Coral Bay to the Bungle Bungles
Sunday 14th June 157 km
Quite cool when we woke up. The sun was shining but it was a while before it got through the trees, in the sun it was warm. We chatted a bit more to John and Ruth before they left, and then had breakfast outside sitting in the sun and then I went and had a swim in the pool before we left at 10 o'clock.
We drove out of the site and parked along by the beach and walked up first to a lookout, it was quite windy up there. The wind was quite chill in the shade although in the sun it was very hot, absolute clear blue sky and really exquisite looking and the name Coral Bay is just right, this place is just what you might conjure up. We went and got some flippers and mask and snorkel, free of charge after going on the boat yesterday, which we reckon was a pretty good deal and walked along the beach for quite a way. The plaster came off my toe and I was pleased to find that my toe seems just about healed.
At one point yesterday the man had told us that there was a current moving downwards towards the Coral Bay Resort, so we left our towels and things there and walked on further and then went into the water and had a lovely time viewing the coral. The coral was deeper here than yesterday and the water was a bit sandy and not as clear, so the viewing perhaps wasn't as good, it certainly wasn't as good as yesterday's, but we still saw a lot of coral, lots and lots of wonderful fish and it was lovely just feeling we were there on our own doing this. The current took us back down and we didn't really need to swim very much just to keep afloat. But we did swim sometimes to keep ourselves warm, it was not quite as warm there as it had been out on the reef yesterday. There was apparently a warm current out there, but we very much enjoyed ourselves. We came out of water and walked back, we'd had coffee before we left for our swim and it was now more or less lunchtime.
We handed back our stuff and then drove down to a place called Mauds Landing. This was a few kilometres on an unmade up road and there were a couple of posts which were all that remained of a wooden jetty here where wool was exported in the early days. There was a beautiful sea there but the reef wasn't close into the shore at this point, but we did have another little dip in there, no one else around, the water went deep very quickly.
Quite cool when we woke up. The sun was shining but it was a while before it got through the trees, in the sun it was warm. We chatted a bit more to John and Ruth before they left, and then had breakfast outside sitting in the sun and then I went and had a swim in the pool before we left at 10 o'clock.
We drove out of the site and parked along by the beach and walked up first to a lookout, it was quite windy up there. The wind was quite chill in the shade although in the sun it was very hot, absolute clear blue sky and really exquisite looking and the name Coral Bay is just right, this place is just what you might conjure up. We went and got some flippers and mask and snorkel, free of charge after going on the boat yesterday, which we reckon was a pretty good deal and walked along the beach for quite a way. The plaster came off my toe and I was pleased to find that my toe seems just about healed.
At one point yesterday the man had told us that there was a current moving downwards towards the Coral Bay Resort, so we left our towels and things there and walked on further and then went into the water and had a lovely time viewing the coral. The coral was deeper here than yesterday and the water was a bit sandy and not as clear, so the viewing perhaps wasn't as good, it certainly wasn't as good as yesterday's, but we still saw a lot of coral, lots and lots of wonderful fish and it was lovely just feeling we were there on our own doing this. The current took us back down and we didn't really need to swim very much just to keep afloat. But we did swim sometimes to keep ourselves warm, it was not quite as warm there as it had been out on the reef yesterday. There was apparently a warm current out there, but we very much enjoyed ourselves. We came out of water and walked back, we'd had coffee before we left for our swim and it was now more or less lunchtime.
We handed back our stuff and then drove down to a place called Mauds Landing. This was a few kilometres on an unmade up road and there were a couple of posts which were all that remained of a wooden jetty here where wool was exported in the early days. There was a beautiful sea there but the reef wasn't close into the shore at this point, but we did have another little dip in there, no one else around, the water went deep very quickly.
We had lunch there the annoying thing being the flies and then a horse fly thing had a couple of goes at my leg, so that drove us inside. So we then finished our lunch and were ready to leave just before 2.30, by which time one or two people had come down to the beach, there had been nobody else before.
We drove the almost 150 km to Exmouth, pronounced xmouth. The land was flat practically the whole way with something looking like grass and interspersed with termite mounds, and later on a couple of sheep and one or two small trees, but that was about all. Exmouth was disappointing perhaps on first getting to it, being a place which was built in 1967. There wasn't much to see, we went to see the town beach which wasn't much at all after all the beautiful beaches we had seen. We tried to suss out the caravan sites, ending up with the realisation that there had been three, one of which had recently changed its name and one had recently disappeared both to confuse us. Both of those remaining charged $18 for a powered site which we needed to have because of the problem with the battery, so we made our way to the Tourist Information before making our decision. We were dealt with there by a very pleasant young girl who despite all the odds, it was practically five when we arrived and they closed then and then she suddenly lost her voice and people were coming in. Even though it was really closed, she didn't lose her cool at all and dealt with us very pleasantly and we found ourselves booked onto a tour for tomorrow, an all day tour starting at 7.00 in the morning.
We then went to book ourselves into the Exmouth Cape Tourist Village for two nights where again we were dealt with by very pleasant young girls and put onto a grassy pitch, which looked as though it had rained there recently, as the ground was soft with very wet looking soil. We just had the last of the sun and before it got too cool, we went to have a shower to wash off all the salt. We did go out to the phone boxes thinking we'd try and phone Tom, but there were queues of people and so we had to give up on that one as our phone wasn't logging in there at the moment.
I cooked the meal in the microwave, chicken and baked potatoes very tasty, which we ate sitting outside with our light. We then went back to the phone boxes and we tried to all of our children getting answer phones from all of them, except Simon where there was no reply, rather frustrating. But we did manage to use this phone card and utilise it for that purpose, there were lots of stars on the way to the phone box. The night unfortunately became very windy and I had very little sleep.
We drove the almost 150 km to Exmouth, pronounced xmouth. The land was flat practically the whole way with something looking like grass and interspersed with termite mounds, and later on a couple of sheep and one or two small trees, but that was about all. Exmouth was disappointing perhaps on first getting to it, being a place which was built in 1967. There wasn't much to see, we went to see the town beach which wasn't much at all after all the beautiful beaches we had seen. We tried to suss out the caravan sites, ending up with the realisation that there had been three, one of which had recently changed its name and one had recently disappeared both to confuse us. Both of those remaining charged $18 for a powered site which we needed to have because of the problem with the battery, so we made our way to the Tourist Information before making our decision. We were dealt with there by a very pleasant young girl who despite all the odds, it was practically five when we arrived and they closed then and then she suddenly lost her voice and people were coming in. Even though it was really closed, she didn't lose her cool at all and dealt with us very pleasantly and we found ourselves booked onto a tour for tomorrow, an all day tour starting at 7.00 in the morning.
We then went to book ourselves into the Exmouth Cape Tourist Village for two nights where again we were dealt with by very pleasant young girls and put onto a grassy pitch, which looked as though it had rained there recently, as the ground was soft with very wet looking soil. We just had the last of the sun and before it got too cool, we went to have a shower to wash off all the salt. We did go out to the phone boxes thinking we'd try and phone Tom, but there were queues of people and so we had to give up on that one as our phone wasn't logging in there at the moment.
I cooked the meal in the microwave, chicken and baked potatoes very tasty, which we ate sitting outside with our light. We then went back to the phone boxes and we tried to all of our children getting answer phones from all of them, except Simon where there was no reply, rather frustrating. But we did manage to use this phone card and utilise it for that purpose, there were lots of stars on the way to the phone box. The night unfortunately became very windy and I had very little sleep.
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The beautiful beach at Maud's Landing (Adrian Hutak 2021).
Monday 15th June. 0 km in van
I had in fact just dropped off when the alarm went off at 6 o’clock, we packed up the stuff for the day and got ourselves organised and we were ready to leave as the sun was rising at 7 o'clock on a day trip with Les of Eco Tours. This was an absolutely brilliant day, 11 hours of entertainment certainly good value for $95 each. about £40 each for the whole day. It was about 200 kilometres, binoculars for the day, food for the day, and a lot of expert knowledge and some brilliant places we visited.
We first went down the road the way we'd come in yesterday and turned off to the two gorges the first one Shothole Canyon which we drove along, the cliff faces in here looked a bit like Banksia seed heads or a bit like the Hakea Victoria in Fitzgerald River N. P. , opening up with lots of interesting coloured rocks amongst the sheer faces of the rock. We stopped at the end of the gorge for a few minutes to walk up some steps.
I had in fact just dropped off when the alarm went off at 6 o’clock, we packed up the stuff for the day and got ourselves organised and we were ready to leave as the sun was rising at 7 o'clock on a day trip with Les of Eco Tours. This was an absolutely brilliant day, 11 hours of entertainment certainly good value for $95 each. about £40 each for the whole day. It was about 200 kilometres, binoculars for the day, food for the day, and a lot of expert knowledge and some brilliant places we visited.
We first went down the road the way we'd come in yesterday and turned off to the two gorges the first one Shothole Canyon which we drove along, the cliff faces in here looked a bit like Banksia seed heads or a bit like the Hakea Victoria in Fitzgerald River N. P. , opening up with lots of interesting coloured rocks amongst the sheer faces of the rock. We stopped at the end of the gorge for a few minutes to walk up some steps.
There was on our map, a walk from here to the other gorge, which luckily wasn't even entertained as it seems it's closed now, but would have been quite hairy walk for me. The second gorge we drove up was the Charles Knife Canyon, there in fact was a gorge on either side of us at this point. There were four wheel drive tracks here but we then headed south a bit further before taking a four wheel drive track across the centre of this peninsula.
This took us about three hours to do the 20 kilometres or so across very rough terrain and still showing a lot of signs of the rain of the recent weeks. We stopped several times, one time where we could see nothing except a tree. When we got to the tree it was growing in a cave - there are 600 plus caves in this range of mountains and this one went down a sheer hole, Les said it was OK under foot and I managed to get to the mouth of the cave, Adrian climbed a bit further and took a photo but it dropped down a shear drop afterwards - I was quite pleased with myself for doing that.
This took us about three hours to do the 20 kilometres or so across very rough terrain and still showing a lot of signs of the rain of the recent weeks. We stopped several times, one time where we could see nothing except a tree. When we got to the tree it was growing in a cave - there are 600 plus caves in this range of mountains and this one went down a sheer hole, Les said it was OK under foot and I managed to get to the mouth of the cave, Adrian climbed a bit further and took a photo but it dropped down a shear drop afterwards - I was quite pleased with myself for doing that.
Adrian at Shothole Canyon
We stopped another time by a little cave opening just a very shallow cave going into the hillside and by it we could hear a lot of birdsong - we soon realised that Les was an absolute expert on birds and flowers, geology and most other things too. This was our morning coffee stop where we had cake and coffee. it was now about 10.15 and we were ready for it after our early start. Another stop was in a place called a billabong, where there was no water anymore but they were coolibah trees.
Looking into the cave - we couldn't actually see much!
We then progressed across the Cape Range National Park seeing all manner of different flowers and having the names told to us which was very good, some we'd seen before, some we'd never seen and some were just from this area, so we wouldn't have seen them anywhere. Solarnum, grevillia, portulaca, a little yellow one and some were just coming out after the rains.
The waterless Billabong
We came to the western side of the peninsula and made our way to Yardie Creek for the 12 o'clock trip on a boat up this creek. This was with someone called Maco, a great entertainer, full of jokes with some things which were true and some that weren't. But again he was a master of knowing the wildlife to see on our 1½ hours trip, we must have had in the end, on this little boat going up the creek with a sheer gorge red sandstone on either side of us. We saw several rock wallabies something we'd never seen before, they were quite pretty, but we were not able to photograph them as they were too far away. Several reef herons, blue and white, a fruit bat took off just as we got to the gorge, two Osprey on a nest, some Corellas, and a white parrot type bird. At the end of the water part of the gorge, as far as the boat could go, a whole group of us walked across to a freshwater pool a bit further on where supposedly there were snails that were amazing, and bull rushes and other things. But as somebody said, “I've never walked so far to see so little”.
Some of the indigenous wild flowers we saw
We really enjoyed ourselves on there and when we came back, Les had got lunch, organised. We sat down and had a picnic lunch much the sort of things we would normally eat ourselves for lunch. After that we drove northwards up the way we had just come, but then further on to Turquoise Bay. One thing I hadn't said was on the way down from coming across the centre, with binoculars we'd watched some humpback whales on their way up northwards. But we now came down to Turquoise Bay, it's name described what it was like. A coral reef of course, comes all the way up here, and we put on costumes and snorkelling gear, and walked a few 100 metres along this beach, quite an idyllic looking place, blue sky, turquoise sea, white sand, green vegetation, coral reef, and quite exquisite of course. Luckily Les told us that the current wouldn't take us out, it would only bring us in, because the current was flowing very, very strongly and could have been quite scary. Because of the wind presumably, the sand had been a bit churned up. Certainly the waves breaking on the coral reef, were enormous as spray came up from them. Les said he'd not seen them like that for years and the coral all looked a bit sandy but we saw plenty We saw different coral, we saw soft corals that we hadn't seen before and lots and lots of fish. Some different fish and some from before such as a reef lagoon ray. A lot of long pikey type fish, I saw a cat fish and some of all shapes and sizes again, a lot of sea cucumbers too, so it was really exciting.
A heron in Yardie Creek
Adrian at the end of Yardie Creek by the pool
So that was a great time on the boat.
The boat on Yardie Creek
Thoroughly refreshed and exercised by this we made our way ashore, it was quite difficult as the waves were just meeting there from two different directions and we were rather tossed onto the shore -it was really good fun.
So having got dressed, we progressed to the Visitor Centre. We arrived there about 3.45 and the place closed at 4 o'clock, so just long enough for quick tour. It was quite nice to see, but doing the action things was better, so we weren't too bothered about that, but we did see several things that were artefacts from the area. Then it was time for afternoon tea and a piece of cake.
We then drove up north as far as Vlamingh Head Lighthouse which Les had the key for, so we ascended this and we could look out back over the Cape and then round to the sea.
So having got dressed, we progressed to the Visitor Centre. We arrived there about 3.45 and the place closed at 4 o'clock, so just long enough for quick tour. It was quite nice to see, but doing the action things was better, so we weren't too bothered about that, but we did see several things that were artefacts from the area. Then it was time for afternoon tea and a piece of cake.
We then drove up north as far as Vlamingh Head Lighthouse which Les had the key for, so we ascended this and we could look out back over the Cape and then round to the sea.
Rosie snorkelling amongst the coral
As we'd visited, but not gone up the Cape in the southwest corner, to come to the northwest corner and see this one was good, and the weather was much nicer. All we could see looking back was the green vegetation. And just seeing reef all around, all sorts of masts and things that I didn't take in, at different stations, but obviously were important and he told us all about them.
Having seen that, we then headed round towards Exmouth, but we didn't finish even then, he took us into what had been the USAF Camp, which was now done up as a sort of tourist resort and one can stay there. It had all sorts of amenities, I hardly think it was pretty but it was interesting to see. A bit further on we turned off into an area where Les knew there would be some red kangaroos, we'd also seen some euros today, and lots of ostriches and a lot of different birds and wedgetails. It culminated with him stopping to see two birds having a scrap, it was a corella being seen off by a harrier. We just watched them as the sun was going down which was quite an exciting thing to watch and very photogenic looking. He'd also shown us a sturt desert pea which was perhaps not as pretty as the black centred ones we saw back in South Australia but had a pale centre and was more of a pinky colour. He also pointed out a black shouldered kite which they sort of hand reared when it came in with a broken wing, so he actually knew that one. He obviously was quite knowledgeable on all sorts of wildlife things and seemed quite happy to share this with us. So all told we'd had a thoroughly good day and arrived back at the Exmouth Cape Tourist Village at 6 o'clock, just as the sun was setting. I cooked pork stir fry for supper, cooking the rice in the microwave.
Having seen that, we then headed round towards Exmouth, but we didn't finish even then, he took us into what had been the USAF Camp, which was now done up as a sort of tourist resort and one can stay there. It had all sorts of amenities, I hardly think it was pretty but it was interesting to see. A bit further on we turned off into an area where Les knew there would be some red kangaroos, we'd also seen some euros today, and lots of ostriches and a lot of different birds and wedgetails. It culminated with him stopping to see two birds having a scrap, it was a corella being seen off by a harrier. We just watched them as the sun was going down which was quite an exciting thing to watch and very photogenic looking. He'd also shown us a sturt desert pea which was perhaps not as pretty as the black centred ones we saw back in South Australia but had a pale centre and was more of a pinky colour. He also pointed out a black shouldered kite which they sort of hand reared when it came in with a broken wing, so he actually knew that one. He obviously was quite knowledgeable on all sorts of wildlife things and seemed quite happy to share this with us. So all told we'd had a thoroughly good day and arrived back at the Exmouth Cape Tourist Village at 6 o'clock, just as the sun was setting. I cooked pork stir fry for supper, cooking the rice in the microwave.
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Vlamingh Head Lighthouse (streetview 2021)
Adrian & Les on top of the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse
Tuesday 16th June 200 km
It was windy again in the night but sunny when we woke up and so even though it was still windy, I went for a swim in the pool. It was quite a pleasant pool, it was still in the shade but quite invigorating, followed by a shower and hair wash by which time Adrian had got breakfast and we were ready to leave about 9.45.
We drove into Exmouth and went first to the post office where we collected our post. We had letters from Emma with photos of her garden and a letter from Renee and Lena with information on Aunty Nancy's funeral and photos of our kids at Val and Mike's do and a letter from Janet O'Gorman. So all told lots of news to read, there and a couple of official ones too. We drove around the corner and prepared to do some shopping in Foodland, but we noticed we were parked right outside the laundrette, so thought we'd take advantage of doing a bit of washing while we were shopping. This we did and came back and had tea and coffee with cake, half a cream doughnut each and finishing reading the post while the washing was drying, and then made our way around to get gas and diesel. Adrian also made phone calls to Landbase to say about the phone bills coming, to find out if there was a place in Tom Price to sort out our battery and to Cathay Pacific to book our seats for going home.
