Vena's Travels

Vena's Travels

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This is a blog for friends and family to keep up with my travels if they feel like it. Most of you will feature in it at some point. Enjoy the journey.

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Helicopter flights are very windy - poor Susans mobile phone lanyard was a tangled mess.

May 3

T

Gary our resident geologist

Cathedral Cave

Bigge Island

Leonie, Raffles Wife who was busy approaching us at dinner tables to organise a karoke night.

Ladbroke because he loves a branded running shirt.

Bogans brothers from Adelaide - who refer to me as level 6 with a bathroom.

Raffles to the right!

May 4

Breakfast is a buffet which is ok - coffee is mixed, Julie regularly sends hers back.

Today we visited Prince Frederick Harbour. King and Hunter explored Prince Frederick Harbour and the Hunter River. King named the river after his surgeon, Hunter. Its was definitely the trend to name this landscape after the explorers or their helpers. We visit Porosus Creek which is named so as Porousus is the genus term for Crocodile. We went in the Explorers then shifted into the Zodiacs for a closer look.. It didn't take long, and we came across a small salty croc submerged in the water. They love the mangroves and the plentiful schools of fish. This was the only salty we saw but he/she was not really worried about us although you could see his eyes watching us all the time. They say that the most dangerous crocodiles are the ones you cannot see.

Mudskippers were there in their hundreds.

The Trusty Explorer - we are usually warned whether there is a wet landing, so we wear the right shoes

In the afternoon we were boated out to Naturalist Beach where island where we had beach drinks and canapes. As we headed in on the Explorer in our best island resort wear and the staff were lined up on the beach waiting with welcome drinks it felt very White Lotus; i can only imagine what they were saying. Mani is the Maitre Dei and he makes these events very stylish with his French accent and knowledge of wine.

Peter, like a number of passengers needed a hand to get out of his chair

May 5

Today we go to Careening Bay where Phillip Parker King was the first to accurately chart the Kimberley Coast, and in 1820 he repaired his ship HMS mermaid in this bay. His men recorded the event by carving a Boab tree, which can still be clearly read.

Dad and Susan running a little late to get the Explorer.

Hugging a Boab tree brings good luck.

Mermaid Boab Tree.

Mike - the expeditions Archaeologist

Mula Mula flower

Love nest - Male bower birds build these nests to impress and entice the female.

Crocodile tracks

May 6

Today we went to (Yohab) Montgomery Reef which the viewing of is heavily tide dependent. To see it properly it has to be exposed but not too much as it can be difficult to navigate the boat. We saw lots of turtles sticking their heads out of the water, hard to photograph as they tend to bob back into the water too quickly. The reef is not limestone but rather part of the Kimberly (sandstone) so it has a very different look and feel to what we see on the east coast - brown, not so colorful but rich with marine life, turtles, sharks (mostly black tips). Again the reef was named after a surgeon (Montgomery) who saved the captain from bleeding to death. There are lots of humpback whales here later in the year.

Dad attends all the nighttime docos on level 6 but has a tendency to nod off straight away and wake up just as the credits roll up. I'm not sure how he would go on an exam either.

Classic Kimberly Red (sandstone)

May 7

Today we have stopped in Talbot Bay (Ganbadba) and we did one of the most spectacular cruises so far up Cyclone Creek. The rock formations got Gary particular excited as the coast line has lots of dramatic folding, twisting and buckling rock.

The afternoon involved one of the highlights of the cruise - the Horizontal falls. These are narrow gaps formed in the sandstone that have water forced through them due to the intense tides in the area. A Gary perspective - "There are two gaps in the McLarty Range which cut through the Pentecost Sandstone - these sandstones are the most common rocks of Talbot Bay. The are likely to have formed part of a creek cut through a joint or a fault line, eroding its way through softer siltstone, as it flowed from higher part of the range. Once the gap had widened sufficiently the tides would have forced water into the basins (flooded valleys) behind the gaps.

The Horizontal falls is due to be handed back to the local mob in the next couple of years. It will simply mean that you can't do a zodiac trip through the narrow gap we went thru. There have been a number of deaths of people trying to race through the narrow gap at the wrong time and going head on into the rocks which are very unforgiving.

