Point Ann

“This better be good”, I hear you muttering under your breath.  “This better live up to the hype.”  Well Point Ann was only a dot on the map until we got to Bremer Bay.  Our original plan was to head straight to Hopetoun, and do a coast crawl from there to Esperance. But on our second to last day, a couple who had come from the other direction raved about this Point Ann.  Point Ann is within the Fitzgerald River National Park, which carves a large chunk of the coastline between Bremer Bay and Hopetoun.  So we figured we‘d take the diversion and maybe stay a couple of nights before the ‘weekend footy, gotta have internet” ritual pushed us on to Hopetoun.

We came in on a long dirt and hit the ridge above the bay.  By the time we reached the camp ground below, our planned two day stay had turned into nine. With what I call ‘impossiblue” water, bleached white sand and a cluster of mountain peaks across a wide protected bay, this was postcard 101. 

  Yet, despite all this, the place was deserted.  The campground was small with only 13 sites of various sizes so we snapped up the best one and settled in.

We decided that we needed a holiday from travelling (go figure), and with the fishing bug firmly embedded, Tamika saw this as the perfect spot to hone her craft.  Most days would find her up to her knees, casting out into the gentle surf into what she hoped were holes filled with dinner. 

I was a late convert to the whole fishing -as- fun concept, having had a rather one sided relationship with our gilled friends in the past.  Yet somehow, probably hypnosis, I started following her to the beach with my learner rod, casting without knowing, extracting hooks and throats from her catches and snagging a few of my own (“How the hell did THAT happen?”).

Of course the bait to plate was becoming familiar now, and Tamika was wielding her filleting knife like a Samurai.  She would trudge up the hill to where the internet floated by on the breeze, hold her phone to the heavens to download fish curry recipes and ‘how-to’ advice.  The results are well…see for yourself.

In between all this excitement, there were moments, especially in the early evening, when you could just look out the horizon, feel the ocean slapping your knees like it had just told the funniest joke, shadows lengthening on the distant peaks,  and go “Wow, how good is THIS?”  Visitors were rare, but all were susceptible to the exchange of anecdotes and “Safe travels.”

As a consequence of this rush of blood, we were caught short of food, gas, water and of course internet.  So on footy day with left our van to do a dry run to Hopetoun, a ‘mere’ 450klm round trip by road or about 100klm round trip by kayak.  Our first leg was made worse by a cruelly deceptive National Parks road that turned into corrugated nightmare after about 25klms, too far in and too committed to go back.  We bounced along on ruts normally only found in Kakadu (see The Choice is Yours/NT/Kakadu) at between 5 and 15kph for about 15 klm, only to improve when vestiges of civilisation started to appear along the roadside (note to self-terse phone call to National Parks).

Anyway, managed Hopetoun by lunch time, and a delicious meal at the Hotel, put that particular pain behind us.  The afternoon sped by so fast I almost forgot the list of must haves in my pocket. Unfortunately, the shellacking being handed to our beloved Swans by Geelong, was not part of the plan and to make matters worse, I had accidently flattened the car battery with the car fridge.  Luckily, kind locals soon had us fired up and we slunk off into the night with our ‘shame job’ as Tamika called it, clanging along behind us like tin cans at a reception farewell. 

There was this one time, at fish camp……Tamika is on the beach and I’m relaxing on the bed, when there’s a knock at the door.  A reed thin foreigner with a thick accent pleads for help.  Their car has ‘broken down’.  I grab the now impressive tool box, but he says, “No, we are stuck”.  How they could become so hopelessly bogged in five metres of sandy track remains a mystery, but they did a hell of a job – buried up to the floor pan.  What’s worse, she is on her hands and knees scooping sand from around the tyres, he’s standing there like a lost child at the Easter show.  I unpacked the roof and dragged the tracks down to their car, but it was not enough.   I was at a disadvantage as neither was familiar with their hire car (the park brake was a button.  That probably hampered our rescue attempts).  Luckily a winch bearing 4WD turned up and after much digging and winching,  we retrieved the stranded vehicle.

As a consequence of hours trudging up and down beaches looking for ‘the spot’ and long dirt road fitness goals, we found ourselves in bed by 8pm (whatever happened to the party animals who would still be going strong at 9:30?)  The upside, for Tamika at least, is that she’s seen more sunrises in the past week than her entire life.  The other novelty is the diesel heater.  After 2 years of chasing the sun, chilly mornings and rain squalls are suddenly on the menu. It was clear straight away that we had very different ideas.  For me, you switched it on just long enough to melt the ice off the quilt cover.  For Tamika, she’s thinking about white towels, birch branches and the scent of cedar.  I guess we’ll work it out.

In summary, we’ve been enchanted by Point Ann.  The water was surprisingly warm with dolphins ploughing along the shore line every other day, chasing salmon into the shallows.  The only sad note is that we’ll miss the whale calving season by a matter of weeks, where mums and bubs settle just beyond the breakers for the next three months.  Let’s hope we can recover that experience further along the coast.  We both agree Point Ann is in the top 5 of all our destinations so far.

Faux Tan and The Coconut