More Fitzgerald

  The Fitzgerald River National Park comes in two visitable halves. The large centre section has been basically closed off in an effort to keep the Phytophthera root rot disease out of the peaks of the centre. Today we inspected the second half before moving on to Esperance.

 

 

St Mary’s Inlet is officially a nice spot. Our early night last night allowed me to get up rather earlier than usual for a look around in the early morning. The crisp white sand and the light winds rippling the surface of the lake in the inlet gave some nice reflections. I’m still not up to dawn risings, so I missed most of the birds, but travelling east we need to start getting earlier again.

The road in is the only way out, so we had 60km to get back to the highway. Even after our comprehensive look yesterday, we still had to stop for a few more flower photos. It was then 55km down to the next entrance. We had hoped that we may be able to exit via a coastal route to the east, saving us a return journey, but the closure of that road meant another 80km backtrack. Hence the late night arrival in Esperance.

In general, the second half of Fitzgerald is much like the first. The road in skirts a few low mountains, and there is again a wide selection of wildflowers to slow progress across the coastal plain. At the coast end though the mountains are rather more dramatic. If we had more time there would have been some extensive investigation possible, but we had to satisfy ourselves with a quick run up the lower slopes of one of them to inspect the view.

Having now added an hour to our afternoon’s travel with the closure of the exit road, we had to race off to cover the nearly 300km into Esperance. That marks the start of the serious travel we need to do in the press for home. The days of intense exploration are now sadly behind us. Today also marked the passing of 20000km since home, in 88 days. That means we have been averaging a comfortable 230km a day in that time. In the next 12 days we have to cover another 5000km or so, and including a day off to investigate Kalgoorlie, we’ll have to double our average.

Our wildflower and bird counts are really quite impressive. Louis and Isabel could give you the actual numbers as they have been keeping the records. I expect our rate of discovery will now slow dramatically, but perhaps the southern arid regions will cough up some surprises. It has certainly been a cultivated interest for the two of them. Elliot has been a willing ally as well, with his sharp young eyes.

Not sure how much of Esperance we’ll see tomorrow. Seems it has a jetty, white sands and dramatic coastal scenery according to the info in the camp kitchen. Sounds much like what we’ve been through. Also sounds a bit like what we’ll be missing in Cape Arid, as that has now definitely fallen off, despite everyone telling us how wonderful it is.

As has been the motto of the last two weeks – you can’t do everything.