The day was started with a telephone call to my older son; the grand old age of thirty four today. He was just finishing his lunch before returning to his desk, and we were about to have breakfast; such is the weirdness of time zones.
Our exploration today was all about discovering the most southern reaches of Perth’s port and “harbour” although these titles are not at all correct. But to understand the shape of Western Australia’s capital and industry, such a trip is required.
We headed south firstly to the end of the Roe Highway, then onto the Kwinana Freeway, that with the rail running down the centre that tickled our daughter-in-law so much. We passed through the suburb of Success where Jess had stayed with her friend a few weeks ago, and could see that the area was indeed full of very smart modern homes. In fact the whole southern extent of Greater Perth is a mass of construction; surely it must be a mecca for those in the construction trade?
We left the Freeway at Baldavis, calling into the Masters hardware outlet, and purchasing a short electrical extension lead, something we had been looking out for . Interestingly there appeared to be no manned checkouts, just the self-service computerised machines that nearly always have us calling for help. Today we managed without.
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| Coastal scenes of the Shoalwater Bay Marine Park |
Safety Bay Road took us to Safety Bay of course, the northern corner of Warnbro Sound. We followed the coastline north and out to Point Peron in the Rockingham Lakes National Park. There we parked and walked up to the raised lookout over the fragile limestone cliffs looking out over the Shoalwater Bay Marine Park, the clear clean waters dotted with a multitude of ragged rocky islands.
The entire geographical landscape has ebbed and flowed over the many thousands of years or Aboriginal inhabitation and before. 8000 years ago, Cape Peron and Garden Island were part of a continuous chain of limestone islands and shallow reefs that stretched over forty kilometres from Rottnest Island to Mandurah.
We then walked across the cape to John Point, through scrub along concrete paths pitted with age. From the point, barricaded off for our safety, we were able to see across to Garden Island which if the two bridges and causeway were solid land, would form the western arm of Cockburn Sound. The name “sound” is erroneous, in our opinion, because the body of water is neither deep nor walled in by land.
The island is 10 kilometres long and just 1.5 kilometres wide, lying about five kilometres off the coast. The 3.3 kilometre long causeway was constructed in the early 1970s and joined to the land each end with two bridges. It is home to HMAS Stirling or Fleet Base West, to five frigates and all submarines of the Australian Submarine Service. Entry to the island via the roadway is by permit only although the public are apparently welcome to come by sea; this we find quite bizarre.
We drove on around to Rockingham Beach from where we could observe the comings and goings of the traffic across the access and were very surprised to sea how much there was, especially given that naval activities seem to have been so drastically reduced with budget cuts over the last few years.
After lunch we found our way to the Rockingham city shopping centre, a significant size and offering all the usual outlets you expect in such centre these days. The city apparently has a population of 104,000, so this should come as no surprise. Today it promotes itself as a seaside resort offering many activities around the marine life. With the temperatures far too cold to do much more than walk in the intermittent sunshine, we were not tempted by the tours or like attractions.
From there we travelled on up the coast, keeping as close as possible to the sea although the large heavy industrial activity located directly north of Rockingham does mean that the public road is quite away inland.
Aside from the Kwinana Refinery, the Kwinana Power Station, Ravensdown fertiliser storage, massive port facilities including an impressive grain loading facility, Coogee Chemicals has massive facilities which seem to dominate the industrial area. This latter company manufactures a range of chemicals at this site including sulphur bentonite pastilles, aluminium sulphate, methane sodium, milled or pastilled sulphur, sodium aluminate and sodium hydrosulphide solution. It came as no surprise to learn that this was all going on nearby. When we drove out to the Woodman Point Regional Point on the northern perimeter of this industrial zone, we could smell the poison in the air. This “park” is really just an overgrown rubbish tip; metal waste, litter and burnt out cars. It is also home to the Woodman Point Wastewater Treatment Plant which treats wastewater for a population of more than half a million people living south of the Swan River in the Perth metropolitan area, designed to treat up to 160 million litres of waste water each day.
Just north of this we drove into a new development named Port Coogee. It is part of the established suburb of Coogee, but is more particularly new development offering “a world class marina and residential offering a premium coastal lifestyle”. The development is apparently one of Australia’s biggest coastal renewal projects, covering more than eighty five hectares and costing over $2 billion. Those homes already built do look lovely however if the wind was blowing from the south, which I am sure it often does, this may not be such a sought after location after all.
From here we carried on without pausing on up through Southern Freemantle, Freemantle, across the Swan River and up through Claremont, Subiaco and onto to highways already travelled and so on home.
We have two full days left before we leave and these will be spent mainly attending to household matters, cleaning, re-provisioning, a bit of admin and hopefully receiving some mail that has been far too long in coming across the continent. The travel guides are already out researching the road ahead.
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