Water Sunrise to water Sunset

 Arising in the pre-dawn twilight this blogger headed off down to the deserted beach spit in order to capture the rising sun over the sea with the intent of being able to replay the event in future times. Some call it slow TV. Others may call it boring.

Making the effort to be there and experience the world in its raw beauty with no one else around apart from a curious and thus seemingly friendly adolescent seagull makes these types of experiences all worth the effort.

Two hours later it was back to the abode and crashed out on the couch for a sleep catch up – and why not ? – this is holidays after all and there is no pressure to do anything else but catch up on lost zeds with no consequences. Relaxing to the max.

After another indulgent breaky looking at the extremely calm sea where the horizon is difficult to discern due to the sun plying heat and light over the varying distances it was off to the town of Dunsborough for another salubrious caffeine hit prior to a wander, shop and parcel post around the town before a beach hunt.

Beaches adorn the area. This is why people come here and spend a shite load of dosh in order to do so. As the town expands it’s ability to draw the funds out the visitors the governing bodies are also mindful of keeping it clean, pristine and thus consumable. We headed off to the local sand strip at the towns old boat ramp and were once again thoroughly pleased with the foreshore facilities, adorned by yet more funky sculptures highlighting the sheer natural beauty of the place.

We’ve been here two days and it was finally time to go and have a look at the serious side of the peninsula. Heading over to Yallingup was a short hop to discover a totally different aspect where the landscape overlooks and is buffeted by one of the three significant oceans on the planet. Whilst on our side the beaches are calm, the water is welcoming and the overall vibe is sereneness – here it is windblown, rugged and the surfers get to ride serious swells. Waves pound the beaches and the colour of the water is a deep blue (as compared to a turquoisey green on the other side). Needless to say, both are spectacular. It’s been many years since we’ve dipped our toes in the Indian ocean and so made the extra effort to park, walk some way and get down to do exactly that.

Yallingup is one of many locales in the area which are “up” – we have a few days to work on this particular vernacular - suspect it does not actually mean “minimal food opportunities” but you never know. We did discover they do interesting sculptures over this side as well.
We eventually found a minimalist bakery which adequately satisfied the lunchtime hunger pains and then headed back to the east side of the peninsular to have a swim at Gannet Rock. This is not a swimming beach but we did it anyway. Lolling around in shallow warm crystal clear water surrounded by picturesque rocks, with no one else around was a great choice of swim locations. We even had our own nature created spa as the gentle waves washed in and out of a sand defined pool. Didn’t realise until later showers that it was filling our undies full of sand.... definitely a first world problem.

Back to the abode saw a couple of lay down hours of more zed catching up before slowly getting into the mode of doing something for the evening. Our very generous host arrived and was extremely apologetic about some pending chainsaw noises and offered a compensatory bottle of wine. As we were staying in we accepted whilst suggesting we were briefly stepping out to catch the sunset on the ocean side anyway.

Which we did.  The chain sawing noise was totally minimalistic and after our BBQ’d locally supplied pawns we headed off to capture the sunsetting over the ocean. It always looks different when there is no land anywhere under the setting sun for many horizons away. The road to get there was so corrugated it was reminiscent of the Tunnel Creek road and as such we needed to slowly crawl down to the Windmills car park to behold the event.

Well worth it was – and so from viewing the sun rising over the water from one side of the day to seeing it disappear over the water on the other side of the day was a very unique experience. Notch that one up as a bucket list tick off (without realising it was even there in the first place).

On the way home we had the unfortunate event of a kangaroo leaping out in front of us. The collision left us both scarred yet mobile, and so suspect the next day will be dealing with the inevitable follow-ups.

The rest of the evening was BBQ at the abode and trying to come to grips that not all goes perfectly on holidays in the first world and sometimes we need to deal with what life throws at us.