Worroora Station and so on

I think the last blog left us at Worroora Station, at 14 Mile Camp, so let’s go back to there…

 

The 18^th, we spent a very lazy day doing not much apart from a bit of tidying up and doing fun stuff like emptying portaloo’s. Fun times… We ended up with Craig and Dale in our caravan for dinner since the wind was worse than ever (if that’s at all possible!). We had a great night, a few drinks and played some (rather, a lot of) cards.

 

Saturday (19^th) was another action day, we headed into Coral Bay for most of the day. We started off going into the dunes south of the new-ish boat ramp and got a little way up before some people on four wheelers told us that there was someone in a 4WD that was stuck further up. We got to him a couple of k’s further south, he’d made it through all the sand dunes, and had got stuck on the beach. Matt was laughing afterwards, he said the guy didn’t even know if he had it in 4WD or not! So, after pulling him out of the sand (he was pretty thankful), we headed a bit further down the beach to Five Finger Reef where we stayed for an hour or so while Matt and Craig put their lines in. Craig caught the only one this time, as you’ll see in the photos. We headed into town after that, straight to the pub where we had lunch overlooking the actual bay of coral, very nice! Lunch was followed by snorkelling amongst the coral, fish and a couple of turtles, I only wished I had’ve had an underwater camera! A quick trip to the supermarket for the world’s most expensive jar of coffee, then we headed back down the coast to 14 Mile for dinner and cards again (love those cards! J).

 

We decided that we’d had enough of the relentless/blowing/howling/gale force/annoying (insert your favourite in here) wind, so packed up on Sunday and headed into Carnarvon. Matt and I had to stop at the entrance to the station to put our level-rides back on the caravan, and Craig and Dale were waiting for us there. As soon as I got out of the car Dale showed me these gorgeous little green bird-looking flower/leaves. It’s hard to explain, so there’s a photo of them to show you. Dale was telling me her grandpa had been a lighthouse keeper and her grandma had brought one of the bushes back to Busselton with her after they’d done a stint in the north-west at one of the lighthouses up there. How cool is that?! A lighthouse keeper! J

 

So, we left the windy coast and headed south again, back to good old Carnarvon. Craig and Dale cooked up a feast of roast dinner, and we “went over to their place” for dinner. Had a pretty early night so we could get organised and get going early the next morning.

 

Worrora Station

Tuesday we left Barradale, and headed straight to Coral Bay. Had a bit of lunch, and a wander around before making the trip in to Worroora (pronounced Warra) Station. So, we’ve been here since then, and are camped right on the beach with Craig and Dale (we’re about 10m from the water, so Matt tells me) and it’s windy all the time, but it’s bloody beautiful! Warroora is on the coast (obviously!), and is part of the Ningaloo Marine Park, WA’s answer to the Great Barrier Reef. You can see the actual reef all the way along the coast from the beach, I’d guess it’s about anywhere from 500m to 1k out from the shore. The water is a beautiful aqua colour (you’ll see in the many photos!), not super cold but just nicely so.

 

Matt and Craig threw a line in almost as soon as we got here (boys and fishing, pft!), Matt ended up pulling in a Milkfish (we didn’t know that at the time, someone told us the next day what it was), but threw it back. Craig and Dale found some corrugated iron, so we’ve had a couple of raging fires so far which has been quite good with all this wind. Wednesday we went to Sandy Point (on the station) for the boys to do some fishing. Craig caught the first fish, a little black thing, threw that back, then Matt caught a Golden Trevelly. We were all stoked, most of all Matt, probably because I always give him such a hard time about not catching any fish! We had planned on having the fish for entrée to our roast dinner that night, but we ended up having fish and rustic chips last night, and it was absolutely delicious!

 

Yesterday, we had a bit more of an explore around the coastline. I think at the furthest point away from where we’re camped, Matt said it was about 32k’s as the crow flies. There’s heaps of stations right on the coast along here, like here and Quobba, that Matt and I have found really unusual. Nothing like this on the east coast. So, we went to a couple of beaches along the coast yesterday, did some swimming and snorkelling, and drove right to the other end of the station. Just in the one day we saw goats, sheep, emu’s and kangaroosters, and Jack stared at all of them, so funny! He even had a bark and a bit of a wimper at the goats when Matt stopped to get him to have a look at them, then tried to jump out of the window and chase them. The little bugger… He’s been in his element here though, it’s the first time he’s been off the lead for this long in ages. He’s even turned into “the great crab hunter”, chasing all the little crabs along the shore and pushing them with his nose when he catches up to them. He’s loving it!

