Carnarvon Races

I’m enjoying Carnarvon heaps more this time and I know it’s the change of park. This one is great.

Yesterday we went to the Farmer’s Market in town again-it’s on every Saturday morning and is really worth getting to if you are here. After an early lunch we walked down the park steps and met the bus to take us to the local races. It was a small meet with only 6 races, only 7 horses in most races and about 10 jockeys all up-they had pretty full cards so would have been happy. The race caller gave us little bits of gossip about horses, riders and trainers and I’m sure he almost knew the moment every horse running was conceived. We had met another couple at the Nanutarra roadhouse and they were staying here and on the buss too. Jack had been an amateur jockey and trainer and former president of Dalby racing club so pretty keen on his racing. Wendy and I were happy to sit in the sunshine and chat whilst the horses went by, drink very cheap drinks and enjoy a great day. Russ was very happy having a few bets and a few of those cheap drinks.

Carnarvon Racecourse


Today we slept very late (10am) then went to town and bought ourselves a doona and cover as we find these nights getting a bit cold-sometimes slipping below 10c at night. The days are still beautiful though.

This afternoon we went for a drive out to the blowholes (about 80ks from town). On the way out we counted 15 emus along the road-they are a bit brainless, so you need to watch they don’t run in front of the car. The blowholes were pretty good, but there were a lot of signs warning of the power of the waves and people being killed-it was a bit off putting. We then turned left and went to look at the Quobba Point camping ground. There is no water or electricity, so you have to be very well set up but there were literally hundreds of people out there. Then we went back past the blowholes and to the right to Quobba Station to look at their campground. It was a bit more civilized looking, but not many people. On the way there we saw a whale breaching-it hit the water making a huge splash. It did it again twice but was unfortunately moving away from us.

Tomorrow we are going to try and find a car wash to clean off and out all the red dust from the car-it really looks a mess, inside and out!

Deja Vu in Carnarvon

A Carpet of Wild Flowers on the Road leaving Nanutarra


The overnighter at the roadhouse was really good. Our neighbours from QLD were on for a chat so we sat out until it got quite dark and started to spit rain. Russ cooked us one of the best T Bones I’ve ever eaten, we listened to a Max Merrit DVD Beth gave me, and then headed to bed. We’ve learned not to eat in roadhouses if we can help it-the food is always overpriced and usually a bit sad. The cowboy was working again this morning as we filled the car and was very proud of the place and how clean they keep their amenities. I had to agree and it was nice to get plenty of hot water with plenty of pressure.

So, here we are in Carnarvon in a different and much nicer park than last time (I have to say it was a shitty site to get the van on though!!!!). It was a pretty boring drive today with lots of flat straight stretches and no wild flowers due to the lack of rain down here.

We’ve seen the travel agent and got our freebies, been out to the farm gates and bought up big on fruit and veg (2kg of bananas for $6, 2kgs Tomatoes for $2), so now we’re happy. The local races are on tomorrow with a courtesy bus leaving from the front gate so that might be the plan.

Mine Tour at Tom Price and on to Nanutarra RH

The View from Mt Nameless


Wednesday 26th we had a late brunch of bacon, eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms (delicious) then headed out for a 4wd up Mt Nameless behind the caravan park. It is pretty steep (but not quite as steep as Mt Sheila was thank goodness) and gave us great views of the mine below and country side around.

At 1.30 pm we went on a really interesting tour of the mine-it was to last 1 ½ hours, but the bus driver had been arguing with his beloved and stretched it out to 2 ½! It was great to travel past all the huge machinery and trains etc and watch them loading and dumping the ore in the various stages. I thought it was a much better and informative tour than the more expensive one we took of the Ore Loading Facilities in Dampier.

