

Day 4 – By Brian & Carol 364 Kilometres travelled Having experienced more rain in the night, everyone was up and about, camp fire put safely to bed and ready to roll by 9.40a.m. The sky was grey, temperature about 14 degrees, quite windy but dry. We were out of the campsite without any drama, quickly onto the bitumen and straight away out of 4WD. The sun came out for a few minutes about 10.00 am and then thought better of it and quickly went in again. We were now travelling along the longest stretch of straight road in Australia. We saw a lone cy-clist heading west – no comment!!. The roadside was littered with kanga-roo carcasses, a truck driver told us that a few weeks earlier every kanga-roo on the Nullabor had descended on the road and the result was the car-nage that we could now see. The truck driver was driving a refrigerated truck carrying strawberries from Perth to Adelaide, where another driver

took his truck onto Melbourne. His truck was then returned to Adelaide ready for him to leave Friday lunch time for Perth bringing over vegeta-bles to WA. Every week he did that – it’s a job isn’t it!!. David and Kent quite enjoyed their chat with the guy, you know the sort of things – the weather, road v rail transport, the weather, 4WD tracks, the weather. And I am sure that he enjoyed it too. We stopped at the Caiguna Blow hole which was very quiet. This is sign-posted and only a few metres off the road. The moment we got out of our vehicles there was a heavy shower and so it was a quick look and back in the vehicles. David by this time had been giving some thought to the wet weather of the previous two days, and obviously looking for some positives. Eventually patting himself on the back for organising a camp for us to experience Nul-labor rain at its best. The average annual rainfall on the Nullabor is 250mm and we had experienced approximately 80mm of that. It could have been worse – to the west of us at Lake Grace they had hail the size of pigeon eggs which had destroyed 100% of 7500ha of wheat and barley, with a fur-ther 6300ha between 5% and 75% destroyed – on average about 30%. The cost of the damage according to latest Department of Agriculture figures is in the region of $10 million. Anyone interested in seeing the pictures of that storm go to the ABC Great Southern website. We digress – we stopped at Caiguna roadhouse for a quick coffee etc, and noted that we had done approximately 1000kms since leaving Albany. Back on the road – the temperature had reached the giddy heights of 16 degrees, and a few of us saw a wedge tailed eagle – (no matter how many of these birds one sees they are still very impressive and worthy of com-ment). We arrived at Cocklebiddy Road-house for lunch, as we arrived we real-ised that we had missed the track to the Cocklebiddy cave system some 12km back to the west. It was at this point that one real-ised the difficulty of leading a group like ourselves when you wish to know

the state of the tracks ahead of you. After the very heavy rain people were a little apprehensive about the state of the tracks – but it became apparent that no one will tell you to ‘go for it’, they all err on the side of caution without really knowing and if the person advising is a CALM ranger he will tell you not to go. So the answer is ‘go for it’ use your 4WD skills and experience and you will get there.

Or nearly there!! As this was going to be the last sighting of ‘civilisation’ for some days and so everyone ensured that they were full to overflowing with fuel and water and most people showered. Because of time constraints and uncertainty about the track we didn’t go back to the caves. And by 2.15 pm (Albany Time) – [at Caiguna the clocks go forward 45 minutes – but there was a consensus in the group that the trip would run to Al-bany time] we were away again and very shortly we turned south off the highway. There was plenty of wild life to keep us interested, kangaroos, ground plovers and Lauren sighted a big red roo. Came across a rock hole with water in, and later came across another wa-

ter storage system that had obvi-ously been built by man, probably cameleers or Government – as it had a silt trap built into the system. The track turned west, was very greasy, another rock hole, and we came across a quandong tree abso-lutely loaded with fruit. This of course is famous bush tucker so we all had to try it; personally I found it quite pleasant but just pleased that

