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  • Pete and Lou

Aus wandering

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    Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Esperance and Cape le Grand NP

    October 28, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    As we recovered from our big walk, we made our way to the town with possibly the Australian best beaches in the country! Esperance is alright as a town but it has pretty stunning beaches itself. It was a bit windy at time, but by the time we got to Cape le Grand NP which is about an hour out of Esperance (our last destination before the big drive home!), it started to settle.

    On our second day in the national park we had the most beautiful day of weather and walked around the headland from Lucky Bay toward little Hellfire Bay. This tiny beach is possibly the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. Crystal clear water, not a speck of rubbish or human interference and white sand❤️ what a way to finish the trip. The first five photos are from Esperance, and second five are from Cape le Grand NP    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Stirling Ridge Walk

    October 24, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    We had been eyeing off this hike as we were coming down the WA coastline as we’d heard such epic things about the epic Stirling Range. And yet we were also feeling cautious about attempting it, as everywhere you read about it, it gets mentioned as being an incredibly challenging hike.
    Over 1600m of elevation gain, it can be a tricky track to follow as it disappears and has many deceiving phantom tracks, there is also no water on the hike so you have to carry all of your water with you, and then hectic winds and poor weather are also a high probability.
    We decided to give it a go and see how we went (Pete was very keen, I was more concerned 😅).

    It was only about 25km in total length but we felt every one of them over the two days it took us to complete it.
    Especially the first day as we walked up the 600m to get onto the ridge, and then it was a pretty constant incline and decline after that.
    Just after we started, a rain began drizzling so we got pretty soaked walking through the thick bush. Then the wind picked up as we got up the top and it got cold. Thankfully the views as we go were up high we’re phenomenal! And the wildflowers were in full bloom so the spectacle of the views were even more stunning. We walked for about 8 hours on the first day and got to camp pretty exhausted by 3pm.

    Thankfully on the second day, the weather was near perfect, clear skies, no rain and minimal wind. We only met one other group as we traversed over the ridge, then as we came up to Bluff knoll we saw all the day walkers coming up for the view from that iconic peak. We made it back to the car by the early afternoon pretty exhausted but very happy to have finished with no major dramas! All in all, the hike was one of the most challenging and walks we’ve done but it was worth it for the experience and epic vistas from the top 😍 my legs took a few days to forgive me though…
    The first photo shows the ridge from the side as we are starting to make the initial ascent toward Ellen Peak, then the other photos show various perspectives from up on the ridge, then the last photo is of Pete looking out from Bluff Knoll.    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Denmark pt 2.

    October 17, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    Our second WWOOFing stint was also in Denmark with another greenie and pillar of community projects. He was an older fella who had his fingers in pretty much every pie of regeneration and conservation activity in Denmark 😆 we learned a lot from Basil, he told is a lot about the native flora for the area and we helped him on a variety of projects like the community garden, painting the structures on a revegetation site and helping on a communal creative area. He also had a very cute sausage dog Gigi😍
    Denmark as a town has such a vibrant collective of of artists and groups dedicated to the environment and building positive community networks. I fell in love with this town, if only it was on the East coast! ❤️    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Denmark pt 1.

    October 10, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C

    Our first week of WWOOFing in Denmark was with the most beautiful, welcoming and inspiring older couple on their property that was part of a commune. Both of whom had a longstanding commitment to environmental causes and careers. We such a lovely connection with these guys, and the most beautiful week in their stunning mudbrick home, making delicious meals (Pete learned how to handmake delicious pasta!) and helping them with their veggie gardens and orchards.Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Point D'Entrecasteaux/ Walpole

    October 8, 2023 in Australia ⋅ 🌬 18 °C

    More beautiful coastline and forests as we make our way east. We learned that the Walpole region was a place of significant conservation effort in order to protect its precious woodlands from being logged.