We finally left at 12.15. and went to have a look at Pebble Beach, and then a bit further on, turned off again at the Learmonth Jetty and decided to have lunch there. This was again a pebbly beach and with a very grey and angry looking sea, bringing in seaweed with it and a sky with gathering amount of cloud, but pleasant for all that and we put the table and chairs out and had our lunch here.
It was windy again in the night but sunny when we woke up and so even though it was still windy, I went for a swim in the pool. It was quite a pleasant pool, it was still in the shade but quite invigorating, followed by a shower and hair wash by which time Adrian had got breakfast and we were ready to leave about 9.45.
We drove into Exmouth and went first to the post office where we collected our post. We had letters from Emma with photos of her garden and a letter from Renee and Lena with information on Aunty Nancy's funeral and photos of our kids at Val and Mike's do and a letter from Janet O'Gorman. So all told lots of news to read, there and a couple of official ones too. We drove around the corner and prepared to do some shopping in Foodland, but we noticed we were parked right outside the laundrette, so thought we'd take advantage of doing a bit of washing while we were shopping. This we did and came back and had tea and coffee with cake, half a cream doughnut each and finishing reading the post while the washing was drying, and then made our way around to get gas and diesel. Adrian also made phone calls to Landbase to say about the phone bills coming, to find out if there was a place in Tom Price to sort out our battery and to Cathay Pacific to book our seats for going home.
We finally left at 12.15. and went to have a look at Pebble Beach, and then a bit further on, turned off again at the Learmonth Jetty and decided to have lunch there. This was again a pebbly beach and with a very grey and angry looking sea, bringing in seaweed with it and a sky with gathering amount of cloud, but pleasant for all that and we put the table and chairs out and had our lunch here.
We put up a washing line and hung out all the washing which dried while we were having lunch.
We continued travelling south and turned off left onto the Burkett Highway and found out that it was now surfaced and we hoped that it was so right across to the North West Coastal Highway, which it was. It seemed it was only completed six months ago and cut off some 160 km going further south and then north again. We continued for about 80 km along this road, the only thing to see was the bright red soil and the green vegetation and termite mounds.
We continued travelling south and turned off left onto the Burkett Highway and found out that it was now surfaced and we hoped that it was so right across to the North West Coastal Highway, which it was. It seemed it was only completed six months ago and cut off some 160 km going further south and then north again. We continued for about 80 km along this road, the only thing to see was the bright red soil and the green vegetation and termite mounds.
Adrian ready for lunch on Learmonth Beach
We then turned onto the North West Coastal Highway.
At one point along this very flat road there was a large mound and with its bright red colour and the way sun was shining on it, made us think of Ayers Rock, there were a lot of trees with white trunks here which made it look very photogenic. We pulled into an unofficial camping area at Yannarie River Rest Area at 4 o’clock – it had been very wet there. There was a noisy generator there and again a lot of these trees with white trunks. There was also a bush with yellow trumpet flowers which was exquisitely scented. We had a little walk around and saw a mimosa tree and a little yellow creeping plant.
At one point along this very flat road there was a large mound and with its bright red colour and the way sun was shining on it, made us think of Ayers Rock, there were a lot of trees with white trunks here which made it look very photogenic. We pulled into an unofficial camping area at Yannarie River Rest Area at 4 o’clock – it had been very wet there. There was a noisy generator there and again a lot of these trees with white trunks. There was also a bush with yellow trumpet flowers which was exquisitely scented. We had a little walk around and saw a mimosa tree and a little yellow creeping plant.
Termite mounds scattered across the countryside
We managed to find a few scraps of wood, and so Adrian lit a fire in the pedestal barbecue there and cooked steak on it and cauliflower and potatoes in it. Just as we were about to eat there were some large drops of rain, but it held off and we had our supper outside. We cooked bananas on the fire and with our gas light which gave out a good light, we sat out for some time, but being on a pedestal and had a metal ring round, the fire was not very warm.
Reflections on the Yannarie River
Wednesday 17th June 416 km
There were some drops of rain at various times during the night and the generator didn't go on all night but then it was the weather and the lorries going past making a noise and so we were awake early. A couple of other campers left really early. We were ready to leave just after 9 o'clock on a rather grey morning with promise on the radio, that there was more rain to come.. We soon went through areas that had been wet and had rain recently and we went through heavy rain ourselves. We pulled into the Nanutarra Road House soon after 10 0'clock, the forecourt of which was flooded with thick red water. We'd crossed the river here which had a lot of water in. We got some diesel - the attendant boys had to waddle across to the pumps to give us this and Adrian was also able to buy a map. We had our tea and coffee stop and a nice piece of carrot cake and were concerned about the state of the roads further ahead that we we're now setting off for - Tom Price and hoping. We turned off on the road to Tom Price as we had heard that the other road, the main road, was closed with floods. We were hoping that the road we were on remains open as it's 300 kilometres long. There were some little humpy hills as we turned off, like minnie Ayers Rock shapes. Earlier we'd seen quite a lot of birds of prey. The road to Tom Price seemed to be okay. It was pretty wet on either side of the road often very flooded. There were several times when we had to go through areas of water on the road.
There were some drops of rain at various times during the night and the generator didn't go on all night but then it was the weather and the lorries going past making a noise and so we were awake early. A couple of other campers left really early. We were ready to leave just after 9 o'clock on a rather grey morning with promise on the radio, that there was more rain to come.. We soon went through areas that had been wet and had rain recently and we went through heavy rain ourselves. We pulled into the Nanutarra Road House soon after 10 0'clock, the forecourt of which was flooded with thick red water. We'd crossed the river here which had a lot of water in. We got some diesel - the attendant boys had to waddle across to the pumps to give us this and Adrian was also able to buy a map. We had our tea and coffee stop and a nice piece of carrot cake and were concerned about the state of the roads further ahead that we we're now setting off for - Tom Price and hoping. We turned off on the road to Tom Price as we had heard that the other road, the main road, was closed with floods. We were hoping that the road we were on remains open as it's 300 kilometres long. There were some little humpy hills as we turned off, like minnie Ayers Rock shapes. Earlier we'd seen quite a lot of birds of prey. The road to Tom Price seemed to be okay. It was pretty wet on either side of the road often very flooded. There were several times when we had to go through areas of water on the road.
We passed quite a few emus and various birds, galahs in particular. We passed the time by listening to tape number eight reliving memories. We had difficulty in stopping somewhere for lunch because the few parking areas were thick with mud and we were wary of getting stuck. Eventually we backed in to a parking area just before it came back onto the road on a bit of a slope and we had our lunch there. By the time we'd finished lunch it had stopped raining and the sky was very clear, lots of little clouds and we realised what an attractive area this is - the rocky hills, the red soil, green grass, green trees and very pretty. Just as we set off again and I was recording that, we saw that the picnic area that we'd been looking out for was just a kilometre further on. When we passed it, we were quite pleased that we hadn't waited any longer because it too was thick mud and we'd never have got into there. Then through Paraburdoo and I was surprised to see it in such beautiful scenery, almost surrounded by hills which were very dramatic on this day of contrasting weather - some sunshine and then settling in grey again but the mountains looking very dark and very dramatic all around it. Solanums had brightened the side of the road and also something like grasses but they had little white fluffy flowers on the end and like grass heads. Adrian said like an astilbe which they were. We continued to Tom Price. I found the scenery round here wonderful, rather Scottish - the weather and also Scottish clouds descending to halfway down the hills and the lighting - sometimes it was really overcast and we couldn't see much and it rained quite a lot. Other times the sun just lit up certain hills here and there, and I found it very very attractive. Tom Price itself also was very attractive, very green, it went in for the tidy town image - lots of poinsettia plants. We went into tourist information, the poor lady in there had had a hard day telling everybody that the National Park was closed but would be open tomorrow. Disappointment but not unexpected to us. There were some nice postcards, I bought a couple, but not of the gorges as we probably won't get there. Adrian inquired where WesTrac was because he hopes to find out about the battery. I posted the postcards that I'd written and having gone to find out where this WesTrac place was, which was few kilometres out of town, we then headed for the caravan site. To get there we had to go through a large flood right across the road, and we arrived at the Tom Price Caravan Park with hills/mountains all around, one called Mount Nameless half hidden in the clouds. We arrived behind a couple who were at the Minilya Rest Area and then settled into this wet campsite. We talked to a person from Adelaide in the neighbouring caravan, he was with his wife and children. They were travelling to Broome. I cooked chicken in the microwave. We went to phone Tom and Emma on the public phone in the campsite, but got the answerphone. It didn't feel that cold out there then, but everywhere was very damp. We came back and I wrote a letter to Renee and Lena.
Fortunately it didn't get any worse, but it was the main road that was closed because of floods!
Thursday 18th June 125 km
We were pleased to wake up to blue sky, but it had been quite chilly. The air had a sort of mountain nip to it, but the sun was lovely and warm. There were some clouds around but those soon left to leave the white fluffy clouds. We both had a shower and hairwash and chatted a bit to the person called Terry from Minilya Rest Area and his wife was Phyllis. We filled with water and with diesel too, at the campsite,, as it was meant to be the cheapest around so it was after 10 o'clock by the time. we left. I viewed the swimming pool, which was just a rectangular pool with a fence around it, I'd have had a swim if I'd found it earlier. We were so pleased to see Mount Nameless behind us, which was nameless yesterday as we couldn't see it – but today it was quite stark, a big red blob.
We were pleased to wake up to blue sky, but it had been quite chilly. The air had a sort of mountain nip to it, but the sun was lovely and warm. There were some clouds around but those soon left to leave the white fluffy clouds. We both had a shower and hairwash and chatted a bit to the person called Terry from Minilya Rest Area and his wife was Phyllis. We filled with water and with diesel too, at the campsite,, as it was meant to be the cheapest around so it was after 10 o'clock by the time. we left. I viewed the swimming pool, which was just a rectangular pool with a fence around it, I'd have had a swim if I'd found it earlier. We were so pleased to see Mount Nameless behind us, which was nameless yesterday as we couldn't see it – but today it was quite stark, a big red blob.
A difficult morning followed. We went next to WesTrac where we were hoping to get a battery, but things didn't go smoothly. After a long time it turned out that we had to have an invoice to show where John had bought it. This was difficult with lots of phone calls and virtually the rest of the morning was spent trying to sort out this problem. We went back via the town and had the battery tested which was flat. Adrian made lots of phone calls and in the end tried to ring John but all we got was the answerphone. We wanted to speak to him because it turned out we're going to have to buy a new battery at £70, not just going to exchange it as we had hoped as we can't get hold of the invoice. We could have got a cheaper one - £50. We deliberated on what to do, we were a bit despondent about it all and having to fork out our own money again, which we hope John will pay up at the end. I had made coffee during the time in the car park in Tom Price. We went shopping in Coles, thinking 'oh that's good, we'll stock up on some food as we're going out of habitation areas’, but Coles was being moved about and redone so it was difficult to find anything, it wasn't a particularly good one anyway- no cheap wine in the bottle shop. We'd been into the tourist information and found that at least the road into the park was open, even it did seem the road we had come on yesterday was now closed. It was now lunchtime, so we drove around to a site where there was a big truck that they had used in the iron ore mine. It was 11 metres long, by seven metres by six metres. The wheels were three metres diameter and the engine was twice as big as a grand prix engine. Our Coaster beside it was dwarfed.
Also I photographed a crested pigeon and some galahs in the campsite and it really did look lovely with all the mountains around and the blue sky and palm trees.
A crested pigeon and Galahs at the campsite at Tom Price
The inspiringly named, Mount Nameless
It was clear blue sky and hot now with a just a breeze and beautiful with these stark mountains around, the red soil and the green vegetation, I like this area very much. So we sat there and had lunch of a hot chicken we had bought in Coles, sitting outside at a table and then went off to get the battery.
Loaded with a new battery, we left Tom Price at 2.10. We took the road into the Karijini National Park and I was revelling in the beautiful scenery which to me is very Scottish but with beautiful blue sky and very warm. We first saw what we thought was a dingo, we took a couple of photos.
Loaded with a new battery, we left Tom Price at 2.10. We took the road into the Karijini National Park and I was revelling in the beautiful scenery which to me is very Scottish but with beautiful blue sky and very warm. We first saw what we thought was a dingo, we took a couple of photos.
The big and the small
Just after that we saw a flower rather like a deep purple clover and I got out and photographed this both in close up and a patch of it. As we went on further along the road, we found just drifts of it, as we'd been led to believe and these carpets of flowers did look very lovely.
There was a turn off to a camera viewpoint which we took, the road was okay and it only went a short distance. Here there was a wonderful view down with a beautiful yellow shrub, a bit like a deep potentilla which made a nice foreground subject and next to it there was a little memorial, there are so many in Australia. This one was rather different and rather amateurishly painted on it, it said to place a stone there in memory of loved ones, so we placed a stone, Adrian particularly thinking of Andy [Fuller] and me particularly thinking of Aunty Nancy.
A Dingo
'Batchelor Button' flowers
All around us for 360 degrees (not the odd five I added on a previous tape) were hills and wilderness and blue sky and just a little bit of bird song, a very treasured moment. I photograph Mount Bruce looking absolutely splendid against the blue sky, the shadows and the colours here are just exquisite today, maybe helped by yesterday's rain but everything is just wonderful.
View from the viewpoint
Viewpoint where we left stones fro Auntie Nancy & Andy Fuller
We stopped again beside the road and saw several different wildflowers, so I've been knocking up the old pictures today. We drove into the Karijini National Park itself and headed for the campsite area at Dales. We stopped first at the Visitor Centre in a large tent, with two Aboriginal people working in there who seemed very clueless about everything that was asked. We then made our way to the camping area down a very very bumpy unmade up road for several kilometres. We thought we'd go and have a look at one of the sites near here, the Fortescue Falls, but found it was a long walk. It was now 4.30, so we made our way to the camping area and found a pitch. The sun was too low for us to enjoy it and it was just going down behind the hills. We had a walk out amongst the spinifex and saw the glorious colours as the sky turned pink, a mixture of pastel pink and blue, with a bit of sun shining low onto the mountains in the distance. We came back for Adrian to change the battery. This done we found the pump seemed to be a bit problematic but he sorted that too. We had some more of the roast chicken, cold for supper. At bedtime we went out to see the absolutely star filled sky in the absolute silence.
Mount Bruce
Friday 19th June 52 km
We awoke at 7.00 am to see the sun just rise. A clear blue sky, it seemed quite chilly inside but we had breakfast sitting outside in the sun. Unfortunately a bit of my tooth broke off. Just after that a ranger came along and spoke to us. We left at about 9.00 o'clock and drove down to the carpark for Circular Pool. Here after sorting out the situation, we climbed down a steep gorge. I was very proud of myself for doing this because as far I was concerned it wasn't at all easy and it was a very long way. At the foot of the gorge, we then had a beautiful walk along it. We'd seen a group of young people who were out on an 'Explore type' trip, they were just ahead of us. We followed along this gorge which had a little river running through it. The cliffs were a brilliant red, the sky was pure blue, with green vegetation and white bark on some of the trees.
We awoke at 7.00 am to see the sun just rise. A clear blue sky, it seemed quite chilly inside but we had breakfast sitting outside in the sun. Unfortunately a bit of my tooth broke off. Just after that a ranger came along and spoke to us. We left at about 9.00 o'clock and drove down to the carpark for Circular Pool. Here after sorting out the situation, we climbed down a steep gorge. I was very proud of myself for doing this because as far I was concerned it wasn't at all easy and it was a very long way. At the foot of the gorge, we then had a beautiful walk along it. We'd seen a group of young people who were out on an 'Explore type' trip, they were just ahead of us. We followed along this gorge which had a little river running through it. The cliffs were a brilliant red, the sky was pure blue, with green vegetation and white bark on some of the trees.
And really the pleasantest walk we've been on, marred only by Adrian tripping right at the end of the walk and hurting his hand. That was the only downer of the whole walk. We weren't in the sun for much of it, being deep in the gorge, but the sun was shining all the time. It was sort of marked with blobs of yellow, so we could follow our way along the floor of the gorge and ended at Fortescue Falls, then forgot to tell you how you got out.
We scrambled up and then we went a bit further to another pool of water with a couple of little waterfalls coming into it. The group of young people were just making their way back and several of them had been in for swim. They all left and I thought, well we bought our things, so I went for swim and it was far pleasanter than I'd imagined, it wasn't freezing cold although it certainly wasn't warm, but it was pleasant enough swimming, and it was a delightful swim.
We scrambled up and then we went a bit further to another pool of water with a couple of little waterfalls coming into it. The group of young people were just making their way back and several of them had been in for swim. They all left and I thought, well we bought our things, so I went for swim and it was far pleasanter than I'd imagined, it wasn't freezing cold although it certainly wasn't warm, but it was pleasant enough swimming, and it was a delightful swim.
Holly Grevillia
Adrian enjoying the walk in Dales Gorge
The Dales Gorge
We'd only brought the weeniest towel with us not really expecting to swim, but I managed to dry myself and it wasn't cold. One or two people arrived afterwards. We made our way back steeply up to the top of the gorge and from there we walked back along the top with wonderful views down to the rich redness of the iron stone layers of rock, rather like liquorice all sorts, or those rubbers that come in all different coloured layers, with some yellow ochre colour.
