Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Augusta - West Australia
Round The World Trip Journal

(21st - 22nd March) Augusta
Heading on south down the coast we passed through 100 year old Karri forest – the third tallest tree in the world. We spent the night at Hamelin Bay where there is nothing but a campsite – we could see the sea from our pitch. It has a dilapidated jetty that used to be used to ship out the karri logs. The main draw here was that we had heard you could see huge stingrays in the shallows. Unfortunately the weather was not very good – windy and cloudy - so we couldn’t get the best view of them but we did see a couple rummaging in the weed for food – must have been at least 4ft across. The weather has turned quite autumnal now – lovely bright sunny days in low 20’s but mornings and evenings have a slight chill to them. We now turned a big corner in our travels and headed to Augusta next which is on the south coast of Australia – on the Southern Ocean. We stopped off at Jewel Caves to do a guided tour of the limestone caves. Not normally too bothered by caves but this one was something else – hundred of stalactites and stalagmites wherever you looked. No need for fancy light shows to make things look like different animals here – the natural formations were so impressive. There are even ones hanging down from the ceiling that are the same diameter as drinking straws and hollow too – one was 5.9m long. We arrived at Augusta at lunchtime. The town is located on the Hardy Inlet which is the estuary for the Blackwood River which leads into the Southern Ocean. We went straight to the jetties on the river and had lunch here and even saw 3 dolphins swimming by! We were glad we had sun today as the Augusta foreshore is lovely. The four pictures here show different aspects of it - quite rocky especially down at the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse which is the most south-westerly point on the Australian mainland. We treated ourselves to a Devonshire Tea at the lighthouse cause it felt like we were back in Cornwall but it was a real disappointment – squirty cream not clotted! Just for a change we found a campsite that backed right onto the foreshore and we were lucky enough to get a pitch right down by the water. The photo of the ray was taken just in front of our van! They cruise up and down searching for scraps from the fish gutting tables! This one was a good 4ft across. We went in search of a phone box one evening and spotted a kookaburra sat on a fence. You can see from the photo just how close Mike managed to get to it – didn’t seem phased by us at all.