Finally after many doubts, we made it to Broome this afternoon. Unfortunately our first stop was to have the van looked at. Having a view hiccups, mainly the suspension and wheel alignment and it looks like its not going to be an easy fix, so that’s disappointing. Will have to battle thru until we can get it back to a Jayco workshop, probably in Brisbane. Anyway we’ll continue on and overcome.

Went off to the Staircase to the Moon tonight. For 3 days each month the moon rises over town beach and the reflections of the moon on the water look like a staircase, hence the name.

We’ll be here for about 5 days, so we have a few things planned but it will also be nice to be in the one place for more than 2 days.

Really disappointed to hear that Melbourne is going back into lockdown for 6 weeks. Our thoughts are with the kids, Tracy (& Lilian), Brendon (& family), Nathan & Emily, Rebecca, Shannon & Jessica. Also our family and friends, please stay safe and well. Of course everyone else, be careful too. Love to all!

After 80 Mile Beach we travelled north to Barnhill Station, another farm stay. A lot of the major farms/Stations have set up camping/caravan parks as a side business to their normal station activities and Barnhill has been one of the more famous, probably because of its close proximity to Broome.

We enjoyed the 3 days we had here, very relaxing and the swimming was great as well. Still gets me I’m swimming mid July in Australia, all be it way north of Melbourne. The sunsets are unbelievable, so many different colours.

Tomorrow its off to Broome, a place a few months ago we’d didn’t think we’d get too.

A quick trip today, travelled only 250 km’s from Port Hedland to Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park. The Park is the only thing here and most people use it as a stopping place before and or after visiting Broome. In all the red dirt, the park is a lush green oasis.

The beach is amazing, especially when the tides out, there are millions of shells everywhere. Susan and I spent an hour walking the beach and looking for shells this afternoon before viewing the sunset. We’re here for a couple of days before moving on to Barnhill Station about 250 km’s further north.

The last few days we have been fairly remote without any mobile reception, so no phones or internet. We left Point Samson on Monday morning bound for Port Hedland. As we went further north into the Pilbara region, mining trucks became the most frequent vehicles on the road. We are accustomed to B Doubles in Melbourne and the occasional B triple but up here the’re mainly B Quads and bloody huge. One of the photos below shows a prime mover with 5 trailers, these are definitely “Road Trains”.

We made good time into Port Hedland and seeing we planned a free camp on the Monday night before heading to Karijini National Park, we decided to head off down highway 95 to make the run into Karijini a bit shorter in the morning. Susan found us a nice little place behind an overnight truck stop in between about 3 mines in the region. I can tell you the trucks and trains run 24/7, the highway was non stop with B Quads all night long. The plus about the free camps in the middle of no where is the night sky, we sat there for ages just looking at the stars.

The two days we spent in Karijini was magic. If we were 20 years younger we could have spent a week there doing all the walks but four 60+ people don’t have the legs and knees to tackle all the walks. They are truly spectacular, climbing down the stepped walls of the gorges was something special. I went down a couple and I would have done more but prudence dictated not to do it alone, so photos had to do. Do yourself a favour, do not miss Karijini if you are coming to North West WA!

So this morning it was back up highway 95 to Port Hedland for a overnight stop in a Caravan Park to recharge the batteries, replenish the water and get ready for the next 5 days leading up to our arrival in Broome. Port Hedland is basically here for the mines. It’s the largest resources port in Australia and one of, if not the largest in the world. There is close to 30 bulk ore carriers moored of Port Hedland port all the time, waiting to be loaded with iron ore. The trains and trucks continually feed these giant ships with ore from all the mines in the Pilbara region. The town is not much to look at and you probably wouldn’t choose to live here if it wasn’t for the mines. The mines employ a huge number of people and the flow on to other businesses and industries is enormous as well. We still send wool and sheep overseas as we have done for over 100 years but its hard to comprehend how much ore we have sent, are sending and will send in the future.