    Some of our WWOOFer hosts we stayed with in Denmark told us they were protesters there back in the 70s! As of next year, WA will cease all old growth logging.    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Gloucester/Mount Frankland National Park

    October 7, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    After exploring Margaret River and Cape Leewin, we drove east to Gloucester National Park. Sadly the big tree that you can climb was closed but we spent all day walking around the National parks in the area. The wildflowers are in bloom and we had some beautiful weather so it was such a blissful day soaking up the amazing green spaces everywhere.Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Margaret River

    October 6, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    Our time here was shorter than we would’ve liked due to needing to be heading south soon to start our next WWOOFing stint. But I could still easily see why people rave about this region, beautiful farms, beaches and epic surf as well the stunning vegetation everywhere. Keen to come back!Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Meelup Beach

    October 5, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    As we’re making our way down the SW WA coastline we are getting inundated with wildflowers and coastlines. We’re also starting to get into the gigantic Karri Forests, a stunning trademark of this region. We were so stoked to be able to see proper trees and vegetation after so much of the arid WA landscape up north! This area has so much to offer for natural beauty, it’s been such a great to soak it up with loads of bushwalking and swims.Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Perth

    September 29, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    We made it to Perth! It had a gorgeous botanic gardens in full Spring bloom, an incredible Ancient Egypt show at the museum and we had a great time exploring a big city again (in dress-ups!). And best of all, Pete got to meet up with his good mate Aaron from way back.Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Jurien Bay/ The Pinnacles

    September 27, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    On our way we stopped in at the lovely Jurien Bay for a swim then visited the Pinnacles in Nambung NP. These odd limestone formations jutt out of the neighbouring desert in such an eery and beautiful way!Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler
    1

    Kalbarri

    September 24, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    We then headed south to Kalbarri NP, a patch of landscape that apparently holds some of the worlds oldest rock. In the Murchison river there is some rock dated to around 1500 million years old! Very very old and very very pretty.
    We loved camping here for a couple nights and meeting some really lovely climbers and hikers while we explored the areas amazing bushwalks and rocks climbing crags. I’d hurt my hand a few days earlier so couldn’t climb but Pete had his first time back climbing on rock after a 5 month break as we hadn’t found any decent crags in our time in Northern NT and WA.
    He nailed some tough climbs which was impressive given how long it had been!

    The only downside was the flies. They were unbearable at points, and it made our outdoor living and cooking routines pretty uncomfortable 😆    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Exmouth Navy Pier Dive

    September 24, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    We decided to finish off our time in Ningaloo by doing the world class Navy Pier Dive in Exmouth. This navy pier has minimal boat activity and no fishing is allowed so the sea life was out of this world!
    We saw the densest and most diverse array of aquatic creatures in this dive. About 4 grey nurse sharks, multiple gropers including an enormous 2.5m long old boy, lion fish, wobegong sharks, moray eels, octopus, different colourful nudibranchs, enormous schools of barracuda and cod and loads of other fish, some incredible macro life too. And the sea life were all so relaxed about having us down there, it was like floating in another world!

    We were also lucky enough to dive with a lovely lady who was an underwater photographer and was kind enough to let us use her photos of the trip, seeing as we didn’t have any. Her Instagram is @kerryanneborgula and she has a video posted of on there with more of the photos from the dive. We’re pretty sure the two divers in one of the photos is Pete and I.

    We were super psyched to know there’s still areas in the ocean with such thriving sea life, we can only hope it survives in the future❤️    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Ningaloo coast/Cape Range National Park

    September 14, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    Ningaloo reef and Cape Range NP both lived up to their reputation for providing access to some amazing snorkelling. Sadly Pete’s GoPro is so old it wasn’t worth using underwater so we didn’t have any photos or footage of our time in the water, but we spent 8 days exploring all up and down the coast line and had a gorgeous time soaking up all the sea life and getting to swim with all kinds of fish, so many turtles, octopus and reef sharks. We also got to explore the Shothole canyon and Yardie Creek Gorge (photos 2 & 4). We also got to see the sobering remains of the Whale processing plant that had been abandoned and the facility left to rust. Photo 5 shows me standing next to one of the vats they used for cooking down the whale oil. There was also a gorgeous family of Osprey that were nested about 100m from our camp!Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Karijini National Park

