Western Austtralia

Strictly speaking, this isn't about the race. But what the hell, I'll throw in a bit of a general travel writing.

I didn't spend a lot of time in Perth itself. Seemed like a nice enough town, but I really just took the first afternoon recovering from a 20 hour trip, most of it in a middle seat.

Selfie at Hangover Bay

The second day, I took a day trip north along the coast. I stopped for a swim at Hangover Bay, though without a hangover I felt I wasn't doing it quite right. The main destination was Pinnacles Desert, a spot where there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of stone formations sticking up out of the sand. It's really weird, not exactly spectacular but definitely interesting. Apparently, researchers aren't even quite sure how the formed, but they are pretty sure it has something to do with trees. They also suspect they've been buried by dunes for a few thousand years and only resurfaced in the last hundred or so.

In among the Pinnacles

 I saw my first wild kangaroos every as I was driving back that night, two varieties -- one live, one roadkill. I saw loads more during the rest of the trip, probably 70% roadkill, 20% near-roadkill (e.g one that went out if its way to trip hop in front of me), and only about 10% frolicking about at a sensible distance from the road. Hardly seems like a ratio that's made for long-term success.

Looking down Busselton Jetty

The next day, I headed south toward Margaret River. I stopped in Busselton on the way, home to the longest wood-piled jetty in the Southern Hemisphere at 1.8km. It was long, but still not an amazing claim to fame. I later heard a radio commercial saying "There's more to Busselton that they longest wood-piled jetty in the Southern Hemisphere!" -- there is also a music festival -- and I was about 80% sure they were taking that seriously.

Sunset at Canal Rocks

Margaret Riven involved a day of wine tasting as well as some chocolate and olive oil makers. It was mostly small scale, less developed that wine tasting I've done elsewhere. At several, I was the only person there. At one, Ashbrook, I just chatted with the woman on the front desk while they were bottling in the back room. I eventually made my way to Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse and caught sunset from Canal Rocks, so-called because natural erosion has left what look like canals in the rock formation.

Crystals inside Calgardup Cave

I then headed south. There are a lot of caves in the region, and I managed to explore two. Calgardup Cave had a lot of cool crystal formations. Giants Cave was a lot bigger and deeper and was set up as an "adventure cave", which involved climbing ladders through narrow spots and scrambling along sections of fallen rock. I got down to Cape Leeuwin, the most south-western point in Australia and the meeting point of the Southern and Indian Oceans. Finally, I headed over to Albany via Denmark through some forests that just seemed to go on forever.

I liked WA a lot. If ti were closer, I'd come back for the wine country alone. Given the beaches, the deserts, the forests (and the diving, which I heard good things about but didn't manage to try), it could be worth a return trip despite how far away it is from everything.

Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse