January 18 – Fitzgerald River National Park and Drive to Albany

We had breakfast in a café/vegetable market/general store this morning…the only place in town for breakfast.  It was very good.  Paul had pancakes with whipped cream and berries and Mary had avocado toast with feta cheese and cherry tomatoes.  And we both had orange juice.  It turned out that they fresh squeeze their OJ.  It separated out easily but boy was it tasty.  Yum!

After breakfast we stopped at the town jetty for some pictures.  

It was a busy place with people fishing... 

and the gulls hanging out. 

Then we decided we would drive through Fitzgerald River National Park on our way to Albany.  We stopped at Barrens Beach, 

Cove Point with great views of the coastline, 

and Hammersley Inlet.

then headed for Albany.  There were some very interesting native plants called Royal Hakae that Mary needed to photograph.

We didn’t get very far because the road turned to a gravel road.  In fact, it was billed as a corrugated road (ridged) and boy was it bumpy.  We decided we would make very slow time on this road so to turn back and took the paved roads. 

It was a very long drive, about 4 hours with a couple of stops.  We did see a couple of kangaroos.  Unfortunately, they jumped out in right in front of the car and we hit one.  So sad.  Fortunately one of them was fast enough and went on its way.

A long stretch of the road was through the Hassell National Park.  The park straddles the route we are on (South Coast Highway).  From the looks of the map the park only goes on a short distance on either side of the highway.  It functions as a major wildlife corridor between two other nature reserves. 

We saw a lot of birds, including some Australian Ringneck, a species of broad tailed parrot.  We only saw them by the side of the road and then as they flew away.  But the coloring was very distinctive so it was easy to research the.  They have a vivid green body, yellow belly, a yellow collar around the neck (hence the name) and a black head. 

We arrived in Albany about 5:30 to a wonderful little boutique hotel near the ocean.