This is a free camp place (found through the good offices of WikiCamps on my phone) and it has turned out to be a superb choice. The small camping area is sheltered and is right on the shores of the calm and pretty inlet while there is a walkway (albeit with a lot of steep stairs) to the beach which is another one of these WA beaches of white sand and blue, blue water. This one has some serious surf pounding it, but it is just glorious and we have to share it with nobody else.
Heavenly!
It took us about 90 minutes driving to get here so we have had plenty of time to explore and check things out before we head on to Albany tomorrow.
This is the view you get of the bar across the inlet at Norman's Beach. The high tide just gets over it, but a good king tide should wash it away some time.
This is looking up the beach to some shacks at the far end.
After descending the stairs we walked along the beach, taking the time to rest on some smoothed rocks that were poking out of the sand.
Albany - well, this is a beauty of a town. Population about 30,000 and we were (at first) a little surprised at having to share road space with other traffic, but we got used to it quickly enough and started to enjoy what it had to offer.
We spent a little time exploring the town and the bayside area, eventually finding out way into a beauty of a pub or wine bar called the Great South. They have Sierra Nevada beers on tap here as well as some very fine local wines so we stopped for a chat and to spend some time just gazing out at the harbour.
The next day we decided to head off to the Torndirrup NP and to have a wander through there. Like most WA parks, it is well maintained and has some lovely parts to see. Sadly the road to Natural Bridge was closed for repair so we missed out on that one, but we caught a few other spots.
One of the other spots was the Blowholes. Unfortunately, they weren't actually blowing the sheets of water that they can do when it is a large swell out on the ocean, but we could hear it breathing (sounds like a whale, but even louder) and every now and then we were treated to a couple of plumes of spray jetting up.
These are the actual blowholes themselves.
On our way back we drove up to the National ANZAC Memorial Centre. As all of the first couple of convoys of soldiers in 1914 had their last sight of Australia at Albany it was an appropriate place to build it.
It is quite an emotional place to visit though.
We went back the next day to visit the centre itself and walk around the place and we were treated to a saddening experience, but a beautiful day.
On Thursday we thought we'd take a drive down to West Cape Howe NP as this holds the southern most point of WA and I like the idea of visiting all these points.
As you can see, it is a lovely coastal view with some great beaches.
The beach below is easy to access and some enterprising young bloke has a coffee van down there. We bought a couple of coffees to go with our sandwiches and sat in the shade of some huge gum trees, just watching the ocean.
We left there and continued on down to the southern most point and this pic is of the beach near there. You can see the car park and some people fishing on the beach - just beautiful.
Below is the point itself.
The road in, and out, runs through an area of old forest that majors in karri trees.
That was the last thing we did at Albany though - the next day we were off to Denmark to check out their tall trees etc.
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