The next day was spent zooming down to Perth, so that we would have a few days there with Devin before he left for Sydney.
After arriving back on the mainland, we spent a night at another free campsite along the coast south of Denham, this time at Whalebone Bay. The evening was beautiful – the clouds were incredibly dynamic, and continued to please through the last hours of daylight as the wind whipped them into all kinds of colorful shapes. Unfortunately, we spent the better part of this time fixing a broken tent pole. Though it was a bit of a pain, both Mar and I couldn’t help but be a little impressed that the $25 pawn shop tent had lasted this long (4-5 months of near-daily use) without any malfunctions or catastrophes. While there was still light, I showed the Aussie fish gods that I wouldn’t go down without a fight and did my best to do some fly fishing off the beach. Stromatolites! The next morning, we finally had our chance to visit the stromatolites. They looked just as we expected – blandly colored blobs of slimy rock just below the water’s surface. Nevertheless, we paid homage to the industrious, stromatolite-building cyanobacteria that literally breathed life into this world, by sacrificing two kangaroos, a wombat and some German backpackers. Science be praised. We spent the bulk of the afternoon powerhousing down to Geraldton, which turned out to be a very pleasant and surprisingly populated town. We had grown accustomed to the simple necessities provided by sleepy beach towns and were therefore taken aback by the capitalist splendor that was Geraldton’s strip mall region. We took the opportunity to sneak into a glorious megastore aptly named Barbeques Galore, just to see what a name like that could possibly entail. I may have seen God when I saw the 3 in. thick ceramic-walled charcoal grill that could have easily cooked two thanksgiving turkeys simultaneously. Think about it – simultaneous turkeys! I was equally covetous of a gorgeous gas grill that featured a 4 ft x 2 ft grilling space, two-fifths of which was a flat grill plate (an Aussie standard, which allows you to pretty much BBQ anything under the sun). Drool. ANYWAY, there was no camping to be had in town, so we moved on Perth-ward. Just south of Geraldton, we suddenly realized we had stumbled into serious farm country. By this time in our trip, all of us were yearning for some foliage; after spending the better part of 5 months in desert scrubland, the sight of lush rolling hills, huge, swaying fields of grain and dramatically gnarled, windswept trees was pretty amazing. We were a little too excited to see herds and herds of fluffy sheep milling about, looking altogether pleased with their place in the world. And to top it off, the sun decided to set at that very moment, covering everything in copper and gold. You’d think we would have stopped at least once to take a picture, but we didn’t. So sorry! It was great, I promise.
The next day was spent zooming down to Perth, so that we would have a few days there with Devin before he left for Sydney.
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Marielle & BenWe're two people in the midst of severe quarter-life crises who decided to leave good jobs in a bad economy to travel to the other side of the world because, well, why not? Archives
April 2011
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