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I have very few things on my bucket list, but one had long been to visit the site of wreck of the Zuytdorp. This year I made the effort to organise it - which is in itself harder than most trips - and tied it in to the trip we already had planned for Kalbarri and Lucky Bay in April.

One of the things that appealed about the Zuytdorp site, apart from its great history worth, is that it is very much off the tourism trail. It is situated between Kalbarri and Shark Bay on the WA coast, and is theoretically accessible from three directions by land - either from the Kalbarri side through Murchison House Station as we did it, or from the North West Coastal Highway, or from Shark Bay.

Off the highway requires a tedious slow trip down the vermin proof fence, and a few of the 'locals' do it that way to avoid detection by the Murchison House Station; but it wasn't my preferred option. Coming down from Shark Bay is off the list for the foreseeable future, as the required permission from Tamala Station can't be obtained due to weed infestations that they don't want spread around. And via Kalbarri worked right for us anyway, as we already had a trip planned for there. But of course it's never that simple.

We had to get permission from Murchison House Station, which was easy enough. They like paying visitors, and they don't charge too much. The department in control of the vermin proof fence had no problem with our plans because we wouldn't be driving along their patch, only crossing over it; and they were quick to respond, so that was good. We wouldn't enter Tamala Station or Nerren Nerren, the one to the east, so we didn't have to pursue them. But we were supposed to get permission from the Department of Environment & Conservation at Shark Bay, to access the Zuytdorp Reserve, a patch of land that encompasses the coastal end of the vermin proof fence, the northern end of Murchison House Station, and the southern end of Tamala Station. They wouldn't give us that until we had the station permission, and that was done, but also permission from the WA Museum to visit the wreck site, which is under the Museum's control.

It was almost predictable that DEC wouldn't give us permission until we had the Museum's permission, and the Museum wouldn't give us permission until we had DEC's permission; a stand-off that was never actually resolved. In the end we did it without receiving final approval, although we did of course comply with all requirements. The last email I had on it was just three days before we headed into Murchison House, still permit-less:

I am willing to provide permission for you to access the Zuytdorp Nature Reserve on the following conditions:

• Permission must be obtained from the WA Museum and all conditions imposed by the WA Museum complied with,

• Permission from the Department of Food and Agriculture (DAFWA) to travel along the State Barrier Fence is obtained, ( should you need to travel along the fence)

• No firearms are to be carried without specific authority from the landholders,

• No firearms are permitted to be carried on DEC lands as parts of this permission,

• Permission from any pastoral leased holders if travel over pastoral lease is proposed,

• No persons are to climb down or in any way access cliff faces in the area.

On provision of the above permissions from the WA Museum and DAFWA, I will supply you with a formal letter of permission from DEC.

In the meantime we were entertaining the kids down at Lucky Bay, a magic spot just south of Kalbarri, which funnily enough always seems to lose its signpost off the main road every time.

This image will appear in the 2013 catalogue for Land & Sea Sports, a major importer of water sports products. The Redback surfboard is one of their products:

We spent a couple of days down there; towed the boat in (in fact over the tallest sand dune without getting bogged - on the way in - wouldn't try the same on the way out! Then we went via the beach). Dragged the crew around on knee boards, in ski tubes and on the wakeboard. Coolers full of icy drinks on the bullbar, barbeque going up the back, reef-protected lagoon in front. Nice spot.

Last one's a phone pic from my daughter; grandson and nephew on the OKA steps. Good training I reckon.

I'll slip in a couple of 2011 photos; first one from up the river, upstream from Kalbarri. Another spot we always spend a couple of days at, with the canoes and a picnic lunch. From here it's about a one-kilometre paddle up to Murchison House Station. You'd need to be fitter than any of us to paddle from here down to Kalbarri though, especially against a sea breeze.

By the way if later in this you get to wondering how we manage to tow both a boat and a camper trailer to Kalbarri, well the answer is: take two vehicles. You know you really do have too much stuff when you have to take two cars to go on a family holiday.

After a week of Kalbarri and Lucky Bay, most of the family headed back to Perth, taking the boat with them. I took my son Jack, and nephew Angus, and headed out to Kalbarri's airport to receive Peter Taylor, a mate who had flown over from Toowoomba to help me out with the Zuytdorp leg. I was only two weeks out from having had my last dose of chemotherapy, and I'm a rotten cook to boot, so his offer of assistance fitted the bill.

We entered Murchison House Station on the Saturday evening, crossed the Murchison River that night and set up camp a few kilometres down the track, to wait for some more mates who were driving up from Perth. Those two crews both had Prados.

They all arrived in good time, and on the Sunday morning we headed north along the station track, which runs a few kilometres back from the coast. There are side tracks leading down to the coast about every five kilometres. We were all keen on a fish, and were certainly in the right stretch of the coast to be throwing lures for the biggest tailor Australia has to offer, which was a not insignificant part of the attraction; so we headed down just about every track, looking for that ideal reef platform or surfcasting beach.