 

The wind has been blowing pretty much constantly since we got here, the first night we were ready to move over behind the dunes, but we’ve kinda got used to it now, and it hasn’t been as bad as the first night again (thank god!). We’re booked in here for the week ($50 for both of us for the week, how cheap is that?!), Craig and Dale leave to go home next Tuesday I think, so we’ll make the decision then whether to leave with them, or stay an extra couple of nights before we invade Jen and Phill back at Cape Burney again on our way back to Perth. It’s been pretty great so far, especially the rest day today. I think I’ll definitely have to have a nanna nap this afternoon…

Karratha Weekend

After leaving the pretty cool Point Samson, we drove the mammoth distance to the awesome Karratha (made so by the Morrissey’s! J). We arrived at about 11am, parked the van up outside Kez and Petey’s, then headed into Karratha to have a bit of a look around. After some Maccas to help Matt’s sore head, we drove out to Dampier to check that out. (I’ve just realised that I deleted the photos I took out at Hearson’s Cove, near Dampier, so there’s not going to be anything on the blog from there. I’m so annoyed with myself for doing that, it was so beautiful the day we were there. Grrrrrrr…)

 

After a swim and a bit of a wallow in the water (it was so warm and clear!), we headed back to K-town via the bottlo (priorities), and got back to Kerry and Peter’s just before Petey got home from work. We sat around having a good old yarn with Petey, then Kerry came home and after a bit of a catch up with her, we decided we’d head out to the pub for dinner. The Tambrey was full of guys in hi-vis, which is to be expected on a Friday night, I guess. The ratio of guys to girls was about 10:1, so that was a bit funny. We had a nice meal, a couple of drinks then jumped in a taxi to go (no more walking, hey Kez? J). After a few more drinks back at the house, we had an early-ish night.

 

Saturday was hot again (I didn’t expect anything less in Karratha). We headed into town to the shopping centre to have a wander around, do some shopping and pick Conner up from work. Kez suggested we all sit and have a coffee at Muffin Break, and I tell you it was one of the funniest shopping-type experiences I’ve had. Firstly, it took us about 10 minutes to actually get to be served (there were only two lots of people in front of us), then by the time we actually got to the counter we could see why. The dude behind the register was (to put it nicely) a bit all over the place. He took Kerry’s order, then went off on his merry way to get it all together and by the time he came back it looked like he wasn’t going to take any money. Then there was no EFTPOS (who doesn’t have EFT these days, I ask you?!), so we asked him to add the orders together, then when we asked how much it was he pulled out a calculator to figure it out since he’d taken the first order off the register. I was wetting myself by this time, and I was surprised that we actually got what we’d ordered! After that fun little experience we went to do the shopping, Conner was finished at Coles by then and we headed back to a nice big lunch and a very relaxing afternoon back at the house. We headed off to the local AFL grand final later on, Matt and I just made it for the last quarter. One of the guys Petey works with’s son was playing, and they won so that was pretty cool. It was a good game, even for me who’s not really into AFL. We watched more footy and cricket on the movie screen Kerry and Pete have in their home entertainment room while having a few quiet drinks.

 

Sunday Petey, Conner, Matt and I headed off to Cossack to go out in the estuary in Pete and Kerry’s (soon to be) son-in-law’s boat that Petey is “looking after” during the winter months. We had a great day, crabbing and fishing, but only ended up with one mud crab that Matt and I ate that afternoon while K & P were out at a friends place. Had another relaxing evening around the outdoor table. We said our goodbyes that night, and it was lucky we did since we woke up later than we’d planned. Such a great weekend with good friends, we’ll definitely be back to park to van on the corner and stay in Karratha again! J

 