Rosie congratulating herself on reaching the bottom of the gorge
And having a swim
Lots of magnificence to enjoy, we'd seen several butterflies and heard one or two birds. Just prior to us arriving back for lunch, we'd seen a motorhome leaving and it was Terry and Phyllis, who we met up with a couple of times, so we had quite a long chat to them. We even spoke to some girls in a car who seemed to think that the other road into the gorges was going to be open this afternoon. I made up some chicken rolls for lunch and we took these to the head of the gorge behind the Circular Pool where we did a bit of videoing, and then sat in the sunshine, a very pleasant atmosphere and ate our lunch and sat around for a bit.
Hoping that the girls were right about the road, we set off along this unmade road, stopping at the obligatory termite mound to take a photograph.
Hoping that the girls were right about the road, we set off along this unmade road, stopping at the obligatory termite mound to take a photograph.
Dales Gorge from above as we walked back
The road was open so we set off in the opposite direction along it, turning off to Kalamina Falls. This was not at all a deep gorge and they had made steps down to it. I was amused that it said look out and you walked to just a sheer drop made of this shaley rock which I would have thought could easily have fallen away. There was a little walk along to the waterfall at the foot of it, not terribly goable in my opinion, so we followed along the other way, which was quite pleasant, but the path was very hard to follow and there seemed to be more water in the river than normal. As it was getting late in the day we returned to the van and left at 4.10 pm. On the way back from the falls, a kangaroo leapt across in front of us, we narrowly missed it. We stopped at Joffre Camping Ground and just looked out on to spinifex a few trees and hills beyond and we watched the sun go down and a lovely sky. We looked through the first photo album, and relived lots of memories.
Adrian by the obligatory stop at the termite mound
Saturday 20th June 188 km
A clear blue sky when we awoke, we had our cup of tea and decided to get off early to view some of these gorges which were supposed to look good in the early morning light. Hence, we drove to the Knox Lookout first. We weren't sure about this thing about the early morning light because they were so dark. The contrast between the sky and gorges made it very difficult to see and certainly made taking photos difficult. We drove back to the Joffre Falls, the roads were very variable and some of the time pretty good, but then we went through some bad areas as a result of the heavy rain a few days ago. At the Joffre Falls, again a very deep gorge, we saw the three people who'd been camping near us climbing down into it, they seemed to have got down there very quickly. I wouldn't have liked it, it was so much scrambling down into the gorge which was enormously high.
A clear blue sky when we awoke, we had our cup of tea and decided to get off early to view some of these gorges which were supposed to look good in the early morning light. Hence, we drove to the Knox Lookout first. We weren't sure about this thing about the early morning light because they were so dark. The contrast between the sky and gorges made it very difficult to see and certainly made taking photos difficult. We drove back to the Joffre Falls, the roads were very variable and some of the time pretty good, but then we went through some bad areas as a result of the heavy rain a few days ago. At the Joffre Falls, again a very deep gorge, we saw the three people who'd been camping near us climbing down into it, they seemed to have got down there very quickly. I wouldn't have liked it, it was so much scrambling down into the gorge which was enormously high.
It was quite fun and very pretty and we ended up at a place where there was a large log across the gorge and then a pool of water beyond it. I think we could have climbed up high and gone on but we didn't. The previously mentioned couple caught up with us then, they were from Perth and he was called John and we had had quite a long chat to them, unfortunately in the shade. We then returned along the foot of the gorge. A young German couple had just arrived who we'd seen earlier and started scrambling up after ascending the ladder. We got to a point which I didn't like at all and we realised we had in fact gone the wrong way, which wasn't difficult to have done, but happy to say we made it to the top and back to the van just before midday and decided that it was time for tea and coffee.
We left the park now and drove the 25 Miles or so on unsurfaced roads. It was lucky that we had stopped to have our coffee because there was nowhere at all to stop in the park apart from these parking areas to see the gorges. We then drove out onto the road and it was another 25 miles with absolutely nowhere to stop and eventually we came out to the main road going north-south, the Great Northern Highway and there was an information board with a little pull off to it. There was a lot of rubbish on the information board welcoming you Tom Price which was long way in the other direction. We decided that this was the place we had to stop for lunch, so set our table and chairs up in the little roadside behind us with the clear blue sky, the green of the vegetation and the red of the hills in the distance, this had been lovely as we'd been driving along. There was quite a strong cool wind there, although the temperature was very pleasant. We turned off to the Munjina East Lookout into a gorge, we couldn't really see very much but it was a nice place for them to put up a lot of wooden railings, two picnic tables, and no exit signs etc!
We stopped at Munjina Roadhouse (Auski Tourist Village) and got diesel and air. We continued north, the land was rather flat, not terribly interesting now. We came earlier than we'd expected to Bea Bea Gorge picnic area and this was to be our stop for the night. It was still quite warm when we got there about four o'clock. We sat outside for a short while. The sun went down behind the trees. We did have a little walk around the area and saw one or two different wildflowers - a deep purple one, on a plant looking like sage. I wrote to Janet O' Gorman during the evening. I cooked bacon and eggs for supper. I had tried to clean some of the red dust from various places in the van, which was coated thickly.
We left the park now and drove the 25 Miles or so on unsurfaced roads. It was lucky that we had stopped to have our coffee because there was nowhere at all to stop in the park apart from these parking areas to see the gorges. We then drove out onto the road and it was another 25 miles with absolutely nowhere to stop and eventually we came out to the main road going north-south, the Great Northern Highway and there was an information board with a little pull off to it. There was a lot of rubbish on the information board welcoming you Tom Price which was long way in the other direction. We decided that this was the place we had to stop for lunch, so set our table and chairs up in the little roadside behind us with the clear blue sky, the green of the vegetation and the red of the hills in the distance, this had been lovely as we'd been driving along. There was quite a strong cool wind there, although the temperature was very pleasant. We turned off to the Munjina East Lookout into a gorge, we couldn't really see very much but it was a nice place for them to put up a lot of wooden railings, two picnic tables, and no exit signs etc!
We stopped at Munjina Roadhouse (Auski Tourist Village) and got diesel and air. We continued north, the land was rather flat, not terribly interesting now. We came earlier than we'd expected to Bea Bea Gorge picnic area and this was to be our stop for the night. It was still quite warm when we got there about four o'clock. We sat outside for a short while. The sun went down behind the trees. We did have a little walk around the area and saw one or two different wildflowers - a deep purple one, on a plant looking like sage. I wrote to Janet O' Gorman during the evening. I cooked bacon and eggs for supper. I had tried to clean some of the red dust from various places in the van, which was coated thickly.
Rosie & Adrian in Hancock Gorge
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1998-06-20 Joffre Gorge (Randolfo Santos 2023)
We had thought we'd have breakfast there but decided we'd progress on to the next lot of falls as these were about 20 kilometres from where we were. So we set off along this road, in one or two places there were floods of water. We drove first to the Oxers Lookout, which was an area where several of the gorges met and although it just looked like flatish land from the top, huge deep gorges went down from it and there were two little look outs here. Not my favourite occupation to stand and look down into the dephs, but we did our viewing thing and then came back. There was actually a strong wind blowing here, quite cool, so we ended up having breakfast sitting inside, which was very warm. We briefly spoke to the Ranger again who we had spoken to yesterday. We drove a very short distance to another parking area and walked down a gorge to what was called Handrail Pool. We couldn't go very far when we got to the bottom so climbed back up again, we had spoken to a couple on our way down. We then thought we'd have a look at the one called Hancock Gorge which the ranger said was not good for me with height problem but we decided to have a go as far as we could. We met up again with the couple we had just met earlier and decided to go down to a point where there was a ladder going down quite a distance onto the floor of the gorge and I negotiated that and we then had to walk along the gorge, often on little ridges sticking out over the water.
We neared Port Headland, it was now very flat and very boring looking. The phone was now working and we got a message from Tom to say that he was home from university and at Elm Gable. We stopped by a so called lookout by a large salt mountain, this area is a huge exporter of both salt and iron ore and we then proceeded to a campsite. The campsite was full, so we drove back into Port Headland finding very little to see, a very bleak place, it reminded us of Whyalla on the Eyre Peninsula. We found a tiny little park beside the sea where we had our lunch, it was very hot, but not a swimming beach, quite rocky where we were and very shallow.
We then drove on further into Port Headland, located the tourist information and asked the lady in there how we could get in touch with Nicky‘s uncle, which was one of the reasons for coming here. We had seen the yacht club but didn't think he could be there but in the tourist information she said yes, that he could be at the Yacht Club. So we made our way back there, there was nobody around, although we did locate his catamaran called 'Sea Wind'- we knew the name of it. Adrian tried phoning several times but we couldn't get hold of him. We were just on the point of leaving when a family in a car arrived back and Adrian found out that he lived in a house, in fact back near where the caravan park was, so we set off in that direction, stopping off at a little park to empty the loo. We located Gordon's house and Adrian left a message to ring us if he came back. An ice cream van had just gone by and a chap came out from a neighbouring house and tried to buy an ice cream from us - we didn't have any to sell him, and we weren't playing Annie Laurie!
We made our way down to Pretty Pool and it was a pretty little bit where the river came out to the sea. We had a little walk, it was a bit blowy, but then we put the seats out in front of the van overlooking this little river and spent a lovely hour or two.
We then drove on further into Port Headland, located the tourist information and asked the lady in there how we could get in touch with Nicky‘s uncle, which was one of the reasons for coming here. We had seen the yacht club but didn't think he could be there but in the tourist information she said yes, that he could be at the Yacht Club. So we made our way back there, there was nobody around, although we did locate his catamaran called 'Sea Wind'- we knew the name of it. Adrian tried phoning several times but we couldn't get hold of him. We were just on the point of leaving when a family in a car arrived back and Adrian found out that he lived in a house, in fact back near where the caravan park was, so we set off in that direction, stopping off at a little park to empty the loo. We located Gordon's house and Adrian left a message to ring us if he came back. An ice cream van had just gone by and a chap came out from a neighbouring house and tried to buy an ice cream from us - we didn't have any to sell him, and we weren't playing Annie Laurie!
We made our way down to Pretty Pool and it was a pretty little bit where the river came out to the sea. We had a little walk, it was a bit blowy, but then we put the seats out in front of the van overlooking this little river and spent a lovely hour or two.
I wrote a couple of postcards, phoned Emma and got straight through to her and had a lovely chat and later wrapped up a present for her birthday. We got just the answerphone from Tom and spoke to Steve who said that Simon was in Holland today. We were just about to leave as the sun went down behind the hills and we had just set off up the hill when the phone went and it was Gordon to say he just arrived back. We spent the next two or three hours chatting to Gordon, had a cup of tea with him and found him quite interesting. He was a bachelor and perhaps rather self centred, one might say and when it got to about 8.30 pm, we thought we’d better find somewhere to stay for the night.
Gordon's catamaran 'Sea Wind'
Pretty Pool
We thought we'd go back to the place where we spent most of the afternoon, down at Pretty Pool and Gordon said it was fine as when he cycled around on his early morning cycle ride sometimes in the dark, he'd seen campers there. So we set off back there arriving at about 8.45 and I quickly prepared to chicken stir fry. We ate this with an agreeable bottle of wine and then phoned Paul and Nicky and spoke to them. We then went for a walk down to the beach and the little creek that comes out to the sea here. It was quite a chill evening, certainly not cold, but obviously cold by their standards - this is the middle of their winter.
Gordon & Adrian
Monday 22nd June 169 km
I awoke early, about 6 o’clock, to see the light was beginning to rise above the sea. We put the phone on and found that there were messages from both Simon and Tom and Simon in fact had only just phoned. We managed to get hold of him and had quite a chat and found that he's working in Holland as from next week. .
I awoke early, about 6 o’clock, to see the light was beginning to rise above the sea. We put the phone on and found that there were messages from both Simon and Tom and Simon in fact had only just phoned. We managed to get hold of him and had quite a chat and found that he's working in Holland as from next week. .
So we were then quite early, so had our breakfast and got organised and left at 8.15. I phoned the dentist and managed to get an appointment for 9.30. We got to South Headland at 8.50 and located the dentist's, which was opposite the shopping centre, so we went in there, the shops were just about opening up but weren't able to get any photos done as they only did gloss, the lady did say she thought they did matt in Port Headland, but we weren’t going back there. We went into a travel agent and ruled out the possibility of going to Bali from here. I got my tooth filled, it seemed to be a good job and cost $80. I posted a parcel off to Emma, it cost $6.50. We then went back to shop in Kmart. Adrian bought some shorts and I bought a little two piece swimming costume of brief shorts and bikini top - it's money spending day today. We did quite a big shop in Coles including bits and pieces like films etc. Adrian rang Landbase to say to send our post to Derby - that's pronounced Dirby. We didn't find a laundrette and so about 11.45 we came back to the van and put the kettle on for some coffee.
After our tea and coffee and unloading and a bit of the shopping, it was 12.15 by the time we left and got some diesel and headed north. We pulled in after half an hour or so, we we're both feeling a bit dozy. It wasn't a particularly nice place, just where an unsurfaced road went off, belonging to salt mine it appeared, but we made this our lunch stop. It was pretty windy so we stayed inside the van and didn't leave until 2.45. We tried again to get Thomas but were only able to leave a message on the answerphone. We continued through very flat country, sometimes rather wet, and we turned off at Pardoo Roadhouse. Just as we turned off onto the unmade up road, there was a lorry, which contained a whole lot of live beehives - we closed the windows quickly.
The road down was very straight, and we hoped it wouldn't rain while we're down there. It was 14 kilometres down to the sea, through absolute nothing, just grassy land, several kangaroos leapt in front of us on the way. We reached the sea where a little creek came out at Cape Keraudren and parked on the sand. The tide went out a long way. There were several other 'campers' here and we settled ourselves in. We chatted to a couple with a ‘coaster’ from Perth who had been to a CMCA [Campervan and Motorhome Club of Australia, who we belonged too whilst we were there] get together in Roma, Queensland and briefly to Ken and his wife in a caravan from Queensland. We sat in the last of the sun and had a piece of fruitcake and a glass with sweet wine and then walked off out across this vast beach to the edge of the sea just as the sun was setting. There were glorious colours - deep blue and pink in one direction, more orange in the other but right around - 360 degrees of colours which was magnificent. The beach was scattered with pieces of washed up coral. It had been a clear blue sky all day but with a fresh wind
After our tea and coffee and unloading and a bit of the shopping, it was 12.15 by the time we left and got some diesel and headed north. We pulled in after half an hour or so, we we're both feeling a bit dozy. It wasn't a particularly nice place, just where an unsurfaced road went off, belonging to salt mine it appeared, but we made this our lunch stop. It was pretty windy so we stayed inside the van and didn't leave until 2.45. We tried again to get Thomas but were only able to leave a message on the answerphone. We continued through very flat country, sometimes rather wet, and we turned off at Pardoo Roadhouse. Just as we turned off onto the unmade up road, there was a lorry, which contained a whole lot of live beehives - we closed the windows quickly.
The road down was very straight, and we hoped it wouldn't rain while we're down there. It was 14 kilometres down to the sea, through absolute nothing, just grassy land, several kangaroos leapt in front of us on the way. We reached the sea where a little creek came out at Cape Keraudren and parked on the sand. The tide went out a long way. There were several other 'campers' here and we settled ourselves in. We chatted to a couple with a ‘coaster’ from Perth who had been to a CMCA [Campervan and Motorhome Club of Australia, who we belonged too whilst we were there] get together in Roma, Queensland and briefly to Ken and his wife in a caravan from Queensland. We sat in the last of the sun and had a piece of fruitcake and a glass with sweet wine and then walked off out across this vast beach to the edge of the sea just as the sun was setting. There were glorious colours - deep blue and pink in one direction, more orange in the other but right around - 360 degrees of colours which was magnificent. The beach was scattered with pieces of washed up coral. It had been a clear blue sky all day but with a fresh wind
Pretty Pool as we left
Sunday 21st June. 226 km
I hadn't had a very good night. We woke to clear blue sky, but a very fresh wind and according to the radio many places seem to be pretty cold in Australia. We listened to a programme with someone by the name of Ian McNamara and is known as Macca. He was not very professional in his presenting, and he was quite taken aback by a lady who rang in and he asked her what she did, and she and her husband ran a nudist caravan park and he didn't know what to say and was in convulsions of laughter and she was talking on quite seriously - quite amusing [it is ironical that we ended up loving his simplicity and almost innocence and we listened to him every Sunday until we left Australia. He is still broadcasting his programme ‘Australia All Over’ as of 2023!]. They had a male voice choir, which we thought was pretty awful but everyone was saying wonderful, wonderful.
We were ready to leave at 8.45 am, after a short little walk out and seeing a different bush which I thought was a grevillea,. The landscape was fairly flat for the most part, occasionally with some hills in the distance, often red, looking a bit like Ayers Rock against the blue sky and we passed a few large red boulders and few dry creeks. After about 140 kilometres, we stopped in a rest / picnic area where there about half a dozen people caravanning long term, and it was very windy still, so we had our coffee and cake in the van - the fruitcake is still going well.
I hadn't had a very good night. We woke to clear blue sky, but a very fresh wind and according to the radio many places seem to be pretty cold in Australia. We listened to a programme with someone by the name of Ian McNamara and is known as Macca. He was not very professional in his presenting, and he was quite taken aback by a lady who rang in and he asked her what she did, and she and her husband ran a nudist caravan park and he didn't know what to say and was in convulsions of laughter and she was talking on quite seriously - quite amusing [it is ironical that we ended up loving his simplicity and almost innocence and we listened to him every Sunday until we left Australia. He is still broadcasting his programme ‘Australia All Over’ as of 2023!]. They had a male voice choir, which we thought was pretty awful but everyone was saying wonderful, wonderful.
