Coomalbidgup, Western Australia, AustraliaStokes national park
Here we were not as busy as Lucky Bay
because not so many people know about it and its getting colder. Also
because of the water level in the inlet, the road to the sand bar
closing off the actual coast is underwater, but you can get to the
coast in 2 other camps in the park. We have to go to these to check
them and clean in the ranger ute as its sand driving. We share the
trips to these place with the ranger as they are checked twice a
week. People come here to fish and most catch enough to feed
themselves.
There are also a couple of commercial
fishermen allowed to fish from small boats with nets at certain times
of the year. We have 2 here at different times for 3 weeks while we
are there. We do not clean their camp , its an old site, we just
supply toilet paper and cleaning stuff to them .
Stokes Inlet campground has its own
beach and boat entry ramp. Each campsite enclosed in its own area
with bushes and trees. Good for shade but not good to collect solar
so generators are allowed at times during the morning and evenings. 4
of the sites are larger to take groups of 3 or 4 caravans, of which
we had at least one in use most times.
There is a walk to the day use area
that takes about an hour and goes up to 2 good lookouts over the
inlet. Day use area has toilets and two camp kitchen areas for us to
keep clean. For this we have the use of a 4 wheel mule to drive the
road entry to day use area and up to ranger station.
Ranger station as usual has hot shower
and washing machine for our use. Used washing machine but only used
shower twice. Yes we showered but in the caravan as we had a small
rain water tank to use and a gas bottle supplied. I prefer to shower
before bed and was not driving to ranger station , 1and1/2 klm. to do
this.
The other camps in the park are Skippy
Cove and Fanny Cove with The Moir Homestead .
So Skippy cove is west side of the park
and you have to drive back to the main road along a bit before
driving down between farms to get back into the park. Then its a sand
track to the coast and the camp site. Nobody there the first time we
went and only a couple of campers at each other time. With nobody
paying their fees either and its not pushed to collect fees by the
ranger as the BBQ is not working. Its not a bad spot.
The other place we have to check is
back out to main road then east and back into the park. This leads to
Fanny Cove , Shoal bay and the Moir Homestead.
It was a big problem having different
entry points to the park that go from each end so anybody could come
and go without paying park fees. The locals had removed the self pay
boxes at the entries every time a new one was put in place.
Including digging up the big concrete block holding them in the
ground. Its stupid because they get a very cheap locals pass so they
can camp and use the facilities. On one of our trips to Fanny cove
and shoal Bay we followed a couple of cars and found heaps of locals
out surfing on another little beach. They got upset because not many
of them had their fees or carried their local pass to get into the
park. Then they got upset when I took photos of the surf beach as it
is their secret surf beach.
Before you turn to Fanny Cove the road
also keeps going to the sea and Quagi beach which is council run and
not bad we drove down and had a look.
Fanny Cove was named after the first
female traveller to get of a ship here in 1800s. She was Fanny
Dempster so the cove was named Fanny Cove. It also became one of The
Esperance areas first ports for and wool producing areas.
In 1859 John and Elizabeth Moir came
here from Scotland settled in Albany district with 10 children. 2 of
these children ,2 boys in 1870 took a pastoral lease on 14000 acres
either side of Stokes Inlet for sheep grazing. Their homestead built
not far from Fanny Cove just 2klm away.
Because of 2 rivers and the inlet even
back then they had to travel the same track to get into property as
we did now. The track is mostly sand and limes stone and definitely
4 wheel drive.
It would have been a nice quiet place
to live but a very hard life.
The park ranger also looks after Peak
Charles National park so we get to use the ranger car and go visit
and clean just once, as its done only a couple of times a month at
this time of the year.
The ranger leaves for annual holidays
while we are there and another couple in their caravan park up at the
ranger house to take care of it and do our job when we leave. So they
do some of the trips to Fanny Cove and Skippy rock . It is split once
a week each.
The trip to Peak Charles takes a couple
of hours driving each way and could take longer but we take dirt
roads through to park instead of having to go to Esperance up the
road that goes to Norseman and into the park from the north, this
very long trip and has to be done if the dirt track is under water as
it has a river crossing.
Peak Charles is 100klm along these
connecting dirt roads and its mostly 4 wheel drive so we use ranger
car not our car.
It rises 651 metres and its neighbour
Peak Eleanora not so high.
You can climb to the top of Peak
Charles but it is steep with the top half rocky and you have to be
able to scramble over and up these large rocks. This bit of the climb
has no classification as it exceeds the class 5.
Neither of us did this last bit but
Larry got higher than me . I sat on a rock and waited for him to
return as I new if I got up I would have trouble making it down.
We did our cleaning and shovelling out
of the winter allowed fire pits , as a scout group had been here the
weekend before.
It was a long day 2and half hours in ,
clean have lunch do part of the walks and drive back . Thats 8
nearly 9 hours before we get to camp and our late afternoon chores.
One of our campers took out his canoe
and paddled out to the sand bar and ocean then the next day the other
way to the rivers entering the inlet. Larry never got to take our
kayak out to see for himself.
We took of photo of the start of walk
and 4 wheel drive track at the day use area and one of the end of
track at the boat ramp in the campground all underwater for the
past few months.
You can swim but we did not as water
getting too cold even though some of the campers stood in the water
to fish.
There is a white bellied sea eagle at
the beach in the campground catching its own fish for the day. The
first time we found him/her it had just caught a salmon.
We had spotted thighed frogs under
water taps at the toilet blocks most nights. Very pretty frogs , they
did appear some times at our little water tank too as we had a bowl
for water for birds there.
Frogs greyish with green blotches all
over and these spots on the inside of their thighs.
We also had a couple of cuckoos and a
tawny frogmouth at night in the trees behind us.
It was getting too cold to see many
lizards but did see a couple of snakes, mostly pretty crowned snakes,
probably out after the frogs.
Most of the people in the campground
were very nice some gave Larry fish fillets to eat . One group from
south Australia in a big bus and a big fifth -5th
wheeler we will be calling into their home next time in S A.
One man makes wooden bowls and candle
holders and lots of stuff from old bits of wood he finds. I think I
will buy some xmas presents . We did swap one of my gemstones for a
small bowl that they had with them.
2025-05-22