GUEST ARTICLE:The south-west corner of Western Australia is a beautiful place in which you’ll find over a hundred lush vineyards that have established themselves in the Margaret River area since the 1960’s. They produce some of Australia’s finest wines (we can verify that!) and by the decadent landscaping you can tell there certainly is no shortage of money in the region.

The beaches were also pretty spectacular at a cooler +21C, oh yeah and with Great White Sharks! Needless to say we decided not to tempt fate and remained two snap happy tourists who enjoyed the ever famous Western Australian sunset.

Karri Forest credit: robertpaulyoung

After 2 days we were on the road again trying to fit in as many tourist attractions as possible on our way to Albany (south). First we went to see/attempt to climb a giant Karri tree called the “Bicentennial Tree.” It’s 75 meters tall and was used as a fire lookout tree. It has metal rungs making it’s way up to the top and if you got the guts you can give it a go. I was pretty brave and went up to the first landing, but step number 10 was enough for my wife as she didn’t exactly feel like it was the safest thing to do.

After changing my shorts we went to ‘Walk Among Giants,’ they’ve built a fantastic metal walkway in the treetops of the gigantic Karri and Tingle trees, the highest point on the bridge was about 40 meters high, freaky! And every time the wind blew through or someone else was on the walkway with you, you knew it!

The forest was also home to these cool and very beautifully coloured birds called Fairy Wrens – sweet and fat little buggers! Our next hit were the famous Green Pools near Denmark. A gorgeous beach with crystal clear blue green waters and sand with all the characteristics of talc. We would have loved to have jumped in if the water wasn’t soo freezing!

Wind Farm

We’ve been in Albany for a few days now and so far we’ve had the chance to see one of Australia’s biggest Wind Farms. There are 12 of these massive structures that provide 75% of Albany’s power, I don’t see why they don’t use more of these around the world – very cool!!

The coastline here has to be the best we’ve probably seen in Australia so far. They have beautiful granite structures like the Natural Bridge (a massive structure that’s been sculpted by the torrential seas)and ‘The Gap’ ( a 24 metre drop to the seas where the ocean rushes into a huge cavern). Not to mention the numerous beautifully coloured, soft white sand beaches.

Today we went to explore the Porongurup Range – giant granite rocks that date back 1,000 million years ago. There are a few treks to choose from but we decided on the Castle Rock walk. After half an hour of hiking up a never ending path, we started to have second thoughts but of course by the time we had this brain fart we had gone too far and had to continue on.

One very important thing we should have brought with us on this walk should have been water…but no…guess we like to suffer in +34C heat!?! Oh yeah and maybe finding out how far we had to walk would’ve been the go as well….! Of course in the end it was worth every bead of sweat and tear.

Even though we were foaming at the mouth by this time we still had it in us to admire the massive granite boulders before us – incredible!! (what would’ve made it even more incredible would have been a coke machine!). There was this one particular boulder dubbed ‘Balancing Rock’ that had been eroded over time to find itself balanced perfectly somehow on a small space of only 1.2m! Didn’t want to lean to hard on that one eh!

There was also a ladder leading to the top of a massive boulder with a sheer cliff face called Castle Rock. I must admit I had moments of pure terror run through me as I attempted to climb up to the top. It’s very high and the gusts of wind and panoramic view on either side of you of tiny fields below didn’t exactly help the acrophobic, gulp!!

In the end the thought of climbing all that way for nothing got the best of me and I finally made it! Now all I had to do was go down….great. Nah, of course overall all of these experiences have been definitely worth it!!

This travel diary has been written by Rob Gower, a traveller who works part-time for a Sydney minibus hire company and enjoys travelling along roads less travelled!

If you’ve travelled somewhere off the beaten track, can write well and have good quality photos I encourage you to contact me and I’ll consider publishing your travel diary here including generous attribution and links back to your website as thanks for your contribution

GUEST ARTICLE: In which our intrepid outback explorer Rob gets a closeup view of ancient living fossil stromatolites, snorkels at a Coral reef and has close encounters with dolphins, dugongs, a whale shark and giant manta ray.

After landing in Perth and picking up our rental (little Subaru) we drove 4 1/2hrs to our first stop – Geraldton for the night. Nice little mining/fishing/farming town but a little too ‘ghost’ like…we’re talkin’ serious tumble weed town. Although we did get to go on a tour of one of the worlds biggest Live Lobster Exporter factories (100% Aussie) which was pretty interesting and yes…delish!