Monday we headed off early to do some shopping for the week/s ahead, it ended up taking us bloody ages but we weren’t really in that much of a rush so it was all good. We ended up leaving at about 1, and drove straight through to Old Barradale (there used to be a roadhouse there) with a quick stop off at Fortescue River for Matt and Jack to have a swim! Barradale was packed with grey nomads, but we found a spot alright since the place is so big. We woke up the next morning to find that we were the second-last people there, because apparently you have to get up at the crack of dawn to be at your next night’s accommodation by 10am (rule #76 in How To Be A Grey Nomad). We only woke up at 8, and didn’t think that was too late, but clearly we were wrong…

Balla Balla, Roebourne and Point Samson (6-10th Sept)

After deciding to stay two nights at Balla Balla, we ended up staying for only one. Matt got stung by massive amounts of midgies (sandflies) on Sunday night (check out the photos to see how bad they were!), I was in bed thank god and didn’t get stung at all (or weed on, so we’ve found out from our extensive research on how to stop the itch and prevent them biting you). Matt tried some fishing at the “boat ramp” which was more of a mud pit with rocks, but got no joy. There were crabs everywhere, you could see little bits of red all through the mud, but they were only small (the ones we saw, anyway), so sorry Norma, we didn’t have any! : (

 

After a pretty quiet night, we headed off mid-morning through to Roebourne, then straight towards to coast to Point Samson. It’s a pretty sleepy little town (if you can call it that!) with two caravan parks, some houses, and that’s about it. The caravan park (Cove) is pretty new, I think only about three or so years old, so it’s pretty nice even if the prices are a bit steep!

 

We jumped on our bikes after unpacking, and had a bit of a look around the point, not much to see other than whales passing by, lighthouse, reef and the Cape Lambert port for iron ore (I’m guessing from Newman) with the massively long jetty. The jetty is apparently the longest and highest in the southern hemisphere (or maybe just in Australia…?) There’s an old jetty here as well, but there’s not much left of it – the weather up here gets a bit hairy when it’s cyclone time! We found the coolest raised deck-type thing as well (the photo is on the website – especially for you Lyn & Drew!), it’s on top of a bus parked in someone’s front yard!

 

Tuesday we went out to have a look at the abandoned town of Cossack. The town originated from pearling, and was abandoned after Broome took over as the pearling guru town. It was pretty interesting having a walk around and checking out all the restored buildings and ruins around the town. Matt threw a line when we’d finished looking around, but no luck. : ( We then headed back in to Roebourne to go to the tourist information centre that’s been set up in the old gaol, only to find that it closed at 3 and it was 3:20 by the time we got there! So, we went up to Mt. Welcome, then headed back into Point Samson.

 

Yesterday we had a bit of a lazy day, well I did anyway! Matt did a bit of work while I sat outside all day and read a whole book, for the first time ever (not I actually read a book for the first time ever, I actually read a whole book in one day – and no, it wasn’t a little golden book : P). We had a bit of a wander around the beach and rocks out the front of the cvp, then Matt went for a swim (surprise, surprise) at Honeymoon Cove. We wandered around to the marina (world’s smallest!), and had a bit of a paddle at the boat ramp. The marina highlight was the size of the chains we saw sitting on the side of the road, check out how big they are! Crazy!

 

Today’s been another kind of lazy day, we went to the beach this morning (both got sunburnt), then came back to do a bit of maintenance on the van, and have a bit of a tidy up ready to head off tomorrow. All the way to Karratha… (seriously, it’s only 60k’s from here! Hi Kez and Petie, we’ll be there soon!)

Saturday & Sunday (5 & 6th Sept)

We made it to Port Hedland from Auski Roadhouse (Munjina for those of you playing at home) yesterday. It’s amazing how much the country changes between the two, going from mountain ranges (that look like something out of the wild west) near Munjina, to big flat open plains and back again all in about 260k’s. Pretty uneventful drive.

