Day 12: same players play again.

Another morning behind the skate park, this time I guess we won't get bother by another ranger again, at least not in Margaret river.

But waking up at 6 in the morning has some negative effects on me, I'm sleepy all day long.

After a quick shopping at a surf shop (2 tees for 50$, when you know it's almost 50€ per tee in Europe, it's a good deal) we went to Surfer's Point to see some good big waves. Of course, we didn't surf them, we just watched some good surfers riding these huge reef brakes which are also surrounded by rocks.

But that gave us the motivation to do some surfing as well! The weather was still shit with a cold wind, there was two other beginners at Redgate and we managed to take some good waves when we were not hit by the biggest ones.

We finished our day back at Surfer's point, with a little improvement of the weather, looking this time at a lot of windsurfers and some kite surfers.

It was no less spectacular, with this heavy wind, their rides were really fast and impressive.

Dinner and back behind the skate park after that. Time to say, see you tomorrow, maybe even in Fremantle or Freo as the locals call their hometown.

Day 11: Margaret River Again

Day 11 was a bloody cold one! For some weird reason the temperature dropped by 15 or so degrees, down to a nearly freezing 21°C! And on top of that there was a strong onshore wind blowing which didn't make it any warmer. Particularly for me this was bad news as I had lost my last hoody (after I lost my 2nd cam and a real nice t-shirt and before I lost my rented rashy) about 3 weeks ago. Since then I had only been wearing t-shirts which wasn't a problem at all -- until Day 11!

As we had to get up very early again in order to avoid the rangers we were spending the first coupla hours in our Bart-van in front of a grocery store. Fun times! Poor Bastian, all spoiled from the warm temps up north on the east coast in Queensland, was freezing his ar...errr...bum off!

We kind of killed time until noon, then went to Redgate Beach once again to check on the waves. The ocean seemed still pretty choppy and the waves came in fairly irregularly. I still wanted to give it a go, so while Bastian took care of our Bart-o-mobile I took my board (called "the whale") and went down to the beach. And the conditions sucked! The current was very strong, the wind would have been fantastic for windsurfers but it was very bad for me, and the waves were almost impossible to ride.

After 45 minutes I gave up and just went for a swim instead. That was actually nice. The air temperature was well below 20°C with the wind chill but the water was nice and warm (23°C to be exact)! I actually had to stay in the water so I didn't freeze. Quite lovely!

But the evening wasn't fun at all. Both of us spent most of the time in the van trying hard not to freeze. Maybe we should have swapped our flip-flops and shorts for jeans and proper shoes but that wasn't an option. It's supposed to be summer after all!

The outlook for tomorrow isn't much better. According to the forecast it'll be even colder than today (about 18°C) and the wind is supposed to blow just as strong. I guess we'll just have to endure one more day with arctic temps and wait for Saturday when it's said to get better...

PS: As I'm finishing this entry off another freaking ranger showed up giving me shit about using the toilet's sockets....what a pain in the a.. they are :-)

Day 10 : 14 shades of grey

After 10 days of sunrise with a perfect blue sky, we woke up in the campsite with a sky made of shades of grey, and that sucks ...

We were in Walpole, with not so much to do this morning except to head back on our way to Margaret River. I kept saying to mysel,f the weather will be good again before we are back at the west coast beaches.

A couple of hours later we were already back in our favorite slacking spot, just next to the toilet where we can get tap water and power for our laptops, etc.
The weather was not bad but not very good either, a lot of wind, a bit cloudy. Since we had nothing else to do we decided to go check on our lovely surf spot. And for the first time, there was almost no one arround. There was only a few cars, maybe 3 or 4, no surfers at all, and only 3 people on the beach.

After checking the waves from inside the car and at the beach (choppy, windy, sucky) we picked up our boards anyway and tried our best...
We finished our short session by meeting an Austrian kite surfer with his girlfriend, talking about the conditions and the weather. While talking to him I also found out that both of us grew up in the mountains: him in the alps near Hungary and me in the French Alps -- we are both Schluchtenscheisser, hooray!

And that's it, well almost. Tired of spending money in campsites we spent the night between a skatepark and a footy stadium just behind a tree. We crossed our fingers that we'd wake up at 6 to avoid meeting another ranger.

Day 9: The Turning Point

After getting a tip from another camper about where to best stay overnight without paying we checked those places out. We eventually parked our van at a marina, roughly 10km outside Albany, mainly because of the nice scenery.

And our fellow camper was right! No ranger was in sight when we woke up at 6am (!). No, we didn't get up this early because it's so much fun but to be safe. Those two times when we got caught by the rangers they showed up between 6.30am and 7.00am so we thought 6.00am to be a good time to get up and leave. At least the sunrise was quite pleasant.


Until noon we explored the town of Albany but there wasn't much to see. Albany might be the largest town in the region but it's still kind of small and absolutely nothing was going on there while we were around. We drove up a mountain to have an overview of the town which was quite nice but that was pretty much it. Oh, the only other highlight was me driving on the wrong side --which is the 'right' side which wasn't the 'right' one in this case :)-- of a 4 lane city highway! There was no other car around, thank god. I must have forgotten for a second that people here drive on the left side of the road.