I hadn’t got to depend on it for survival. We eventually came to Tommy Graham’s cave – (still don’t know who Tommy Graham was!!). It was quite a tricky climb down a very rocky de-scent to get to the cave entrance but most people achieved it. Some actu-ally went into the cave and Peter actually came out a different way to which he entered. The wild life – mainly kestrels and swallows were not too en-amoured about being disturbed by ‘homo sapiens’. The swallows were nesting in the walls of the cliffs. A recently sloughed snake skin was found, and Peter found a very interesting collection of small bones in the cave it-self. Right next to the cave system was a potentially good campsite so we took advantage of it. Everyone had a good dry pitch, a good campfire was soon

going and a gecko caused a great deal of interest as it sat and enjoyed the warmth of the fire sitting on a stone very close to the flames. The night was windy but dry, and morale was high!! Day 5 – By Peter 68 Kilometres travelled We left Tommy Graham’s Cave this morning, heading off in search of the track to the Eyre Bird Observatory. The track

being a lot drier than yesterday we had an easy drive out to the old Micro-wave Tower and into the Nuytsland Nature Reserve. We stopped at the lookout to take in the views out towards the Southern Ocean from the top of

the escarpment. We descended the upgraded track down the escarpment and on to Burnabbie (ruins of a small holding) for morning tea. After exploring the tim-ber clad well and seeing sev-eral species of native Eremo-phila (Poverty Bush) we con-tinued on, stopping once again to get a closer look at a young carpet python climbing a Mallee Tree. The Eyre Bird Observatory

was closed for renovations so we drove past and stopped for lunch at the Edward Eyre Memorial, close to the beach. At the beach we checked out the wreck of an Albany fishing boat, which was washed ashore in 2001. We then headed west along the beach in search of the illusive mussel beds, which we eventually found on a shallow limestone reef. After col-lecting a bucket or two of mussels for our dinner, we returned to our vehi-cles to discover David’s trusty Hilux looked as if it would break in half at any minute! After a thorough examination it appeared that the chassis was bent and not broken, probably due to the air shocks. The decision was made to push on to Twilight Cove to camp for the night.

Day 6 - By Molly (rest day) I woke to the noise of the “winged orchestra” and the morning was peaceful and serene at 5.30am. After breakfast a party of us set off to walk to Twilight Cove, per-haps not realising how far it really was. Mary, David, Lau-ren, Kent and Kay to come later in vehicles and bring the provisions. When we ar-rived at the water’s edge the view took our breath away, the magnificence of the ocean, no matter which way we looked. While walking along the beach we saw a huge flock of terns. Alan and Peter tried their hand at fish-ing as we made our way along the beach. After we arrived at Twilight Cove we settled in with some having a swim. Mary tried her best at water aerobics when she got dumped by a wave, and tangled with Carol also. We all had lunch and sunbaked for a while before sadly making our way back to camp. Peter stayed behind to follow along and fish. Alan, Robyn and Molly set off as did Brian, Aileen and Carol. David and Mary with Kent and Kay drove along the beach to try and get back to camp that way but had to turn back, which was good for me as I then got a lift back with them and we drove along the magnificent col-oured cliffs that compete with anything up north. Peter caught 4 herring. We also saw a pod of dolphins doing their tricks, they came right in close to shore. Back at camp we had a sophisticated shower – very nice. Then nibbles and red wine and an exotic meal for us prepared by Mary. Later the usual friendly sit and chat around the fire. David and Kent had collected drift-wood for the fire tonight. Kay took us to see the stars from her camp, it was

just awesome. Mention must be made of David who spent the whole morning reorganis-ing his vehicle after the damage that occurred yesterday, he is a patient man. Day 7 - By Robin & Alan 68 Kilometres travelled We left Twilight Cove at 8.27am in blazing sunshine, after a very enjoy-able rest day of swimming, walking, sunburning and fishing on the

beach. At last everything was dry. We headed northish on the track to-wards Cocklebiddy stopping to inspect the ‘Twilight Hilton’ (a fishing shack) but there were no bellboys in attendance. Kay spotted a beau-tiful blue dragonfly. Then we were off up the scarp again, on a reasonable track with a few washouts. The view of the calm ocean, white beach and lime-stone cliffs from the scarp was fan-tastic. Moving on we came to the junction in the track to Thundulla where it crossed the Telegraph Line. Dave stopped the convoy for a conference. He had decided that he was confident that his vehicle was ok and that he would prefer to revert to the original plan and continue along the telegraph track. The rest of the party was relieved to hear the