The next day we drove to Denham (next to Monkey Mia) which was about a 4 hour drive down a fairly deserted highway with the exception of the odd road train (mega semis with about 3-4 flatbeds in tow!).

Bone dry fields of rich deep red earth lined either side of the road and the heat!! Oh man! the temperature gauge just kept going up and up until it hit a very dry stifling hot +44C!!

About 80km just before Denham we noticed a minuscule sign to the right saying ‘Stromatolites’ that away. Needing a much needed stretch anyway we decided to go check them out. After about 5km we drove into a very little dusty place called Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay.

The intense heat was a blast to the face after exiting the comfort of our little A/C slice of heaven but we were on a mission! It was actually very lucky for us that we did decide to stop, it turns out these Stromatolites are the world’s oldest living organisms that can be seen and were a major factor in Shark Bay being declared a World Heritage Area.

Stromatolites were built by primitive life forms called cyanobacteria that first existed on earth 3.5 billion years ago!, reach up to about 60cm in height and grow at a rate of less than 1mm per year. They say the discovery of these ‘living fossils’ was akin to finding a live dinosaur, now that’s incredible!!

Back on the road again we came across, or I should say almost wiped out 2 big Emus! Man, could you imagine hitting one of those things (they’re only about as big as our little car)! It would be sad to kill such a beautiful animal but another thing to get a face/mouthful of Big Bird ass! Lol! (Fabio eat your heart out!)

Fortunately the roads up here are pretty much deserted and you can see for miles so we had plenty of warning and Kodak time.

Denham is a nice little town situated on Shark Bay, the color of the ocean water has an incredible array of greens and blues with patches of dark sea grass and white sand.

Fortunately the weather here is a much cooler +34!?! The water is very warm ranging from +24-26C and great for swimming as long as you do it first thing in the morning otherwise you get the afternoon gale that only increases as the night goes on.

Yesterday morning we drove about 15 minutes to the famous Monkey Mia and watched the daily dolphin feed. There were only about a handful of us there and we got to stand in the water just inches away from about 10 Bottlenosed dolphins lazing about waiting to get some free grub, soo cool!

Afterwards we went on a sailing safari on a catamaran called the Shotover, we had the wonderful opportunity to spot giant sea turtles, dolphins, a sea snake (one of the most poisonous in the world) and Dugongs and their babies.

Dugongs are a milk chocolate brown colour and resemble Manatee (sea cows), they are very docile creatures and feed on sea grass. They also have a really cool self defence mechanism, for example if one of the very common Tiger Sharks here wanted a nibble, the Dugong’s skin automatically tightens and turns to a very hard plate of armour making it impossible to penetrate.

It’s so tough in fact that if a shark were to surprise it and sink it’s teeth in, the skin still hardens instantly cementing and breaking off the shark’s teeth in it’s skin, and once it feels it’s out of danger it’s skin relaxes and releases the teeth, cool eh!

The view of the coastline from the boat was pretty amazing, such a beautiful stark contrast of great dark red Aussie earth, white sand beaches and blue green waters – spectacular!

We tried a bit of snorkelling in a few places but unfortunately there wasn’t too much to see except for a few wonderful surprises – 1 Shovel Nosed Ray (about 4-5ft), 1 green sea turtle and 1 sea snake (3ft) and lots of small Blue Spotted Rays.

Not too bad for cruising close to the beach, we weren’t about to go out too far, they don’t call this place Shark Bay for nothin’! and I kinda like my legs….

Today we went to visit a little Ocean Park just outside of Denham. Very cool little place with a great collection of all the local sea life like – baby Loggerhead turtles (they get massive), Stone Fish (extremely dangerous and uglier than sin!), eels, lobster, rays, a big pond of Snapper (yum) and a few other very cool and curious fish (they actually pop their heads out of the water and give you a once over…weird!).

Last but not least a big pond of sharks with a little walkway and observatory. It held a few very big Sandbar Sharks (not very kind to humans and if you see one it’s probably too late..!), Lemon Sharks (also not a great pal of man) and some Nervous Sharks (nice little fellas). We got to feed them and see them go ape over a few scraps of fish (little wooden bridge please don’t fail us now!!).

It took us about 6 hours to get to Coral Bay (Ningaloo Reef) from Denham. The drive was smooth sailing once again but instead of just having beautiful rich red farming fields on either side of us the landscape changed to one of a smattering of tough short shrubs and a continuous graveyard of giant Red Kangaroos, cows, feral goats and the odd Emu. We unfortunately contributed to the mass by collecting a little birdie to the ol’ fender, she was quick…but not quick enough

Coral Bay is a nice little place, situated literally in the middle of nowhere and it has that rare untouched quality which is really nice. The white sandy beaches go on for miles and the water is as warm as bathwater (+27C) and a magnificent colour of aqua.