Mt. Tom Price's Main Pit


Russ and I were both a bit sad to leave Tom Price this morning; it’s been a really friendly caravan park and a beautiful spot. We headed south through Paraburdoo to Nanutarra Roadhouse where we are spending the night. For those of you who don’t know what a roadhouse is, it’s the pub, motel, camping ground and fuel stop and usually the only building in what looked like a town on the map. The 10 or so people that work here are the entire population and the next road house is over 200ks away. This one is very remote with no TV, internet of phone coverage for us. As we booked in the cowboy type who helped us said that it was a nice walk to the river and couples were known to be quite romantic when they got back. I told him I’d take Russ over there twice! Right now we are sitting outside (it’s probably 23c with a bit of a breeze) watching all the late arrivals pull in and set up. It does look and feel like we might get some rain which would be different after only 3 days of rain in 5 months.

Down at the Romantic River (Nanutarra Roadhouse)


Tomorrow (28th) we head to Carnarvon and all those lovely fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs. We’ll be spending 4 nights there and I’m actually looking forward to it-even though I didn’t enjoy it so much last time.

Karajini NP

Early Tuesday morning (about 12.30am), I walked over to the toilets. I thought I’d cut back through the laundry and see if there were any magazines. As I went to walk in one door, a rather large kangaroo was thinking the same thing at the other. He wandered off to eat some long green grass nearby, so I went and got the camera so I could show Russell I hadn’t been dreaming! I was able to get really close to take his photo as he ate.

Weano Gorge

On Tuesday we headed out early for a day in the Hammersly Ranges and Karijini National Park. We went to Kalamina Gorge, Weano Gorge and Oxer and Junction Pool Lookout, Joffre Gorge, a long look at the interpretative centre and finally Dales Gorge and Fortesque Falls. I can only say again that it is too beautiful to describe and The Kimberly must be amazing to be more beautiful than this place. Fortesque falls are the only ones in the park that have water in them 12 months of the year-we were lucky enough to see water in all the falls we visited. We had to do a couple of creek crossing too on the way out to Joffre. At Dales a dingo walked out onto the road, so I went closer to take its photo, it just lay on the side of the road to let me do so. We passed another on the way home wandering along the side of the road.

Weano Gorge


We were tired and all covered in red dust when we arrived home after 5 last night. Lucky we didn’t wear clean clothes but decided to wear yesterdays-you wouldn’t have known within 10 minutes of walking out to the first gorge. The car is filthy too and its grey canopy now looks red after a couple of hundred ks on red dirt and corrugations! We did the washing at 7pm last night because the machines here run just about 24/7 and line space is at a premium-I figure it’s all that red dust! Right now Russ is making us a brunch of bacon and eggs; we’ll bring in all our washing from last night then go on a mine tour.

More Flowers

Tom Price

Yesterday we arrived in Tom Price. We are at the Tom Price CP and will spend 4 nights before going further south.

MT Bruce-WA's Second Highest Mountain Near Tom Price


It was one of the prettiest drives of the trip so far, although it started out only so so. It was flat and dry and then it just changed-hills, red rocks, bigger white trunked gums and heaps of wild flowers and shrubs. It just got better and better as we went through gorges and bigger mountains until we got here. It was a bit sad to turn round and head backwards though, but it’ll be great to get to Perth and see Blair Leah and Todd and to go to London to see Mick. Sad too to think we’ve parted company with James and Beth. They are off to Broome now but hopefully we’ll catch up in Perth around Christmas. I don’t think I’d enjoy travelling permanently with anyone, but it’s been so nice to catch up with them for a night out every week or so.

This is a big park, but the sites are also enormous-I reckon you could fit 2 vans and cars on ours. We went to Coles and paid $3.98 for a very small thin continental cucumber, so it’s good we shopped fairly well before leaving South Hedland.

Hammersly Gorge



Today (Monday 24th) we took a drive out to Hammersly Gorge. Russ went and got some lunch stuff and a permit to drive on Hammersly Iron’s railway maintenance road and found he had to sit and watch a half hour safety video to get it! We stopped on the way for a short walk at the base of Mt Bruce (WA’s second highest mountain) for some lovely views, then on to Hammersly Gorge for lunch and another walk. I can’t begin to describe how beautiful it was but will post some photos soon to try and show you. We only took a short walk down to the rock pool and waterfall, but the colours were amazing.
Hammersly Gorge


On the way back and before we got on to the railway’s road we decided to drive to the summit of Mt Sheila. It was 4WD only and virtually straight up and down again. I was terrified and felt like I was having a panic attack. Once we started to go up, we had no choice but to keep going, and coming down was the same but felt worse. The views from the top were spectacular though-I really imagined these inland mining towns would be flat and forgettable, but in spring they are beautiful. The weather’s been pretty wonderful too.