good news and agreed that if Dave was happy to continue that that was ok by us as well. We soon came across an origi-nal pole and followed the wire in a general westerly direction. Vertical and horizontal poles became visible at irregular in-tervals so photo opportunities were taken as requested. Kent’s car picked up a bit of wire that had to be cut out so

the opportunity was taken to keep a small piece as a souvenir of the trip. Lauren managed to spot a join in the wire, which was also keenly photo-graphed. Morning tea was taken in a clearish spot then we continued our slow progress west. Dave caught a bobtail goanna to show Aileen. The track was slowly changing from sandy and rocky to red dirt and rocky. Lunch was taken on the top of a hill in a welcome breeze. Robyn found a small limestone cave that from the amount of small bones out the front looked like a fox or dingo lair. Moving on, we had a short stop for a ‘poo’ talk – of the Emu, Kangaroo and Camel kind. The Emu poo pro-vided an excellent visual example of their seed dis-tribution potential. Lauren (again with time to look out the window) spotted a Red Kangaroo watching the con-voy go by. A couple of small snakes were also observed by the lead vehicles in the convoy. A 10 min leg stretch saw Peter collecting mallee roots for the evening campfire. Very soon his roof rack was full. About 4.00 pm, Dave found his well remembered campsite. The weather looked ominous for a while but a beautiful red sunset preceded another beautiful day. Day 8 – By Kay 61 Kilometres travelled The convoy left camp in a cloud of red dust. Peter, having done the round trip to Caiguna to collect fuel for all who were running short, was 4 hours’ driving ahead of us for the day when we started out. Shaved and shining from a Caiguna scrub-up and chirpy for having eaten a cooked breakfast in town, he was not wearied by his endeavour. Passing Pe-

ter’s arrows in the dirt confirmed the 30 mins extra travelling time he took checking the several tracks to the north before he found the signpost to Caiguna. Turning left at the rusted out abandoned tanks was our key to finding the Telegraph Track again, then 1 km down the road to Baxter’s Memorial. Contemplating how anyone ever found the remains of Baxter here, in this featureless landscape of porous rock, sparsely covered in low scrub, we moved on to spot the ocean 5 kms from the memorial, and our first stun-ning view over the cliffs. We had driven for two days from Twilight Cove: it seemed a lifetime from that beach day of swimming and fishing, the track had been so torturously slow. By 3.30pm we were travelling in wet red dirt country again where David picked up the first [and as it turned out, the only] puncture of the trip in his left-side trailer tyre. Being a good time for a cuppa, most of the party exited to higher ground to sun them-selves on a warm dry granite slab while the blokes did some serious

men’s business. The wheel was changed using a convenient exposed rock in the road to steady the jack, while the cheer team looked on and com-plained good-naturedly about being excluded from the fun. An early camp was set not much further on, where there was plenty of green grass, with a few signs of roos

and some abandoned rabbit warrens in the dry fine red dirt. A cheery campfire burned that night around which most of us sat [Kent having discovered that he had brought along a collapsi-ble chair]. After break-fast, a group excursion on foot in the early morn-ing sunshine revealed

we had chosen for our campsite an expansive clearing draining into a rock-hole cave at the lowest point of a washaway. 61 km travelled today, 68 K the day before, with an exhilarating peer over the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight behind us.

