Exmouth for the Sea

I have just spent all morning surfing in excellent waves! I’m getting better at this surfing lark. The weather is nice an warm but not too warm, not many flies and mozzies about here either. The water is a bit nippy without a wetsuit but I don’t mind that I’m getting plenty of use out of it.
On the way here we stopped in Shark bay and caught some squid, (tasty fresh calamari) and saw the dolphins in Monkey Mia.
Since Lancelin the van has been overheating when we drive over 90kph so got it checked out in Carnarvon to find out the radiator was buggered and had to get a new one. Carnarvaon is not the nicest place to hang around so we were very glad to get out of there after 5 days and spent $680 on the van.
We spent a night at the blowholes which was very busy as the aussie version Christmas holidays has just finished now. The next day we drove up a very sandy rough road to Gnarraloo and had a nice surf and great snorkel there.
Coral bay next and I was lucky enough to have enough wind for a windsurf. It was great as its really shallow for about 2 km to the reef and I could see loads through the lovely clear water.
These pics are from the first day in Cape Range national park when it was crazy windy.
I got to use my 4.2 North Ice for the first time here and I was really overpowered on it. It’s a really nice sail and was great when the wind dropped a bit later. I spent some time practising different gybes and interesting ways of falling in.
There is great snorkelling around here and some interesting walks that were too hot to do last time I was here.
I’m going to have lunch and then see if I can spear a fish for dinner. Should be good surf tomorrow. Take it easy.

Warm again!

We are in Geraldton now and it’s a lovely sunny warm day and the swell looks like its picking up. I’ve just got a haircut and feelin good. Yesterday I shot a fish and cooked a big fish curry for dinner, it was only spoiled slightly by someone taking my snorkel and fin bag and my fillet knife from the beach while I was out.

Lancelin was great with good surf and a bit of windsurfing also. Some more friends came up for a day also and
we all got in the water, good times. The girls rented a surfboard and enjoyed themselves, we had 3 days of good surf till we moved on.
I’ve been getting used to my surfboard now but on the last day I left it for sale in the surfshop and bought another. It’s the same length 7ft but wider in the tail and thinner with more rocker in the nose. The main thing is that it has removable fins so it fits under the bed with my windsurf kit. I had a surf on it and it’s a nice board.

The water is not warm here in the winter so I bought a wetsuit in Perth. It’s a West 3x2, a good suit and from Western Australia. I’ve used it quite a bit in the last week and it was definitely worth it.

We tried some sandboarding also with the hope it would be similar to snowboarding. I wasn’t too impressed by it as it was hard to go fast and only then in a straight line. No carving turns down the sand dunes!

We are gonna stay a few days here as Tarvi, an Estonian guy travelling with us has a lobster poisoning from his time working on a crayfish boat and has to stay in hospital for a short time until they fix him.

Travelling again! Hurray!

Im back on the road again with Herbert and he is looking good. I have changed the Feng Shui interior design with the bed at the back and cooking at the front. The big advantage is that the windsurfing board is now under the bed giving much needed headroom!
The work in Frankland River on the olive farm was alright, mainly consisting of driving a machine that shakes the trees for the olives to come off and beating the ones that don’t come off so easily with a big stick. The machine constantly broke down so plenty of time was spent fixing it. As its winter here now the mornings and nights were pretty cold, down to -3 one night. I was working 11 hour days 7 days a week most of the time and it was tough. We had to take 2 days off after 14 days in a row and I escaped to Albany to stay at some nice beaches and see the sea.

Albany is a nice town, not too big and quite a chilled out atmosphere. I imagine it’s a lot busier during the summer. I also visited a really nice little town called Denmark, quite an arty little place.

I have been working with Estonians on the olive farm, learning a few words and now have an Estonian travelling companion which means I need the more space that comes with the new layout of the van.

On the way back to Perth we called in to Will my mate form Yorkshire at the dairy farm he is working at, where he cooked spearfishing.us a dinner and I gave him a hand moving the bull. He has a nice place there with mandarin, orange and lemon trees and even a pet kangaroo!

Windsurfing!! On a whim I decided to have a look at Safety Bay and it was windy! It was very good to get on the water again even though it was a bit cold. It was ok at first because the sun was out but the wind dropped and it started to rain so I had to come in. Definitely need a wetsuit in the winter here.

Now I’m heading north again, first stop Lancelin for some surfing and spearfishing....