Featured Image: Surf’s Up at Red Bluff!

Well, it did get too cold down South so we just had to come back to Red Bluff (via a more than cold trip home to Newcastle).

As there’s not a lot of infrastructure at Red Bluff, we needed to stock up on a few provisions. Nothing’s a problem with 400lt water, 200lt diesel, a fridge full of tucker (mostly bananas, cos lettuce & spinach for green smoothies) and a couple of bags of coffee beans. And, one or two (dozen) bottles of wine.

Luckily the rough gravel road had been graded since our last visit so it was in much better nick and a lot easier to negotiate. This meant there was less screws to retighten and little to repair upon arrival. Although, we did encounter a few other hazards on the way in.

The Lizardestrian crossing? I’ll have to check the road rules but evidently you have to slow down or stop to let a 6′ goanna cross the road whenever it so chooses.

Flocks of Sheep and Goats need to be treated a bit the same, only they wander about in small groups. Goats are more of a worry as they seem more prone to leaping about unexpectantly.

A Big Red Kangaroo, bigger than me, was giving us a very disapproving eye as we stopped to let air out of the tyres for the last rough bit of the track into the Bluff.

Car parts and bits of tyre casings decorate the dirt road on the way in. This gives you some idea of the normal state of the road.

Once back at Red Bluff It didn’t take long to settle in and pretty soon it was time for another stunning sunset and a bit of stargazing. Ahhhhhhhhhh, Sunsets at Red Bluff. Chillax…

Click on the photo above to see a time lapse of the sunset to reveal the changing colours in the afterglow and then the crescent Moon and the first star of the night (Or possibly Mars or Venus). 

Stargazing out here really puts our little planet earth in perspective.  It’s a shame that most kids these days have never seen the amount of starry detail on show away from the blinding glow of the city lights. Shooting stars are also more common, well, easier to see, particularly without the Internet or a TV.

The daily walk to the point for a surf is about a 3-4km round trip. It follows a fairly well beaten path but is literally no more than a goat track.  We have conclusive proof of this as goats can often be seen on the way. Some even stop to look out longingly at the surf break and seem to enjoy watching waves being ridden.

Surfing on this side of Oz is a bit different to the East coast. Something I haven’t seen in the surf before is a shag in a barrel.  While waiting for waves there’s always a few birds about. A day or two ago one very adventurous cormorant (shag) was spotted diving in close to the reef break. A wave came barreling thru and the shag switched to take off mode, madly flapping wings & feet in a effort to get lift-off. Lift off was achieved & the shag seemed happy enough with the result until it realised that it was now flying inside a barrelling wave. There was more mad flapping and more barreling wave until eventually the wave overtook the bird & it disappeared into the breaking foam-ball. This particular shag got absolutely shagged! A few moments later it popped up, shook it’s head and moved a little further offshore.
There’s whales in the line up! It’s not uncommon to flick off a wave and see humpback whales breaching only a few hundred metres away. Humpback dolphins (yes dolphins) although rare, seem fairly common in these parts as well. A couple of pods came to check out the lineup in the surf now and then. One of the guys I chatted to in the surf said that while he was further up North at Yardie Creek he’d had a visit by a pod of Orcas (killer whales). They appeared to be busy chasing something and luckily didn’t bother him. While it was an awesome experience at the time, he had to thoroughly rinse out his wetsuit after the event.

The swell has been consistently head high or above for about a week. Surfing every day, sometimes twice a day, eventually took its toll. On the 7th day I rested. Absolutely exhausted. More practice is definitely required, but just a bit later, after a cup of tea and a little lie down. It hurts to watch the surf from the viewpoint of the van below.

After about a week of Red Bluff heaven we made another 300km round trip to Canarvon for more bananas, cos, water, diesel, food, visit a dump point, email checks, phone calls and a very noice grilled snapper lunch at the Carnarvon Hotel. A busy, busy day! Oh, and a gas refill. $42 for a 9kg refill, bargain! That’s an Austratian National all time expensive Gas Refill Record!! Congratulations to Mitre-10 Carnarvon! (Stop-Press: Nah: We found one more expensive at one of the roadhouses, $59.95!)

The swell picked up during the 2nd week. These Indian Ocean swells are something else. To give some indication of the power in these waves you only have to listen to the shore dump 100m from our van.  Click here for a slowmo Boom Boom – Shore Dump.  You see it, you hear it and the whole van shakes as the waves dump on the shore line and explode into vast plumes of spray.

I had a solid overhead surf one morning & decided to take a few photos in the afternoon session as the swell had increased a bit.  It was good to see a couple of the younger local girls putting some of the old surf dogs to shame in the bigger waves.

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One not so lucky teenage girl snapped her board in the big surf. A Grand effort! As in, it’ll probably cost her about $1,000 for a new one…

We’ve been here 2 weeks with just the one trip back to Canarvon. The isolation in this place is captivating. It is absolutely timeless. You walk along the beach and see a recently expired clam shell like the one below. The rock shelf above, where the girl with the broken board is walking, is covered in live clams, just the same. You need to be careful they don’t get your toes…

Then, while you’re walking out to the point for a surf past cliffs of uplifted fossilised reef from who knows how many millions of years ago, there’s the same type of Clam shell fossilised in the rock face. If only the human race could exist for such a long time with as little impact on the earth.

As there was surf at Red Bluff every day we weren’t inclined to look elsewhere. We did manage a trip to a couple of the other local breaks. Turtles and Tombstones on Gnaraloo Station.

Even managed a swim (bath) at Gnaraloo Bay just up the road, a bit… More Dirt Road… another 35kms of it.

Here’s a time lapse of the last 5km just to give you an idea of how busy the roads are.

We’re on a road to Gnaraloo!

We dropped into Tombstones at 3 mile camp on the way back. The kite and windsurfers were going nuts.

Jayne’s been very patient and industrious. Her back continues to give her trouble but she keeps herself busy whale watching, reading, cooking, resting, bread making and knitting.

Another masterpiece nearly complete. The top above may need some sleeves if we venture too far South too soon. 

Off to Denham & Monkey Mia next!

14 Sep This entry was published on 14/09/2016 at 11:11 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.