Saturday Sept 6th to Tuesday Sept 9th, 2025
Saturday – Bad weather all night with rain and strong winds. Most of the roofs in Australia are metal so the rain really sounds loud when it comes. When we checked the weather app it showed wind gusts up to 47 miles per hour. We explained to our friends that in Florida we would call this a hurricane! With the bad weather we had a leisurely morning at home and we were not in any hurry to leave the house.
We ventured out late morning with rain jackets on over our coats. We grabbed a few things at the grocery store and walked an attached mall to stay out of the incumbent weather. We had lunch at a chain restaurant.
After lunch we headed out to do a little sight seeing and hoped for the best with the weather. The sun would come out intermittently but mostly windy and rainy. We drove up to Mount Clarence which has some nice view points but with the weather being what it was not very scenic. There is a large Anzac memorial at the top and lots of info about the fleets of ships that left from Albany, WA during WWI. Anzac stands for Australia & New Zealand combined troops. The first fleet left Albany November 1st, 1914 and included 38 troop transports and 7 war ships and had 30,000 soldiers and 10,000 horses.
You can see how cloudy it is but imagine all the ships waiting to sail from here to Egypt for training first and then on to Gallipoli. I know the outcome was a lot like our D-day but makes me want to watch the movie when we get home.
The statue at the top of Mount Clarence. The statue is located at a site that overlooks King George Sound. This was the last view of the Australian coastline for the first ANZAC convoy before it left for the World War I battlefields in November 1914.
There were not many tourists out and about since the wind was was much stronger up on the hill but we did pass a wedding party getting pictures and trying to stay warm.
We headed home and did take out Thai for dinner.
Sunday – Weather is better although still cold and windy. We decided to head out and do some exploring of Frenchman’s Bay. There are several lookouts and a place called The Gap and also a natural bridge. The Gap is a large chasm
I “stole” this shot from the internet so you could see what the gap looked like with the extended walkway high above the crashing waves. With the recent weather it was really cold and the spray came up quite high.
Pictures from The Gap. The water color was beautiful but very rough.
It is a short walk from The Gap to the natural bridge. Here we are all bundled up. I have on a long sleeve shirt and a down jacket underneath the rain jacket.
After visiting these view points we looked for a place to have lunch but everything was closed on Sunday so we ended up back in town at the same place we ate yesterday, luckily they offer an extensive menu.
After lunch we headed back out to Frenchman’s Bay to an old whaling station. This was the last whaling station to close in Australia and closed in 1978. Most of the facilities have been kept in tact and you can do a self guided tour of the facilities and also the last whaling boat.
Cheynes IV, the world’s only preserved whale chaser ship. Amazing how small the ship was. While the whole idea of whaling is horrible it was amazing to see the size of the boat, compared to the size of the whales they harpooned. They also had video clips of interviews with the whalers that used to work at the station which was fascinating to hear.
They showed you how they pulled the whales up and then explained the whole process of carving up the whales and using the pieces parts into the huge tanks down and the boiling down everything to get the oil. They still have the tanks and the steam pressured machines.
I normally don’t like museums but I read every description under all the photos and we ended up spending 3 hours there. They also had the spotter plane used to find the whales and had a film from the pilot explaining how he did his job. The workers talked all abut Greenpeace and how disruptive they were and how they kept their ship right next to where the whaling vessel went out and followed them and got between the whales and the whaling boat. Merv actually remembers his dad bringing him to the whaling station when he was a boy and watching them bring in the whales. They had lots of info on the impact of this major employer closing down.
We had dinner in town and then we watched the FSU game that we had taped and while we are glad that FSU won we turned it off after the 2nd quarter due to the blow out.
Monday – We packed up this am and headed out to our next stop which will be Esperance. The drive was about 5 hours and rained most of the time. We passed by lots of cannoli fields with their bright yellow flowers. Still seeing lots of cattle and sheep but only an occasional kangaroo.
We stopped in a very small town for lunch and did not have a lot of choices. We finally found a restaurant within a hotel that had a surprisingly large menu selection. Kathy had flathead (fish) & chips which she says was excellent and I ordered a beef burger. When the burger arrived it was huge and on the burger was lettuce, tomato, cheese, bacon (their bacon is more like Canadian bacon than American bacon) and also a fried egg. You could not even get your mouth around the whole thing it was that tall. Surprisingly good and not a combination of things I would have put together.
We made it to our next rental at 4:30. It was right across from the beach and Merv & Michelle have stayed here before. It is 2 stories with the kitchen and living room / TV upstairs and 2 bedrooms downstairs along with a bathroom. When dinner time came we were all still full from lunch so we skipped dinner and I watched the Dolphin game on the computer. It was horrible and looks like both of my NFL teams are starting off quite poorly. Glad FSU is doing well.
Tuesday – We got up and took our time starting out on our day. Our first stop was to the info center where we got some directions of where to go. We stopped by a bakery, which totally different than what we call a bakery in the states. It did have some baked items but also had lots of meat pies and sandwiches and wraps. It also had a small hot bar. Merv got a snack to hold him over since no dinner last night and figured we would come back after our outing for lunch.
Our first stop is a replica of Stonehenge. We did not actually go inside since it takes about 5 minutes to look at and cost 10 dollars.
It is not an exact replica and we took this from the road but an interesting attraction. I thought it would have been so much better if they had some kangaroos hopping around to give it an Australian flair. I probably would have paid for some pictures of that.
After “Stonehenge” we headed towards the coast which was about a 60 min drive through mostly flat land with some large rock outcroppings and lots of scrub brush. The view at the end of the drive was totally worth it.
Lucky Bay with stunning water color. Our friends tell us there is not much swimming here due to how cold the water is and also lots of sharks. The water is crystal clear.
The view from up above. As you can see the weather is much better but still cool. Highs in the 50s.
After walking on the beach, which they say is the whitest sand beach in Australia, we headed back to town and back to the bakery for lunch. The bakery was picked over from earlier but we still managed to find some meat pies and sweets for lunch which we took back to our apt and ate on the balcony.
After lunch we walked a long jetty and talked to a couple of fisherman who were not catching anything but said they had seen a seal. We looked but did not find the seal.
After the jetty we took the “Ocean road” along the coast and stopped at several overviews.
I got obsessed trying to get a good picture of a wave curling
Also got a close up view of a local resident.
A Noisy Minor. There were several by the beach and they were riding the wind currents.
At the end of the day we had a nice rainbow. We went out to dinner and had fish and chips and the fish was some of the best we have had. The fish was Red Emperor which we have never heard of.
In the morning we leave her and head to Kalgoorie which is a mining town more inland from our current location.
Where we are currently located. We started our journey 3 hours south of Perth. We have 4 nights of our road trip left.