Day 9 - By Brian & Carol 58 Kilometres travelled Got up to a cloudy and breezy morning, the previous night’s tins were flat-tened and buried, tyres were checked and everyone was ready to roll at 8.30 am. The evidence of wires and poles confirmed that we were still on the telegraph track, and we looked forward to a 22 km run to Toolinna Cove. The track had changed compared with previous days; it was now quite overgrown and would have been very difficult in the wet. Purple-crowned Lorikeets were spotted as well as a Rainbow Bee Eater. Temple-tonia retusa (Cockies Tongues) were flowering profusely and there was lots of Dodder twining in the trees. Aileen gave a reading on certain background information regarding the telegraph track. Questions were asked about some of the accuracy of this report, as some of us could not imagine the builders hauling materials up the cliffs. As we got nearer Toolinna Cove there was a change in the vegetation,

with more short dense eucalypt, then very low ground cover at the cove itself. David told of a yacht in serious trouble in this area of the Southern Ocean and it drifted into this cove, I think I am right in saying the only ac-cessible cove in the 175 kms of the Baxter Cliffs – lucky. The cliffs at this point were 57m high. Morning tea was taken. It was a most beautiful spot, with people taking a walk along the top of the cliffs; sharks were seen re-laxing just below the water in the swell and lots of swallows swooping around. We then proceeded a little way along the top of the cliffs, with the vegetation getting much taller as we turned away from the top of the cliffs. We came across lots of bridal creeper (a most invasive weed) – Kay and Kent scattered rust amongst it and hopefully Mother Nature would see to it that it spread far and wide. They had collected this rust from Emu Point before leaving Albany with the objective of scattering it as far to the east as possible. It is fair to say they achieved their mission. By mid-day we came across the Toolinna ruins which one assumes would have been a camp site for the telegraph track workers. Wildflowers cov-ered the area like a carpet. It was here that a water hole was shown on the map, and we were not disappointed, it was full and David and Alan topped up their water reserves. Lunch was taken at this point, accompanied by ‘the flies’ with lots of swal-lows around and also parrots. The trackers amongst us also spotted roo and emu droppings. After lunch we carried on ever westwards. The bush was pretty thick with no evidence of fire for many a year. Two wedge tail eagles were spotted in the sky, plenty of kangaroos all looking fat and well. At one point the con-voy stopped in order to view a doe with her joey. The convoy stopped for a breather a 2.54 pm – it had been 19 degrees for most of the day, lots of lovely flowers along the track with plenty to look at. There was the occasional sighting of old telegraph wire – just to reassure us that we were on the right track. As always in this country it was interesting to note how he vegetation changed as we moved from one soil type to an-other in a very short space of time. Here we had taller trees followed by very dense bush, with occasional rocky clearings to right and left of us. I have to say at this stage that as I sit in my comfortable office I can tell the state of the track on any day and any time by the legibility of Carol’s notes – the first part of to-day they were hard to read!

We saw sheoak in flower and came across a dead trailer in the bush, no one could think why it had died and no one wanted to bring it back to life!!. Potential campsites were hard to come by and so we took the first opportu-nity to stop at 3.50 pm. We had travelled 60kms in the day. It was hard and stony but otherwise fine with plenty of fuel for the customary camp fire. Pre-dinner nibbles were the order of the day – whilst the group was enter-tained by the story of Molly sight-ing camels in the afternoon, these turned out to be kangaroos – when we heard how she had in-sisted on David stopping the car – well as they say on Australian television – ‘this story is only rec-ommended for mature audiences – there is some bad language’, There was much laughter and merriment at Molly’s expense. Never mind Molly and we never did see any camels did we. After we had all eaten our various meals Peter organised marshmallows toasted on a stick on the fire – yummy. David and Mary made some super damper again and cooked a salt beef joint in the camp oven.

Most people turned in about 9.30 pm at the end of another very en-joyable day.

Day 10 - By Peter 67 Kilometres travelled We left our 9th bush camp, north of Point Culver at our usual 8:30am departure time. We headed further west along the telegraph track, through a mix-ture of mud, rock and sand along with new varieties of wildflowers.

After morning tea, David unhitched his trailer and we all took a left onto a side track for some 4WD rock climbing. This was a real test of our skills at getting our heavily laden vehicles through the rock garden and up to the cliff tops for the magnificent views

out west along the coast to the Bilbunya Dunes and beyond. We then had to re-trace our way back over the rock obsta-cle course and continue on down the scarp. This was how-ever made all the more chal-lenging as we had to hammer in the broken steel pegs which had once secured the old con-veyer belts to the track. We set up camp early (late morning) on day 10, in a shady spot amongst the Mallee trees, with views over the dunes to the ocean. After lunch, we took off down the beach to collect drift wood for the camp fire, explore the rocky ledges and cliffs and to have a refreshing and in-vigorating dip in the ocean to wash away the red dust.

