There was nothing to it but get back on my horse and undo the 1,000 km back to Perth. I tried not to treat it as a retreat by driving less frantically (with an eye to straying kangaroos; I actually saw a pair hopping extremely fast across the highway, but fortunately they were a couple of hundred meters ahead of me and thus posed no danger).
The desert of the north, which in many respects reminds me of the Mojave and Colorado deserts, was lovely in the early morning light, and as I (resentfully) passed the deviation to Shark Bay I reflected that the stark desert-to-water transition reminded me of Searles Lake in the Mojave (or the Salton Sea in the Colorado desert). Like those stark bodies of water, Shark Bay also attracts a crowd of tough campers who with their "reinforced" 4-wheel-drive vehicles might have been the original inspiration for the Mad Max movies.
Crossing the 26 parallel I entered into greener country, although now that I look at it carefully, most of the vegetation is thorny and impenetrable. The green is splashed by oranges and yellows, making a beautiful palette. In a much better mood by now, I took the slightly longer Indian Ocean route, which afforded me glimpses of the turquoise blue ocean. It is not a heavily traveled road, so I did not have to deal with road trains (by the way, I have now ascertained that the road trains can be up to 50 m long, and have 32, 38, 42, and even 50 wheels), but it has many gentle curves and hummocks that make for a short response time to incoming traffic. Barry tells me that this was the old road, famous for many tourist traffic accidents; without the reference of seeing incoming traffic, many tourist drivers would turn into the right lane and have head-on collisions with left-lane drivers.
As I approached Perth the rain started anew, but by now I am getting to be an old hand at navigating Perth (always with the help of my cell phone and Google Maps), and by 5:45 pm I arrived to the home of Barry Castle (Luke Castle's uncle) and his girlfriend Mellissa. What a wonderful feeling it is "to come home" to friends, a welcoming beer, and a nice meal! I am going to spend the weekend here, joining Barry and Mellissa in soft-ball practice tomorrow Saturday, and going to a big Aussie Football match on Sunday. During dinner we were soon laughing at The Great Stromatolite Bust adventure, followed by a great deal of local intelligence that soon convinced me that I should have gone south, rather than north, to discover the beauty of southwestern Australia, with a choice of mammoth caves, dreamy beaches, and rugged mountains to look at. Monday afternoon I need to fly to Adelaide, but Monday morning I may decide to give stromatolites a second try, by visiting Lake Clifton, about an hour south of Perth, to inspect what are locally called "thrombolites".
And now is time to run a laundry batch.
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