A fashion parade was also held selling the ships merch. Dad is in search of a shirt (with pockets of course). We also had a BBQ dinner on the vista (level 7).

Horizontal Falls - bogans from Tbar and Ninguin!

Cyclone Creek

Ramini Kite

Gary's description of this rock formation - "its just like Vienetta ice-cream"

Buffet dinner on vista - level 7

Our favourite waitress Sabrina in the fashion parade.

May 8

Its my birthday today; went to the gym first then greeted Julie with a big birthday huggie which she understandably rejected until I had a shower. We went for a rough but lovely cruise on the Explorer around the Lacepede islands which have a fascinating history of contested ownership. In the mid-19th century, American guano miners briefly claimed the islands under the U.S. Guano Islands Act, exploiting the rich phosphate deposits before British control was reasserted. Today, the islands are an important nature reserve, home to one of Australia’s largest breeding colonies of brown boobies and other seabirds, as well as nesting green turtles.

Curious boobies followed our boat everywhere

Lacepedes

Dawn telling her life story - shes been around the world twice and managed many fast lavish boats.

May 9

Arrive in Broome and its the end of the expedition. We say our goodbyes to the Coral Geographer and Susan and Peter who are heading off the Perth for four days. We are staying in the Moonlight suites near the Mangrove hotel where the best spot for viewing the stairway to the moon happens - a very pretty spot. After farewelling Peter and Susan when then ran into them in town getting a "good" coffee. It was nice to see Julie didn't have to send this coffee back. Dad, Julie and I then did an afternoon walking tour around Broome run by a local couple. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Broome became the centre of the world’s mother-of-pearl industry, attracting workers from Japan, China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. At its peak, Broome supplied around 80% of the world’s mother-of-pearl, which was prized for buttons, buckles, and decorative items. Remnants of this history are visible in the Shiba Lane, Chinatown, and the pearl museum which we will probably visit in the next couple of days.

Out and About in Broome!

Japanese part of town

Outdoor Cinema

Julie finds wild caught barra!

Traditional Broome house with low cost aircon!

May 10 - Broome

Went for a run to the jetty this morning (before the heat of the day) and then the Broome Markets in the morning. Nice mix of indigenous art, crafts etc. As recommended from the cruise i got a Boab carving from a local aboriginal guy TJ. I asked for a Wanjana (spirit) and lily.

My commissioned Boab being carved.

Think I may have developed a Boab obsession!

May 11 - Broome

Today we moved to the Oaks cable beach- its bit dodgey, Julie had a cockroach on her pillow and Dad couldn't open his door because a very ugly brown mat was blocking it. We called in housekeeping and Julie ordered them to fix the situation which took quite some time. Its also Mothers day today (my first without the kiddies). We celebrated with seafood feast followed by dinner where we met some cruising buddies (Vivienne and Sara from Ozharvest) at Matsos for dinner.

May 12 - Broome

This morning, I got up early to go for a walk/jog along the famous Cable Beach. Its 22kms long and so wide at low tide. The water is like a pond and has very few waves although the locals say you get surf at high tide - yet to see that. After my jog I decided to have a swim as it's been torture not being able to swim at these beautiful beaches. So stripped down to my underwear (decided not to go to the nudist beach that is apparently here) and went in. The water was a little murky near the shoreline, I wasnt in for long before I saw a big brown shape moving through in the water ...luckily it turned out to be a large manta ray not a huge salty as I first thought. It gave me quite the fright!