A beautiful sunset, a glass of wine and a good camp fire – what a magnificent Monday! Day 11 - Lauren 109 km travelled Setting off from our Wylie Scarp camp-site with ocean views, the sun shone through fluffy clouds. Down on the beach, and before

we reached Bilbunya Dunes there were three baby seals sleeping in the sun, looking very cosy. We reached the dunes and started climbing, flat-tened cardboard boxes in hand. Peter, Alan, David, Mary, Brian and my-self reached the top, and WHAT A VIEW! Bilbunya Dunes are a magnifi-cent place to be – just stunning. However, we couldn’t get the boxes going … maybe Esky lids next time? And sand in between my teeth was a bit weird. Morning tea was on the beach, and very pleasant. We set off, and Peter the Scout was out of sight … literally! 52 kilometres down the beach we turned off and had lunch – very windy. We took a bush track and soon found that it was our old friend the Telegraph Track, however it appeared that this leg was hardly used. Joke of the day went to Kay – “It feels like

we’re in a car wash”. We crashed and banged our way along, through a few very large dry lake beds, some of which were covered in an abun-dance of shells. On closer inspection, a lot of the shells were embedded in the limestone – fossils in the making perhaps? We saw a couple of emus (FINALLY!) and some kangaroos. We pushed on past our normal 4 pm camp time, and made our way to Israelite Bay. The wildflowers along the way in were beau-tiful, a real show. An-other great beachy campsite … the tent pegs go in so easily. The sounds of other campers and their vehicles was something different for us. Thanks to Pete who did a great job as Scout and Leader today. Day 12- By Robyn & Alan 135 Kilometres travelled After a bit of a sleep-in after our late arrival yesterday, we left Israelite Bay

camping area around 9.45ish. This gave Kent time to replace his ‘bulging, oozing battery’ with Al’s spare one. We went exploring in the immediate area, visiting the old Telegraph house (great house being restored by the National Trust), a couple of old grave sites (Thomas Cook, Lineman 1912 and John Brass, Postmaster 1916) and the remains of the jetty. While the rest of us were watching a dolphin

cruising a few metres offshore, Lauren (again) spotted some whales further down the beach. Back in the vehicles and driving further around the bay we drove onto the beach abeam the whales. We counted five Southern Right whales altogether, cows and calves and several dolphins. A very pleasant half hour passed before we were back on the road. Leaving Israelite Bay we followed the track along the edge of salt lakes to Point Malcolm (25km). There were lots of little flowers along the way and Kay, Peter and Lauren kept us informed. We paused at the ruins of John

Bejou and Ponton brothers’ house. They were the first people to settle the area in 1873. Shifting a piece of rusty galvanised iron to prevent leg injury revealed a small olive green snake with a black head. He watched us for a minute or so then wriggled into the grass. Back in the cars and on to Point Malcolm. Over the final sand hill and onto Point Malcolm itself where we found big waves crashing onto the rocks on one side of the Point and a calm bay on the other. There were also lots of mozzies out of the wind, but lots of blowing sand in the wind. A compromise area was found for lunch in the lee of the dunes but with sufficient breeze to keep most of the flies and mozzies away. This place had a sign-posted rubbish tip so we took the opportunity to dump our rubbish. As CALM had closed the telegraph track to Poison Creek we had to re-trace our steps a short distance to get onto the extension of Fisheries Road. The wildflowers were again prolific and many different varieties observed. A couple of brief stops were made along the way for a closer inspection, much to the delight of Kay, Lauren and Peter as well as the rest of us. Fish-eries Road was very wet in places with large water filled holes and occa-sionally detours around the detours. It was in one of these spots that we learnt the use of a tow rope and the value of a couple of hooks on the front of a vehicle. Kent being the victim of a particularly soft spot in the middle of the detour. The 50 odd kilometres of Fisheries Road was a wildflower paradise. Time prevented us from stopping as often or as long as we wished. As we progressed down the road, the increasing thickness of muddy water restricted the view out the side windows so the stops be-came more important. Once again the Spotter (Lauren) noticed a brush turkey strolling through the low scrub. The rest of us couldn’t see out the side windows! Finally we reached the end of the track and got onto Fisher-ies road proper for a fast? (60kph) run on Baring Road toward Cape Arid National Park and the camp site at Seal Creek. Here was our first encoun-ter with other humans for a while – a couple of surprised fishermen and a generator! So endeth the peace and quiet of the bush camps.

