Via AG Outdoor.
Tag Archive for 'Western Australia'
Molten metal flows on the ground from a property destroyed by bushfire, as a firefighter walks past near Toodyay about 75km (47 miles) north east of Perth December 30, 2009. A major bushfire in the West Australian outback has destroyed almost 40 homes, officials said on Wednesday, as firefighters end a third month of fighting bushfires across the country.
A gallery of Western Australia bushfire photos can be seen over at Reuters.
It is great see that the beautiful forests of southwest Australia getting the protection and recognition they deserve:
Climb to the pinnacle of one of Western Australia’s newest national parks, and you can soak up a 360-degree view over large parts of the proposed Walpole Wilderness, a 3630 sq. km haven of national parks, nature reserves and forest conservation areas in the state’s south-west. Abundant in towering trees, threatened ecological communities, ancient plants and animals – many endemic to the region – wild rivers and calm coastal inlets, the Walpole Wilderness forms a large chunk of Australia’s only internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot.
Although logging features prominently in the area’s history, an increasing number of visitors are coming to recognise the breathtaking natural environment here. Walpole-Nornalup National Park alone has seen visitor numbers more than double during the past 10 years to about 194,000 per year. This has been partly a result of the construction of the excellent Tree Top Walk, where you can wander in the canopy of giant tingle trees, some 40 m off the ground, on one of the world’s longest canopy walkways.
Located about 450 km south of Perth, the area has a handful of excellent hiking trails, plenty of scope for river and inlet paddling, and some unique interactive forest sites. [AG Outdoor]
You can read more about these amazing forests at the link or view pictures of the area from my trip there here, here, and here.
My brother spent four years in the Navy and he told me when his ship went to Australia has favorite city was Perth. Now I know why:
PERTH brothels are increasing staff to contend with the arrival of two US warships carrying more than 5400 sailors.
Nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington and guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens docked off Fremantle on Thursday.
Prevalent in groups of five or six on the streets of Perth on Friday, some sailors were asking locals: “Where do you go to party?”.
Business groups estimate the sailors’ arrival will boost the local economy to the tune of $5 million during the ships’ five-day stay.
The owner of Perth brothel Langtrees, Beverly Clarke, said she had put on five extra staff for the weekend, including two from the eastern states.
While there had already been a marginal increase in business, she expected numbers to increase markedly by Friday night.
“Two more (US) sailors just walked in,” she said while being interviewed on Friday afternoon.
“At the moment I’ve even got girls from the eastern states here to assist us.”When a similar number of sailors appeared in Perth in 2002, Langtrees was overwhelmed with the demand and was forced to shut its doors.
Then brothel madam Mary-Anne Kenworthy said her staff and workers at other brothels had become exhausted and that she would rather stop business than offer customers an inferior service. [Perth Now]
Here is a place I have always wanted to go to in Australia, but never got the chance to is Ningaloo Reef. However, a lucky writer for Australian Geographic did get a chance to visit the reef and has only further increased my desire to one day visit this scenic area:
The word Ningaloo belongs to the Gnulli people, traditional owners of the coast surrounding the North West Cape of WA. Ningaloo means promontory, but like everything about the stretch of coast between Carnarvon and Exmouth, the name is so much more than it first seems. Just saying Ningaloo conjures images of whale sharks and coral, wilderness and adventure.magine a promontory shaped like a beckoning finger, nearly 200 km long and jutting into the Indian Ocean. Try to comprehend a landscape that is one of the driest in Australia – with a mere 226mm of rain and an evaporation rate of more than 2.5m annually. Some years, if there isn’t a cyclone, it doesn’t rain at all. On average, the sun shines 320 days out of 365.
Ningaloo is famous not just for its reef, surf breaks and fishing but also its soul-destroying winds, white-hot 45°C temperatures and frontier-like feel. The harshness of the landscape, the swarms of native wasps and bush flies, the fine sand that blows into every nook and cranny, and the burning sun make its gentler moments seem like epiphanies.
Standing sentinel over the northern reef is the Cape Range, a rugged upward fold of limestone packed with fossilised prehistoric marine life including countless perfectly preserved shark teeth that are embedded in the rock and visible to the naked eye.
Inside the boundaries of the surrounding 47,655 ha Cape Range National Park is Mandu Mandu rock shelter, part of a massive system of sinkholes and caves that underpin the peninsula’s weathered spine. Here, archaeologists have confirmed the oldest evidence of the collection and use of fish, shellfish and crabs by indigenous Australians – an astonishing 32,000 years.
Ningaloo Reef itself stretches from the skyscraper-high military radio antennas, just outside Exmouth, southwards for almost 300km. It’s the nation’s longest fringing coral reef and the namesake of the 5218 sq.km Ningaloo Marine Park. [Australian Geographic]
Make sure to read the rest because it is a good read as usual from Australian Geographic.
I actually was very close to Ningaloo when my wife and I visited Shark Bay. We had the option of either traveling further up the coast of Western Australia to see Ningaloo or head back down south and see the southwestern portion of the state. We decided to head back south because we figured we had already done a lot of swimming and sailing in the area and wanted to see a different part of the state, which the southwest of the state definitely is with the high peaks of the Stirling Ranges and the region’s thick karri forests. We had an absolutely fantastic time exploring this area, but we both one day look forward to when we can spend time exploring Ningaloo as well.
The beaching of whales off the coast of Australia continues:
A rescue mission is under way to save a pod of long-finned pilot whales which have become stranded on a beach south of Perth, in Western Australia.
Around 80 whales were found along a 5km (three mile) stretch of beach in front of a caravan park in Hamelin Bay, a picturesque tourist destination near the Margaret River, about 200 miles south of Perth, on Monday morning.
At least 55 of the mammals were found dead this morning, and despite rescue efforts, a further eight died today.
Environment officials, whale experts and over 100 community volunteers in wetsuits are desperately trying to save the 17 which remain alive in the shallows of the sea.
Liz Carlon, who works at the Hamelin Bay caravan park, said the giant creatures were found by people taking an early morning stroll along the beach.
“I’ve never seen this sort of thing happen in real life, I’ve only seen it with photos, but I went down on the beach and had a look myself and … just held back the tears,” Ms Carlon told the Australian Associated Press.
“I thought one was still alive because there’s quite a bit of swell down here, and the dorsal fin or part of the whale had moved but it wasn’t, it was just the waves (pushing it around).”
A spokesman for the WA Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) said they were trying to herd the remaining group together to form a pod they hoped to entice back out to sea by the morning.
I have actually been out to Hamelin Bay before and wrote about it in my Western Australia Holiday Journal. It is actually quite a scenic area that you can see pictured below:
It is sad to see these whales being stranded there. This latest whale beaching comes on the heels of two prior beachings in the past four months in Tasmania as well.
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