The next couple of weeks will find us on the coast, firstly 80 mile beach, then Barn Hill Station before we get into Broome next Tuesday. Unfortunately the beaches are full on nasty’s at the moment, so swimming (at the beach) looks like its off the agenda for sometime.

Until next time, stay safe people!

After leaving Bullara Station on Thursday we travelled southeast until we hit highway 1 again and then headed back north. We stopped briefly at Fortesque Roadhouse for a bite to eat, where the biggest damn truck I’ve ever seen was. This was a B Quad, four huge trailers being towed by the one prime mover. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo, as it was pulling out of the roadhouse as we pulled in.

We are right in the Pilbara now and its all red dirt, not like it was further south, this red “dirt” is really not dirt but solid rock, basically its iron ore. In places the ground is more a purple hue than red but its just rock hard, its like the ground is massively rusted. There are huge mines everywhere, I’d suggest the whole north west of WA could supply iron ore to the world for many many years. It’s no wonder there is so much money in WA. We waited at a rail crossing for 10 minutes as an ore train passed us buy with huge trucks of ore being pulled behind 3 engines, just amazing the amount of ore in the one train going to the port on the coast.

We left Fortesque Roadhouse and travelled further north to a free camp off the side of the highway about 20 km’s south of the Robe River Mine and about 200 km’s south of Karratha. The free camp was just a roadside gravel dump but we had a fire and sat out and looked at the night sky and all the stars, just a great sight. We managed in a short time to count 11 satellites that flew over us. In the middle of nowhere without city lights you can easily see the satellites as the traverse across the sky.

Saturday morning it was up and heading north again. We stopped in Karratha for some shopping and lunch. Karratha was a very clean and modern town, not what I expected. From Karratha we travelled a further 50+ km’s to Point Samson where we’ve been the last 2 days. On the way we were stopped for a breathalyser at Roebourne which was rather surprising. Seemed to be more police than people in Roebourne.

Point Samson is a very small holiday town but a bloody big port for all the ships that come in for the iron ore mined in the region. At one stage we counted 11 bulk ore carriers all waiting to dock and load up with ore. Samson Beach was very inviting so we had a quick swim, not used to swimming in June in Australia, feels rather strange.

We also visited Cossack which is a “ghost town” about 20 Km’s from Point Samson on the coast. In the 1870’s it was the centre of pearling in WA, in fact 51 pearl Luggers plied their trade here. Unfortunately cyclones kept hitting the town and in the late 1800’s the pearling shifted to Broome after the beds were fished out and the town damaged. So the history of pearling is not all about Broome. There is not much left of the town but they have restored a few buildings and we had lunch there today. We leave tomorrow for Port Hedland, as the saying goes, “on the road again”.

Stay safe everyone!

Well it’s 6 months to Christmas and 6 months since last Christmas. As we all sat down to Christmas dinner just 6 months ago, none of us could have guessed what we would be facing in a few short months. Christmas Day 2019, I was looking forward to our big lap around Australia which was 4 years in the planning and also just 4 days into my retirement. Without going over old news, both Susan and I are fit and well, enjoying our trip all be it very truncated on what we hoped but still we are healthy and safe.

The last 2 days we have been at Bullara Station, a farm stay at the bottom of Exmouth Gulf. It’s a cattle station that is 100 years old, whilst not the biggest, its still very sizeable at 250,000 acres. It’s not the first farm stay we’ve been too as last year at Easter we were at Alpana Station in the Flinders Ranges SA but Bullara is unique in its own way, from Emmet the Emu, Buckley the Goat and Maggie the Kangaroo, the wildlife has made it special. Although the tea and scones each morning and Happy Hour with damper at 5 pm each evening, adds to the ambience of the place.