We were ready to leave at 8.45 am, after a short little walk out and seeing a different bush which I thought was a grevillea,. The landscape was fairly flat for the most part, occasionally with some hills in the distance, often red, looking a bit like Ayers Rock against the blue sky and we passed a few large red boulders and few dry creeks. After about 140 kilometres, we stopped in a rest / picnic area where there about half a dozen people caravanning long term, and it was very windy still, so we had our coffee and cake in the van - the fruitcake is still going well.
Sturt Desert Pea near Port Headland
Tuesday 23rd June 0 km
We thought we'd stay there two days as it was such a lovely location, but as luck would have it, it was very windy in the night and in the morning very gusty. We'd heard of a minor earthquake at 6 o'clock last night, at Marble Bar, not that far from here. We certainly heard a strange noise last night but at that time we were out on the beach and didn't know if it was connected or not. So we enjoyed looking out from the van, it looked like desert behind us or it did until the tide came in and the river filled up behind us and the tide came in quite closely, not far from where we were. Everybody except us, was out there fishing. We had breakfast inside because of the strong wind. We hoped that it would die down, from the forecast that we heard it seems that it might well do.
We had our elevenses sitting outside and then decided to go for a walk northwards, it was a long way along the beach, we had to cross the river which had come in at that point because it was high tide. The wind was quite strong but it was a pleasant walk and after we had walked for quite a long way, about half an hour, I had a quick swim in the sea. It was coolish, and afterwards we lazed around a bit and then walked back chatting to somebody else in a 'coaster' on the way. When we got back I cooked lunch using the new brown rice, which you cook in the fridge - no that wasn't a mistake. You put it in the fridge with water and then it's ready. I did fry it lightly afterwards in a pork stir fry. We sat outside to eat this, but the gusts of wind did mean that sometimes you got sand with your food. We both washed our hair. I put on my new little two piece costume and we sat outside. I finished reading my ‘travel stories’ book and Adrian was writing an epistle about Gordon.
We had a cup of tea and the last piece of fruitcake which has done us very well and we then went for a walk along in the other direction, quite a long way along the beach and came across quite a lot of other caravans, tents and motorhomes and then cut across and walked back across an inland bit, where we saw lots of kangaroos. When we got back, we stopped to talk to two couples who are both in 'coasters' almost next to us. One of the women is in a wheelchair and had been paralysed for the last nine months and her husband had adapted the van to fit in with her. While we were talking to them I was aware of the sun, which was fading fast and was actually going down, so I went back to get my camera and walked out to the edge of water but unfortunately too late to take a picture of the sunset, which I'd wanted to do last night. We got a drink and went to sit outside but it was already chilly once the sun had gone down.
After it got dark, the stars came out quite magnificently. We sat looking at one collection of stars which looked slightly familiar and we realised that it was the plough upside down. Later in the evening, we saw a shooting star going across the plough. Then I saw another shooting star and also we saw what Adrian said must have been a satellite that went right across the sky at speed. It wasn't a shooting star but too fast as he said for an aeroplane and then it disappeared. Also while I was sitting out there a huge moth, which Adrian had thought was a bat, came and landed on my hand and then around my face, fluttering and fluttering like anything. It looked a bit like a tortoiseshell butterfly but it was a moth and much bigger, so a nice little bit of wildlife. We then came in as we were surprised at how chilly it was.
We thought we'd stay there two days as it was such a lovely location, but as luck would have it, it was very windy in the night and in the morning very gusty. We'd heard of a minor earthquake at 6 o'clock last night, at Marble Bar, not that far from here. We certainly heard a strange noise last night but at that time we were out on the beach and didn't know if it was connected or not. So we enjoyed looking out from the van, it looked like desert behind us or it did until the tide came in and the river filled up behind us and the tide came in quite closely, not far from where we were. Everybody except us, was out there fishing. We had breakfast inside because of the strong wind. We hoped that it would die down, from the forecast that we heard it seems that it might well do.
We had our elevenses sitting outside and then decided to go for a walk northwards, it was a long way along the beach, we had to cross the river which had come in at that point because it was high tide. The wind was quite strong but it was a pleasant walk and after we had walked for quite a long way, about half an hour, I had a quick swim in the sea. It was coolish, and afterwards we lazed around a bit and then walked back chatting to somebody else in a 'coaster' on the way. When we got back I cooked lunch using the new brown rice, which you cook in the fridge - no that wasn't a mistake. You put it in the fridge with water and then it's ready. I did fry it lightly afterwards in a pork stir fry. We sat outside to eat this, but the gusts of wind did mean that sometimes you got sand with your food. We both washed our hair. I put on my new little two piece costume and we sat outside. I finished reading my ‘travel stories’ book and Adrian was writing an epistle about Gordon.
We had a cup of tea and the last piece of fruitcake which has done us very well and we then went for a walk along in the other direction, quite a long way along the beach and came across quite a lot of other caravans, tents and motorhomes and then cut across and walked back across an inland bit, where we saw lots of kangaroos. When we got back, we stopped to talk to two couples who are both in 'coasters' almost next to us. One of the women is in a wheelchair and had been paralysed for the last nine months and her husband had adapted the van to fit in with her. While we were talking to them I was aware of the sun, which was fading fast and was actually going down, so I went back to get my camera and walked out to the edge of water but unfortunately too late to take a picture of the sunset, which I'd wanted to do last night. We got a drink and went to sit outside but it was already chilly once the sun had gone down.
After it got dark, the stars came out quite magnificently. We sat looking at one collection of stars which looked slightly familiar and we realised that it was the plough upside down. Later in the evening, we saw a shooting star going across the plough. Then I saw another shooting star and also we saw what Adrian said must have been a satellite that went right across the sky at speed. It wasn't a shooting star but too fast as he said for an aeroplane and then it disappeared. Also while I was sitting out there a huge moth, which Adrian had thought was a bat, came and landed on my hand and then around my face, fluttering and fluttering like anything. It looked a bit like a tortoiseshell butterfly but it was a moth and much bigger, so a nice little bit of wildlife. We then came in as we were surprised at how chilly it was.
Wednesday 24th June 394 km
Again, very windy when we woke up, very very gusty and sand blowing across the long beach. We'd heard of severe flooding at Bairnsdale, Victoria where we were for my birthday and Orbost, New South Wales. We were ready to leave soon after 8.30. The caravan which had pulled in almost on top of us, left. Shame they ever came because they spoilt our view completely and the caravan next to us left also, so that looking along to the right as we faced the sea we were the last vehicle there looking out to the long, long, windswept beach.
Again, very windy when we woke up, very very gusty and sand blowing across the long beach. We'd heard of severe flooding at Bairnsdale, Victoria where we were for my birthday and Orbost, New South Wales. We were ready to leave soon after 8.30. The caravan which had pulled in almost on top of us, left. Shame they ever came because they spoilt our view completely and the caravan next to us left also, so that looking along to the right as we faced the sea we were the last vehicle there looking out to the long, long, windswept beach.
As we were leaving, we stopped to see the husband of the two couples and this person's wife who was in the wheelchair. We asked him and he said she had multiple sclerosis so we gave him the tape of Cari Loder that Val had given me. We then stopped by the Rangers hut and paid him for our visit.
The route back to the main road, as we knew, was very flat and unexciting and low vegetation, there had been a lot of burning in the past. We pulled in for coffee just past the turn off to 80 Mile Beach, it was a clear blue sky as before but the wind just as strong which made being outside unpleasant and with the door open large numbers of flies came in. We had been amused at coming to a sign saying it was the Shire of Broome, which was 430 kilometres, 260 miles until Broome - quite a bit of a Shire.
Our next stop was the Sandfire Roadhouse for fuel, as this is the only one for the next 300 kilometres. This certainly was a bit of an oasis in the desert with a lot of trees and plants and a little park and some water lilies in a little pond. I had a free cup of coffee for the driver, a bit of a cheat because I'm not the driver [ it was called 'Driver Reviver' - an attempt at reducing drivers falling asleep on these long distances]. There were purple and red bougainvilleas. We looked closely at these for the first time and noticed that there is a tiny white flower protruding and the so called flowers are presumably coloured black. After this, the scenery was absolutely nothing but flat grass. We pulled in for lunch at a large picnic area, lots of different wattles around but also flies and very windy. We had a visit from a nice little honey eater.
We carried on about another 80km kilometres or so. We were going to turn down to Port Smith, but this was 23 kilometres on a bad unsurfaced road. We started down there and decided that we weren't going to make it, so managed to turn round. We passed one or two rest areas that would have been more suitable than the one we finally pulled off into, another 80 Km or so on, about 50 Km south of Broome. We arrived at it about 4.15 and there wasn't a great deal of space but we located a little place on our own and then with Adrian's clever manoeuvring and bits of wood under the wheels, we made ourselves level. It was very warm. We enjoyed sitting outside with a beer and watching the many birds and the trees. There was a plant just by us, like a pea plant, it had long green flowers on it.
The route back to the main road, as we knew, was very flat and unexciting and low vegetation, there had been a lot of burning in the past. We pulled in for coffee just past the turn off to 80 Mile Beach, it was a clear blue sky as before but the wind just as strong which made being outside unpleasant and with the door open large numbers of flies came in. We had been amused at coming to a sign saying it was the Shire of Broome, which was 430 kilometres, 260 miles until Broome - quite a bit of a Shire.
Our next stop was the Sandfire Roadhouse for fuel, as this is the only one for the next 300 kilometres. This certainly was a bit of an oasis in the desert with a lot of trees and plants and a little park and some water lilies in a little pond. I had a free cup of coffee for the driver, a bit of a cheat because I'm not the driver [ it was called 'Driver Reviver' - an attempt at reducing drivers falling asleep on these long distances]. There were purple and red bougainvilleas. We looked closely at these for the first time and noticed that there is a tiny white flower protruding and the so called flowers are presumably coloured black. After this, the scenery was absolutely nothing but flat grass. We pulled in for lunch at a large picnic area, lots of different wattles around but also flies and very windy. We had a visit from a nice little honey eater.
We carried on about another 80km kilometres or so. We were going to turn down to Port Smith, but this was 23 kilometres on a bad unsurfaced road. We started down there and decided that we weren't going to make it, so managed to turn round. We passed one or two rest areas that would have been more suitable than the one we finally pulled off into, another 80 Km or so on, about 50 Km south of Broome. We arrived at it about 4.15 and there wasn't a great deal of space but we located a little place on our own and then with Adrian's clever manoeuvring and bits of wood under the wheels, we made ourselves level. It was very warm. We enjoyed sitting outside with a beer and watching the many birds and the trees. There was a plant just by us, like a pea plant, it had long green flowers on it.
The beach at Cape Keraudran
A couple from Queensland came for a little walk down this layby and talked to us, particularly about getting stuck in the mud, a similar sort of experience to us, but they had a four wheel drive vehicle. We ourselves went for a walk along to the end of this layby. Adrian cooked steak outside and we sat out under a star filled sky until 8.30 pm.
Green Birdflower near Broome
Thursday 25th June 82 km
It was windy still, but a clear blue sky. We had grapefruit for breakfast and were ready to leave by 8.30. We headed for Broome, which was 50 kilometres away. On arriving there, we went into the tourist information, trying to locate which campsite had spaces and then tried to sort out where to go. We drove down to see Cable Beach, which is very lovely and beautiful turquoise water. The caravan site that everyone wants to go to was there, but not exactly on the beach. We located one at Tarangau Art Centre, a strange name, there were paintings there but not much else to show it was an art centre - it was a little caravan site. To me it was like an Italian one of the 60's, very low key, quite pleasant. We had our coffee, a couple arrived, they had been shown the same spot as us but they went to a different one. We then got the washing organised - two loads of washing which was all dry on the line in no time at all. We looked through some of the brochures we had picked up and had lunch there, it was very hot - the temperature in the 80's.
After lunch, we prepared to leave to drive into Broome. We telephoned Tom and got hold of him, it was about 7.15 am there and he sounded like it. We drove out and down to Broome and parked near at a bit they called Chinatown. I took my photos in and they would be ready tomorrow. We bought an ice cream and while we were eating it, a couple we spoke to the previous night when we were staying in the layby, came past and we had a few words with them there. They were staying at the Cable Beach site and it was obviously very full in there. We went into a 'do it yourself' shop and bought a gas cylinder to use the light outside. We then went to an air conditioning place where Adrian prepared to have the air conditioning done tomorrow, as when we were travelling along, it hasn't been working and we feel we're going to need it during the current weather which we think is going to be warmer from now on.
We returned to Cable Beach and had a pleasant swim after walking across the wide beach and then we watched the sun go down, joining lots of other people doing the same thing.
It was windy still, but a clear blue sky. We had grapefruit for breakfast and were ready to leave by 8.30. We headed for Broome, which was 50 kilometres away. On arriving there, we went into the tourist information, trying to locate which campsite had spaces and then tried to sort out where to go. We drove down to see Cable Beach, which is very lovely and beautiful turquoise water. The caravan site that everyone wants to go to was there, but not exactly on the beach. We located one at Tarangau Art Centre, a strange name, there were paintings there but not much else to show it was an art centre - it was a little caravan site. To me it was like an Italian one of the 60's, very low key, quite pleasant. We had our coffee, a couple arrived, they had been shown the same spot as us but they went to a different one. We then got the washing organised - two loads of washing which was all dry on the line in no time at all. We looked through some of the brochures we had picked up and had lunch there, it was very hot - the temperature in the 80's.
After lunch, we prepared to leave to drive into Broome. We telephoned Tom and got hold of him, it was about 7.15 am there and he sounded like it. We drove out and down to Broome and parked near at a bit they called Chinatown. I took my photos in and they would be ready tomorrow. We bought an ice cream and while we were eating it, a couple we spoke to the previous night when we were staying in the layby, came past and we had a few words with them there. They were staying at the Cable Beach site and it was obviously very full in there. We went into a 'do it yourself' shop and bought a gas cylinder to use the light outside. We then went to an air conditioning place where Adrian prepared to have the air conditioning done tomorrow, as when we were travelling along, it hasn't been working and we feel we're going to need it during the current weather which we think is going to be warmer from now on.
We returned to Cable Beach and had a pleasant swim after walking across the wide beach and then we watched the sun go down, joining lots of other people doing the same thing.
We drove back to the caravan site and had a shower, they were rather primitive showers there and then Adrian had to mend the rooflight handle which I had broken again. We cooked pork patties outside and then sat outside using the light with the new cylinder. Adrian could now cook outside by it. It was a cool evening with the stars lovely again.
Sunset on Broome beach
Friday 26th June 40 km
We lay in bed listening to the birds singing, a clear blue sky. We hadn't heard anything from the garage where we were going to have the air conditioning done, so having cooked breakfast outside of bacon sandwiches, we set off about 9.45 to do some sightseeing. We headed down to Gantheaume Point, where there were dinosaur footprints. The colour of the rocks here was dramatic, deep red against a deep turquoise sea and a pale blue sky. The dinosaur footprints had been copies and cast in concrete, so that visitors could see them at any time, because they are only visible at low tide. We had a walk around this area, managing to avoid coach parties, one of which had just left as we got there and a another which arrived as we left.
We lay in bed listening to the birds singing, a clear blue sky. We hadn't heard anything from the garage where we were going to have the air conditioning done, so having cooked breakfast outside of bacon sandwiches, we set off about 9.45 to do some sightseeing. We headed down to Gantheaume Point, where there were dinosaur footprints. The colour of the rocks here was dramatic, deep red against a deep turquoise sea and a pale blue sky. The dinosaur footprints had been copies and cast in concrete, so that visitors could see them at any time, because they are only visible at low tide. We had a walk around this area, managing to avoid coach parties, one of which had just left as we got there and a another which arrived as we left.
When we got back to the van, we found that the road going on round this peninsula was closed. The road down had been absolutely bad - it was a rumble rumble all the way. There was a message on the answerphone from the garage who we'd tried to contact and they told us to make our way there then. We duly left the van at the repairers and the chap said he'd give us a lift down to the town we said ‘no, we'd walk’. It made us think of being in the Marquesas Islands or Tahiti - it was very warm. We made our way to the Town Beach, this was about a mile walk past the Roebuck Caravan site that we'd met some people from but didn't think much of it - the beach there wasn't very nice. We thought it was lovely location though, right on the beach.
We came to a little park with a Pioneer Cemetery with one or two gravestones. Nearby there was a cafeteria set looking out onto the beach. We had coffee and tea and shared a piece of carrot cake. It looked very tropical there, it looked what dreams are made of and what everyone imagines the tropics to look like - the palm trees and the beautiful sea and the sky. While we were doing this, we had a message from Chris, we think he called from the garage to say that the air conditioning wasn't repairable and he'd come and pick us up which he duly did. Back at the repairers Adrian sorted out finances etc. with him - it cost us $45 just to be looked at, but it was going to be several $100 to get a new part for it. So we'd really got nowhere. We set off south on the road linking with the one that didn't go this morning, right down to the port. We stopped briefly at the port. A lot of people were fishing there from a little jetty. The road across to the lighthouse where we wanted to go to, which was a junction just before this was closed as we had passed, but as we returned the few 100 yards or so the drums had been taken away and it said road open so we thought we'd give it a go although it looked pretty bad still.
We had to go through one section of water and kept our fingers crossed and then we came to a little car parking turn off by the sea. After some deliberation we parked ourselves there and walked down onto this beach [Reddell beach] and had one of those magical times to remember. We took lunch with us of some rolls and a very nice salad that I'd made and some fruit. We first had a swim which was pleasantly warm, the sand was a bit sort of muddy there hence the sea looked a bit churned up, but the beach was quite wonderful and no one else around at all. The rocks were made up of a conglomerate of rocks, some rocks had a sort of reddy surface with yellowy criss cross markings on them, and the tops of these were a bit like a fruit bun dabbed in fruit and nuts it had bits like bits of coal on the top. So lots of interesting formations. After having our lunch here, we had little walk around and enjoyed this just fantastic location and the isolation of it. We saw some tracks in the sand that we thought were made by large crabs going out into the sea, and were glad we didn't see any of those and we found bits of shell and bits of coral.
We came to a little park with a Pioneer Cemetery with one or two gravestones. Nearby there was a cafeteria set looking out onto the beach. We had coffee and tea and shared a piece of carrot cake. It looked very tropical there, it looked what dreams are made of and what everyone imagines the tropics to look like - the palm trees and the beautiful sea and the sky. While we were doing this, we had a message from Chris, we think he called from the garage to say that the air conditioning wasn't repairable and he'd come and pick us up which he duly did. Back at the repairers Adrian sorted out finances etc. with him - it cost us $45 just to be looked at, but it was going to be several $100 to get a new part for it. So we'd really got nowhere. We set off south on the road linking with the one that didn't go this morning, right down to the port. We stopped briefly at the port. A lot of people were fishing there from a little jetty. The road across to the lighthouse where we wanted to go to, which was a junction just before this was closed as we had passed, but as we returned the few 100 yards or so the drums had been taken away and it said road open so we thought we'd give it a go although it looked pretty bad still.
We had to go through one section of water and kept our fingers crossed and then we came to a little car parking turn off by the sea. After some deliberation we parked ourselves there and walked down onto this beach [Reddell beach] and had one of those magical times to remember. We took lunch with us of some rolls and a very nice salad that I'd made and some fruit. We first had a swim which was pleasantly warm, the sand was a bit sort of muddy there hence the sea looked a bit churned up, but the beach was quite wonderful and no one else around at all. The rocks were made up of a conglomerate of rocks, some rocks had a sort of reddy surface with yellowy criss cross markings on them, and the tops of these were a bit like a fruit bun dabbed in fruit and nuts it had bits like bits of coal on the top. So lots of interesting formations. After having our lunch here, we had little walk around and enjoyed this just fantastic location and the isolation of it. We saw some tracks in the sand that we thought were made by large crabs going out into the sea, and were glad we didn't see any of those and we found bits of shell and bits of coral.
Adrian at Gantheaume Point, Broome
Dinosaur footprints at Gantheaume Point, Broome
All told we really enjoyed the spot. Just as we were making to leave one or two other cars arrived so we knew it was definitely time for us to go, now being just about 2.30
We drove back into Broome looking for a Toyota place and not finding it at first. I went to the tourist information and enquired about a couple of roads that we need to travel on after Broome as to whether they were currently goable or not. We located the Toyota place and found that their price for the piece needed for the air conditioner was $1000 or so, very expensive. So we headed for Chinatown shopping centre, went to collect my photos and found we hadn't got enough money, as Adrian had paid the chap at the garage in cash, and we had forgotten it was 2 films, so we had to speedily go across to the bank and get some money, coming back get the photos, which seemed to be good on a quick look through. We then had a long shop in Coles including the bottle shop afterwards, where we got a couple of bottles of wine. It seemed to be all Chardonnay in there and as we were not really drinking Chardonnay that wasn't very helpful. We actually bought, a weekly telegraph as well and put all this into the van, as I'd remembered seeing a nice ice cream shop where we hastily made our way. It was now about 4.50 and pretty close to 5.00 - everything seems to be shutting up at that time. We bought an ice cream, I had a baby sized honeycomb flavour and Adrian had a rocky road, but it was certainly a nice home-made ice cream.
We then realised that the sun was going down fast and we'd like to see it set so we hastened towards Cable Beach. There was not really anywhere to get down to the beach except the Cable Beach entrances and got there just as the sun was setting, a little bit of cloud had come up which hid it from view - crowds and crowds of people there. It did seem to be the thing to do to come and watch sunset at Cable Beach with your picnic or champagne or whatever. Coach parties there but quite a nice atmosphere and lots of people with cameras on tripods, so we joined in this pleasant atmosphere and walked down to the beach and across to the rocks and back again. We drove round to the campsite and began packing away the shopping and Adrian phoned up Broome Camel Safaris and booked us in for a camel ride tomorrow morning at 10.30. It was a pleasant evening, warmer than the night before and we sat outside, cooked pork steaks and enjoyed the night sky again. We then came in to look at the new photos, the newspaper and Adrian to his computer magazine.
We drove back into Broome looking for a Toyota place and not finding it at first. I went to the tourist information and enquired about a couple of roads that we need to travel on after Broome as to whether they were currently goable or not. We located the Toyota place and found that their price for the piece needed for the air conditioner was $1000 or so, very expensive. So we headed for Chinatown shopping centre, went to collect my photos and found we hadn't got enough money, as Adrian had paid the chap at the garage in cash, and we had forgotten it was 2 films, so we had to speedily go across to the bank and get some money, coming back get the photos, which seemed to be good on a quick look through. We then had a long shop in Coles including the bottle shop afterwards, where we got a couple of bottles of wine. It seemed to be all Chardonnay in there and as we were not really drinking Chardonnay that wasn't very helpful. We actually bought, a weekly telegraph as well and put all this into the van, as I'd remembered seeing a nice ice cream shop where we hastily made our way. It was now about 4.50 and pretty close to 5.00 - everything seems to be shutting up at that time. We bought an ice cream, I had a baby sized honeycomb flavour and Adrian had a rocky road, but it was certainly a nice home-made ice cream.
We then realised that the sun was going down fast and we'd like to see it set so we hastened towards Cable Beach. There was not really anywhere to get down to the beach except the Cable Beach entrances and got there just as the sun was setting, a little bit of cloud had come up which hid it from view - crowds and crowds of people there. It did seem to be the thing to do to come and watch sunset at Cable Beach with your picnic or champagne or whatever. Coach parties there but quite a nice atmosphere and lots of people with cameras on tripods, so we joined in this pleasant atmosphere and walked down to the beach and across to the rocks and back again. We drove round to the campsite and began packing away the shopping and Adrian phoned up Broome Camel Safaris and booked us in for a camel ride tomorrow morning at 10.30. It was a pleasant evening, warmer than the night before and we sat outside, cooked pork steaks and enjoyed the night sky again. We then came in to look at the new photos, the newspaper and Adrian to his computer magazine.
The rocks and Rosie at Reddell Beach
Saturday 27th June 18 km
When we woke up it was cloudy, or some clouds in the sky, and a sporadic rainbow. It felt rather humid, it had felt quite damp last night. There was still lots of birds song, we saw a beautiful green and red parrot. We had showers and we sat outside to have breakfast. A lady from another Coaster came and spoke to us, they were hoping to go on the Gibb River Road, and about 9.30 we left for Cable Beach. We arrived at Cable Beach in plenty of time to suss out where the camel rides left from. We collected the video camera and then we had a very enjoyable half hour ride along the beach and back again. There were three camels and one person leading and we were on 'Banjo' at the rear, it was nice being up high and it was pleasantly warm, but unfortunately cloudy for the photographs. A person called Alison, who was running it, took photographs of us and video and all in all great fun.
When we woke up it was cloudy, or some clouds in the sky, and a sporadic rainbow. It felt rather humid, it had felt quite damp last night. There was still lots of birds song, we saw a beautiful green and red parrot. We had showers and we sat outside to have breakfast. A lady from another Coaster came and spoke to us, they were hoping to go on the Gibb River Road, and about 9.30 we left for Cable Beach. We arrived at Cable Beach in plenty of time to suss out where the camel rides left from. We collected the video camera and then we had a very enjoyable half hour ride along the beach and back again. There were three camels and one person leading and we were on 'Banjo' at the rear, it was nice being up high and it was pleasantly warm, but unfortunately cloudy for the photographs. A person called Alison, who was running it, took photographs of us and video and all in all great fun.
We returned at 11 o'clock in time for coffee. We had this sitting looking out over Cable Beach which was very pleasant and very warm. We next headed for the market which was in the grounds of the courthouse, which was a quite nice building, and the market was absolutely jam packed with all sorts of different things, mostly art and craft type stores. There was a juggler when we arrived, he reminded me of Tom, juggling with fire. Some food stalls and ice cream stalls, one was the ice cream shop we were at yesterday and another one at which I had magnificent fruit ice cream for $2 – a sort of frozen fruit pushed through something fine to make a sorbet. We also bought a Filipino spring roll, which was very pleasant, also for $2. That was all of our spending. The rest of the time we spent looking at the various different stalls and entertainers, there was someone doing shiatsu, massage, and all sorts of things like that.
Just as we were leaving Adrian met the Canadian and German couple, Geoff & Brigette, that we'd met at Minilya Rest Area. We stopped next at Streeters jetty, the old Jetty used for the pearling boats in the past, and then went on a bit further to a mangrove walk, which seemed pretty non existent, but we did walk along beside the mangroves and then went across the road to a little park called Bedford Park, which was supposed to have a railway carriage - there was a sign but no railway carriage. There were two plaques with a war memorial, there was a replica of Dampiers chest, he was here in 1699, and there was a model of a decompression unit used for the pearlers, which understandably stopped the many deaths there had been from pearlers, when they came up to the surface to quickly. While in Broome we had seen a large number of birds of prey. We thought that they were black kites and there were a great many of them hovering overhead. We ate our lunch in the little Bedford Park overlooking the mangroves and the iridescent turquoise sea and the cloudy sky but the sun came out some of the time and it was certainly warm, slightly windy.
We returned past the BP station where we filled with diesel and checked the tyres and Adrian had a go at cleaning the van. We then headed for Cable Beach, the day was rather overcast by now. We went onto the beach and we saw people were looking up at the sky and realised that there were two parachutists coming down, so we watched them land and then went in for a swim. It was quite pleasant in there with the waves breaking quite close to the shore and then we sat on the beach doing our holidaymaking bit for a little while, we even got the newspaper out, it was slightly on the chilly side after our swim. So we made to leave, but at this point we could see a plane in the sky and everyone looking up again and some more parachutists came down, it is obviously the thing to do here.
Just as we were leaving Adrian met the Canadian and German couple, Geoff & Brigette, that we'd met at Minilya Rest Area. We stopped next at Streeters jetty, the old Jetty used for the pearling boats in the past, and then went on a bit further to a mangrove walk, which seemed pretty non existent, but we did walk along beside the mangroves and then went across the road to a little park called Bedford Park, which was supposed to have a railway carriage - there was a sign but no railway carriage. There were two plaques with a war memorial, there was a replica of Dampiers chest, he was here in 1699, and there was a model of a decompression unit used for the pearlers, which understandably stopped the many deaths there had been from pearlers, when they came up to the surface to quickly. While in Broome we had seen a large number of birds of prey. We thought that they were black kites and there were a great many of them hovering overhead. We ate our lunch in the little Bedford Park overlooking the mangroves and the iridescent turquoise sea and the cloudy sky but the sun came out some of the time and it was certainly warm, slightly windy.
We returned past the BP station where we filled with diesel and checked the tyres and Adrian had a go at cleaning the van. We then headed for Cable Beach, the day was rather overcast by now. We went onto the beach and we saw people were looking up at the sky and realised that there were two parachutists coming down, so we watched them land and then went in for a swim. It was quite pleasant in there with the waves breaking quite close to the shore and then we sat on the beach doing our holidaymaking bit for a little while, we even got the newspaper out, it was slightly on the chilly side after our swim. So we made to leave, but at this point we could see a plane in the sky and everyone looking up again and some more parachutists came down, it is obviously the thing to do here.
On Cable beach
We watched them until they landed and then returned to the caravan site where we filled up with water - it was by then 4.30. We sat outside, it was pleasantly warm, Adrian with a beer, and read the newspaper and a magazine and then went to chat to another couple in a coaster, she had spoken to us this morning, a couple perhaps a bit older than us, although she said she was born in 1942. We thought just a quiet little couple, but they had travelled a great deal around Australia and loved travelling on the unsurfaced roads. They were the ones who were keen to go on the Gibb River Road [I am sure it was this ‘quiet little couple who had travelled on Route 1 between Birdham, Northern Territory and Normanton, Queensland. Although it was Route 1, the main road around the outside of Australia, this section of the road in 1998 was not much more than a 4 -wheel drive track – and much of it is still in 2023. It is roughly 700 miles and she casually said ‘ it was OK , we just had to go slowly, about 10mph’ – that’s 70 hours!] After returning from that we started preparing our meal and had a phone call from Tom and had a nice chat to him. We then cooked the steak and opened a bottle of bubbly thinking this was our halfway mark between leaving England and getting home again. We sat outside to eat and as it was cloudy it was still warm, and after the meal we washed up and had a walk around the site. A coach load of young people in little tents arrived rather filling up the place. We then decided to come in, a lot of people were still sitting out as it was a mild evening. By now, we could see a few stars.
A paraglider descends onto Cable Beach
Sunday 28th June. 258 km
It was blue sky, slightly windy with lovely birdsong as we woke. We had showers, they were rather inadequate as this campsite. We came back and had breakfast outside and put the phone on and had a message from Simon to tell us that Jim O'Gorman had died [Our neighbour in Hermitage], which made us both feel very very sad. We were ready to leave at 9.15. We left Broome and drove east a few kilometres and then turned off north on the road towards Willie Creek having travelled towards Derby for a short distance. The first bit of it was tarmacked, and then the road that went off to Willie Creek wasn't and the road on north wasn't either after a few miles anyway. We went some distance along there, but it was badly corrugated and didn't look too good. [we had intended to go up northwards here originally, but were glad we didn’t, as we met Geoff and Brigitte in Darwin later, and they did, and got stuck up there for 3 days as it rained heavily and the road was undriveable to come back].
We returned to the main road and stopped there for coffee, where we spoke to a couple, possibly German, who were thinking of cycling up to Willie Creek. We left just before 11.30 on the Great Northern Highway, on a road that was flat and rather monotonous, fringed with the young trees, often yellow flowering wattle. We stopped for lunch in a rest area after about 50 miles or so from the turn off of the Great Northern Highway going south. It was very hot, we sat in the shade behind the van. We saw an increasing number of Boab trees as we got nearer to Derby and we stopped off to view the prison Boab tree, a large Boab tree, where they used to keep Aboriginal prisoners on their way into the town.
It was blue sky, slightly windy with lovely birdsong as we woke. We had showers, they were rather inadequate as this campsite. We came back and had breakfast outside and put the phone on and had a message from Simon to tell us that Jim O'Gorman had died [Our neighbour in Hermitage], which made us both feel very very sad. We were ready to leave at 9.15. We left Broome and drove east a few kilometres and then turned off north on the road towards Willie Creek having travelled towards Derby for a short distance. The first bit of it was tarmacked, and then the road that went off to Willie Creek wasn't and the road on north wasn't either after a few miles anyway. We went some distance along there, but it was badly corrugated and didn't look too good. [we had intended to go up northwards here originally, but were glad we didn’t, as we met Geoff and Brigitte in Darwin later, and they did, and got stuck up there for 3 days as it rained heavily and the road was undriveable to come back].
We returned to the main road and stopped there for coffee, where we spoke to a couple, possibly German, who were thinking of cycling up to Willie Creek. We left just before 11.30 on the Great Northern Highway, on a road that was flat and rather monotonous, fringed with the young trees, often yellow flowering wattle. We stopped for lunch in a rest area after about 50 miles or so from the turn off of the Great Northern Highway going south. It was very hot, we sat in the shade behind the van. We saw an increasing number of Boab trees as we got nearer to Derby and we stopped off to view the prison Boab tree, a large Boab tree, where they used to keep Aboriginal prisoners on their way into the town.
We arrived at the caravan site at Derby at about 4 o'clock and not a site to say much about, it had pitches and it had ablution blocks - and that was it. We did go off for a walk straight away as we wanted to phone Janet, there were phone boxes by the campsite. One wasn't working and the other had a queue - our phone wasn't in contact there. We walked down near the tourist information and found a phone that was working and spoke to Janet, [O'Gorman] which we were pleased to have done and later found another phone and spoke to Tom and told him what we'd done. We walked around the ‘vast’ place of Derby seeing little of interest - it is very very flat - mud flats, but couldn't really see anything very interesting. So we returned to the caravan site, there was a nice sky and we went briefly onto the mud flats.
Also near here is a very long cattle trough 120 metres long.
Adrian & Rosie by the 'Prison' Boab tree
The 120m cattle trough - there was either a lot of cattle or they were very thirsty
We came across this crane near here, just like a toy one Adrian had as a boy
Monday 29th June 61 km
It was a clear blue sky but very windy. We had showers and then had a cooked breakfast outside, which Adrian had cooked outside and then he filled the van up with water. He also decided to empty the loo so it was about 9.30 when we left and drove into the municipality of Derby, which hardly exists, went to the post office and waited in the queue for a long time only to be told that the post wasn't yet sorted and to try after lunch. We thought we'd go down to the jetty next, so we drove down and parked there. We thought there was a walk which took an hour - it took us about 20 minutes. The Jetty went round in a crescent shape and it was just muddy water for as far as I could see and mud, thick mud. This was low tide and it's meant to be the second highest place in the world for the height of the tide at 10 metres but it didn't look very exciting at low tide and I couldn't see what anyone would go there to see. To me it was a godforsaken place, absolutely flat and there's nothing I could see of interest in this place [in the background on the tape, you can hear Adrian laughing and saying - 'Mrs Bower doesn't like this place']. The temperature was pleasant. We drove back to the tourist information, spent a little while and there and then had coffee outside, sitting at a little table.