Banksias were out in force at this time of year (April). I haven't done any research to try to figure out what's what:

Unfortunately the fishing wasn't looking so good. Considering the length of coastline we were covering, there was remarkably little variation; everywhere we popped out on the coast, there was a dramatic drop down to the water's edge, and while at some places that was manageable, there was an ever-present reef plateau that we would have had to have been on the edge of to fish over. That was imaginable in zero swell, but we were already faced with a couple of metres, and the forecast was that it would be rising. Not looking good for a feed of fish!

I think the reason the north-south track had been cut so far inland, was that the rain run-off had carved deep chasms through the cliff edge at regular intervals along the coast. The further north we went, the further inland they ran, and along the coast there would have been major deviations to get across them. There's one visible to the right in the pic below.

You can also get an idea of the swell there. We traversed the 50 or so kilometres up to the vermin proof fence without encountering a single spot where we thought we could fish from the shore in that swell. There might have been some beach spots right down near Kalbarri, but at that rate you might as well fish Kalbarri.

The vermin proof fence marked the northern boundary of Murchison House, and the beginning of the Zuytdorp Reserve, which is DEC land. The condition of the track immediately plummeted, which was no surprise, as DEC had no reason to encourage visitors, and rarely had reason to traverse the tracks themselves.We were reaching the end of the day, and picked the next spot to camp at; an abandoned abalone fisherman's camp. Murchison House had told us we would be the only people up here, but the fireplace outside was still warm when we got there; and there was an extraordinary number of recently-shot goats scattered across the nearby cliffs, left where they fell. Evidently the track alongside the fenceline in from the highway had been in recent use.

and departing in the morning...

There isn't a lot of distance between the vermin proof fence line and the Zuytdorp wreck site, but the track probably only sees a couple of dozen vehicles each year, so it's brutally overgrown in places - it goes through a ti-tree belt - and has the sharpest and steepest gully crossings of the whole trip. One Prado crew bailed the next morning, unwilling to pinstripe their vehicle through the bushes.

The second Prado crew pulled the pin only seven kilometres from the wreck site. The OKA suffered yet another broken wing mirror - they were already folded in but the belting was hard enough - and the camper trailer suffered a bit, with a beaten up wheel arch (not shown) and a speared stone guard!

So now we were on our own, but of course there was no way I was quitting. Here's another view of the kind of coastline we were experiencing - commonly steep or steeply sloping cliffs, and the inevitable reef plateau.

Great report and pictures, Hal, thank you, I just love these travel tales. More please.......

Cheers,

Paul

Fantastic Hal - keep it coming!

Getting close now. Peter Taylor with the anti-tourist sign...

... and then we're there. Three hundred years after scores of Dutch sailors had the questionable luck to hit what is now known as the Zuytdorp Cliffs at the lowest point for a hundred kilometres, allowing many of them to get ashore and survive, we pulled up in comfort, and had a look around.

At the top of the first hill was a small collection of overhangs that no doubt sheltered Dutchmen from the winter storm. Jack scampered through it, but it wouldn't have been fun in 1712.

The view to the south shows why the wreck site went year after year without being explored, after it was discovered in the middle of the last century; diving on the ship was impossible on all bar a handful of days each year.

Those little blowholes did confirm we were looking at the right spot; we compared with this map in Phillip Payford's book Carpet of Silver:

The drive back to the vermin proof fence line illustrated just how rugged this last piece of track really was. With the wing mirrors folded in and no pauses to take photos, no more deviations down to the coast, no stops for any other reason, we drove it as fast as we dared - and covered the 11.9km in 55 minutes, for an average speed of 13km/h!

With a rising swell and no fishing prospects, we decided our best use of our remaining time would be to do the long circuit back out through Murchison House, out to the highway and up to Shark Bay, and then in to the Steep Point area where we knew we would be able to fish out of reach of the swells. Back at Murchison House I stopped to take some pics of the ti-tree assault on the camper trailer; enough twigs and branches to start a week's worth of campfire in the gap above the poles box, gas strut protection on both sides shredded off, and one of the side doors ready to fall open - but fortunately I had also fitted belt-and-suspenders centre-over latches as a secondary lock...

We caught up with the Prados at Shark Bay. The rising swell - and it was getting seriously big - meant that it was worth spending a day along the cliffs down south of Steep Point, if only to get some photos of the spectacle. This bay is called False Entrance, and across on the far side is the bluff that marks the northern end of the uninterrupted Zuytdorp Cliffs. The really spectacular thing about this photo is the swells blasting up on that far side of the bay, visible over the sandhills in the distance, which would mean that spray is going up around 100 metres.

This is the view in the other direction. May their mothers forgive me.

The blowholes were of course really pumping; and as boys will be boys, we had to find things to drop down them and see what would happen. Angus' broken thong went down. The result was satisfactory. One day you'll get to see the video of what happened to that lovely beach umbrella we had back at Lucky Bay.

Nearing the end now; we caught some fish... Cruze Turner-Carson with a giant herring, and his big brother Tre:

Angus and Hal with some big tailor...

A bit of bottom fishing for dinner - Jack did well...

The obligatory shot at mainland Australia's westernmost point:

... and the next morning we were on the road (beach) again for a casual two-day drive back to Perth.