Today was an interesting day. First day that I haven’t taken a photo on the trip!
You guys will just have to make do with the 1000 words instead.
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Day 41 – Broome
Aug 18
Day 40 – Broome
Aug 17
Waking up to a fog free day, we were rapidly packed up and on the road. We took the opportunity to have a quick wash of the van too before we left.
An uneventful drive saw us arrive in Broome at about 12:30 … with nowhere to stay. We’d called nearly all of the parks when we were in Port Hedland without success. All full up. A couple of fresh calls today though was successful in securing our patch of dirt for a night.
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Day 39 – Eighty Mile Beach
Aug 16
We woke this morning bright and early to the sound of the generators around us. Quite glad to be moving this morning. Not too far, only about 100m. We’ll be closer to the loo’s and out of earshot of the gennies.
I poked my head out this morning and saw all our chairs wet. I didn’t think we had rain last night though … the whole place was engulfed in complete pea soup fog. A quick stroll down to the beach was a bit eerie and disorienting. You only needed to walk about a minute down the beach to lose all frame of reference. Luckily the fog was destined to burn off really fast.
Day 38 – Eighty Mile Beach
Aug 15
Up at 6am again and packed and on the road by 8. Starting to sound familiar?
Blake’s run of luck was continuing with him banging his head (really well) getting in and out of places three times. He also managed to stub his toe … yep … THAT toe.
Today we had 550 kms to do to get us to Eighty Mile Beach. The road was a little unknown, with some maps saying that sections were still unsealed. It turned out to be bitumen all the way on spectacular and later, boring, road until the turn off to Eighty Mile Beach.
Day 37 – Karajini
Aug 14
Today we woke, as usual, at 6am … since Kel had forgotten to turn off the alarm. First thing we noticed was that the fridge temp was a bit warm … since we we’re out of gas. “No problem”, thinks I, “we’ve got 2 gas bottles”. Typically, swapping over to the second gas bottle I discovered a leak somewhere in that side of the system. This meant physically swapping the gas bottles over which also meant folding up the bed to get to it. Morning exercise with variety in Karajini…
A quick brekky and hike preparations saw us ready to get stuck into the other major gorge system of Karajini, Weano Gorge. We were just getting ready to leave when Blake let out a scream.
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Day 36 – Karajini
Aug 13
We got up fairly early and headed the 100km into Karajini National Park. I’d thought that the roads were all dirt in here, but we were on bitumen all the way up to the campground itself. We did an extremely basic setup, pretty much just popped the roof and got the fridge going on gas.
We were keen to get stuck into the various walks around the area. A quick discussion soon had a route mapped out and off we went. All the trails are graded 1 to 6. Class 6 requires rockclimbing and/or abseiling equipment. The others decrease in difficulty until the easiest, in here, is a class 2. A class 2 is just a walk through the bush with a few obstacles on marked trails.
We were in Dales Campground, Cockatoo Loop section, due to wanting to use a generator. We walked from there down to the Fortesque Falls Carpark and then took the class 3 trail down to the falls themselves.
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Day 35 – Tom Price
Aug 12
Only a single day in Tom Price … but we’re here a day earlier than expected too. That means we’ve got a day up our sleeve to use before we get to Broome. So an extra night at Karajini, 80 mile beach or Broome. It has to happen somewhere, so we’ll see what happens.
Today we had booked a mine tour … at 3pm. What else can you do in a drinking town with a mining problem? Plenty actually. We settled on checking out a few lookouts and sights as there weren’t really many other activities that caught our attention.
Day 34 – Tom Price
Aug 11
We were up at 6am and on the road at 7:30am. The brumbies were awaiting our return and this time we had apples for them. For wild horses they’re pretty tame. A short stop at the wreck of the SS Mildura soon had us at Exmouth. A chance drop in at the local bottle shop saw us replenish our stock at prices equivalent to home. A slab was about $43 compared to the $56 that I’d paid in Coral Bay. Needless to say we now have more beer than available storage … not that that problem will last long out here. It’s warmer than the 30 degrees the thermometer suggests.
Day 33 – Exmouth
Aug 10
With only a single day to spend in Cape Range National Park we were a bit flustered about what to do. After being woken up by the noisy pack of galahs in the next campsite we had a walk along the beach after breakfast, this turned into an impromptu dip … until Blake discovered the dinner plate sized crabs lurking nearby. Back at the van I proposed an itinerary that garnered only a few murmurs, so off we went.
Day 32 – Exmouth
Aug 9
We sadly left Coral Bay this morning. It’s a very cool place, we could’ve easily spent a lot more time here. There’s plenty more to explore via 4wd.
Only a short day today, 170km to Exmouth and then about 40 or so more around the cape to our campsite.
The only stop we had was to get a little bit of groceries at Exmouth. A little bit of groceries took about an hour though. Exmouth was so incredibly busy and I can’t begin to explain it. There was a queue at the bus stop about 200m long with people waiting to go ‘somewhere’. It was a bit bizarre seeing all these people queued up … we’re just not used to crowds of more than 20 people anymore I guess.
We headed around the cape and saw the submarine comms array. It’s a bit hard to miss it.