We travelled the 100 km’s north today to visit the town of Exmouth. Basically Exmouth was founded as a result of Operation Potshot during WW2, where the Australian and US governments set up defence establishments for the US Submarines and the RAAF Airbase, which is now known as RAAF Learmonth. The US and Australian Communications Base Harold E Holt is still operational here in Exmouth. It’s here to provide communications worldwide to all US and Australian submarines. During the 1960’s thru to the early 90’s the base had a very strong US presence but now its basically an Australian run organisation. The base was built in the 1960’s to provide communications to US submarines and even today, nearly 60 years later there is no better facility to communicate with the subs than Exmouth. During my RAAF career we always heard about the US base in Exmouth and RAAF Learmonth, so it was good to finally see it on this trip. As I will with other RAAF establishments in the northern part of Australia.

It feels like we have been travelling for weeks up the coast but we are still only 50% up the west coast but from tomorrow we head further north. Red dust and sand has become the norm and hopefully the borders to NT and QLD will open and in about 2 months time we’ll hit the north east coast of Australia at Cairns but there’s still a lot of WA to go yet.

Stay safe everyone!

We’ve had a great 3 days here in Coral Bay, we will be sorry to leave it. No doubts the town exists as a pure tourist destination, there was no other “work” that we could see, so the C19 issue has hit the place hard. Fortunately its starting to come back but the tourist operators are really missing the international visitor’s as they are the ones that frequent all the diving, snorkeling and fishing trips. The WA locals have all done these activities before hand so the trips have vastly reduced numbers. Our trip today for snorkeling and Coral viewing only had the 4 of us, our guides said they are normally full every trip this time of the year. They are all hoping for a big school holiday fortnight in July, both Caravan Parks are booked solid for the 2 weeks so that’s over 500 sites.

We did a bit of beach 4 wheel driving yesterday out to 5 Finger Reef beach and had a swim and snorkeled a little bit as practice for today. Stayed for awhile and had drinks on the beach waiting for the sun to set over the water, which proved to be well worth while.

Today was out on a glass bottom boat to view the Ningaloo Reef and also snorkel. The Ningaloo reef is different to the Great Barrier Reef, as in the coral is not as colourful as the GBR, mainly due to the cooler temperature of the water here compared to the GBR.

The snorkeling was great, I managed to snorkel with the fish (after the guides threw barley all around me) and it was very speccy! Had my fingers nibbled on a few times but it was a superb experience. The sea was a bit rough at the first dive spot but the second was much calmer and enjoyable. The views of the coral thru the bottom of the boat were also good but unfortunately the photos don’t match the excitement we had when taking the shots. As I said Coral Bay was great, we are sorry to leave.

Tomorrow we are going to Bullaro Station Stay, it should be an interesting couple of days. We intend to drive up to Exmouth on Thursday to check out the place. So until my next post, stay safe guys!

Travelled further north and into the Tropic of Capricorn today, so not only are we in the northern part of Australia, we’re also in the tropics as well. We are now noticing Cyclone warning boards everywhere, very similar to our bushfire warning boards back home in the Dandenong’s. Thankfully they are reading “all clear” at the moment.

Yesterday we did a free camp at New Beach, 30 odd km’s south of Carnarvon. Very quiet little spot, not many people but we did have some excitement. Driving into the camp sites, I took a sandy stretch of road not far from the beach and got the Cruiser and Caravan bogged. I thought I was in heaps of trouble but after letting all the tyres on the Cruiser and Van down to 18 psi, the Cruiser just powered its way out of it. After all the preparation for this trip, particularly on “RAYNSU”, its great to know we have a vehicle fit for the job. Whilst it was disconcerting at the beginning, it proved to be a rewarding exercise as now we know the recovery capabilities of RAYNSU, particularly in the sand!

After a quiet night at New Beach, we travelled to Carnarvon, did a little shopping and a quick look around town, before heading off to the Space Museum. I can now say the I have been to all the tracking stations that were utilised in the Apollo space flights here in Australia. It was very interesting to know that Buzz Aldrin visited Carnarvon to open Phase 1 of the Museum back in 2012. Also Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon and Commander of Apollo 17, visited Carnarvon to open Phase 3 of the museum back in 2016, just a few years before his death in 2018. Also worthy of note is the number of the original Mercury and subsequent Gemini and Apollo astronauts who came to Carnarvon to assist in “CapCom” (Capsule Communications) with the various missions. The place has seen many famous and influential people from NASA over the years, since its opening back in 1964.