Now Russ is cooking my most favourite dinner-veal cutlets and we’re having mash and veg. Yummy.

Japanese Food in South Hedland

Last night we (Russ and I James and Beth) went out for dinner in South Hedland. We'd spotted a Japanese restaurant so thought we'd give it a try-the worst it could be was terrible!
Well, it was great. The four of us ordered 3 entrees, then just kept ordering different dishes until we couldn't eat any more. We had sushi, sashimi, spicy squid, prawns in egg gravy, pumpkin in sweet soy, miso soup, rice, more sashimi, chicken karage, mixed tempura and gingered beef-all really good, and the bill came to $55 per couple!
Then we went to the pub a cross the road-a real bloodhouse that's probably seen more than a few fights in its time. They were doubtful about letting Russ in in his Rivers thongs! We were apparently in the Saloon Bar where they need to "keep up a better standard". They need to start over I think!
James stated to talk to a guy at the bar and he turned out to have moved here 10 days ago from Warrnambool, so I went and had a long chat to him as he knew lots of people from the pub where I worked in town.
Leaving the pub, we almost ended up in a fight when a local thought a big mouth waiting for a taxi was with us. The local had his shirt off in the middle of the road when the big mouthed guy ran off. In the end, the local guy was showing us photos of his wife, kids and dog on his phone, so peace was restored. All in all an exciting night and a good place to never return to (th pub I mean).

Today we drove into town and took a couple of Ks walk on the beach a t pretty pool-which it is. Very nice at low tide as there are lots of shells and pretty things on the beach. But even the sand is brown! Then we did a bit of shopping to get us through the next few days in land and headed back to the park. I have the air conditioner on right now cooling the van down a little as it must be about 30c.

More Flowers

Russell's Tooth!

Today is the start of our 6th month on the road. Russ is celebrating with a tooth out! He went to the dentist last night and was advised to have it removed as there wasn't much left to save. The dentist was a one man show (no nurse or recetionist-just him) and was able to see him straight away.

When we drove to look at Port Hedland we crossed over the rail line and had a wonderful view of the salt works. We saw a number of people sitting at a lookout and laughed as we thought the salt wasn't quite that exciting-now we find they actually sit there to watch the iron ore trains pass by! Train spotters!

Flowers in the Pilbara

Flowers in the Pilbara

Port and South Hedland

Iron Ore Train Outside Port Hedland


We arrived in Port Hedland today. It’s only 220ks from Karratha, so we didn’t have to rush which was nice. We left after a sleep in and arrived in time for a late lunch. We even found time on the way to stop and take photos of wild flowers. They are really beautiful and we never stop oohhing and aahhing at them!

Our caravan park is in actually over in South Hedland which was built in the late 60s when it was expected the population would rise to 250,000. It didn’t! It has a large shopping centre and is obviously newer and less depressing than poor old Port Hedland which is covered in iron ore dust from the crushing plant right in town. Everything is brown. Brown, brown, brown. The footpaths, fences, roofs, and cars in car yards- they’re all brown.

James and Beth are here too, but they are over in Port Headland by the water. The park looks nice, but we went for an en suite rather than a view for a change. We are all going out for dinner tomorrow or Friday as we part company then. They’ll be heading to Broome for a couple of months and we’ll be heading inland to Mt Tom Price and Karijini National Park then back down to Perth. 4 weeks from today, we’ll be landing in London! We’ve booked 4 nights here and I think it might be more than enough. James and Beth will be back in Perth around Christmas time, so we'll catch up again then.

Right now, Russ is at a local dentist trying to get something done about a nasty tooth. He seems to think it needs to come out and he wants that done before we move on and before we go overseas. He’s been gone for ages, so I guess they were able to see him straight away!

