Balladonia Road to Albany

Campground 1: Quagi Beach
Facilities: Toilet, Cold Beach Shower, Rubbish Bins, Picnic Tables, Non-Potable Water.
Good stuff: Spacious individual camping areas with bins next to you.  Very close to the beach if you are into rock fishing.
Not so good stuff: It gets really busy and people set up their caravans taking up more than one camping area… Very considerate!
Price: $10 per night per site.
 

Campground 2: Jerramungup Caravan Park
Facilities: Toilet, Shower, Camp Kitchen, Unpowered and Powered Sites, Satellite TV, Picnic Tables, Rubbish Bins, Laundry, Potable Water.
Good stuff: Reasonably priced in comparison to other caravan parks in the area.
Not so good stuff: There is a construction/ some sort of site next to the Caravan Park meaning reverse alarms are going off until 8/9pm and start again at 6am. Camp kitchen is lacking an oven- they only have a BBQ. Mouse droppings in the camp kitchen cupboard… Generally a bit shabby and out-dated.
Price: $26 for two adults, unpowered site.

This journey was both literally and figuratively an emotional rollercoaster… Think Oblivion at Alton Towers and that pretty much sums up our journey.

After our impressive stay at Nanambinia Station our moods were uplifted and we were running on a high. Not to mention lending a helping hand in the morning to jump start a French couples car, it felt like nothing could go wrong.

Our next stop was much the same as before when we checked out Deralinya Station further down the Balladonia Road. The condition of the homestead was even better than the previous, although not as homely it was a great experience. A handy tip: great place to have a shower if you are on the road!

Deralinya Station

This was where the downhill experience started… Kind of ironic because we were progressively going uphill whilst hitting more and more corrugations on the road as we turned on to the Parmango Road. Those corrugations turned to massive ruts where road trains had been previously bogged, with their big arse tyres in the wet. Margaret did not like it at all… Everything was shaking and rattling- so much so that the kettle went from a one piece to two-piece set! The rusted handle had fallen off, deeming it to be unusable. For Liz this meant that her wake up morning coffee routine was no more… Don’t you feel sorry for Kyle right now!

As we have mentioned before we had been keeping an eye out on budget… The fuel budget being underestimated was a big hit and then we rechecked over our other expenses to find that we had been a little too frivolous with our money. We have always had the idea that our tax return should help out down the track but we decided to be a lot more tactical (read ruthless) with money. This probably coincided with the moment when we realised it is a long-term experience rather than just a holiday.

Now in the mood to save, we decided to free camp near Esperance overnight so we could buy a WA NP Annual Vehicle Pass on the Monday morning, when the office opened, and then head on to Cape Le Grand NP. However, the free camps were free but we didn’t feel comfortable staying there; the ground was pretty rough for our tent and there was a ridiculous amount of glass dotted around which would probably lead to more punctures to the bottom of our tent (read home/shelter from storms)... Our next thought was: lets stay in a caravan park for the night. The only issue was Esperance is EXPENSIVE! We decided that it was way too much for our now much smaller budget. We may regret this later but with both of us in a bummed out mood just thought bugger this lets move on from here. Oh and not to mention that the Woolworths supermarket was closed on a Sunday. What is this 1990?! Or maybe the East coast is a little different to over here...

In search for a cheaper spot we headed to Quagi Beach, just west of Esperance. It was rather crowded, probably due to the fact it was a Sunday afternoon, so we thought; hey lets just go to the camping spot further up the road! What we didn’t realise was that this road was what sums up the hatefulness of limestone (Kyle’s most hated rock type) - a total pain in the arse. Liz knew there was a reason why she always preferred igneous! Think karst scenery make it smaller and then you have got the road we were driving on – rock hard, fist to head sized round lumps of wheel twisting lumpiness. It is the roughest 'road', and we use that term loosely, we have driven on so far! After covering about 500m in half hour we turned around to head back to Quagi Beach for fear of damaging Margaret.

Looking down the fold axis. Camouflaged camera bag for scale! 

Huge Phenocryst of Mica- sparkle sparkle.

The camp was all set up, squeezed in a spot next to a camper trailer, and we were ready to cook. Finally we will have a break! Nope, midway through cooking the gas ran out, then one of the gas burners on the stove stopped working once we had replaced the bottle to then, oh is the tent light flickering… No it’s out of battery. GRRRRR!

You reckon we were ready for a good nights sleep? Well a few hours us both dropping off Liz woke up. Her mattress had deflated… Maybe one of the valves wasn’t closed properly. She re-pumped it up only to wake up in the early hours of the morning. Waheeey! We have a puncture!

That morning we tried to locate the puncture but with non-expendable water supply we had no luck. Looks like we were going to have to stop at a caravan park after all - at least we will have a kettle there! (Coffee, coffee coffee)

After Quagi Beach we had another grievance: Margaret’s gear stick was getting rather sticky and becoming progressively harder to get into gear (and double dipping the clutch is so 1940’s). She was due a service so our priority was to get her booked in ASAP. Albany had a garage that the Land Rover Dealer recommended so we booked her in to get her checked over by the car doctor.

This meant from here on in we didn’t want to detour too much, just in case the gearbox did play up, and stayed at Jerramungup Caravan Park where we had coffee, tea and finally located the mattress puncture! (By taking the entire inflated mattress into the shower and waiting for the hissing bubbles – must have been an odd sight ‘Just taking my mattress for a shower’). Things were looking up finally with a good nights sleep on the horizon. We walked around the Fitzgerald Biosphere garden, in Jerramungup, that tells you about the different areas within the biosphere, which included information on the geology (mini wohoo) and the flora of each of the areas.

Stunning Sunset at Jerramungup Caravan Park

Fitzgerald Biosphere Garden in its youth.

Such a cool name for a street.

Then we had another positive: we spotted a BCF heading into Albany and we came out with a kettle. Even better than our previous one! Hopefully this one won’t rust anytime soon and will provide us with many, many caffeine’s. Oh and the extra positive is that it fits into our drawers like the old one - Oh the little things!