Day 13 – By Kay 145 Kilometres travelled Seal Creek Camping Area is located within the roar of the ocean, in a swale of paperbark trees behind the high sand dunes. The ground was firm and very wet, but acceptable. We were unable to use the CALM pro-vided camp kitchen which had been occupied overnight by the two fisher-men, who laid swags and lit an open fire in the shelter. However, what relief to use a ‘real’ toilet! The moving dunes are fine dry white sand en-gulfing Banksia trees, some of which are already buried up to the crown, but still providing a wonderful show of yellow flowers. How odd to sit atop a sand hill, in the branches of a 7 metre tree!

While access to Fern Creek via a sandy ridge between fresh and salt wa-ter was checked by Dave & Crew, the rest of the party stayed at the Poison Creek crossing to chat with the Ranger, exchanging news of flooded roads, and scenic locations. The gravel Poison Creek Road led us back to Fisheries Road. This stretch of Fisheries was in much better condition than the muddy unsealed road that splattered us yesterday. It was the first bitu-men since we left Caiguna. The tarmac provided a smooth drive through farmlands to civilisation. It became obvious to me as we saw increased signs of human endeavour that we were approaching Condingup, our lunchtime goal and much an-ticipated fuel stop. Expecting to see a small town I was surprised it turned out to be simply one striking building, standing alone on a prominent rise. Made of stone, mud brick and timber, with a steep roof, the building was imaginatively designed with the valley of the double pitched roof feeding into a rainwater tank located right in the middle of the entrance. Entering the building to the left of this interesting but seriously useful feature, the visitor enters the store, and walking to the right reveals a delightful bar with duke box and restaurant. A congenial meeting place, as the spick’n’span locals attested, perched on the high stools at the solid timber bar. Once inside the building, walking around the far side of the rainwater tank takes the visitor from store to restaurant [or visa versa] in carpeted comfort, sheltered by cathedral ceilings, straw lined and heavily beamed. It took no time at all for us all to settle in and relax here. With a drink at the bar, and a fine meal of generous proportions, we indulged in unaccus-tomed luxury to the foot tapping strains of 50’s/60’s pop songs from the original duke box. With a lingering lunch at the Tavern behind us, and feeling almost urban again, we continued our drive through to Duke of Orleans Caravan Park, arriving by 2.30 pm. A pleasant but somewhat neglected facility, the Caravan Park provided us with wonderful hot showers and an oceanfront location, protected by dense thickets of paperbark trees. Having set up camp and showered (not necessarily in that order for some) we set off on an afternoon excursion to Wharton Beach. Our route took us around and through some extensive fresh water lakes. Here we stopped for a photo opportunity as the Clancys attempted to wash the encrusted layers of salty sand and mud from their vehicle by travelling at speed through the shal-low water. That night the sky was dark and our group huddled around a sparky, windswept barbeque fire under rustling trees, enjoying just one more of Mary’s wonderful fruit filled dampers. Today we had emerged from the wilderness. We had travelled 145 km, more than any other day since we left the bitumen on the way out.