In other news, we wrote our last two blog-entries at the Albany Mc Donald's. They offer free wireless in their 'restaurants' across Australia. But we weren't the only ones trying to get online. Along with us there were about ten more backpackers who wanted to use the internet - and only two sockets. So some brought their multi socket extensions cords and what not along with them. As a result, there were about 8 laptops and several cell phones hooked up to those two sockets which looked quite funny. The manager didn't like that too much, though, and nearly kicked us all out.

We left the golden arches at noon to drive back to Denmark on a different route. Of course we found a few more real nice beaches. One of which was a beach called at William Bay. What makes this beach so famous are huge rocks that sit right next to it. Due to their size someone very smart christened these rocks Elephant Rocks.

And the day was already over! We quickly drove through Denmark and looked at the waves of Ocean Beach (still very small) and then drove further along Highway 1 towards that little sh***hole I mentioned the other day: lovely Walpole. This place is too small to do any illegal camping so we checked in at a camping site. Not a good idea. There were no young campers around at all. Instead we found ourselves surrounded by a bunch of bogans :) Thank god there was still some goon left.


PS: This entry is dedicated to our two loyal readers from Melbourne, Kat and Chris. Keep it up guys! :)

Day 8: Along the south coast

After a quick breakfast at our campsite in Walpole, we were on the road again.
As we looked at the map, Esperance turned out to be too far away, another 250 km with only half the road as a highway didn't seem too good, so we resolved to just trasvel as far as to our next destination Albany.

The first stop in the morning (9 am) was a short walk, 10 km after Walpole, in the giant tree forest.
Big trees, huge trees, high trees, sounds boring, huh? Well, not when you are in the middle of the forest exploring the wilderness.

Our second stop was the town of Denmark and the scenic drives on the way were just amazing (not much different from the scenery from the day before but still very nice).

After checking the lonely planet we saw there's a surf spot at Great Ocean Beach in Denmark. And there we went with our surfboard under our arms, but it has to be said that the waves were not as good as the ones at Redgate. Not very strong, not as close to the beach and way too short to ride them properly.

We had lunch there and after a second session of (bad) surfing, we moved to Albany (biggest town since Busselton).

After talking to some other backpackers we got a few tips about where to stay for the night.
In the meantime, here we are at a Mc Donalds, where we had our first "meal" with meat in a week. Moreover, we finally had access to Mc D's free wifi...hooray \o/!

I guess Albany is the most eastern town we will travel to and the turning point of our road trip, so see you on our way back!

Day 7: On the Road Again

After our first night at a camping site --which was surprisingly inexpensive after the last two nights-- we decided to do what we were doing in the last couple days. We went to Redgate Beach to do some surfing. Though, as we arrived there were hardly any big waves. We still gave it a try but gave up after an hour or so and left our lovely beach to check out more of the south and possibly find even nicer spots.

On our way to the south coast we passed by Cape Leeuwin, the cape where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meet. Usually you can see the waves of both oceans clashing (as seen on Bruno's and Elodie's pictures :) ) but when we arrived there were no waves at all - bummer!

We soon left and kept driving (me doing the driving, Bastien taking thousands if not millions of photos) along the south coast which is just as pretty as the west coast. Soon we left the coast and and followed the highway inland and spent most of the day driving in the outback. The scenery was amazing, very different from any Euro landscape. Red soil everywhere, heaps of gum-, and eucalyptus trees and plenty of wineries. The only problem was our old Bart-van. It kept guzzling the gas in huge amounts (and also loads of motor oil, as we later found out) and I got worried about getting stuck in the outback as there was no gas station to be seen anywhere.

As the sun was setting we arrived in Walpole, another little sh**hole in W.A. :) We drove straight to the next gas station. We just made it as i gased the car up with 38 Liters in a 40 Liter tank! While at it we also checked the oil. To our surprise there was nothing left at all. Seems like we got lucky that we actually arrived at that town. Still too afraid of those rangers we checked in at another campsite for a mere $20 - bargain!

Tomorrow's to-do-list: Driving to Denmark - not the cold one in Europe but a town along the south coast with supposedly real nice beaches.

Day 6: Surfin' Surfin' in Oz

huuuum a good night of sleep, just in front of our surf spot. But now we know the best way to be woken up is by a ranger. Yes another fine for us! Again we weren't allowed to camp at this spot as it's part of a national park. And, as he told us, camping in national parks is strictly prohibited. He was still nice enough to give us only a $50 instead of the usual $500 fine...phew!

But those 50 bucks didn't change our plan to go surfing again! And that's what we did for the morning. But unfortunately it was a Saturday; the beach was crowded, there was a surf school, and too many people in general!

After some good waves and a few hours later we drove back to Margaret river for lunch. We needed a break, relax for a little while and wait until it wasn't as hot anymore before we could go back to the beach (these days are commonly the hottest in the year at the west coast).
Once there again, I (Bast) was the only to go surfing. Well, I shouldn't have done that. A few bruises later, while trying to dodge a body boarder I got hit by my own board right in the face. As a result I lost my beloved lip-piercing and now have a lip which has a deep cut and on top of that it's swollen...

I was done for the day.

We decided to look for a new place to sleep, but this time we chose the safest way and stayed at a camping park (12$ each for a spot for the night ...).