If you want to know what paradise looks like this is definitely it! The reef is only a few steps off the beach and stretches out about 1 – 1.5 kms and runs up and down the coast for about 200kms. So for you snorkel/diver lovers out there this is the place for you!

On our second day we decided to sign ourselves up for a 2hr kayaking/snorkelling tour of the reef which was highly recommended.

Of course in the morning the winds were not on our side but our tour guide told us, ‘no probs, she’ll be right’ with a sly outback Aussie grin. We should have taken that gesture as a ‘you’re gonna be in a world of hurt my city friends,’ but of course we didn’t and continued on with our group of 7.

Seeing as I had never kayaked before I thought we did pretty well and everything seemed fairly easy going for the first 100 meters or so (Cronulla in the lead!), that is until the wind picked up the further out we went. After ½ hour of paddling like madmen against the wind, and getting a constant battering of water against the ol’ face we finally reached our mooring point.

We were about 1km or so from shore and we all eagerly welcomed the break from the evil kayaks and looked forward to the snorkelling sights ahead. The water was crystal clear and the marine life abundant with multitudes of fish and coral of all sizes and colours – absolutely breathtaking! We even got to swim with a large green sea turtle, what a beautiful graceful creature.

After some exploring we reluctantly got back on the ‘evil one,’ and our guide took us another ‘easy’ km down the reef to another snorkelling spot. This time we weren’t swimming with nice little Nemos but rather 3 meter sharks!

We slowly (no thrashing) swam to this giant piece of coral that looked like a giant carnation and watched these graceful and rather intimidating creatures glide around with mouths wide open while tiny wrasse fish cleaned their mass of teeth, it really was an incredible sight.

Now the fun part of paddling back home was ahead of us. We tried to get a rhythm going but it was tough going seeing as we’re not exactly navy seals but rather two whimpering tourists whose spaghetti arms were just about wound out of their socket s from acting like friggin windmills for the past 2 hours!! And not to mention our legs! (what legs!?) Good grief chief! At least now we can check that off the ‘to do (nevah again) list!’

On our last day we signed up for a Manta Ray tour.

Manta Ray blocks out the sun photo credit: NOAA’s Sanctuaries Collection

Fortunately since this is off season there weren’t many of us on the cruise. They had a spotter plane overhead in search of Giant Manta Rays when all of a sudden a call came through that they had spotted a Whale Shark!!

What a wonderful surprise, especially seeing as they usually don’t come until April. Our guides told us to get our snorkel gear on asap and before you knew it we were jumping in and swimming like crazy to get a chance to swim with this enormous 7 meter long, 4 meter wide Shark!!

It was every man for himself and if someone got an elbow or fin in the face, so be it! (Thankfully no blackeye for me this time! Not so sure about the Pom that kept getting in my way though, oops!)

At one point it actually swam right underneath us, everything seemed to go in slow motion as this beautiful massive dark white spotted body and huge gaping mouth passed by and then we were scrambling again trying to keep up with it.

You really don’t realise how insignificant you are until you’re up against one of them, it’s just unbelievable.

Next we got word of a Giant Manta Ray in sight and were soon diving in and swimming with this magnificent creature. It was about 4-5 meters across and glided effortlessly through the aqua waters. Fortunately it didn’t move nearly as fast as the Whale Shark and we were able to swim right on top of it for quite some time, at times it got so close I literally could have hitched a ride (darn!).

These two incredible creatures are both harmless and spend their time cruising the deep waters of the bay for plankton. This was definitely one of the most extraordinary experiences we’ve ever had. We would most certainly recommend this one for you ocean lovers out there.

If you can’t see the video player than you should open this URL in Windows Media Player:http://www.abc.net.au/science/broadband/catalyst/asx/WhaleShark_Ep39_hi.asx

This travel diary has been written by Rob Gower, a frequent traveller who works part-time for a bus hire company and enjoys travelling along roads less travelled!

If you’ve travelled somewhere off the beaten track, can write well and have good quality photos I encourage you to contact me and I’ll consider publishing your travel diary here including generous attribution and links back to your website as thanks for your contribution

Download a free 1024×768 resolution desktop wallpaper photo of a Man Walking at Sunset – 80 Mile Beach, Western Australia.