Day 14 –Brian & Carol 182 Kilometres travelled Got up to another super morning, a number of people had showers again, just to remind themselves that they weren’t dreaming yesterday evening. It was a good campsite with a small beach just off the edge of the site. One or two people attempted to remove some of the mud from the previous day or two and we were all ready to depart at 8.33 am. We travelled on gravel to a small beach nearby, part of Little Wharton Bay, there was lovely wedding bush lining the track. The tide was high so it was a brief photo stop and on our way to Rossiter Bay. Turned onto Merivale Rd – plenty of cattle – Charollais; Aberdeen Angus, and Murray Greys. Saw emus in with one herd. Next turning into Saddle-back Road, lots of Esperance Banksias by the road side, a tiger snake was spotted – it quickly re-treated into low scrub. Kent & Kay pho-tographed smokebush, Banksia flowers, Stylidiums, Isopogon tri-lobus, and a beautiful red Leschenaultia – (I hope you Aus-sies are im-pressed with the Poms being able to speak your language!!!). Turned into track which was to take us to Dunns Beach, this was fairly rough (everything is relative!!) but the wildflowers were absolutely mag-nificent. We stopped in this ‘garden of eden’ to let air out of our tyres be-fore making our way onto the beach. The sea was extremely calm and the colours were amazing. The vehicles had a photo call on the beach. We drove west along the beach, there were some streams coming in through the dunes but they didn’t cause any problem. Eventually the beach was ‘no go’ and so we tried another route through the dunes and then at-tempted the beach again. Still ‘no go’ Peter did another recce through the dunes, David had done some recce work on foot. Peter found that what sometimes appears to be sand is not always sand (it was wet sloppy stuff),

and he was quite relieved to make his ‘escape’ over the dunes and rejoin us via the beach. After inflating his nearly flat tyres we retraced our tracks out through the ‘bush garden’ and onto the gravel to head west and make an attempt to get to Rossiter Bay via the beach a bit further west. There were plenty of roos about, we left the Cape Le Grande National Park, with lovely peaks ahead of us as we travelled South West. David went ahead at one point to find the track washed out – but OK after putting some air in our tyres. But eventu-ally we came to a wash out that was impassable and so we never did see Rossiter Bay. (another time eh!!). Took the opportunity to stop for lunch

and restore tyre pressures to some-thing like normality. We were plagued with bush flies, Kay produced a ‘wonder’ lotion to deter the flies. We were on the move at 1.20 pm re-traced our tracks up the track at speed on gravel and travelled through wide ex-panses of cultivated

land. Comment had been made earlier in the day as we had travelled by the Linkletter empire – excellent Charollais stud and wonderful farmland. Kay gave us a little bit of background about the history of the American TV celeb. Art Linkletter opening up this country by buying huge acreage. Anyway one of the first things I was told later that evening was that the em-pire had been sold for ‘tree planting’ for $40 million. So probably the next time we are down that way we shall see miles and miles of blue gums. I am sorry guys, call me old, call me traditionalist, the farmers might be pro-ducing what the global economy requires but I hate the blue gums. The bush has ‘spirit’, the traditional farming has ‘soul’ blue gums have noth-ing!!. Sorry guys I digress I don’t why you let me do it.

As we once more travelled west along Merivale Road, we saw a large flock of Sacred Ibis, we saw blue gums and we saw Shire workmen burning Pinus radiata which had been planted about 30 years ago. Turned into Cape le Grande Road, saw a lone Black Swan, more ibis, emus and cattle. This time as we entered Cape le Grande National Park we had to pay. We headed first for Hellfire Bay, the sea was an intense blue and very calm, - just time for a quick wee and a paddle (not necessarily in that order), be-

fore driving over to Thistle Cove (named after John Thistle, who found water here in the small lagoon when he discovered the bay in January 1802. Thistle was master of Matthew Flin-ders’ ship the “Investigator”). There was a rock here called the whis-tling rock – personally I thought it looked more like Dog Rock than the Dog Rock we all know. Some

