Rame Head to Walpole. Had a very crappy night sleep just couldn’t get comfy and didn’t get to sleep until very late some time. I think I need to make a concerted effort not to go to bed too early otherwise it’s just too many hours on that little mattress and I wake about 3am and then every half hour after that feeling sore in the hips, legs and shoulders. So tonight I’m going to try and stay up until about 9. Ohh, 9 o’clock. Haha. Anyway where was I.
William Bay to Rame Head. What a day, after having a day off yesterday today was 8 hours of hard slog all day. The beach along Mazzoletti was very soft, and my pack weight has ballooned out to 16 kg with 5 days off food and no water, so 18 kg with my standard 2L of water so much for being light weight, how did things get so out of control.
Fungi are still prolific around the south west and I see them everywhere while I’m out walking. I love taking their pictures though it’s not a pretty sight, me with my backpack on and walking poles flailing around as I try to get down low on the ground trying to take pictures, then getting back up again with 15 kg on my back? Yeah, not pretty. I’m still weighing up possibilities as to what I’ll do in the coming months. My original plan was to ride the Munda Biddi mountain bike trail from Albany to Perth, then walk back down the Bibbulman track to Albany, total distances of about 1000 km up and then 1000 km down.
The troopy was booked in to have a suspension upgrade at the end of January so I either had six weeks sitting around Ballarat over the Christmas new year period, or I could get my act together and do a road trip. I’d also been getting some serious hints from the local possums where I was staying at the caravan park.
This post is purely about more photos I’ve taken around Alice Springs. That’s the great thing about macro photography, you can find all sorts of possibilities within a small area, you don’t need huge spaces, just a good eye for finding interesting angles and things that look nice in the right light and the right angles.
I’ve done some driving in the last week or two, I’m sitting at Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory and it’s about 36 in the shade. Strange to think that only a couple of weeks back I was suffering from the cold back in Tingha, in fact I still have the little fan heater out in the back of the troopy, figure I could pack it away now as nights rarely get to 10 or less. The picture above was somewhere in Northern Queensland just before dawn, the sky was the bluest blue I’ve seen in a long time.
Yeah sorry, another car picture. I pulled into a caravan park which seemed very full and I was about to turn around and leave till I saw another troopy parked by the water so figured I’d stay for a night. They had bought there’s many years ago as an x-camper and changed almost nothing on the vehicle, it was the old straight 6 with no turbo, only 2 years older than mine. I’d arrived back in Tassie at about 5 in the morning, it was dark and foggy and I’d had very little sleep laying down on a couch in the ferry.
I’m not going to say a lot in this post about Esperance, I was only there for a few days, some of that time I spent preparing for my trip across the nullabor and the rest of the time I was driving around taking photos. Although Esperance has magnificent beaches, the thing that impressed me most during my stay was Helms arboretum, about 15kms north of Esperance.
Mullewa is about 100km inland from Geraldton and right on the boundary of the wheatbelt and the expansive rangelands. You’ll notice as you leave Mullewa heading north or east there are road signs about road conditions, now you’re heading out into the real outback. I drove from Geraldton in a loop passing by the Mumbida wind farm, dropping in at the Ellendale pools, passing through the Coalseam conservation park then up through Mullewa before returning to Geraldton.