We went shopping in Foodland and then got some diesel. We then proceeded to the post office where the post had now been sorted and we were able to collect ours. We had quite a collection: letters from Harry and Maureen, Emma with a Father's Day card, a nice one from Connie Jackson, a postcard from Jane, one from Simon with the CDs and a chequebook and several official type things. We quickly read through these and then proceeded towards the Pioneer Cemetery, which seemed to be next door to the main cemetery, all very spacious and spread out. There was a grave here to a Policeman Richardson, who was murdered by someone by the name of Pigeon [an Aborigine] of whom there was rather a legend around there. Having seen that we thought we'd progress along the road and stop for lunch. However, the road deteriorated rather badly, but we had thought it was going to go back onto the road that we wanted. After several kilometres of deteriorating road and not able to turn around and a more and more anxious Adrian, we did find a space where we could turn around, and we in the end we had lunch, sitting outside the cemetery in the shade made by the van. [It is interesting over 25 years later with Streetview and GPS, to see how easy it is to find a place now, whereas in 1998, with no detailed maps we didn't have any idea where we were . Now I can see the road obviously went through!]
It was a clear blue sky but very windy. We had showers and then had a cooked breakfast outside, which Adrian had cooked outside and then he filled the van up with water. He also decided to empty the loo so it was about 9.30 when we left and drove into the municipality of Derby, which hardly exists, went to the post office and waited in the queue for a long time only to be told that the post wasn't yet sorted and to try after lunch. We thought we'd go down to the jetty next, so we drove down and parked there. We thought there was a walk which took an hour - it took us about 20 minutes. The Jetty went round in a crescent shape and it was just muddy water for as far as I could see and mud, thick mud. This was low tide and it's meant to be the second highest place in the world for the height of the tide at 10 metres but it didn't look very exciting at low tide and I couldn't see what anyone would go there to see. To me it was a godforsaken place, absolutely flat and there's nothing I could see of interest in this place [in the background on the tape, you can hear Adrian laughing and saying - 'Mrs Bower doesn't like this place']. The temperature was pleasant. We drove back to the tourist information, spent a little while and there and then had coffee outside, sitting at a little table.
We went shopping in Foodland and then got some diesel. We then proceeded to the post office where the post had now been sorted and we were able to collect ours. We had quite a collection: letters from Harry and Maureen, Emma with a Father's Day card, a nice one from Connie Jackson, a postcard from Jane, one from Simon with the CDs and a chequebook and several official type things. We quickly read through these and then proceeded towards the Pioneer Cemetery, which seemed to be next door to the main cemetery, all very spacious and spread out. There was a grave here to a Policeman Richardson, who was murdered by someone by the name of Pigeon [an Aborigine] of whom there was rather a legend around there. Having seen that we thought we'd progress along the road and stop for lunch. However, the road deteriorated rather badly, but we had thought it was going to go back onto the road that we wanted. After several kilometres of deteriorating road and not able to turn around and a more and more anxious Adrian, we did find a space where we could turn around, and we in the end we had lunch, sitting outside the cemetery in the shade made by the van. [It is interesting over 25 years later with Streetview and GPS, to see how easy it is to find a place now, whereas in 1998, with no detailed maps we didn't have any idea where we were . Now I can see the road obviously went through!]
There was a beautiful flowering bush which was brilliant red against the blue sky, which was a nice little bonus and a lot of birds of prey, presumably the kites, flying overhead.
We returned to the main road and travelled south and turned off onto the Gibb River Road and after about 35Km turned onto an unsurfaced road towards the May River Crossing. It was a very corrugated road but we proceeded much against Adrian's enjoyment. The road was just over 5Km and we then had to go through a gate, then another 100 metres, to where it said there were shady sites beside the river. We found difficulty in finding these shady sites, we went on a track where there were a few people sporadically camped around. We finally settled a little spot, where there was long dried up grass, it made us think of England, lots of trees around, particularly Boab trees.
We went out for a walk by the river which was sporadic in the amount of water it had. Supposedly there were crocodiles, so no swimming, and most people obviously came here to fish. It was warm in the late afternoon sunshine, which we sat out in.
We returned to the main road and travelled south and turned off onto the Gibb River Road and after about 35Km turned onto an unsurfaced road towards the May River Crossing. It was a very corrugated road but we proceeded much against Adrian's enjoyment. The road was just over 5Km and we then had to go through a gate, then another 100 metres, to where it said there were shady sites beside the river. We found difficulty in finding these shady sites, we went on a track where there were a few people sporadically camped around. We finally settled a little spot, where there was long dried up grass, it made us think of England, lots of trees around, particularly Boab trees.
We went out for a walk by the river which was sporadic in the amount of water it had. Supposedly there were crocodiles, so no swimming, and most people obviously came here to fish. It was warm in the late afternoon sunshine, which we sat out in.
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The cemetery at Broome, where we had lunch (streetview 2025)
Tuesday 30th June 107 km
A cool night, it was windy in the morning so we weren't able to sit out. We were bit fed up with this strong wind every morning. So we had breakfast inside and were ready to leave soon after 9 o'clock. The sore rash bit under my arm was still sore but not quite as bad as last night. On the long way back on the corrugated road to the little strip of surfaced road, we saw a kingfisher. There was a predominance of yellow flowering plants here, apart from the distinctive Boab trees which were so strange. We stopped by a very large snake in the middle of the road, which had just been run over. So not beautiful to take a picture of and it looked like an adder, although by the information that we had, they didn't have adders there. The boab trees sometimes loose all their leaves and they look really spooky, like great witches standing there or metallic bottles. There are other trees which had also lost all their leaves but had yellow flowers, like say a Mallow flower or something at the end or the very tops of their spindly branches. They look quite strange too. There were also a lot of lambs tails type wattles or eucalypts possibly, that had long yellow catkins and there were also little plants, just about everything seemed to be yellow. We did see a few blue plants that looked like a type of solanum, but different from the ones we'd seen near Exmouth. These seemed to have long, brownie coloured leaves, but the flowers were similar.
We stopped for coffee in just a pull off beside the road. We'd also seen some little pink flowers beside the road that seemed rather like everlastings, just growing at ground level, and looked pretty as we drove along. They looked like miniature versions of the ones I photographed in the Pilbara. There were times when we went along with just masses of the yellow trees. I still wasn't sure if they were wattles or eucalyptus or mixture of both, but they were very attractive to drive through. Often, there was just grass and some trees, but the landscape did vary a bit, so it wasn't as uninteresting as some places. We were now on to the unsurfaced section of the Gibb River Road. At about 11.30, after 50 miles or so, we came to the turn off to the Windjana Gorge. We went a little further to see the Lennard River, which was also a place we could have stopped overnight. In doing that two cars with caravans pulled into the Windjana Rd in front of us. This made travelling impossible because of the clouds of dust coming up. The road was also badly corrugated. We pulled in for a while to let the caravans get ahead so that we could travel at the speed that we needed to to make it the least uncomfortable [corrugated roads needed a special technique to drive on. There was a 'most comfortable’ speed to travel, where you didn't go down every dip, but not so fast that you lost control! Every road was different]. Also along this road there were hibiscus type flowers on rather dead struggling looking plants.
We soon came to the turnoff to the Windjana Gorge and found ourselves there, it was almost midday. So after a quick recce of the situation we had lunch and then went for a delightful walk down the gorge for about three hours. This gorge or this rock mass, just came out of the flatness of the land, what they called savanna, just grass and some trees and suddenly this huge massive rock hundreds of feet high. The wonderful thing about the gorge was there was a river with water in it and there were freshwater crocodiles.
A cool night, it was windy in the morning so we weren't able to sit out. We were bit fed up with this strong wind every morning. So we had breakfast inside and were ready to leave soon after 9 o'clock. The sore rash bit under my arm was still sore but not quite as bad as last night. On the long way back on the corrugated road to the little strip of surfaced road, we saw a kingfisher. There was a predominance of yellow flowering plants here, apart from the distinctive Boab trees which were so strange. We stopped by a very large snake in the middle of the road, which had just been run over. So not beautiful to take a picture of and it looked like an adder, although by the information that we had, they didn't have adders there. The boab trees sometimes loose all their leaves and they look really spooky, like great witches standing there or metallic bottles. There are other trees which had also lost all their leaves but had yellow flowers, like say a Mallow flower or something at the end or the very tops of their spindly branches. They look quite strange too. There were also a lot of lambs tails type wattles or eucalypts possibly, that had long yellow catkins and there were also little plants, just about everything seemed to be yellow. We did see a few blue plants that looked like a type of solanum, but different from the ones we'd seen near Exmouth. These seemed to have long, brownie coloured leaves, but the flowers were similar.
We stopped for coffee in just a pull off beside the road. We'd also seen some little pink flowers beside the road that seemed rather like everlastings, just growing at ground level, and looked pretty as we drove along. They looked like miniature versions of the ones I photographed in the Pilbara. There were times when we went along with just masses of the yellow trees. I still wasn't sure if they were wattles or eucalyptus or mixture of both, but they were very attractive to drive through. Often, there was just grass and some trees, but the landscape did vary a bit, so it wasn't as uninteresting as some places. We were now on to the unsurfaced section of the Gibb River Road. At about 11.30, after 50 miles or so, we came to the turn off to the Windjana Gorge. We went a little further to see the Lennard River, which was also a place we could have stopped overnight. In doing that two cars with caravans pulled into the Windjana Rd in front of us. This made travelling impossible because of the clouds of dust coming up. The road was also badly corrugated. We pulled in for a while to let the caravans get ahead so that we could travel at the speed that we needed to to make it the least uncomfortable [corrugated roads needed a special technique to drive on. There was a 'most comfortable’ speed to travel, where you didn't go down every dip, but not so fast that you lost control! Every road was different]. Also along this road there were hibiscus type flowers on rather dead struggling looking plants.
We soon came to the turnoff to the Windjana Gorge and found ourselves there, it was almost midday. So after a quick recce of the situation we had lunch and then went for a delightful walk down the gorge for about three hours. This gorge or this rock mass, just came out of the flatness of the land, what they called savanna, just grass and some trees and suddenly this huge massive rock hundreds of feet high. The wonderful thing about the gorge was there was a river with water in it and there were freshwater crocodiles.
But the pleasure was short lived because as the sun went down behind the Boab trees out came the mossies and I got bitten very quickly. I also had a very painful rash or whatever under my arm since this morning. That made me feel pretty miserable, so we actually came in and cooked inside, the first time for many days. Simultaneously to these things happening two people nearby started up their generators, there were very few people camping here, but these two seemed to have had generators, which were very noisy and disturbed the peace of evening. After the pork chops we had for supper, we looked through all the post that we'd had. Later I labelled the photos in the latest album, and listened to the new CD's that we'd had sent from home
Rosie in the Mary River
Adrian sitting out before the mossies came
There were also little red dragonflies and very noisy white parrots , a heron and sometimes birds of prey overhead, so all in all a very pleasant walk. Sometimes we were walking along what was like the river bed, gravelly. There was a family with four children walking along too, I just thought of times gone past.
We returned to the van about 4 o'clock and then made our way to the little caravan site which was there, very low key but an absolute delight to find that there were cold showers, even if the water wasn't that cold, but after a long dusty walk it was very very welcome. The sore under my arm was a bit better, I'd taken an ibuprofen tablet. We think it was some sort of burn, how on earth I could have got it there I don't know, acid burn or bleach or something like that. I had found the best way before we went on the walk was take an ice pack from the freezer and wrap it in a tea towel and place it under my arm [we never did find out what it was, but surmised that the person who cleaned the showers in Derby had used bleach and had not washed off the area where one put the soap and so Rosie wiped it on herself via the soap].
A delightful evening followed. Pleasantly warm, though it did cool off a lot during the evening. We both put on some new anti mozzie stuff, tropical strength and certainly I didn't get bitten. There was a lovely sky as the sun went down. I walked out a little way amongst savanna grass and took a photograph, and we sat out really enjoying this atmosphere.
We returned to the van about 4 o'clock and then made our way to the little caravan site which was there, very low key but an absolute delight to find that there were cold showers, even if the water wasn't that cold, but after a long dusty walk it was very very welcome. The sore under my arm was a bit better, I'd taken an ibuprofen tablet. We think it was some sort of burn, how on earth I could have got it there I don't know, acid burn or bleach or something like that. I had found the best way before we went on the walk was take an ice pack from the freezer and wrap it in a tea towel and place it under my arm [we never did find out what it was, but surmised that the person who cleaned the showers in Derby had used bleach and had not washed off the area where one put the soap and so Rosie wiped it on herself via the soap].
A delightful evening followed. Pleasantly warm, though it did cool off a lot during the evening. We both put on some new anti mozzie stuff, tropical strength and certainly I didn't get bitten. There was a lovely sky as the sun went down. I walked out a little way amongst savanna grass and took a photograph, and we sat out really enjoying this atmosphere.
We got into the gorge by climbing through a little tunnel to get there and we immediately saw 15 or so crocs on the other side of the river and some more on the same side that we were, right up close, and some more swimming in the water. A real excitement and real privilege to be with them, we took a couple of photos and continued on our walk, which was quite dramatic with this high gorge either side of us.
The beautiful Windjana Gorge
 at Windjana Gorge, Western Australia.jpg)
 at Windjana Gorge, Western Australia.jpg)
Johnson Crocodiles (freshies) in Windjana Gorge - They are not dangerous like saltwater crocs as their mouths do not open wide
We imagined a family camp here. There were lots of people here, a group of Germans camping in little tents, and another lot of Germans with tent on top of the van, another couple with two little children with two little tents and a bigger see through mossie proof tent which they sat in. And yet another group of two couples and four children who played games well into the evening and it was just lovely sitting out under the stars, with bats around. We ate outside, cooked steak, enjoying the atmosphere. There was a fire which somebody had cooked their meal on and after they'd gone off, we sat around the fire until about 9 o'clock. It was just one of those evenings we shall treasure.
View and sunset from the campsite at Windjana Gorge
Wednesday 1st July 148 km
We were woken by the alarm bird, a bird that goes beep,beep,beep like an alarm going off, and also by a lot of activity, people were up and about by 7 o'clock. In fact, the German group of 8 people camping in little tents, left just after that. We sat outside with our cup of tea, the gas had just run out It was a beautiful morning and magnificent looking across to this high ridge, cliff face really, in the morning light. We then decided to go for a walk back to the gorge across through the savanna grass, and we took all the cameras and also did some videoing and we saw just dozens of crocodiles. One was on the ground just in front of us, by the water and just lots and lots, lots on the other side and lots in the water.
We were woken by the alarm bird, a bird that goes beep,beep,beep like an alarm going off, and also by a lot of activity, people were up and about by 7 o'clock. In fact, the German group of 8 people camping in little tents, left just after that. We sat outside with our cup of tea, the gas had just run out It was a beautiful morning and magnificent looking across to this high ridge, cliff face really, in the morning light. We then decided to go for a walk back to the gorge across through the savanna grass, and we took all the cameras and also did some videoing and we saw just dozens of crocodiles. One was on the ground just in front of us, by the water and just lots and lots, lots on the other side and lots in the water.
There were very few people about at that time, 7.30 to 8 o'clock, we were there. There were corellas making a tremendous racket and egrets, cormorants, a night heron, and the lighting was wonderful. The water was very still, the reflections were tremendous, and it was just a really great moment.
 at Windjana Gorge, Western Australia.jpg)
 at Windjana Gorge, Western Australia.jpg)
Freshies in Windjana Gorge
Again, we shall treasure this place. We walked back and had our breakfast sitting outside, in the now pretty empty campsite. A lot of people had already left, so we had the view more or less to ourselves. We went to fill up with water as it tasted excellent, the previous couple days it hadn't tasted too good. However as Adrian went do it, the people who were parked beside the water tap, took ages going, sitting with their engine running and when they finally left another vehicle nipped in before Adrian could get there. We then found there was a another tap so it wasn't really a problem.
We left and went back to the ‘main road’ and headed for Tunnel Creek. We stopped at the ruins of Lillimooloora Police Station were Pidgeon had shot policeman Richardson.
We left and went back to the ‘main road’ and headed for Tunnel Creek. We stopped at the ruins of Lillimooloora Police Station were Pidgeon had shot policeman Richardson.
Reflections in Windjana gorge
Last Picture of Windjana Gorge - it was wonderful there
All around it was just dry Savannah long grass but rather like English wheatfields, very picturesque. Just after this, we noticed something had got caught on the roo guard on the front and we thought it was a cicada, but then I said it looked like a locust, at which point we were bombarded by hundreds and hundreds of what obviously were locusts. Luckily we seemed to soon get out of them, but everywhere does look heavy and dusty and we were wondering whether it was clouds of locusts.
We stopped at Tunnel Creek and now 11.15 we thought we'd have coffee. We walked across to the actual Tunnel Creek and we proceeded to attempt to go through the creek not knowing how I would cope with this. But in fact, despite all the odds, we did make it. It was a very long rocky tunnel through this escarpment of rock and went for about 750m. Very, very uneven surface and we knew that we had to wade through water. So we wore our sandals and hoped they didn't mind it too much and we had to hope we didn't bash our toes. My sore arm survived it, my fear of claustrophobia and darkness also survived it. We had to watch our heads and in places it was very dark and we often had to wade not just once or twice, but lots of times through pools of water of various depths with the deepest up to the top of our legs. We had to be careful that we didn't go even deeper than that. We knew there were crocodiles in there, we did see one, but all told it was a good experience to have done - there were great stalactites and other people coming against you in the darkness shining a light. It had quite a magical feeling about it and I felt very pleased to have accomplished this. There were 4 kids together from different families, who obviously enjoyed it.
