Horrocks (26/4 - 27/4/14)

26th April

After a lay in today we all ate breakfast and then I spent some of the morning on the phone to Kalbarri Info centre to try and arrange a tour to visit Nature's window. I hadn't been able to get there myself on the way up as it's on an unsealed road so I was hoping to ride back there whilst in Horrocks and get on a 4WD tour. The weather however had taken it's toll. People up in Exmouth had been flooded in due to the rain, that I fortunately rode ahead of most of yesterday, and Kalbarri had got a fair amount too. So the road into the National Park there was closed. I had timed my journey south just about spot on. I would have been drowned otherwise. During the day we didn't do much so before lunch I had a show and tell session, of the souvenirs I'd bought, with Sandra and Geoff, and then after lunch we watched my whale shark dive DVD and looked at my photos. I spent some of the afternoon blogging and then about 2.30pm Chris and Graham, some friends of Sandra and Geoff's from Geraldton, arrived to spend the night. It rained all day from about 10am to 6pm which gave us all a good reason to stay indoors and relax. In the evening we had oysters and a BBQ for dinner, walked down to the beach to see the sunset and then drank beer and watched TV  in the evening before going to bed.

27th April

I was up at 9am and phoned about the 4WD tour at Kalbarri again but, despite the weather today being sunny, the road was still closed. Luck isn't on my side. I had a very lazy morning and Chris and Graham left shortly before lunch. Just after lunch I went out to my bike to investigate why my speedo had stopped working on the way here on the day before yesterday (I forgot to put that in the blog for then, sorry). I had been riding along and when I looked down at one point the needle was at the bottom of the gauge but fortunately, because of the amount of hours I've ridden and the fact there's not been much else to look at, I'd noticed what 110km/h was with regards to rev's and gear selection so knew that in 5th gear at 5,000 rpm I was doing 110km/h and so I could make it without breaking the speed limit. The other slower speeds I'd had to guess. So today I unscrewed the speedo cable from the front wheel hub and found that the drive cable had sheared off just inside the hub housing. I wouldn't be able to fix this till I got back to Perth so there wasn't really much more I could do with it. In the afternoon Sandra, Geoff and I drove down to the mouth of the river to enjoy some of the scenery (actually only Geoff drove, otherwise the front seat would have been quite cramped). We also drove along the cliff top and down to the beach further along the coast too which was a nice way to spend the afternoon. There are some really secluded places along there. Late afternoon I spent some more time writing blogs and then just after the sun set Geoff, me and one of his friends called Pete went down to the beach to catch some mullet. Because mullet swim in shoals they are very easy to catch with a net. So Geoff walked the net out into the sea in a big arc while I held one end and Pete walked up the beach ready to grab the other end once Geoff had walked it back. By walking around in an arc Geoff had trapped loads of mullet between the net and the beach so when we pulled the net in it was full of fish. Geoff and Pete then went along the net pulling the fish out from it, breaking their necks and throwing them in the bucket that I was holding. There were about 35 in total, the biggest haul I've ever seen, and it couldn't have been easier to catch them. Back at Pete's house though the hard work started. Well for Geoff and Pete it was, for me it was pretty easy. Geoff washed and de-scaled each fish and then Pete filleted them. I just had to fill the buckets with water and change them every now and then to make sure each fish and fillet was nice and clean. Some of them were filled with roe which looked like a puréed mango when it came out so we needed to make sure none of that was on the fillets. I still came away smelling of fish despite not doing the hard work. It took them both ages which is unsurprising from the amount we caught. Once all the fish had been filleted we split the bounty and Geoff and I went back to our house. Unfortunately we already had something planned for dinner before deciding to catch the mullet so eating any would have to wait till the morning. After dinner I blogged some more and then after a beer went to bed.