 

When we got to Port Hedland and had a quick bite to eat, and saw some people in a mini-bus with an Ulladulla sticker on the back of their bus, we booked into the noisiest caravan park in the world, no kidding. A hint if you’re ever staying in Port Hedland, don’t stay at the PH CVP, you won’t get any sleep or peace for as long as you’re there. It didn’t help for starters that the international (cow paddock!) airport is across the road, and the train and main road down south are right out the back and front of the park. Not a good choice of mine, and a waste of $30 for the night. Oh well…

 

So, we headed off early-ish this morning, via South Hedland to visit McDonald’s for breakky and after a slight detour (ie. we took the wrong road from Whim Creek), we’re now about 120k’s S-E of PH at a place called Balla Balla. It’s not much more than a mangrove swampy kind of thing, but there’s access to the ocean and apparently an island about 3k’s off the coast. We’ll probably stop here for two nights (it’s nice and cheap being free!), then head further down the coast towards Karratha, maybe to Roebourne or Port Sampson. We’ll see…

 

BTW, I’ve put up all the Karijini photos on the website, check them out when you’ve got a tick. So many beautiful gorges!

Monday 31st August to Friday 4th September

We’ve been to Karijini! : ) After spending the day on Monday in Newman getting organised again, we headed North on Tuesday (once again!) to Karijini National Park. Here’s some fun facts for you about KNP – it’s the second largest national park in WA, and has both of WA’s highest mountains, Mt. Bruce and Mt. Meharry. We didn’t do any mountain climbing this time, but definitely did some other climbing – up and down into the gorges! It was a bit bizarre when we first got into the park and got set up, you can’t really see anything from any of the day use areas that would give away the size of some of the gorges, and they’re all down in the ground, instead of up like we were expecting. There are a few mountain ranges in and around the park, which are pretty massive in themselves, but then to have all these big gorges go down from ground level is quite amazing. (As I write this, we’re actually driving through some of the ranges to the east of the park, and there’s even some more gorges you can see from the road - beautiful!)

 

So, we camped in Dales campground (quite fitting since we were still with Craig and Dale!) for the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and managed to see all of the gorges within the area within those couple of days. The first afternoon we thought we might as well make the most of it, and headed straight down into Dales Gorge, to the beautiful and bloody freezing Circular Pool. There was water cascading down out of the rocks into the Pool, and being the afternoon, the sun was nowhere to be seen since we were at the bottom of the gorge. We then headed up to the other end of the gorge to Fortescue Falls, the water was falling off the layered rock and straight into another big pool and was a little (not much though) warmer than Circular. After swimming there as well, we headed on even further (still in the same gorge) to Fern Pool. We definitely swam in the right direction, because Fern was the nicest and warmest one of them all! (BTW, I’ll add photos of all these when I get a chance to get them off the camera – in the next couple of days) We had an early night, as we have tended to do when we’re off-road, and made plans for the next day.

 

Wednesday we were up and going early (early to be, early to rise!), we had a 43k drive to Weano Gorge. This one was the same, no inkling of a gorge even being there until you’re actually climbing down into it. Craig, Matt and I headed off leaving Dale to read while we tackled this one. After a steep descent, and even a shimmy down a ladder, we made it to a pool where you had two choices, get wet, or climb the rocks. Craig and I scrambled over the rocks while Matt put his non-slip sandals on and waded through the water. We got to Spider Walk after that, where you have to have your hands and legs spread over either side of the gorge, and “walk” through (again, I’ll put some pictures up if that, I don’t think I explained it very well!) to Kermit’s Pool. Kermie was a bit chilly (no, actually it was bloody freezing!), but we had a union rule for the three of us, one in, all in. We couldn’t go any further along this gorge, since it turned into a category 6 after Kermit’s Pool, so you have to be accredited to abseil and all that kind of stuff. We headed back along the Spider Walk, I took Matt’s advice and left my shoes tied to my bag and just walked through the water at the bottom of the gorge instead of spidering along. We were back at the top of the gorge before we knew it, with burning thigh muscles (not for the first or the last time)!

 

After a bite to eat, we headed off to another gorge, and down along the bottom to Handrail Pool. We left Dale at the entrance to Handrail, and climbed down the slippery water course and had another (chilly) swim over to the other side of the pool, and into a smaller gorge that we swam through, only to be met with another sign that it turned into a class 6 gorge! So, again we turned back and headed back up the gorge.