A Week in Karratha

It’s been a quiet week in Karratha, but nice. Our sailing trip didn’t come off because it was too windy. I couldn’t believe it, but there you go! We took the lunch we’d packed to take sailing and drove out to Cossack-an historic town of beautiful old stone buildings that was the main port until ships got to big. It’s deserted now apart from a backpacker’s and an art gallery. We went to see the buildings and a big art exhibition that had started that day. There was over 350 paintings displayed in 4 buildings and some of them were really good. It’s apparently the biggest prize pool for an art exhibition in regional Australia.

After we’d visited Cossack we drove to the remote camping area of Cleaverville to eat our lunch before heading home.

Monday we took the tour of the Iron Ore Loading Facilities. I wouldn’t recommend it as a “must do”, but it was interesting enough and filled in a few hours. Our guide (who was doing her first tour) couldn’t work out all the zeros in the figures she was quoting, so it got a bit confusing at times. Part of the wharf is being extended and improved, so we couldn’t see that bit. The tour finished with a drive past the school and sporting facilities in town and still finished about 15 minutes early!

Today we did a bit of running around-doctor, chemist, optician, then did some 4WDing behind the caravan park to have a look up close at some of the wild flowers. It’s a good season here as they had a metre of rain in the last cyclone.

It’s been too windy to take the boat out, but Russ caught us a feed of fish off the beach last night-dinner tonight. Right now he's getting the boat ready to go up on the twin cab where I suspect it might stay until we get to Perth.

Tomorrow we will be in Port Hedland.

PS. The boat’s on!

Lunch in Point Samson with James and Beth

Today’s planned fishing trip had to be cancelled as the wind was too strong to take our boat out. Russ had made lunch so we packed it in the car and went out to Point Samson to visit James and Beth.

They are in a really pretty caravan park right on the beach-it’s small and much less formal than this one! They have a pub, restaurant and small supermarket on the grounds so it’s very convenient. The caravan sites are much smaller than here though. James ordered them take away fish and chips from the restaurant, we ate our rolls (and a small serve of chips) and we had a couple of bottles of wine over a very long leisurely lunch. It was great fun and so nice sitting outside in the beautiful weather.

On the way home we stopped and looked at Wickham (fairly unattractive) and it’s beach. We had to wait for an iron ore train more than 2ks long on the way to the beach (it was a very long wait). After that we had a look around the historic town of Roebourne (sometimes very unattractive and at other times quite impressive). We considered calling into the Sobering Up Centre in town, but had to get home for a glass of wine!

Another enjoyable day in Karratha. I really like it here, but it’s winter now, I don’t think I could cope with the hot summer days when the temperature regularly goes over 37c.

Sight Seeing Around Karratha.

Dampier's Waterfront

This morning we got up, had breakfast and made ourselves some lunch. I have to confess we found 9.5c a bit cold for us and pput the heater on for only the second time in almost 5 months. I think we are starting to get used to this wonderful weather.

First headed west of Karratha out to Dampier for a drive around the town and waterfront. On one hand it is really industrialized, on the other it’s so pretty. Maybe being from the smelly Valley (Latrobe that is) I can see the beauty in heavy industry! On the way out there we passed the huge Pilbara ore trains carrying ore to the wharfs and the evaporation ponds for the salt mines.

The Pilbara is quite hilly, and all those hills look like someone dumped a huge truck load of red rocks on them. That and the blue sky and sea, the wild flowers and trees make it so beautiful.

Hearson's Cove

We took a drive to Hearson’s Cove-a popular swimming, bbqing and picnic and boat launching spot. Those big red rock hills run right down to the waters edge there. After that we went to Deep Gorge to see the Aboriginal engravings. It’s a bit of a goat track in over rocks and the small creek, but well worth it. Some of the engravings are incredible. We saw kangaroos (lots of kangaroos) people, fish turtles, a bull (or maybe it was a water buffalo), lizards……. I expected there would be caves, but the engravings are actually just on the tumbled rocks on the hill sides. Once you’ve seen them, you realize when you are out driving, they are actually everywhere. 40,000 of them have been recorded making it the most prolific site in Australia apparently.

