3 Apr 2009
Passing the time while Lynn takes a turn at the wheel, I browse our trusty Australia road atlas (don’t you just love a good map?). It’s shocking to see how little territory we’ve covered in our travels so far. Even though we’ve clocked about 3,000 km so far, we’ve barely scratched the surface. This really is a bloody big country. Did you know that if you take a right turn off the main road running across the Nullabore plain from Adelaide to Perth, it would be 1,200 km until you hit the next sealed road. Twelve hundred kilometres before the next real road!
Even more amazing is the Google Streets guy. For those of you who’ve had their head in the sand recently, this is latest Google blessing (or gross invasion of your privacy, depending on your outlook) whereby you can view 360 pictures of just about any street in the country. Try it sometime and then think about the poor guy who had to drive the Google camera car down all those roads. There had to be times when was absolutely bored out of his mind. As you can see from the image opposite, even the Google guy wasn’t brave enough to try going up through the middle of Western Australia.
Anyway, back to the business at hand. We’re exploring the delights of the Margaret River area today, and indeed, it is quite delightful. Rolling hills, dotted with vineyards and golden brown fields (admittedly, a little more brown than golden these days), and some quite terrific beaches. We pull into a couple of spots near Yallingup and the water colour is picture-postcard perfect. Crystal clear and a shade of aquamarine that just makes you want to run down the sand and dive in. And what sand it is – bright white, find grained almost powdery and just the right sized stretch of beach between the road and waterline. Best of all – they’re practically deserted.
Needless to say, I’m so enchanted by the coastline that I forgo an afternoon of wine tasting for a stroll along the cape to cape trail, a walking track that runs for 135 km between Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin. Too much for one afternoon, but I give it a small sampling. My stretch finishes at Yallingup and the long, curving Smiths Beach. I call Lynn for a pickup when I get to the start of the beach (destination in sight), but it’s a bloody long length of sand and but the time I get to the other end, Lynn has been waiting for a while, and my calves are burning something fierce.
