Thunder Down Under: Travel memories

By Vic Midyett

I sure miss the adventures Shirley & I had while travelling around Australia as “gray nomads”! For example, I took these two photos in 2014 near a town called Sawtell in the state of New South Wales (where Sydney is). The temperature was very nice that day, as you can tell from the next photo because Shirley wasn’t bundled up!

    Shirley was looking north along the beach (past me & our Nissan Patrol, which I also miss!). In the first photo, I was looking south along the same beach.

A dear, retired-nurse friend of ours, who now lives in Colorado, in the United States, recently asked me about Australia's beaches. In particular, she wondered why almost no people appear in my photographs. Well, I think it’s because we were usually at these beaches in the middle of the week (and in the middle of the day). The locals were at work! Also, the population of Sawtell is less than 3,500. And, anyway, Australia has over 37,118 miles of shoreline, with 10,685 beaches. As of January 1, 2018, there are only 24,772,247 people in Australia, which is less than 10% of the population of the US, which has almost the same land mass. That quite easily leaves a lot of Australian beaches empty!
    After explaining this to our friend, I got to reminiscing of other fabulous experiences we had back in the late ’80s, on our way to spend Christmas in Broome, in the northern part of Western Australia at the Cable Beach Club Resort & Spa. The trip from Perth to Broome was 1,458 miles, and it took us almost a week to get there, with three side adventures I will mention.

Feeding a dolphin

The first adventure was getting to pet wild dolphins at a small tourist town at Monkey Mia Beach.
    The friendly pod of wild bottlenose dolphins regularly swim to Monkey Mia’s shore to interact with humans up to three times a day. This tends to occur more frequently in the mornings, with feeding times ‪between 7:30 a.m. and 12 noon‬. On average, seven or eight dolphins come to visit, with up to 20 other dolphins visiting only occasionally throughout the year.

Talking about the dolphins

Dolphins alert

The second adventure was at Eighty Mile Beach (it is actually 140 miles long). It was fairly late in the afternoon when we got to the sign for the turn-off to the beach. We walked a ways on the beach without seeing another soul. It isn’t all pretty white sand, but it is certainly one heck of an experience. Big, small, and unusual shells were everywhere. Some were as big as a football. There were all manner of shapes and sizes. We stayed on the beach until the sun was setting, gazing for the last time at the uninterrupted sights in both directions, seeing nothing but beach.
    We left to return to a roadhouse we had seen on the other side of Hwy 1 from the turn-off to the beach. It was a little roadhouse that offered fuel, food, beer, and very simple accommodations, a bed and a bathroom in a tin shed. Six people lived at the roadhouse most of the time. One was an old man with a chiselled, kind-looking, extremely weather-beaten face, who came and went as he pleased. He was an absolute delight to visit with and we had a very memorable evening, although I am sorry that I can’t remember what we talked about!
    Yesterday [January 15, the day of writing this], a Category 1 or 2 cyclone crossed the coast at Eighty Mile Beach. We are getting rain from its system in Perth. I surmise there are a lot of shells to be collected there today! Incidentally, the tide in that region is generally 24 feet, which makes for a lot of beach to explore when the tide is out.

The third adventure was at Python Pool, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Folks had told us that, since Python Pool was on the way, we needed to go there. I didn’t know that reaching it required a two-hour, slow drive down a very rocky, unmaintained dirt road, through dry creek beds that really should have been undertaken in a four-wheel drive. But we made it there by the early afternoon.
    As soon as I stopped the car and opened the door, a wild bird landed on it, completely fearless. All we had to offer it was potato chips, from when we had stopped in a creek bed under the shade of Paperbark trees and eaten our sandwiches. The following images aren’t of the trees we saw, they’re just examples of Paperbark trees.

First example

Second example

    And Shirley did a double-canvas painting with a Paperbark tree several years ago to give to my sister; this detail is from the left canvas:

    After our bumpy drive on the “track/road,” we arrived at Python Pool, without another car or soul around. As we approached the pool, a Kangaroo scampered straight up the escarpment and out of site. It was a very hot and humid day, the water looked so cool and inviting, and no one else was around, so I stripped off all of my clothes and waded into the cool, clear water in total nakidity and ignorance. The bottom declined steeply with every tentative step, and too soon I found myself in water up to my chest. I stopped for a moment to debate whether or not to swim into deeper water….Suddenly I was barraged by little nibbles all over my body. Do you understand the gravity of my meaning when I say “all” over my body? Executing an action all at once, I levitated, turned, and flew across the top of the water like a cast stone! I found out later that Python Pool is full of Perch. Come on! They could have been Piranhas!

Python Pool (photo 1)

Python Pool (photo 2)

Python Pool (photo 3)

     Very, very nice memories....

Copyright © 2018 by Vic Midyett & Shirley Deane/Midyett