Rock Engravings-can you spot the kangaroo just off centre


We ate our picnic at Withnell bay, another pretty spot with a boat ramp, but within spitting distance of the Woodside Onshore Treatment Facility (a big gas plant). Lunch finished, we came back to the local tourist information centre and booked a sailing cruise on Sunday and a Pilbara Iron Port Facility tour on Monday. The sailing cruise through the Dampier Archipelago with its 42 islands leaves at 9am in the morning and returns at 3.30pm. There are a maximum of 10 passengers and we provide our own lunch and drinks. We’ll be stopping on the way to swim and snorkel. Sounds good to me.
Our day finished with a spot of retail therapy-we bought some clothes for our coming holiday and a few ingredients for dinner. At the supermarket we bot noticed almost all the cars are 4WD. I reckon 10% of the cars in the carpark were normal sedans. Another fact we discovered was that between the 20,00 people in the shire they have 3,500 boats registered. That's the highest number of boats per capita in Australia.

Karratha

We are now in Karratha thank goodness. I found 6 nights in Onslow enough-especially as the fishing and crabbing wasn’t so good.

Karratha is a service town for the mining, gas and oil and salt production that goes on nearby. It’s not the prettiest of towns but it has 2 supermarkets, banks and restaurants, so it’ll be fine for a week. Our friends James and Beth aren’t too far away (at Point Samson) so we’ll catch up with them for a meal and a bit of fishing over the week.

It was a beautiful drive here today. The only building we passed in 300ks was a roadhouse at Fortesque river-otherwise nothing! We passed lots of low hills and small ranges, many more wild flowers and the road had enough bends in it to keep us awake. The wind pushed the car and van around a bit, but has virtually stopped now.

I was a bit angry when we got here as we’d been promised a site close to the ablutions when I booked. This is a huge park, it’s full and we are just about as far as we can be from them. They couldn’t give us another site, but offered us our money back-it’s school holidays, so the other parks we just tried are full too. When I was booking, I knocked back an en suite site as $43 a night was a bit out of our budget (especially when we own the accommodation!). Now I wish we had taken it!

Russ has the boat trailer assembled, we put the boat on and we are about to go and hit the shops.

Clayton's Crabbing

Tonight (Sunday 9th) is our 4th in Onslow. It’s a very full park now with the school holidays started. It’s hard now to find a vacant toilet or shower at the time you want (or need) it and even the tiniest sites have vans or tents on them, often with their power via double adaptors and cords running across the roads.

The town of Onslow has 850 people-about 600 are aboriginal. It’s a town prone to cyclones, so a lot of the buildings are actually anchored down and a most have metal shutters over the windows. The mosquitoes here carry Ross River Virus, so they spray commercially to kill them and we have to be careful to use insect spray, mosquito coils or cover up!

Today we went crabbing with Beth and James to 4 mile creek. It is supposed to be OK for crabs, but not when we were there. Not being successful crabbers, we threw in our fishing lines and did no good with those either! Never mind, a couple we’d met in Denham arrived, started to chat and gave us a couple of cooked blue swimmer crabs when they heard our sad tale. We ate those, then cooked ourselves some sausages for lunch on the wood fired barbie. Just after we finished our lunch, Russ kindly towed a bogged car and boat out of the river and up the bank. They gave us two big mud crabs which we are cooking right now and will eat before we go to the pub for a roast dinner tonight. So we ended up scoring 4 crabs on our unsuccessful crabbing trip. The claws on one of thosese crabs were nearly as big as my hand!

Russ's towing fee-2 nice big muddies

On to Onslow

Wednesday, we spent our last day in Exmouth. I ended up enjoying the place although I was getting a bit anxious about the lack of phone and internet coverage out at the park. We took the boat out for a quick last fish on the reef, but it was a bit windy so after catching very little we headed back. A remora (those sucker fish that attach themselves to sharks etc) each was the most exciting thing we brought into the boat!

After loading the boat on the car and the trailer on the van, we headed to town for a Chinese meal. It was a bit forgettable, but still nice to eat out.

Thursday morning we headed to Onslow. It’s almost 400ks on from Exmouth and a really nice trip. We passed hundreds of thousands more termite nests (all different colours depending on the soil or sand type), and saw a lot more wild flowers starting.