In late 2003 I travelled up the West Australian Coast from Perth to Broome. Along the way I stopped for a day and night at the deserted 80 Mile Beach.

Eighty Mile Beach is located almost half way between the West Australian towns of Broome and Port Hedland. As the name suggests, the beach is 80 miles in length (140 km). A remote caravan park on the beach some 10km from the Great Northern Highway is a great place to relax for a few days away from mobile phone coverage

Because the beach is so flat and smooth, after high tide has receded the wet sand reflects the setting sun for quite a distance away from the breaking waves along which the man in the photo is walking.

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Man Walking at Sunset – 80 Mile Beach, Western Australia

• Camera: Nikon 110s
• Wallpaper format: JPG 496 Kb in size
• Original Photo: Film negative

• F stop: unknown
• Exposure time: unknown
• ISO: 400 Fuji Superia film

• Metering & Focusing: Centre weighted
• Focal Length: unknown
• Original Resolution: 35mm film
• Optical Image Stabilisation: Not available
• Tripod Used: No

Every month I’ll publish a new 1024×768 resolution Free Desktop Wallpaper for your computer from the archives of photos I’ve taken, subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure you get the next one.

Other photos I’ve taken can be viewed at my Google Picasa Web Photo Album

Download a free 1024×768 resolution desktop wallpaper photo of Camels at Sunset on Cable Beach, Broome, Western Australia.

In late 2003 I travelled up the West Australian Coast from Perth to Broome, where I took a camel ride with Ships of the Desert.

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Camels at Sunset on Cable Beach, Broome, Western Australia

• Camera: Nikon 110s
• Wallpaper format: JPG 392 Kb in size
• Original Photo: Film negative

• F stop: unknown
• Exposure time: unknown
• ISO: 400 Fuji Superia film

• Metering & Focusing: Centre weighted
• Focal Length: unknown
• Original Resolution: 35mm film
• Optical Image Stabilisation: Not available
• Tripod Used: No

Every month I’ll publish a new 1024×768 resolution Free Desktop Wallpaper for your computer from the archives of photos I’ve taken, subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure you get the next one.

Other photos I’ve taken can be viewed at my Flickr Web Photo Album

Broome is a pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley in the far north of Western Australia. The year round population is approximately 14,000, but that grows to around 30,000 during the tourist season.

Broome is famous for its beautiful Indian Ocean beaches and wonderful dry season climate. Being in the tropics, it has two seasons. The wet season extends from October to March and has hot and humid weather with tropical downpours.

I spent my first evening in Broome at Sun Pictures, the oldest open air cinema in the world which officially opened on December 9th 1916 with a silent movie, English Racing Drama ‘Kissing Cup’. Nowadays it’s still going strong and I really enjoyed sitting in a deck chair in the open air where the evening breeze could cool me down.

The next attraction was Broome’s world famous Cable Beach and a 1hr 40min sunset camel ride arranged by “Ships of The Desert” which was Broome’s first camel tour operator offering camel rides back in 1981. “Ships of The Desert” offered a much better experience than its competitors Cable Beach Camel Safaris, Red Sun Camels or Broome Camel Safaris.

The Malcolm Douglas Crocodile Farm on Cable Beach Road is very popular judging by the number of people who were there at feeding time. Malcolm Douglas is “the original crocodile hunter” and has been creating documentaries about Australian wild life since 1964.

These are shown on Channel 7 in Australia and he also has lots of German fans because his documentaries are shown on German cable TV. The farm is dual purpose: offering tourists a look at some really large crocs and also commercially farming crocodiles for their meat and skins.

Broome town centre offers tourists many ways to while away a few hours including:

• Various cafes, pubs and resturants
• Shops & Art Galleries
• Various Pearl Showrooms such as Paspaley Pearls, Willie Creek Pearl Farm Tour & the Shell House of Guy Street which has a great collection of shells on display
• Walking around and looking at the historical buildings, Japanese Cemetery or Broome Historical Museum

When you reach Broome, make sure your first stop after unpacking at your accommodation is to go to Broome Visitor Centre where you can find out what events are on during your stay and book any day trips you’re interested in.

While travelling through Western Australia (including Broome), I found my “Footprint Guide to West Coast Australia” was an indispensable reference.

I flew out from Broome on Virgin Blue, and because I booked my ticket well in advance I paid much less for it than most of my fellow passengers

Note: all photographs in this article were taken by me