Animals / Sea Creatures

The most surprising for me was the whales. We can see them several times in the far but enough close to clearly see their blowing water and their back.

(Please believe me that this is a whale...)

It was also nice that we can see 'free' dolphins. I mean that they was not  closed into a cage or any artificial aquarium but they come from the open see. I understand that feeding them each morning 'supported' their presence but still it was their free choice to be there with us at the afternoon.

And we could see some more see creatures:

Animals / Terrestrial Mammals (and Emu :))

No, we did not see wombats as they live only in east-south part of Australia. So I cannot confirm nor deny that they poop cube. ;)

Instead we saw kangaroos and emus:

...er, i mean these:

And koalas:

Though koalas do not live naturally here they were just transported to the Kalbarri National Park along with some eucalyptus trees. As koalas are not extremely eager to move they stayed.

We saw wild dogs or dingoes at the side of the road:

They said not to attack people but we did not leave the car to pet them....

And we saw lots of cows:

Speaking of mammals: Look at that strangely smelling fruits on that tree. ...er, take a closer look ...even closer: the cutest animal for the cavers: bats.

(Just to make it clear: All of the photos are made by me, so we actually saw all these animals. And even more. Stay tuned. :))

(Note2: Hey, I do know that emu is not a mammal. Somehow it just comes together with the kangaroos...)

Termite Mounds

One of the most significant element of the landscape in northern and western Australia is termite mounds. I was surprised when I saw them close as there was no termite on the surface of the mounds (as opposed to the swarm of the European ants on their nest). Even where the mound was damaged and we can see the tunnels inside we cannot see any termites. So where do they live? And also lots of mounds was on flood land that is covered by water during the monsoon. Does the flood destroy the mounds made of clay? Do termites rebuild them each year?

After our return I tried to find out more about these insects. According to Wikipedia (and for my surprise) they are closer relatives of the cockroaches then ants.
As stated in https://creation.com/termite-mounds in dry season termites live underground where the temperature is almost constant. In flooded areas though they live in the mounds even in dry season. This implicitly means that somehow the water of flood does _not_ destroy the mounds though it is not explained why. Does anybody happen to know why does the termite mound survive the food?

inside the mound

Nothing

'Look at that!'
'What? I can see nothing.'
'That's it! The Nothing.'

This conversation was happened several times in the car when we were driving through the ...'Nothing'. The 'Nothing' does not mean desert without any vegetation but semi-desert with small bushes or grass or even scattered trees. The type of the plants are continuously changed but one thing remained constant: that we can see far above the bushes or among the trees and we can see how vast the 'Nothing' is. And travelling hours and hours through this constant and constantly changing infinite 'Nothing' provided a strange feeling of freedom with us.

Kangaroo Steak

Along the road we had seen dead kangaroos hit by cars. We felt sorrow about them. Though we did not felt sorrow about the one we ate as steak. Both at rest places at the road and in camping there are barbecue facilities. So we used one in our camping. The steak tasted nice.

Red Bluff

Red rocks formed by the salty water, blue ocean, huge waves. It is more special to be here and see than see in the photo. :(

(photo by Csilla Chlebik)

People

An other day at the camp fire we were chatted with a half Croatian, half aborigine guy and a Papua New Guinean. The former one talked about his childhood when his abo cousine was able to catch scorpion and poisonous snakes with bare hand. He also showed a trace of a snake's byte. He was lucky as he get into the hospital in 10 minutes.

He was also talked about that abos keep their habits and way of hunting even when they live in towns and wear clothes like us.

He was also talked about the goats on the peninsula that were spread recently and damage the natural flora.

Geysers and Whales

On Thursday we are travelling along the ocean. Strangely the land is quite dry with rare vegetation despite of the nearby ocean.


Sandy seacoasts alter with wild, rocky ones. Fake geysers. There are holes in the limestone and the waving of the ocean push water into them, that burst out vertically like a geyser. Whales in the fare. Nothing special.:D

(photo by Csilla Chlebik)

Karijini National Park

Karijini Eco Retreat is a special camping area in the national park. The camping slots are fare from each other, scattered in the tropical semi-desert (that I believed to be a savanna...). It provides a special feeling if we would be alone in the nature.

There are picturesque, deep gorges in the park. Red rocks, free trees with snow-white trunks, blue sky. In the bottom waterfalls and pools makes the cool rivers even more attracting.

(photo by Csilla Chlebik)

Road Trains

Imi's father was a truck driver and brought him for some trip when Imi was a child. So Imi is fond of truck and the no.1 reason for him to visit Australia was that he wanted to see Road Trains.

Road Trains are huge tracks quite common in Australia. They could exceed 50m. And it is said that they were robust enough to hit even a cow without getting damaged. (As a contrast: our car could be damaged even by hitting a large kangaroo.)

On the road we are travelling there are a lot of Road Train along with 4WDs and campervans. So Imi is contented.;)


(photo by Csilla Chlebik)

Problems with the car

We spent the Saturday morning at the car mechanical. Rather useful use of time. During our travel from Darwin to Broome we collected an error list of 6. It turned out that one of them was a 'false alarm', caused by our lack of knowledge. But the others seemed to be valid and resulted to change both(!) of the batteries.

In case you are not familiar with camper vans: There are a battery in the front that starts the engine. And an other one at the back that operates other facilities: fridge, water pump, inside lights in the 'living' area, etc. The second one is charged both by the engine and the power cable in camping places.

So we were a bit surprised that the hire company let us take the car with bad batteries though they were fully aware that we travel to Perth. We even reported that the car hardly start and we suspected that there could be problem with the battery but they convinced us that this is normal.:(

But fortunately we reached Broome even with this conditions. And the staff in the service was really kind and helpful and started to examine the campervan promptly and I believe that they did whatever they can for us. Thanks for them in this way as well.

Spring

1st September. The first day of spring. So some warm 35 degree Celsius changed the chilly 32 degree that we had before.:)

Indeed there is no spring in the norden area, the seasons are: cold (June - July), hot dry (Aug. - Sept.), pre-monsoon storms (Oct. - Nov.), monsoon (Dec.- Mar.), knock'em down storms (April), cooler bot still humid (May). So we are in the middle of the dry season. We can see huge river beds without water. We can see simply disappearing rivers. I mean there was a 'proper' river in one side of the bridge and only 'lakes' in the trace of the river and in the far no water at all.

There were lots of 'floodway' warning sign along the road and I could hardly imagine that this dry land is covered by water at some season.

An other day we just passed by a wooden shelter at least 5m above the present water-level of the nearby creek. The shelter was cca. 6-8 m tall and it was signed on the roof which year where was the water level. The this year (2017) sign was quite close to the top...

Danger :)

We have met the most dangerous animal in Australia. Noo, not a crocodile, snake or spider. Guess what: a 15cm long greenish-pinkish gecko. In the ladies room. Indeed she seemed to be innocent and quite frightened by the girls' screening but we all knew Tha she plans to jump into our neck during having a bath. (Of course she is a 'she' as she was in the ladies room.) Fortunately Zuzmoka was able to convince her not to attack us. He also wanted her join us but she refused and stay for relief of the girls.