We stopped at Tunnel Creek and now 11.15 we thought we'd have coffee. We walked across to the actual Tunnel Creek and we proceeded to attempt to go through the creek not knowing how I would cope with this. But in fact, despite all the odds, we did make it. It was a very long rocky tunnel through this escarpment of rock and went for about 750m. Very, very uneven surface and we knew that we had to wade through water. So we wore our sandals and hoped they didn't mind it too much and we had to hope we didn't bash our toes. My sore arm survived it, my fear of claustrophobia and darkness also survived it. We had to watch our heads and in places it was very dark and we often had to wade not just once or twice, but lots of times through pools of water of various depths with the deepest up to the top of our legs. We had to be careful that we didn't go even deeper than that. We knew there were crocodiles in there, we did see one, but all told it was a good experience to have done - there were great stalactites and other people coming against you in the darkness shining a light. It had quite a magical feeling about it and I felt very pleased to have accomplished this. There were 4 kids together from different families, who obviously enjoyed it.
Adrian by the remains of Lillimooloora Police Station
We left and went back to the 'main' road and stopped for lunch in a pleasant little place. These Australian unmade roads don't really have anywhere where you can stop, but we found a track going off and parked on it and walked down to a little river with water and fish in it. We threw crumbs of bread in which they went for and it was very pleasant, quite hot and humid. After leaving this spot, we had to go through a little water splash along the road, which was the river we had been sitting by. We had to make two more river crossings after that. The road deteriorated to become extremely bad as most vehicles would have come from the Great Northern Highway, the opposite direction from Derby, and then gone back again, so twice the traffic. We eventually got ourselves out onto the road to Fitzroy Crossing at 3.15.
We'd only been on the road 15 minutes when we came across roadworks for the next 15 kilometres. At least the road wasn't as bad as those we'd just been on! We soon came to Fitzroy Crossing, there wasn't a great deal to see in the town, a bit like Derby and there was a caravan site in the town but it was very unexciting. We continued on to a part of the town to go back to a campsite on the river and in doing so we passed an area with lots of Aboriginal people standing around. It was a place where obviously they went drinking and there were hundreds and hundreds of beer cans in various states of being squashed and lying around in the road. When we got to the place Fitzroy River Lodge camping site, a lot of it, around the actual hotel site,,was burnt . We found ourselves a pitch down on the camping bit, we don't think this place has a lot to offer and expensive at $16 for an unpowered site.
I made the most of it by using the swimming pool which was actually was a long way back, right in the hotel complex and took me a long time to locate. The water was refreshingly cool but I felt better for a swim and it seemed to do my burn or whatever under my arm good, because it felt better afterwards. We then had showers. Adrian had been trying to clean some of the red dust out of the van, everything was just thick with it. We then decided to do the washing even though it cost $3 here, but even our pillowcases were thick with red dust. We then hung it on the line in the dark, so hoped it would be dry in the morning. Adrian proceeded to cook lamb chops outside and it was very warm. About 9 o'clock we went over and phoned Emma to say 'happy birthday' a bit early, but got the answerphone. We bought all the washing in as it was already dry. We were glad about that because in the night it was windy initially, and then there were quite a few spots of rain. In the morning we heard that in the West Kimberley's it had rained much more than we'd had - it was not supposed to rain at this time of the year.
We'd only been on the road 15 minutes when we came across roadworks for the next 15 kilometres. At least the road wasn't as bad as those we'd just been on! We soon came to Fitzroy Crossing, there wasn't a great deal to see in the town, a bit like Derby and there was a caravan site in the town but it was very unexciting. We continued on to a part of the town to go back to a campsite on the river and in doing so we passed an area with lots of Aboriginal people standing around. It was a place where obviously they went drinking and there were hundreds and hundreds of beer cans in various states of being squashed and lying around in the road. When we got to the place Fitzroy River Lodge camping site, a lot of it, around the actual hotel site,,was burnt . We found ourselves a pitch down on the camping bit, we don't think this place has a lot to offer and expensive at $16 for an unpowered site.
I made the most of it by using the swimming pool which was actually was a long way back, right in the hotel complex and took me a long time to locate. The water was refreshingly cool but I felt better for a swim and it seemed to do my burn or whatever under my arm good, because it felt better afterwards. We then had showers. Adrian had been trying to clean some of the red dust out of the van, everything was just thick with it. We then decided to do the washing even though it cost $3 here, but even our pillowcases were thick with red dust. We then hung it on the line in the dark, so hoped it would be dry in the morning. Adrian proceeded to cook lamb chops outside and it was very warm. About 9 o'clock we went over and phoned Emma to say 'happy birthday' a bit early, but got the answerphone. We bought all the washing in as it was already dry. We were glad about that because in the night it was windy initially, and then there were quite a few spots of rain. In the morning we heard that in the West Kimberley's it had rained much more than we'd had - it was not supposed to rain at this time of the year.
, Western Australia.jpg)
Rosie in Tunnel Creek - she ain't got her umph wet yet
Thursday 2nd July. 139 km
A mostly overcast morning. We sat in bed with our cup of tea looking at the birds outside which we couldn't identify, and looking through leaflets, on the Bungle Bungles and wondering which tour to take. So it was about 9 o'clock before we had breakfast outside. Having filled with water and emptied the loo etc. it was about 10 o'clock before we left. we set off along the road that we'd travelled down yesterday, an unmade up a road around the edge of Fitzroy Crossing, stopping briefly at the Pioneer cemetery with very few graves in it beside the large area of Fitzroy River, which hasn't much water at the moment, but obviously it can flood dramatically in the wet season. [I should mention here that on looking on streetview, in 2023, I discovered that floods in Jan 2023, were so high that the main road bridge, the only bridge to cross the Fitzroy river for hundreds of miles on the Great Northern highway was washed away and the whole area suffered devastation, and a new bridge is not expected to be finished until summer 2024. In the meantime they have put a very temporary structure across].
We had hoped to go straight on up this unmade road to reach the road to Geikie Gorge, but we came to a bit that was four wheel drive only, so we had to go back the other way on a tarmac road, which turned out to be a good idea as we went through a ford on that road anyway, and when we saw the other end of the road that we hadn't gone along, it certainly looked four wheel drive and not one to be attempted. We were pleasantly surprised to find the road up to Geikie Gorge surfaced. When we reached there, there were a great many people as a boat left at 11 o'clock, but it was $18 each and we decided not to go on the boat trip, having done a similar one on Yardie Creek. Instead, after looking at the information boards, we had a little walk down to the river. There was a lot of water in the river at this point due to a sandbar - there wasn't much water in the Fitzroy River further down at Fitzroy Crossing. We saw a multitude of birds, some kingfisher looking birds in autumnal colours which appeared to be bee eaters, although I don't think they were meant to be there at that time of year. Other birds were kites, egrets and cormorants down by the water and lots of other birds in the trees. There was a little footpath rather like being in England down beside the river and felt rather autumnal with creepers growing from the trees. That took us about 20 minutes to half an hour and we came back for coffee and a piece of fruitcake.
After that we set off on a walk called the Reef Walk, supposedly an hour and a half. We walked down the side of this gorge, the gorge was very wide there so doesn't seem like a gorge as such, and it wasn't madly exciting. When we got to the end it did just stop, like so many walks do, and nothing told you, you just couldn't go any further. The river was very attractive with the gorge like side over the other side of it.
A mostly overcast morning. We sat in bed with our cup of tea looking at the birds outside which we couldn't identify, and looking through leaflets, on the Bungle Bungles and wondering which tour to take. So it was about 9 o'clock before we had breakfast outside. Having filled with water and emptied the loo etc. it was about 10 o'clock before we left. we set off along the road that we'd travelled down yesterday, an unmade up a road around the edge of Fitzroy Crossing, stopping briefly at the Pioneer cemetery with very few graves in it beside the large area of Fitzroy River, which hasn't much water at the moment, but obviously it can flood dramatically in the wet season. [I should mention here that on looking on streetview, in 2023, I discovered that floods in Jan 2023, were so high that the main road bridge, the only bridge to cross the Fitzroy river for hundreds of miles on the Great Northern highway was washed away and the whole area suffered devastation, and a new bridge is not expected to be finished until summer 2024. In the meantime they have put a very temporary structure across].
We had hoped to go straight on up this unmade road to reach the road to Geikie Gorge, but we came to a bit that was four wheel drive only, so we had to go back the other way on a tarmac road, which turned out to be a good idea as we went through a ford on that road anyway, and when we saw the other end of the road that we hadn't gone along, it certainly looked four wheel drive and not one to be attempted. We were pleasantly surprised to find the road up to Geikie Gorge surfaced. When we reached there, there were a great many people as a boat left at 11 o'clock, but it was $18 each and we decided not to go on the boat trip, having done a similar one on Yardie Creek. Instead, after looking at the information boards, we had a little walk down to the river. There was a lot of water in the river at this point due to a sandbar - there wasn't much water in the Fitzroy River further down at Fitzroy Crossing. We saw a multitude of birds, some kingfisher looking birds in autumnal colours which appeared to be bee eaters, although I don't think they were meant to be there at that time of year. Other birds were kites, egrets and cormorants down by the water and lots of other birds in the trees. There was a little footpath rather like being in England down beside the river and felt rather autumnal with creepers growing from the trees. That took us about 20 minutes to half an hour and we came back for coffee and a piece of fruitcake.
After that we set off on a walk called the Reef Walk, supposedly an hour and a half. We walked down the side of this gorge, the gorge was very wide there so doesn't seem like a gorge as such, and it wasn't madly exciting. When we got to the end it did just stop, like so many walks do, and nothing told you, you just couldn't go any further. The river was very attractive with the gorge like side over the other side of it.
We saw several birds of prey and not a great deal else. We made our way back beside the river, which was pretty hard going on gravel. The other thing that happened is that it rained for most of the time or after the first say 20 minutes. We were gone perhaps nearly 2 hours in the end, we stopped once or twice to try and shelter a bit. After we got back to the van, it suddenly rained really hard, so we were glad that we'd got back at that point. Everywhere looked awash and very miserable in the rain, which just isn't expected at this time of year. So we had our lunch in the van and we're ready to leave at 2.30.
We drove back to Fitzroy Crossing and went to visit the supermarket. This was the only supermarket in the small township, with a lot of Aboriginal people just standing outside and in the shop too. There was very little selection in the shop, no fresh meat and very little fresh fruit at all. We got diesel and gas and left Fitzroy Crossing in unusually bad weather for this time of year. It was raining and the sky was very mixed and we travelled for about an hour eastwards, stopping at a lookout, but we couldn't see what to, because once we got there it was dark very soon afterwards and the wind was howling and it rained quite a bit more. We sat inside and I wrote some postcards, and we cooked and ate inside.
We drove back to Fitzroy Crossing and went to visit the supermarket. This was the only supermarket in the small township, with a lot of Aboriginal people just standing outside and in the shop too. There was very little selection in the shop, no fresh meat and very little fresh fruit at all. We got diesel and gas and left Fitzroy Crossing in unusually bad weather for this time of year. It was raining and the sky was very mixed and we travelled for about an hour eastwards, stopping at a lookout, but we couldn't see what to, because once we got there it was dark very soon afterwards and the wind was howling and it rained quite a bit more. We sat inside and I wrote some postcards, and we cooked and ate inside.
Adrian in GeikieGorge before it started to rain!
Friday 3rd July. - Emma's Bithrday 207 Km
We'd expected the bad weather to have gone, but awoke to a cloudy morning and a little flurry of rain and still very overcast. On the radio, we heard of the surprise of people of this unusually bad weather for this time of year, when it's not supposed to rain, but to be just blue skies. We also heard of a tragedy of a family in the Pilbara who got stuck in their vehicle and had gone for help. A baby had died and others injured. A man had walked 80 km to get help and it brought home to us the remoteness of this area. Adrian had had a go at sealing up some of the cupboards to try to stop this red dust getting in and we then went for a little walk further round to this viewpoint over the countryside and found other suitable spots where one could have camped. In fact, I would have said this was quite a good place to stay, although it doesn't feature in our free camping book. We left just after 9.30 and continued to Mary River where there was a rest area and this was where we stopped for coffee. The way there was quite interesting, not absolutely flat and with quite a lot of flowers and flowering plants often yellow flowers as I have mentioned before and pink Mulla Mulla and some bushes that look rather like a deep lavender. Perhaps the way was made easier because we were listening to side 2 of tape 9 which was of Gladstone Beach, and Coral Bay and Exmouth and so had lots of interesting things to listen to, so we relived all those experiences as we were driving along.
The Mary River Rest Area was interesting in that you first had to cross the river, there were some pools of water in the wide river, but not much water in it – in fact there was more water on the roadsides round about after the rain. And this was a place which had set itself up as a free camping area. There were perhaps about 20 caravans etc. using this area, and while we had tea and coffee and a very nice Chelsea bun bought in Fitzroy Crossing supermarket yesterday, about the only bun looking thing, but so large that it did the two of us quite adequately. A chap came over and spoke to us, Adrian thought he was Dutch and I thought German, he was wearing clogs and had a very broken English accent, but in fact he was Danish but had lived over here over 20 years. They lived in Cairns and they were travelling around the opposite way to us but 18 years ago they had travelled around the way we're going, taking two years to do it. We stopped for lunch just before Halls Creek in another little pull off just before Rockhole Creek, which wasn't actually a parking space. We sat inside, the weather was variable, mostly sunny by now. There had been some very strange clouds across the sky, rather like corrugated folded rolls of cotton wool.
We stopped in Halls Creek and got diesel and went to tourist information and booked a trip for the Bungles Bungles for Sunday. We went to the post office and had a long wait, but managed to get some money out after she told us that we couldn't on our card and got some more stamps, posted some cards I'd written last night and then we tried to phone Emma to wish her happy birthday and got the answerphone. We had bought a phone card at the tourist information and so we phoned Tom as well and left a message too. We now set off on the track towards old Halls Creek, there was whole host of galahs by the side of the road . This road only had a surface for a short distance and the first thing we turned off to on the unsurfaced road was the so called China Wall, 16 kilometres of a natural wall, which certainly looked man made, it was quartz sticking out from the hillside, white against the colour of the hills.
We'd expected the bad weather to have gone, but awoke to a cloudy morning and a little flurry of rain and still very overcast. On the radio, we heard of the surprise of people of this unusually bad weather for this time of year, when it's not supposed to rain, but to be just blue skies. We also heard of a tragedy of a family in the Pilbara who got stuck in their vehicle and had gone for help. A baby had died and others injured. A man had walked 80 km to get help and it brought home to us the remoteness of this area. Adrian had had a go at sealing up some of the cupboards to try to stop this red dust getting in and we then went for a little walk further round to this viewpoint over the countryside and found other suitable spots where one could have camped. In fact, I would have said this was quite a good place to stay, although it doesn't feature in our free camping book. We left just after 9.30 and continued to Mary River where there was a rest area and this was where we stopped for coffee. The way there was quite interesting, not absolutely flat and with quite a lot of flowers and flowering plants often yellow flowers as I have mentioned before and pink Mulla Mulla and some bushes that look rather like a deep lavender. Perhaps the way was made easier because we were listening to side 2 of tape 9 which was of Gladstone Beach, and Coral Bay and Exmouth and so had lots of interesting things to listen to, so we relived all those experiences as we were driving along.
The Mary River Rest Area was interesting in that you first had to cross the river, there were some pools of water in the wide river, but not much water in it – in fact there was more water on the roadsides round about after the rain. And this was a place which had set itself up as a free camping area. There were perhaps about 20 caravans etc. using this area, and while we had tea and coffee and a very nice Chelsea bun bought in Fitzroy Crossing supermarket yesterday, about the only bun looking thing, but so large that it did the two of us quite adequately. A chap came over and spoke to us, Adrian thought he was Dutch and I thought German, he was wearing clogs and had a very broken English accent, but in fact he was Danish but had lived over here over 20 years. They lived in Cairns and they were travelling around the opposite way to us but 18 years ago they had travelled around the way we're going, taking two years to do it. We stopped for lunch just before Halls Creek in another little pull off just before Rockhole Creek, which wasn't actually a parking space. We sat inside, the weather was variable, mostly sunny by now. There had been some very strange clouds across the sky, rather like corrugated folded rolls of cotton wool.
We stopped in Halls Creek and got diesel and went to tourist information and booked a trip for the Bungles Bungles for Sunday. We went to the post office and had a long wait, but managed to get some money out after she told us that we couldn't on our card and got some more stamps, posted some cards I'd written last night and then we tried to phone Emma to wish her happy birthday and got the answerphone. We had bought a phone card at the tourist information and so we phoned Tom as well and left a message too. We now set off on the track towards old Halls Creek, there was whole host of galahs by the side of the road . This road only had a surface for a short distance and the first thing we turned off to on the unsurfaced road was the so called China Wall, 16 kilometres of a natural wall, which certainly looked man made, it was quartz sticking out from the hillside, white against the colour of the hills.
We viewed that and then continued, turning off to Caroline's Pool. We now went several kilometres on a pretty rough road to Caroline's Pool which was a little red muddy pool of water backed by cliffs nothing much more to say except that there were flies. The countryside here was suddenly very pretty, particularly in this lighting with the sun shining now after the previous rains, so everything looking bright.
We continued a few kilometres to the site of old Halls Creek. There's nothing left there now except the remains of one building made of ant mud and spinifex grass. However annoyingly now, very close to it, there is a little lodge and caravan site, annoyingly, because we had thought we would stay there and you can't free camp if you’re right on top of another caravan site in Western Australia. We stopped and went on a walk trail which took us to the top of a hill, once we located where the trail went, which is often a problem here, across a stream and then a hidden bit up through grass, but the views of the Kimberley, were wonderful right around, just wilderness, only plagued by flies. There were lots of plaques to this that and the other and memorials etc. and that was all at this site. It was pleasant lighting now being about 4.30.
