Road Trip!:

took a road trip this weekend along the coast south of Perth to the city of Albany. I rented a car and just took off Saturday morning. To summarize the scenery is to simply say "Wow!"

Trish offered to loan me some of their camping gear and to pack some food for me. When I got home Friday after work with the rental car I found lined up in the living room three coolers full of food plus everything I need for camping, plus about a dozen guide books and maps. Trish is so damn efficient. There was enough food for two for a week. Salads, sandwiches, breakfast already to eat, fruit, a whole roasted chicken, meatballs, pasta, deserts, and more. Of course there were also plenty of beverages and creature comforts such as dishes, silverware, and napkins. I would eat like a king on this trip. Needless to say, I was only able to eat a fraction of it and brought most of it back. It was very nice of her to go to such much trouble.

I kept as close to the coast as possible. I first headed down to Leeuwin-Naturaliste coast. The hills in the coast are riddled with over 350 caves ranging from small to enormous. I stopped at three of them and took the tours. The caves are spectacular, with many formations found nowhere else on earth. One of them named "Lake Cave" has a beautiful lake far underground that was so clean we were invited to drink from it. Mammoth cave was mind-blowing. You could park a couple of 747s inside of some of the chambers.

This coast is also home to some of the best world-class surfing spots in the world, and the best in Western Australia. I have to agree. I saw plenty of empty beaches with beautiful right-hand breaks going smoothly along for almost a mile.

There is a spot along this coast named "Canal Rocks". It is a strange formation of rocks that have a perfect natural channels of water in them. What was interesting is that there is reef on the south side where the waves would crash over from the ocean spilling their water into a small bay. That water has to go somewhere, right? It pours out this clear wide channel through the rocks, spitting out to the bay on the north side. Now what intrigued me was a second channel in the rocks perpendicular to the primary channel. That water is pushed out the primary cancel so fast that it creates a siphon in this secondary channel, pulling in water from a calm bay to the north.

Seeing this made me of course want to try to ride these rips through the channels. I studied it for a long time but the water was so clear that it was hard to gauge the speed it was moving. By watching the eddies I could tell that it ejected water in to the north bay quit a distance. What I wanted to do was jump into the water in the calm bay, and allow myself to get sucked into the siphon channel, which would dump me into the primary channel and then get ejected out into the north bay. It looked like it would be an awesome ride.

I wished I had a coconut that I could throw in to watch what would happen to it. I did observe that the offshore wind was blowing hard, the same force that drove the waves over the reef powering this whole natural Disneyland ride. I estimated that the rip would push me at least 1/4 to 1/2 a mile out to sea, but then it would an upwind swim back to shore and shelter from the ocean wind and waves. I also noticed that there was no one around for miles. If I miscalculated, or got slammed on a rock, then I would be dead.

So not wanting to be a chapter on the Darwin Awards web site I decided to wait until I had better information and equipment such as a surfboard or kayak. When I mentioned my idea to Trish and Martin after I got back they looked horrified. The told me that many tourists have died there from rouge waves. If a rouge wave hits the Canal Rocks it overflows the system and the water simple slams you into the rocks.

This part of of Australia gets the brunt of rouge waves from the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean is the body of water the surrounds the Antarctic south of Australia, Africa, and South America. It has the unique feature of not having any landmass for waves to run into. A wave pushed along by the prevailing winds can travel around the globe building in size for as long as it can sustain itself. I don't have the exact stats, but I recall that sometimes a wave can live for months down there. There is simply nothing to stop it. Sometimes these waves stack up on each other and create monster rogue waves. These are real waves full of real water that can cause as much damage at sea as on a coastline, unlike a Tsunami which is most dangerous in shallow water.

The coast along here can best be described as similar to the central California coast between Pt. Conception and Morro Bay (Pismo).

I ended up at the southwestern point of Australia, the lighthouse at Pt. Leeuwin where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet. I thought this was pretty awesome until the next day when I went further east towards Albany.

This area of Australia, the Margaret River, is the heart of WA's wine country and forests. I drove hours through empty roads through beautiful forests. I camped out in Pemberton, the heart of the southern forests. The next morning I head to the Valley of the Giants Tree Top Walk. There is a grove of giant trees in a valley here. The trees have shallow roots systems, so in order to protect the roots and still allow people to see these magnificent trees they built a catwalk through the treetops. It is about 130 feet off the ground up in the canopy. If you are afraid of heights, you can't do it. The catwalks sway in the wind and bounce around as people move across (not too much) and have grated flooring so you can see below you.

From there I visited the lovely town of Denmark and visited the beaches south of here. The beaches kept getting more and more awesome the further east I drove. The ocean down here is cooler than Perth, more central California style. You need a wetsuit when surfing here. The water itself was a remarkable cobalt blue and so remarkably clear. The beaches where some of the best I have ever seen. Totally empty with cliffs at your back and with perfect sand extended way into water. You could camp out on one of these beaches here for week and have it totally to yourself.

I finally ended up in Albany. Albany and the surrounding area remind me of Monterey and Santa Cruz. The forests and mountains come down to the sea along high cliffs and bluffs with perfect little beaches in coves. Albany is in a perfect natural harbor protected by large hills from the ocean. Albany was the home the Australia's whaling industry, but is now a prime whale watching area.

I've heard that the coast east of here between Albany and the South Australian border is even better. I will have to save that for another trip.

During this trip I took mostly back-roads. Often I would drive for 3 hours and not see another car or another human being. Sometimes the road was not even paved, or if it was, it was only one lane of asphalt. My rental car contract prohibited me from driving after dark outside of the Perth metro area. This is because of the danger of hitting a kangaroo. I had to keep very aware of this danger, especially at sunrise and sunset.

At one point late in the afternoon in the middle of nowhere I came around a corner and saw a strange sight. There in front of me in the middle of the road was a large man in rabbit suit bouncing up and down. "Now that is weird" I though to myself as I braked to avoid running into him. Then I remembered. "You're in Australia, you idiot. Therefore that must be a kangaroo." That is what it was! A roo was confused by my car and was bouncing right and left trying to guess which was was the safest route to avoid getting hit.

Adam told me later that many of the roos are now blind. A disease is attacking them that blinds them. He said it is very sad to watch some poor roo lost in the woods crashing into trees and injuring themselves.