After our museum trip it was back in the Cruiser for our long drive to Coral Bay. It’s amazing just how desolate our country is in places. Today most of the countryside was flat as a tack but stretched as far as you could see. Looking forward to a few days in Coral Bay and getting out on the Ningaloo Reef, for some snorkeling and swimming. Sorry to all those back home freezing on the winter solstice but it was a very pleasant 30 degrees and it promises to be mid 20’s for the rest of our time here. Getting even warmer as we head further north, glad we’re not here in mid summer, it must be unbearable at times, especially when the humidity comes with the heat.

Yesterday we left Billabong Roadhouse and travelled north to Denham or Shark Bay as it seems to be known locally. We crossed the 26th parallel so we are officially in the north west of Australia. On the way we stopped at Hamelin Pool which was fascinating and very unique as it’s one of only two places in the world where Microbial Mats are found. Then onto Shell Beach which was just as unique, along with Monkey Mia, it explains why the peninsula has been granted World heritage status. We’re staying in the Caravan park in Denham and not Monkey Mia which is about 25 k’s from Denham mainly because the cost at Monkey Mia is over the top.

So this morning we were up early to travel to Monkey Mia for the “Dolphin Experience” as its titled. The chosen few were able to feed the Dolphins and Vicki got picked to do so. It was very good and we could get up reasonably close although nothing like years ago when you could go in and let them swim around you. I understand the conversation thing but it had been going on for years and I understand safely, so now its all changed. We really are the nanny state in some things, particularly when you can freely walk over dangerous rocky outcrops above a gorge to get a photo but not stand in the water and let the dolphins swim up to you, hard to understand the rationale sometimes.

After the Dolphins it was off to Shark Bay Aquarium to view some marine life including Sharks and Turtles. To finish the morning we sat and had a drink on the sunny balcony at the Aquarium overlooking Shark Bay.

Tomorrow we head further north for a free camp at New Beach which is about 35 k’s south of Carnarvon. I’m looking forward to seeing the Carnarvon Space Museum, especially the history on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs in the 60’s.

Today started off when we left Horrocks and travelled by the coast road to the Pink Lake at Port Gregory then up to Kalbarri and the National Park. So far on this trip we have missed out, with many attractions closed because of C19 but we finally lucked out at Kalbarri National Park. The Skywalk opened on Monday so we were there on its 3rd day of opening (not from C19 but its offical opening). It’s a magnificent new tourist attraction and we were very pleased it was open during our visit to the region. The Skywalk overlooks the Murchison River that has cut an 80 km gorge thru the Park, its basically Australia’s version of the Grand Canyon on a smaller scale.

Also we walked down to Nature’s Window, which is like a picture frame of Sandstone that looks down on the River. It’s another one of those special moments where its not what you expected but it far exceeds your expectations. Surprisingly it was a rather dangerous walk down to the Window and in today’s climate we where surprised that we could do it without any guide or safety rails in place. The National Park was a special place and all that for $8 each if you had a seniors card. Starting to get used to asking for the seniors discount although it still concerns I’m of the age that I have a seniors card!

After the National Park we travelled back south east to Highway 1 and then continued north to Billabong Roadhouse which is about 230 km’s north of Geraldton. The Roadhouse allows you to free camp in their grounds, which us and many other travellers took advantage of, although we all nearly went into their restaurant for dinner or takeaway, so they still made a quid out of us. It’s nothing special but it was still a safe and convenient place to stop overnight.

We’re off to Denham and Monkey Mia to view the Dolphins next, hopefully we have good weather as a storm came thru this afternoon and the forecast is for rain over the next few days, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed.