Way Way Waychincup

I commented to Aussie, when I took this picture, that mobile phone cameras always seem to flatten out landscapes. Mount Manypeaks, towered over us on the trek we made, after we met Gyroscope and went hunting for the mythical second sealer's oven. Towered? Well alright, compared to New Zealand mountains it's just a big hill showered with stones - like some giant rock-eating monster lost his dinner during a nasty case of gastro.

The inlet (or 'embayment' as Old Salt calls it) is Waychinicup, one of the rare stone-bound inlets in the south west. In the picture above, the white water shows the inlet mouth. Most inlets around here are bound by sand bars, opening yearly to the sea when the rivers are swelled with winter rains. This inlet is guarded by massive megalithic bosses of lichen-clad granite and its belly is coated in the same.

Waychincup is home to the 1080 weed, the bane of early cattle and sheep farmers. Three of those tiny heart shaped leaves will kill a man, and yet the local fauna are immune to 1080, making it an ideal bait for foxes and cats. Shame about introducing 1080 to eastern states areas where the locals are not so savvy, but still, D.E.C. will work it out one day ...

This place is considered a 'biodiversity hotspot', meaning that more species of flora and fauna are found here per square metre than most places on this planet, excepting perhaps the Amazon and errm, a few other spots.

All the critters who live here are big and well fed. The carpet sharks are like Cessna aeroplanes, the possums are friendly and the bungarras don't give a shit. We met a Dugite on Tuesday, thick as my arm (trufe!), trying to climb a perpendicular stone, only to fail and flop, unhappily, at Aussie's feet.

'Jesus (#%$* standard snake expletives *$%#)!'

The carpet python was friendly. She just lay there, looking at us ...