Lancelin 8-11th January 2015

11th January 2015

After a quick breakfast, finishing off what we had left and vacating the accommodation, we headed back to the beach.

Lancelin Beach

We went for a walk along the beach to the Lancelin Jetty to find a few fishermen and one boat in particular unloading its catch, which initially looked like a load of crabs but on closer inspection were probably large orange fish heads. They also had crates of gutted fish. 

Lancelin Jetty

Looking back at the beach from the jetty one could see rows of 4WD cars and a couple of tractors, all with boat trailers lined up at the top of the beach.  

4WD & trailers

We walked back along the beach past the place where we had parked the car and to the closest point that we could observe Phil and Becks trying their luck at paddling the SUPs onto the reef to catch a few waves.  They had seen dolphins under their boards at certain points.

Heading home

We all headed back to the trees and grass near the cars and took some lunch. By this time most of Phil and Becks’ friends had turned up from Perth with their young children. The wind got up a bit and most got onto the water with their windsurfers. The wind was relatively light so not overly spectacular although a few kite surfers were enjoying the lighter winds. 

Some of the guys went off to take their 4WD cars onto the inland sand dunes. We were loaded up with our luggage and the windsurfing gear so declined the offer to join them.

Eventually we had to make our way back to North Fremantle to check into some new accommodation so left around 5:30pm, Phil and Becks joined everyone else at the Tavern for a meal. The route back along the Indian Ocean Drive was rerouted due to the fire so we had to head to the coast road, a slower route 71 (Marmion Drive). 

After checking in, unpacking and taking a shower, we headed out across the Swan River bridge to a restaurant on the opposite bank. Unfortunately road works seriously limited our access so we drove into Cottesloe only to find all the restaurants just having finished cooking meals. The last restaurant took pity on us and offered two apples, two oranges and two eggs all for free. So the plan was to head back and have a cooked egg. However on our way back Sterling Highway we spotted  a Red Rooster, a take-away restaurant so we purchased a couple of meals and headed back to the apartment saving the eggs for breakfast. 


10th January 2015: Lancelin

Phil and Becks left soon after breakfast (a late one at that) and headed off to the beach. Mike tried to sort out his access to Telstra data on his mobile. After a frustrating session with Telstra we headed north in the direction of Cervantes and in particular the Pinnacles Desert Discovery Centre.

The terrain going north consists of gorse like structures but also bonsai looking trees from a couple of feet to no more than five. Probably a result of the strong winds experienced in this area.

Bonsai tree?

The Pinnacles Desert is a region similar to the Petrified Forest, which we had seen near Port Fairy but not a region immediately on the coast but a few kilometres in land. 

Pathfinder

However, in this case the limestone spires were not as cylindrical as near Port Fairy yet there were thousands of them extending over a large area. We took a 4 km drive around part of the site.

Pinnacle Desert

From the Pinnacles Desert we drove a little further north to Cervantes for some light refreshment, and a quick drive onto the beach to see the coastline, and then headed back out of the town a couple of kilometres to Lake Thetis. This is an exceedingly salty lake due to the rapid evaporation of water and only one of five sites in Western Australia that feature stromatolites.  These are the oldest and simplest living organism on Earth and date back 3.5 billion years. Stromatolites are rock like structures built by microbes (single-celled cyanobacteria, also known as blue-algae).  The very salty conditions inhibit the existence of predators allowing the microbes to flourish but they grow at a very slow rate of a fraction of a millimetre per year.

Stromatolites

We drove back to Lancelin getting back around 5:30 to find Phil and Becks out on the paddle boards paddling in the vicinity of dolphins (two adults and one young) and a couple sting rays.

In the evening we headed back to the Endeavour Tavern for dinner and met up with a couple of friends of Phil and Becks, who had come up for the weekend. A fire had sprung up north east of Perth and we could see the smoke on the horizon even though we were probably 80km or more further north. The smoke killed the sunset. 


9th January 2015

The day started with a cooked breakfast, by far not the first but it promised to be an active day so a little more energy would be useful.

We headed off to the beach but the wind hadn’t quite got up. Becks started the day off with a paddle down the coast, followed by a couple of dolphins. 

Becks goes early morning SUP

Dolphins follow Becks

Becks got into teaching mode and took Sheila out for a spin. She was doing fine until a gust of wind blew her off the board, well that was her excuse.

Sheila's training session

The rest of the day turned into a blasting session out to the reefs, although at one point Mike managed to put his harness hook through Beck’s sail, not the best of moments.

Phil performimg a one-handed lay-down gybe!

A varied choice of food in the Endeavour Tavern with a selection of drinks, a great live group and a magnificent sunset finished the day off in style.

Lancelin Sunset

8th January 2015: Margaret River to Lancelin

We took breakfast early and packed, loaded up the car with bags, windsurfer, sails, masts and Margaret River wine and headed north.

Margaret River to Lancelin

The plan was to visit Yallingup and Dunsborough on the way north to Cottesloe (Perth) and then drive onto Lancelin. 

In Yallingup there were quite a few surfers out catching the waves and we sat and had a coffee from a mobile café while watching the action. 

Surf action at Yallingup

In Dunsborough we realised that the engine was over heating and let it cool down while tracking down some coolant from a local garage. The radiator needed 3 litres adding to fill it up to the 11 litre capacity. This solved the problem for the rest of the journey but clearly needs monitoring in case there is a leak. After sorting out the car we took a look at the beach in Dunsborough, which extends for miles and has some expensive looking properties along the shore.  This is reported to be the Cottesloe of the south attracting a fair amount of money as a holiday resort.

Arriving in North Fremantle we stopped off to see Nick, whose house we had borrowed in North Fremantle.  We dropped off the house key and then drove onto see Phil who was working at home in the afternoon. We had a relatively quick cup of tea and then headed north to Lancelin to search out our accommodation for the weekend some 1 ½ hrs away. Phil and Becks would join us later.

The accommodation in Lancelin, a two bedroomed bungalow, is about three streets back from the coast. We dumped our gear, took a shower and headed off to the Endeavour Tavern for what was the best fish and chips we have so far had in Australia. However, we missed the sunset by about ½ hour so will have to go back tomorrow.

Next week the Lancelin Ocean Classic 2015 takes place, a top international windsurfing event, and we heard that some of the top guys were already in town practising their techniques. If they hadn’t delayed the event by a week then we would have been around for the action but will be in Singapore by then. Phil is planning in taking part.  

Lancelin Ocean Classic

The event is reported to be Australia’s longest running windsurfing & kitesurfing event and now in its thirteenth year. It features the 25km Ledge Point to Lancelin Windsurfing Marathon.