We were driving through a series of red sand dunes cut out for the road when we arrived in an amazing set of low ranges-the highest Mt Alexander being just over 400metres. You have to see the colours in sand, the hills and then the grasses and shrubs to know how beautiful it all is. We passed through about 80ks of this rocky, hilly country before turning off to Onslow.

We arrived at the park and booked in, then asked if James and Beth were still here. The lady laughed and told us they had decided to stay on as they had friends coming. To stay though they had to shift sites (never much fun when you like the one you are on) for some new people arriving. Well, that was us on both counts, so we are now on their old site!! Last night was so nice to sit and catch up over drinks and nibblies before dinner with someone we knew. Today Russ and James will take the boat out and do a bit of fishing.

Did I happen to mention it was about 30c when we arrived, cooling to about 15 at 9pm! This has to be the most perfect winter weather I've ever known!

Cod and a Lost Rod

Sunday we headed in to the Exmouth market. It was a total waste of time except that we needed fresh milk and bread. After that we took the boat to one of the ramps and put it in for some fishing inside the reef.

We got off to a bit of a bad start when Russ forgot to put those bungs in AGAIN!!! I was watching the other boats negotiate the channel out when I turned round to find the boat filling with water. We had to get the trailer, load the boat back on and empty it of water!

After my humor improved, we had a lovely day out on the water. Lots of dolphins swam by very close to our boat, a huge turtle passed us and we saw a fair sized shark out of the water and obviously attacking something. The wind was pretty good, so we were drifting and fishing when we went over a reef and spotted a lot of huge fish beneath us. Next minute, Russ’s good rod and reel got dragged into the water and disappeared. I could only laugh which probably didn’t thrill Russ. We ended the day with a good feed of cod and no rod!

Monday we went fishing again. We’d decided not to worry too much about bringing any fish home (because we were having chicken sausages for dinner that night and steak Tuesday night), so just caught and released them. It was a wonderful day that got off to a good start with the bungs being put in before we launched the boat!!!!! No rods were lost and we decided this part of Ningaloo Reef is the best for fishing (for us). Most of the time the water is so clear you can see the bottom and we reckon of the 500 species of fish on the reef we have caught about 50 of them. We saw a pod of 6 dolphins very (very) close by and after watching the film at Monkey Mia we could tell they were fishing. It was quite a display! They leap from the water to tell others they’ve found fish, circle the fish to keep them together then thump the water with their tails to stun the fish. We know (from the film) that 5 would have been guarding the fish while one went in to eat, then they change places until all of them have eaten. It went on for about an hour. I can’t believe we can take our little boat out and see all these amazing things.

Cape Range National Park

We woke up today and decided it was too windy to go fishing, so decided to go to the other side of Cape Range National Park instead. We had to drive in and through Exmouth, so checked out the wreck of the Mildura and a number of possible beach fishing spots on the way.
Sturt's Desert Pea (WA variety)


It was a stunning 13k drive out to Shotover Canyon through the ranges on a dirt road crossing lots of dry and stony creek beds as we went. The colour of the rocks and trees was amazing. We stopped in a picnic ground to make our lunch-the only people there, and then climbed some steps to take photos of the canyon. We passed one car on the way out.


We drove back to the main road then headed towards Learmonth stopping on the way at a local prawn factory to buy some locally caught cooked and raw green prawns for a very reasonable price. King prawns $17 per kg and green for $12. We ate the cooked prawns with a glass of wine before dinner tonight and I plan to make Cajun prawn pasta tomorrow night with the green ones.

On to Learmonth Jetty where we watched a group of kids catching flat head, squid, a large scary looking eel and trying hard not to catch a sea snake. After that, we headed back into the National park on another road that crossed an extremely narrow ridge at times for a very different view of the ranges and Exmouth Gulf.

I used the elevation to make a few phone calls which was good. I rang James and Beth who are also here in Exmouth to find they are leaving tomorrow as they hate the place. Beth really can’t cope with the mozzies and their park is very dusty with very few trees. I find when you really love a park (like Coral Bay) the next can be a bit of an anti-climax-then the next is OK again.