    September 5, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    After heading south from Broome we moved into the ancient, dry landscape of the Pilbara. We drove along 80 mile Beach, then into the astoundingly ugly and industrial town of Port Hedland, and after a few more hours we made it to the awesome free camp outside of Karinjini. This National park is traditionally owned by Banyjima, Innawonga and Kurrama people and is an absolute oasis in what seems like an incredibly harsh and dry environment.

    From here we then spent 3 days exploring the parks incredible gorges, hiking up Mt Bruce (2nd tallest mountain in WA) and admiring the interesting formations caused by the many many layers of iron slab, that then get warped and curled through tectonic plate movements. Apparently the rocks here are over 2.5 billion years old - mind blowing    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Broome

    August 24, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    We finally made it to the ocean and to Broome! The pearly, aqua waters of Cable beach (photo 1) were such a sight for our dusty eyes after so much inland driving. The thrill of being able to swim in the ocean croc-free after the last 4 months was aided by the fact that the water was deliciously cool and refreshing.

    We did a week’s WWOOFing on a mango farm just out of town (photo 3), which sadly wasn’t in fruiting season but we were able to meet some other travellers and have a base to explore Broome from. It was an absolute treat to catch up with our friends Skye and Cam for the few days they were in town also, we enjoyed some hilarious entertainment at an AC/DC tribute gig that we went to one night 😆⚡️

    After we finished that, we then headed up to the amazing free camps above Broome on the Dampier Peninsula for a few nights. It was hot but we were rewarded with some beautiful sunsets. Then we came back to Broome to see the Staircase to the moon (photo 6), as well as some boat plane wrecks that were shot down by the Japanese in WWII (photo 7), and dinosaur footprints (photo 8)!

    All in all, such a great time in a town that I hadn’t really known much about before this trip. And now can understand why people love it so much.    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Gibb River Road

    August 17, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    Our Gibb River Road experience was a week and a bit long drive along the famous corrugated road that is known for its numerous beautiful gorges and waterholes. We started at a lagoon famous for its birdlife as seen in the video at the end with the sweet little Jacanas that walk on the lilies.
    Some of our favourite spots were Emma Gorge (photo 1), the walk to El Questro (2), the lakeside camp at Pentecost river -even though we saw a huge croc right up close! (3), Manning Gorge (4), Adcock Gorge (5), Bell Gorge (6), Tunnel Creek (7), Galvan’s Gorge (6), and then also just driving along the ruggard terrain of the Kimberley (6 & 7).

    It was hot and touristy but very epic with lots of active bushwalking and cooling-off swims which we love 💛    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Purnululu (Bungle Bungles)

    August 13, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    Next on the list was the famous Purnululu National Park, south of Kununurra. We headed down the Fitzroy, and then the 1.5 hours of dirt road in pretty appalling condition (it was only 50km a or so of dirt but took us that long!) to get to the Bungles. This National Park has its reputation for a reason, it is really spectacular!
    We got into the park just before dark so headed up to the northern section to see Echidna Chasm and the incredible sunset light up the rock.
    The next day we headed south to the start the 2 night bushwalk up into the gorge system of Piccaninny Creek and the 5 Fingers Gorges. The ‘beehive’-like rock dome structures with their organic, flowing outlines that went on for kilometres and were so pleasing to the eye. It looked like a ginormous pottery sculpture. As we walked up further into the gorge system, the rock turned into a escarpment walls 200m high on either side. We only saw 2 other people in the three days we were hiking in there. Camping in there felt incredibly surreal, like we were in an Indiana Jones movie😆 Despite it being really hot and walking on lots of sand at points, this was one of our favourite experiences on the whole trip!    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Keep River National Park

