Thursday, Oct 23 - to Albany

Pics: Scarlet Banksia, King Lizard, Banksia sp.

Overcast and drizzling when we got up. Combined leftovers (steak, bacon, eggs, potatoes, onions) for a tasty breakfast, cleaned up, packed and set off at 8:30, heading west to Albany. The coastal highway, as in much of Australia, is 20-30 miles inland with roads leading of it to the shore. This isn’t great for tourists, but really preserves the coast line from over-development. We drove down to a fishing camp on an large tidal inlet which looked very much like South Dartmouth, and down several other roads through increasingly lovely coastal shrub preserved in small national parks. This area hasn’t burned as recently as Fitzgerald, nor has it experienced the die-off of that area and we saw some lovely red Banksias and other flowers.

We finally wove down to Waychinicup NP on a rocky lagoon and sat by the warm water to eat sandwiches…and suddenly spotted several 1-2 foot long black glossy lizards sidling up to us, obviously interested in our lunch! Fortunately they weren’t too aggressive, but they did hang around and watched us closely.

We continued westward until we reached the outskirts of Albany, the second largest city of WA with 29,000 inhabitants and found Coraki Holiday Cottages scattered on the shore of Oyster Bay. We settled into No. 4 which has a kitchen, living room, laundry and porch overlooking a pen with two pet emus who come over to inspect you for food which is a little disconcerting as they are almost six feet high.

We cleaned up and drove into the downtown on York St. which takes about 20 minutes from our cottage. It started to rain quite hard so we ran down the street and found Nonna’s which had been recommended by the hotel manager. Well, our waitress was enthusiastic and cheerful, but the meal lacked any flavor whatsoever. Returned home for chocolate and bed.
Pouring rain in the night. We are at last in the green, wet part of WA