With less than 4 weeks till we get home we keep changing plans and trying to decide what date we need to be at Kalgoolie by and how many days we are going to leave to get from Kalgoolie to Melbourne. Several scenarios have been bandied around. We could have the sprint home or a slightly longer trip back with a few stops, not too many as we are already short on time.

Today we had an easy day wandering around the gulf side of Exmouth as we were definitely tired after yesterdays kayaking and snorkelling efforts. Apparently we paddled about 14Km yesterday. We drove to the main rock wall / break water as it seemed like a good spot to fish and it went out almost to the channel. I had two fish follow my lure and Sharon had about the same after a couple of hours trying. Nobody in any of the boats hooked anything either. There was one very large school of fish I could see moving from the end of the rock wall back and forth. Not sure of the type of fish but they ignored everything I chucked at them. When they were close even dropping the lure into the middle of them just made them create a hole in their school for the lure to drop through to the bottom!

Dejected we moved on heading south and visited a couple of memorials with some very interesting information about how the yanks came to be here and setup a submarine base and all manner of infrastructure. The Aussies were here as well in their slum camping conditions compared to the US soldiers who wanted for nothing. Several operations on Singapore and Malaysia were done by some elite forces from Exmouth.

Further south we stopped at the Learmonth jetty and had lunch in the car overlooking the beach and jetty. Nobody here caught anything either except for the fishing charter person catching baitfish with a throw net. We still put a few casts in the water after lunch but with the same result. A turtle swam past us and popped his head up for a breath but that was about all. The most exciting event of the day took place here after we heard a huge noise a massive military transport plane took off from behind us. The plane was so close and loud but we struggled to get the camera out in time and get a decent picture.

A BIG plane

We decided to go for a drive up into the national park up on the range that separates the east and west sides of the peninsular and found what we had been told was a mini grand canyon. Well the gorges and valleys dropped off both sides of the road and it turned out to be quite spectacular and unexpected. They do not rate much of a mention in the brochures but they should and you don’t even have to get out of your car, perfect for todays broken down grey nomad…..

Better vantage point ?

Mini grand canyon?

The other side of the road

There are two accesses, one on either side of the canyon so we ended up doing both (26km ea). The second road had extensive water damage and huge erosion gullies running through the road. Apparently it was closed recently after some heavy rains destroyed the road. There are still several places where you need a 4WD to get through the deep wash outs. While at the Thomas Crater lookout we discovered a very strange monument to somebody, see the picture??????

?? two stubbies, one empty and a picture of a guy jumping in the air on a beach perched up on a rocky vantage point near the lookout ??

Shothole Canyon

That was about our day except for the nice teriyaki and sesame chicken with snow peas. More snorkelling tomorrow in some different places on the western side of the peninsular.