    August 12, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 32 °C

    After Garma finished up, we did some big days in the car driving from East Arnhemland through to the NT/WA border, where we start to see the odd-looking Boab trees! Before crossing over, we popped into Keep River National park which is 3km before the border. The Mirriwoong and Gajirrabeng people are the traditional custodians of this place. This gorgeous little national park doesn’t get nearly the same traffic as the famous others close by but it had very similar rock formations to Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles) as it was created in the same geological formation. We got back into life on the road again, post-Garma, with some lovely bushwalks through this area at sunset.Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Garma

    July 29, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    Wow, what an experience Garma was.
    Garma is one of Australia’s biggest and most publicised Indigenous event. Over 2000 people come to the site in East Arnhem Land for 4 days of workshops, music, dance, presentations and learning about Yolgnu culture and traditions.
    We arrived onsite at the beautiful festival site near Nhulunbuy with 100 fellow vollies 5 days before the festival started. We were then split up into different squads and put on a variety of jobs like erecting tents, helping putting up lighting, landscaping, cleaning over 1000 chairs and the like. Within our squads we got to know our teams really well and formed some incredible friendships, there is certain type of bonding and comradery that’s comes from sharing full days of work in the hot sun doing repetitive and, at times, menial work. As well as sharing all our mealtimes together, there was so much laughter and quality conversation - it very much filled our cups to the brim!

    Then the festival started and we swapped into our festival roles, I was on the info desk and Pete was on Rapid Response team (I.e. fixing all the stuff that gets broken or needs attending to). Outside our working hours, we saw lots of incredible traditional dancing, as well great music by William Barton, Kee’ahn, King Stingray and more and amazing cultural discussions and talks. It was so beautiful to see that despite the many challenges that the community faces, Yolgnu culture is very strong and they love to share it with the outside world.
    It was then all over in a whirlwind and everyone was heading home after 12 days of learning, companionship, cultural immersion and good, wholesome labour 😁 it was such an awesome awesome experience, we couldn’t recommend the volunteering at Garma highly enough!
    (I was enjoying myself so much that I often forgot to take photos, so some of these are from fellow vollies)    Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Jatbula trail

    July 22, 2023 in Australia ⋅ 🌬 29 °C

    This hike turned out to be one of our favourite activities we had done in NT. Only 62km, which was completed over 5 days, on mostly flat ground, which housed the most beautiful waterfalls, rivers and natural pools at each campsite. Such a treat. It was also incredibly rewarding from all the beautiful fellow hikers we got to know over the course of the walk, I’ve never made such great bonds from a bushwalk before so it made the hike all the more special. This walk started as a trail for the Jawyon people, then kindly opened up to travellers as the local people wanted to share this beautiful country with the rest of Australia. There were a few rock art sites along the walk which made it extra special.Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Katherine Gorge

    July 21, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    After I got back from a short trip to Sydney for a family event, whilst Pete stayed back at the butterfly farm and kept WWOOFing, we then headed south for our next adventure.

    Before we started our 5 day hike through Nitmiluk National park, we decided to do a half day kayak down Katherine Gorge. Such stunning scenery, we would’ve loved to have explored more up the gorge system but didn’t have time for more. It was so great to view the gorge from the waterside as usually we are scuttling around the cliff edges!Read more

  • Pete and LouAus wanderingTraveler

    Butterfly farm at Batchelor

    July 7, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 34 °C

    Next on the agenda is some WWOOFing at Batchelor Butterfly farm which also had bunnies, pigs, poultry, donkeys and sheep. This quirky place was such a gorgeous place for Pete and I to change our fast-paced trekking and tourist movements for some farm work and getting to know some quirky locals. We had a lovely time here helping feed animals and working in the kitchen. The owner was the most loveable madman 😆🌈 we both had a ball here.Read more

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