Last Bit of the Trip

Yardie Creek is the furthest you can get in Cape Range NP on a proper road, and it's a fair sized water flow, at least for the half a mile or so it goes into the mountains. We got to take a safari boat up into the canyon, which you can see in the distance here:


All those steep rock walls are inhabited by a variety of nesting birds and black-footed rock wallabies, which were a little hard to spot (made more difficult by the fact that an eagle was circling overhead when we first arrived) but very cool when you found them.



After an hour or so maneuvering the creek, it was time to head back towards Exmouth. Our guide kept jabbering on about how we would for sure see an echidna on the side of the road somewhere. We never did, which bummed me out a little, but we did get to be privy to a very entertaining osprey family (it was basically a young adult osprey throwing a fit over not getting food from his parents anymore), as well as this guy:


Our guide had to slam on the brakes as this perentie, Australia's biggest lizard (and this guy was a whopper, probably around 6 feet long) crossed the road right in front of us, pretty much oblivious to the car (he's at the top of his food chain, what does he care about cars?). Very cool to see a wild reptile that big. May have been my favorite thing all trip.

We wrapped things up with afternoon tea at Vlamingh Head Lighthouse, where we not only got a fantastic view of the sunset but also got a fantastic vantage point to watch dozens of whales passing by the Exmouth peninsula, very obvious from their breaching and spouting. It was quite cool and a good way to cap off the best day of our whole trip.



When we finally got back to Exmouth it was past 6 PM and nearly dark, but we had to ground to cover so we drove about 3 hours south before pulling over for the night at a roadside rest stop. With no other cars on the road, we did get a chance to see some incredible stars (it was so dark you could see the whole Milky Way splashed across the sky). Made us all wish we knew some constellations, but very, very pretty nonetheless. Tried taking a couple pictures on time-lapse exposure, but I need a much fancier camera to be able to pull that off. The next morning we got up early, started driving, and didn't really stop except for gas until we got back to Currie - in time for Saturday dinner, about 11 hours total driving. After all that, Sunday was truly a day of rest and recuperation; other than cleaning the car up a bit I don't think any of us got anything productive done.

All in all, an excellent trip and one I will always remember.