Met Julie and Dad at the very cool Zookeeper Cafe for brekky before we took our "get a guide" helicopter trip to Willie Creek. Our helicopter pilot Abbey looked about 17 and picked us up in a little old Toyota something - Julie wondered whether I got the tour through the dodgy old Oaks. Abbey was good, Dad noted she walked very confidently across the airstrip to the Helicopter which put him at ease especially because the helicopter was about half the size of the one we took to Mitchel Falls on the cruise. The flight was spectacular with the turquoise blue water, red cliffs and all the blacky brown spolges of the Manta rays in the water - no sharks or crocs though. Willy Creek Pearl farm was quite an education - basically pearls come from the gonads (sexual organs) of large oysters. They take two years to produce a pearl and the process of producing cultured pearls starts in a laboratory type setting where a man-made core is placed inside the oyster for it to produce a pearl around the core. Dad has kindly offered to buy both Julie and I pearls as a momento of the trip, but there wasn't anything we particularly liked (as yet anyway)- I still think its weird they come from "gonads". I did get to model some pearls and as the picture showed they were a complete mismatch with me and my attire. My favorites were the Keisi pearls, name the "untamed" collection" because they are from the oysters that simply reject the core that is used to make the perfectly round pearl. Instead, you get a much more rustic, irregular look of a pearl that is essentially spat out and in my opinion more interesting than the perfectly round ones.

I was asked to model these pearls...can't say the backpack and cap really matched; or me in pearls generally.

May 13 - Broome

Today was a pretty chilled day. Highlight was the sunset on Cable beach. Poppy and Julie got massages at the Bali Hi Resort which they both enjoyed. Julie and Dad went into town for a final shop and Julie came back with a beautiful "golden" pearl necklace, (taken from a particular species of keisi pearls local to the area). The colours went well with her gold dresses and perfectly with the sunset.

May 14 - Broome

Today was stairway to the moon day, the big day we'd decided to hang around Broome for as you can only see it at full moon. I decided to get a Pedi in the morning at the same place Julie and dad had a massage. It was much needed both for foot appeal and moisturizing parched legs. For the rest of the day we hung out around Cable beach and town.

The stair way to the moon - so the stairway to the moon is a phenoma that happens when there is a full moon, and the light of the moon hits the tidal pools and reflects the light in such a way that a beautiful stairway of light forms all the way up to the moon. Some Broome residents apparently say that it can only been seen from Broome but there are other parts of the world it exists. There are a few viewpoints of in town - town beach, mangrove hotel and apparently the golf course. We decided on town beach and headed down about 530 with the actual stairway to start at 630. It was great atmosphere with just the usual number of French and Spanish tourists setting up for the view. We got some wine and cheese from the local store, Julie was pleased to be asked for ID not sure if its and age or an identity thing though. So i had googled how to photograph the stair way to the moon. I had googled the camera settings for gettting a sharp picture and the right lighting. However, but it soon became apparent that my camera was not working properly(nothing to do with the operator!) Basically my digital fucking camera would not allow me to go manaul, an yes if i had done a practice run the night before i might have learnt this, failure! Dad had the same problem but doesnt think its as bad as i do. So below my pic vs a proper photograhers If you go automatic the moon comes out as a blob.

May 15

Today we left Broome and said goodbye to Dad and Julie at Perth airport. It was sad to see them rushing off to get their flight home - actually a very rushed goodbye as Dad took a while in the toilet, a little nerve racking as the boarding calls for their flight had already started. Anyway, they made it and all was good. I headed off to meet my mate Lanye in Perth to start our whale shark adventure. Lanye had booked all the accommodation and car for us to have just over 24 hours in Perth. We were staying at Scarborough, about 20 minutes west from the CBD. It's my first time in Perth and whilst id heard the beaches were lovely, they really were absolutely stunning. Once Lanye arrived, we headed off for a walk and brief swim at the beach for me. I got quite dumped and a little spooked, as we all know wa is very sharky and it was dusk. We had a far bit to catch up on as I have been away for almost 3 weeks so we headed off to La Capannina restaurant across the road...had a great meal of octopus and fish.

May 16

Today was my only full day in Perth before we headed off to Exmouth. Lanye was driver as she had been to Perth a number of times. We started with a walk in the morning along the beach track that follows the road. The highlight after a good coffee was a swim at Hammershams pool which is a beautifully, protected beach cove with reef. Locals were snorkelling or doing their daily swim, the idea of having a spot this close to the city is just incredible. I can see why people love the place. Sydney and Perth are now definitly my pick for best city beaches in Australia.

May 17

Arrive Exmouth

May 18

Whale Sharks

May 19

Ningaloo dive

May 20

May 21

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