Australia day 63 – Cape Range National Park, WA

The weather is glorious today and we spend most of it at Lakeside simply relaxing – this life is so hard!  All we have to worry about is getting some more ice and topping up on the water supplies.  That takes us to lunch-time.  We spent the afternoon on the beach sunbathing and doing some snorkeling.  There are hundreds of Red Bell Jellyfish in the sea by the campsite, bobbing in the waves, the unlucky ones being washed up on the sand.  Fortunately, it’s a localized influx carried in on a warm current at the tide came in.  Further round the shore in the protected zone there are only one or two – easy to avoid and apparently their stings are not much worse than that of nettles.  The snorkeling is just as good as yesterday and we come across a shoal of black fish amongst them some parrot fish and we stay with them a while.  There’s a huge Manta Ray too, must be at least 6ft from head to tip of the tail, just resting on the sand. 

The National Park operates a hosting system at each of the camping grounds.  The hosts are volunteers who  live on the site and supervise the coming and goings of the campers and visitors.  Our hosts are Greg and Marg.  Originally from South Africa, they settled in Australia some years ago and seem to spend a lot of their time travelling around the country.  One of a band of ‘grey nomads’ that seem to be permanently on the road.  They host the site during the peak season, liaising with the ranger , looking after the site and it’s facilities (such as they are) and making sure that there is no illegal camping.  All of which means that the site runs smoothly;  no-one comes and steals your site when you’re out for the day, or camps in the day parking area – which apparently several people have tried to do arguing with the hosts (as if they wouldn’t know) that it’s free to camp overnight in the day parking area, as opposed to the official sites for which a fee is payable.   But the whole system within the park still depends on people’s honesty, since it would be easy enough to come into the park at night and camp at one of the beaches out of sight of the road.  In fact, people camp illegally in the visitors centre car park.

Light has been shed on the large numbers of children who are out of school during term-time.  Apparently taking children out of school is as simple as writing a sick note.  One of the mothers here explained that all she needed to do was write a note to school the day before she intended taking them out to say that her children would not be in school for the next 13-week term!   This is quite commonplace apparently and for children out of school for more than three months there are official correspondence courses which are posted out to parents and and a postal homework marking system.  similarly.   Unimaginable in the UK where you have to jump through hoops to be allowed to educate your children at home!

We walk along the beach about a kilometre or so to a perfectly still bay and sit on the sand dunes to watch the sunset.  The sun sinks below the horizon incredibly quickly;  from the moment it touches the horizon to it sinking out of sight takes just 2 minutes and 19 seconds.  The sunsets here produce a deep orange skyline, but there is no after glow, no after sunset development through a range of colours as in Darwin or Broome.   Once it’s gone, it’s gone.