people had a swim here, others drove over to Lucky Bay for a swim. The group reformed at Lucky Bay and the convoy left at 3.40 pm to drive to Le Grande Beach and negotiate the magnificent beach run to Esperance. Carol & Brian were leaving the group at Esperance, as we drove towards Le Grande Beach the air waves were full of discussion about camp sites, motels and more importantly evening meals. Once on the beach it was fantastic, initially we ran in 2WD on road tyre pressures, but eventually we hit the soft stuff and had to reduce tyre pres-sures, then it got a bit softer with a couple of stops, but nothing but what a shovel, reduced tyre pressures and plenty of power couldn’t cope with. We eventually turned off the beach looking for the exit into Esperance – no go – Peter once again recee’d a few tracks – a very interesting area but only good for sand boarding etc’. So we retraced our tracks (we seemed to do a lot of that to-day) back onto the beach via the roller coaster track. Once back on the beach we quickly found the true exit and we all gath-ered to pump up tyres as we were now on bitumen. Carol and Brian made their fond farewells as they departed for Lake Shaster at the end of a truly memorable day and for them the end of a truly memorable trip. So, Cheerful farewells to Aileen and Carol and Brian Tipper, driving on to visit relatives, Kent and Kay for a night of comfort on motel beds that don’t have a reputation of going flat before morning and the promise of a flash meal for all after a scrub up in Esperance. Arriving close to dusk the convoy headed for a caravan park close to a res-taurant, settling for the last 3 bays in the Esperance Bay Holiday Park, and Kent & Kay, having decided before leaving on the trek to enjoy a night of comparative luxury in Esperance, were delighted to take up residence in the clean and stylish Old Hospital Motel, with its Colonial decor & brass 4 poster bed.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE TRIP A lengthy Chinese banquet in Esperance on our last night out provided the opportunity for all to relax, and to recall our amazing journey now nearing completion. Day 15 - By Kay 500m Kilometres travelled The group gathered at the Jetty Cafe [minus Brian, Carol and Aileen, who must be, by now, telling tall tales and true over a Lake Shasta breakfast table. What a feast arrived for our alfresco breakfast in the sun, as each chose the tucker they had missed most. It seemed some of us couldn’t say ‘no’ to the variety offered! Leaving a bustling Saturday morning Esper-ance to the Cruise Boat tourists that had drawn a festive mood to the fore-shore, we headed off on the last leg of our homeward journey. Fuelled up with a quick window shop for some and we were on the move again. Pe-ter’s Mitsi Challenger was embarrassingly spotless as we drove out, hav-ing been taken to the beauty parlour before breakfast. Alan’s Rodeo Dual Cab was half respectable; Rod Duel had been given a bit of a splash in the Wharton Beach fresh lakes just two days ago. Kent’s Jack Holden had been propositioned in the street this morning for his rugged, unkempt, adven-turous appeal. Brian’s Pajero was still changing soil profiles by dropping clods of mud and salty sand from the hubs, and Dave’s Hilux Dual Cab (Towing Camper Trailer) was already the talk of Condingup for perform-ing well under duress ‘Broke but not Bust’. We snuck out of town furtively and headed straight for the Dalyup Cellar Sales on Murrays Road. Wine Tastings and the garden tour were most enjoyable, and the pastoral detour was very pleasant. Fuel stop at Jerramungup and lunch on the veranda at Ravensthorpe with rural views and a nice cooling breeze [yes, it was get-ting summery now we were heading home]. Radio chat as the slurbs over-took us past Bakers Junction, then suddenly, at home, with plenty of time before dusk to unpack, and with a familiar cosy bed to climb into. Hmmmmmm...........Unforgettable memories and lots of washing. Lists to write.......what worked, what didn’t.......what’s that? .......when can we go again did you say? ............................... Soon? To all our vehicles, many thanks for their selfless contribution, performing beyond expectation, without complaint, and with good humour. Dave Poultney & Mary Holt with Lauren Poultney & Molly Jones [Toyota Hilux Dual Cab, towing camper trailer] Alan & Robyn Clancy [Holden Rodeo Dual Cab] Kent & Kay Stehn [Holden Jackaroo] Brian & Carol Tipper & her sister Aileen [Mitsubishi Pajero] Peter Pope [Mitsubishi Challenger]

Mary and David Thanks for the memories