We needed somewhere to stay the night so we retraced our steps a bit and took the road to Caroline’s Pool and found a little place off just before the actual site of the pool arriving at five o'clock.
We continued a few kilometres to the site of old Halls Creek. There's nothing left there now except the remains of one building made of ant mud and spinifex grass. However annoyingly now, very close to it, there is a little lodge and caravan site, annoyingly, because we had thought we would stay there and you can't free camp if you’re right on top of another caravan site in Western Australia. We stopped and went on a walk trail which took us to the top of a hill, once we located where the trail went, which is often a problem here, across a stream and then a hidden bit up through grass, but the views of the Kimberley, were wonderful right around, just wilderness, only plagued by flies. There were lots of plaques to this that and the other and memorials etc. and that was all at this site. It was pleasant lighting now being about 4.30.
We needed somewhere to stay the night so we retraced our steps a bit and took the road to Caroline’s Pool and found a little place off just before the actual site of the pool arriving at five o'clock.
The 'China' Wall
We decided that this was the night to gather some notes together with a view to doing a follow up article for Family Tree Magazine on ‘Am I related to the king of the Marquesas’. So we did that together then after supper which I cooked some minced beef for, we listened through again to the tape recordings of Ua Pou.
Sunset at Old Halls Creek
Saturday, 4th July 167 Km
We awoke to a blue sky, to hear Louis Armstrong on the radio singing ‘what a wonderful world’. We ate little scotch pancakes for breakfast, inside. We heard an item on the news saying it was the 20 years of the Solomon Islands independence and we also heard more of the people who were lost in the Pilbara, we knew that the baby had died, but the other people seemed to be recovering and the woman who was on her own, in her 60's, seemed to be all right and one of the men seemed to have walked 200 kilometres. So that all seemed quite remarkable that they at least had survived. We set off about 8.30, on the unsurfaced track, back to Halls Creek and it looked beautiful, the scenery was very lovely against the clear blue sky.
At Halls Creek we located the statue to Russian Jack, one of the early pioneers, who supposedly pushed a sick friend in a wheelbarrow, 300 kilometres across the bush to get medical help and it was symbolising the pioneering spirit of the early days.
We awoke to a blue sky, to hear Louis Armstrong on the radio singing ‘what a wonderful world’. We ate little scotch pancakes for breakfast, inside. We heard an item on the news saying it was the 20 years of the Solomon Islands independence and we also heard more of the people who were lost in the Pilbara, we knew that the baby had died, but the other people seemed to be recovering and the woman who was on her own, in her 60's, seemed to be all right and one of the men seemed to have walked 200 kilometres. So that all seemed quite remarkable that they at least had survived. We set off about 8.30, on the unsurfaced track, back to Halls Creek and it looked beautiful, the scenery was very lovely against the clear blue sky.
At Halls Creek we located the statue to Russian Jack, one of the early pioneers, who supposedly pushed a sick friend in a wheelbarrow, 300 kilometres across the bush to get medical help and it was symbolising the pioneering spirit of the early days.
There was very little left in this little town of Halls Creek now, very little of of interest that is or of beauty. We found we were adjacent to the tourist information where we were yesterday and a little park, which had several items in it, one being a 1885 steam engine from England and there were three little Aboriginal urchins playing on a little roundabout. They were dabbing their feet in the rain water around as the ran around barefooted. Then they scrambled onto the steam engine and I took a photograph of that , it seemed to symbolise quite a lot.
Statue to 'Russian Jack' in Halls Creek
We thought we'd walk along to the supermarket here, thinking that when we pass a town, we must replenish stocks as there weren't too many towns in the area. We went first into a baker's where we did buy a bag of rolls, but there weren't any cakes to speak, in fact nothing much at all. And next door was the supermarket, again with not much in it, it was more of a hardware and other things store with just a little bit of food - we ended up with a bit of cheese and a few mushrooms. So with our grand amount of shopping, we came back ready to leave Halls Creek just before 9.30. It was already very hot.
We headed towards Turkey Creek, and after about 10 minutes, we saw a snake on the road. Adrian backed up and looked at it and it was a black headed python which was what we thought that was we saw the other day, the dead on the road. This one had been hit by something but was still alive and we photographed it.
We headed towards Turkey Creek, and after about 10 minutes, we saw a snake on the road. Adrian backed up and looked at it and it was a black headed python which was what we thought that was we saw the other day, the dead on the road. This one had been hit by something but was still alive and we photographed it.
Aborigine children play on an old steam engine
We were enjoying listening to our last tape, tape10 of the Karijini. We stopped to view a plant that we'd seen before, a rather cabbagy looking plant which I thought must be a hakea. It was tall, up to six foot, with large cabbagy leaves but the flowers at the end of the clusters were mauve, exquisite looking flowers and didn't really belong on this funny cabbagy plant. It looked nice against the clear blue sky.
 on the road between Halls and Turkey Creeks, Western Australia.jpg)
Black Headed Python
We pulled off for coffee and it was surprisingly windy, but we sat in the shade behind the van and looked out over this yellowy grass, green trees, the hills in the distance, blue sky and apart from a few flies, it was pleasant.
We stopped for lunch a few miles before Turkey Creek. We had hoped to pull off somewhere and spend a couple of hours as we have to stay at Turkey Creek tonight in order to go on our 5.30 am trip to the Bungle Bungles tomorrow, and knowing that Turkey Creek didn't seem to be a very exciting place. But, contrary to what one might think, in Australia, it's very difficult to stop along these roads although there's nothing there. The parking bays are usually very uninspired and the couple of rest areas we passed also weren't anything to write home about and not anywhere we would have liked to spend a couple of hours. So where we pulled off was just a hot but windy layby, with pleasant hills around and blue sky, but it wasn't a pleasant lunch, stop. We sat outside but we were just bombarded by flies that made life intolerable.
So we reluctantly, left at about 1.30 and arrived at the roadhouse where the campsite was at Turkey Creek, soon afterwards. We gave it a quick look over but we seemed to be lucky to get what appeared to have been the last powered site. We thought we needed electricity to have some air conditioning as it was very hot - we found the temperature was 90°F. When we went round to locate our position it was actually being watered, so it was rather wet, but not unpleasant and what was a pleasant surprise was to find that there was a minuscule swimming pool almost adjacent to our little spot. So we got ourselves settled and ready to go into it. We did go and inquire about the helicopter flights, so that's a possible for Monday. We soon made our way to the swimming pool and had a pleasant swim. It was a small pool and obviously hadn't been there very long, but it was lovely. We sat around for a bit and came back and got a bit settled in and had a cup of tea. We had just sat down with that outside when a person came up called Lorina who was a representative for the trip tomorrow, when we have to be ready by 5.15 in the morning. She was a very chatty person.
We got ourselves organised for that, read a bit, then went and had a shower and hairwash by which time it was four o'clock - maybe, as I found my watch had stopped. We cooked fish in the microwave and ate outside, it was very warm, and then about 8 o'clock we were thinking of going to bed because of the very early start in the morning, when Lorina came and said the trip was off tomorrow. They had got a problem with the tyres on the vehicle on which Tony had only just come back. So the possibility is that we go the following day and they would pay the site fees for that night, so we had to wait and see what happened. We stayed out until, 9.45, it was a really warm evening, there was a very pleasant atmosphere.
We stopped for lunch a few miles before Turkey Creek. We had hoped to pull off somewhere and spend a couple of hours as we have to stay at Turkey Creek tonight in order to go on our 5.30 am trip to the Bungle Bungles tomorrow, and knowing that Turkey Creek didn't seem to be a very exciting place. But, contrary to what one might think, in Australia, it's very difficult to stop along these roads although there's nothing there. The parking bays are usually very uninspired and the couple of rest areas we passed also weren't anything to write home about and not anywhere we would have liked to spend a couple of hours. So where we pulled off was just a hot but windy layby, with pleasant hills around and blue sky, but it wasn't a pleasant lunch, stop. We sat outside but we were just bombarded by flies that made life intolerable.
So we reluctantly, left at about 1.30 and arrived at the roadhouse where the campsite was at Turkey Creek, soon afterwards. We gave it a quick look over but we seemed to be lucky to get what appeared to have been the last powered site. We thought we needed electricity to have some air conditioning as it was very hot - we found the temperature was 90°F. When we went round to locate our position it was actually being watered, so it was rather wet, but not unpleasant and what was a pleasant surprise was to find that there was a minuscule swimming pool almost adjacent to our little spot. So we got ourselves settled and ready to go into it. We did go and inquire about the helicopter flights, so that's a possible for Monday. We soon made our way to the swimming pool and had a pleasant swim. It was a small pool and obviously hadn't been there very long, but it was lovely. We sat around for a bit and came back and got a bit settled in and had a cup of tea. We had just sat down with that outside when a person came up called Lorina who was a representative for the trip tomorrow, when we have to be ready by 5.15 in the morning. She was a very chatty person.
We got ourselves organised for that, read a bit, then went and had a shower and hairwash by which time it was four o'clock - maybe, as I found my watch had stopped. We cooked fish in the microwave and ate outside, it was very warm, and then about 8 o'clock we were thinking of going to bed because of the very early start in the morning, when Lorina came and said the trip was off tomorrow. They had got a problem with the tyres on the vehicle on which Tony had only just come back. So the possibility is that we go the following day and they would pay the site fees for that night, so we had to wait and see what happened. We stayed out until, 9.45, it was a really warm evening, there was a very pleasant atmosphere.
 on the road between Halls and Turkey Creeks, Western Australia.jpg)
It turned out to be a Calatrophis (Petroleum Plant)
Sunday, 5th July. 0 miles
We woke early, as we thought we might, as we had expected to go on our trip today. We enjoyed hearing the birdsong particularly the carolling of the magpies. We dozed a bit, people were up and about early. At 7 o'clock, we had a knock on the door and it was Greg to see if we still wanted to go on a trip tomorrow. By 7.30, most people had left and except those staying for tomorrow, the whole place was virtually empty. We chatted to a couple who went on the trip yesterday, they said it was good, they were from Tasmania. We had a cup of tea and then went down to the helicopter place, it was then about 7.40. The lady said she'd got two spaces on the 9 o'clock flight, so that's what we decided we were going to do.
This turned out to be brilliant, I was rather sceptical, understandably, but I had complete faith in Jack the pilot. We had another couple with us, Wilma and Harry from Geraldton. Adrian was in the front, and I was in a window seat in the back and it was three quarters of an hour of delight. The Bungle Bungles are just a huge wilderness area of strange mountains, and all we saw of civilisation was one or two tracks down below and a homestead at some point. It was just many square miles of nothing, but a wonderful experience and as you can only get into the Bungle Bungles by track in a couple of places, so seeing it by air is the only way that you will see the vast range of it. So that was pretty wonderful.
We woke early, as we thought we might, as we had expected to go on our trip today. We enjoyed hearing the birdsong particularly the carolling of the magpies. We dozed a bit, people were up and about early. At 7 o'clock, we had a knock on the door and it was Greg to see if we still wanted to go on a trip tomorrow. By 7.30, most people had left and except those staying for tomorrow, the whole place was virtually empty. We chatted to a couple who went on the trip yesterday, they said it was good, they were from Tasmania. We had a cup of tea and then went down to the helicopter place, it was then about 7.40. The lady said she'd got two spaces on the 9 o'clock flight, so that's what we decided we were going to do.
This turned out to be brilliant, I was rather sceptical, understandably, but I had complete faith in Jack the pilot. We had another couple with us, Wilma and Harry from Geraldton. Adrian was in the front, and I was in a window seat in the back and it was three quarters of an hour of delight. The Bungle Bungles are just a huge wilderness area of strange mountains, and all we saw of civilisation was one or two tracks down below and a homestead at some point. It was just many square miles of nothing, but a wonderful experience and as you can only get into the Bungle Bungles by track in a couple of places, so seeing it by air is the only way that you will see the vast range of it. So that was pretty wonderful.
I had been very quiet on the flight and when we returned the pilot said to me that I was obviously the rowdy one in the back, but I did enjoy it very much.
We returned to the van at 10.00 am. We had coffee and a piece of toast having had just cereal before we left. It was very hot. Adrian attempted to stop some of the dust coming in the back window and then an excellent day of cleaning followed. This was obviously just meant to be because we had only just been saying that we needed a day to go through the van and clean everything and sort it and that's just what we did. We found that there was a free washing machine here, so we washed all the bedding, the bedspread, the valance sheet and all the curtains around the bed at the rear end, all of which had got mucky and sandy. They dried of course very quickly in the hot sunshine and that was wonderful to get that done. We did lots of cleaning of cupboards, sorting things and all sorts of different jobs. The day went rapidly. After lunch at some point during the afternoon we had a refreshing swim in the pool.
We went over towards the end of the afternoon and phoned Paul, and had a double bonus as Emma was there as well, so we chatted quite a bit to both of them, in fact we phoned back on our rechargeable card. So that was really good to have done that. We then had showers, and suddenly it was dark. There had been a lovely sky as we'd waited to phone, the sunlight just catching the hills of the Kimberly's. I cooked minced beef and rice in the microwave, which we ate outside, and then sat outside for a long while, it was still very hot. We came in at 9.15 and it was still 88°F and hoping for an early night and some sleep.
We returned to the van at 10.00 am. We had coffee and a piece of toast having had just cereal before we left. It was very hot. Adrian attempted to stop some of the dust coming in the back window and then an excellent day of cleaning followed. This was obviously just meant to be because we had only just been saying that we needed a day to go through the van and clean everything and sort it and that's just what we did. We found that there was a free washing machine here, so we washed all the bedding, the bedspread, the valance sheet and all the curtains around the bed at the rear end, all of which had got mucky and sandy. They dried of course very quickly in the hot sunshine and that was wonderful to get that done. We did lots of cleaning of cupboards, sorting things and all sorts of different jobs. The day went rapidly. After lunch at some point during the afternoon we had a refreshing swim in the pool.
We went over towards the end of the afternoon and phoned Paul, and had a double bonus as Emma was there as well, so we chatted quite a bit to both of them, in fact we phoned back on our rechargeable card. So that was really good to have done that. We then had showers, and suddenly it was dark. There had been a lovely sky as we'd waited to phone, the sunlight just catching the hills of the Kimberly's. I cooked minced beef and rice in the microwave, which we ate outside, and then sat outside for a long while, it was still very hot. We came in at 9.15 and it was still 88°F and hoping for an early night and some sleep.
The Bungle Bungles from the helicopter
We arrive back at Turkey Creek after a fabulous trip
Monday 6th July 0 miles
It was a very hot night. We were awake at 4.00 am although the alarm was set for 4.45. We got up soon after, had a cup of tea and cereal and we left at 5.15 am on 4-wheel drive coaster with 14 other people and Lorina as our driver and guide for our day in the Bungle, Bungles. This started with 40 minute down the main road and then went onto a track into the Bungle, Bungles This was the roughest track one could imagine - we'd been warned of this and luckily I had my backfriend and later I needed my to support belt on as well, because we were thrown around like anything. We for the most part were sitting in the backseat which was extra bumpy.
At 7.30 am, which seemed halfway through the morning to us, we stopped for tea, coffee and biscuits and then on into the Bungle, Bungles themselves. We stopped to have a walk in Echidna Cavern which we went in. Very, very deeply into this enormous cavern, through a tiny crevice at the bottom of these towering mountains.
It was a very hot night. We were awake at 4.00 am although the alarm was set for 4.45. We got up soon after, had a cup of tea and cereal and we left at 5.15 am on 4-wheel drive coaster with 14 other people and Lorina as our driver and guide for our day in the Bungle, Bungles. This started with 40 minute down the main road and then went onto a track into the Bungle, Bungles This was the roughest track one could imagine - we'd been warned of this and luckily I had my backfriend and later I needed my to support belt on as well, because we were thrown around like anything. We for the most part were sitting in the backseat which was extra bumpy.
At 7.30 am, which seemed halfway through the morning to us, we stopped for tea, coffee and biscuits and then on into the Bungle, Bungles themselves. We stopped to have a walk in Echidna Cavern which we went in. Very, very deeply into this enormous cavern, through a tiny crevice at the bottom of these towering mountains.
The Bungle, Bungles were quite amazing, being made of conglomerate, stripy rocks, particularly the bit we went to later . We then went on more of a drive and stopped for lunch which was all organised for us in a netted room, for a help yourself lunch. After that, more of a drive, lots and lots of driving today, until we came to the beginning of the beehive bit which everyone thinks of as the Bungle Bungles. Here we had a walk into the Cathedral Gorge, the weather was very hot but luckily both times we went into shade and it was cooler there, obviously. After that, it was just the long drive home.
Echidna Carvern
Adrian & Rosie by a Bowerbird nest in Echidna Carvern
We left about two o'clock and got home at 7 o'clock - about 5 hours. We stopped briefly at the ranger shop and then once again for refreshments and the rest of the time was just driving. It had become cloudy so unfortunately we didn't have the evening light shining on the rocks. We arrived back feeling pretty exhausted. Two particular couples to mention, were a Swiss couple from Zurich on their honeymoon and a New Zealand couple called Cheryl and Gary who we particularly befriended.
We got some chips from the shop and made a pretty grotty scrambled egg thing in the microwave [far too hot to cook anything on the stove]. We had a bottle of bubbly and it was really really warm still. We sat outside, the lights kept going off, as the generator kept breaking down. We had showers to cool ourselves down before bed. It had been enjoyable day.
We got some chips from the shop and made a pretty grotty scrambled egg thing in the microwave [far too hot to cook anything on the stove]. We had a bottle of bubbly and it was really really warm still. We sat outside, the lights kept going off, as the generator kept breaking down. We had showers to cool ourselves down before bed. It had been enjoyable day.
Cathedral Gorge, Bungle Bungles