 

We then headed about 20k’s back towards our camp, and on to Knox Gorge. It was getting pretty late in the day by this stage, but we still headed in, and along the bottom once again. We didn’t get too far again when we hit the class 6 section, so couldn’t go any further, but headed back a bit to a pool we’d passed on the way and had a nice soak for a bit, even though the water was a tad fresh. A Swiss family (Robinson, I  like to think their name might have been) caught up to us as we were just getting out, and Matt talked them into going for a swim on the proviso that he went back in to the water as well. The son took ages to jump in the water, but mum was videoing him at the same time, so it might have been a bit of a play for attention. He was quite funny to watch though, I reckon he counted to three about fifteen times before he actually jumped in, and then his sister and dad jumped in straight after him. We had a bit of a chat to them afterwards, they’d just come from living in Switzerland for 6 years and were heading to Sydney after this holiday, where the mum had been living before that. Interesting people you meet… : )

 

We had another quiet night, dinner and a couple of quiet drinks around the pseudo-campfire (aka Craig and Dale’s candle, since we weren’t allowed to have an actual fire). Had a very cruisy morning yesterday, then headed off to Kalamina Gorge, after a quick stop in at the visitor’s centre (they had some awesome Christian Fletcher photos for sale, as well as his second book that I pored over for about 10 minutes!). We had some lunch before heading down into Kalamina, then Craig and Dale headed straight to the waterfall while Matt and I headed the opposite way to have a bit more of a look in the gorge. Most of the pools here were pretty stagnant, with only a little bit of running water, so after a bit of a look around, we headed back to the waterfall where there was a nice little pool that Craig was having a dip in. Matt had a “shower” under the waterfall, and I took some pics (surprise, surprise), then we headed back to camp.

 

We were planning on chilling the bottle of Moet that Nigel and Donna gave us as a going-away pressie, and taking it down to Fern Pool to drink, but we’d over-exerted ourselves a bit too much over the last couple of days, and ended up just having a lazy afternoon, reading and snoozing. Sorry Nige, I promise we’ll find somewhere even better for a drink! : )

 

So, that brings us up to this morning. We’ve been up since about 7:30, packed everything up and have been up to Auski Roadhouse to drop the van off, and are now back on our way to Newman to pick up muttley, who’s had his teeth cleaned and has hopefully been given a hydro-bath by now, so he won’t be so red and stinky vby the time we pick him up! We’re booked in at Auski for the night, pretty expensive but nice grassy sites, so we’ll make the most of it while we’re there. We’ve got a few bits and pieces to do in Newman, then lunch and pick up not-so-stinky dog before we head back to Auski. Should be heading up to Port Hedland tomorrow, but if we find somewhere nice to stop off tomorrow night, it might not be until Sunday night that we grace the Hedland. We’ll see… : )

 

PS. For all the Perth kiddies, we’re going to be back through that way for most of October. Matt’s working for most of the time, and I’m looking for work to get a bit more dosh for us. Hope we’ll be able to catch up with you!  : D

Friday 28th to now

Ok, here goes with another mammoth blog! My apologies, but we didn’t have the laptop with us all last week, and even if we did I couldn’t have sent anything anyway! We saw about three other groups of cars for the whole time we were out last week, so it was pretty remote stuff. Some beautiful scenery and waterholes (some not so full of water), and we got our fair share of exercise for the week scrambling up mountains and over rocks for hours at a time. We’ve had a great week!

 

Friday 21^st

Left Newman after dropping Jack off at the boarding kennel. First stop was Kumarina roadhouse, where they had the biggest homemade sausage rolls I have ever seen! We all hoed in to one each, but mine made another appearance a couple of hours later which wasn’t so pleasant. Anyway, we headed offroad straight after that, through a property (thanks gate girl!) and after awhile found the abandoned drill rig and windmill (see pics). After another little drive, we came to Beyondie Station, abandoned for quite awhile by the looks of it. There were a couple of wells we were supposed to have made it to on the way there, but that wasn’t to be. After a bit of not really knowing if we were headed in the right direction (there’s what looks like mining tracks all over the place that intersect with the actual roads, all a bit confusing), we decided to camp for the night at a T-intersection of the track we were on.

 

Saturday 22^nd

Little did we know we were camped about a k up the track from Waterfall Rockhole, which we promptly found the next morning. Looked like it usually has a fair bit of water in it (from the marks on the rocks, and also from the article Craig and Dale had), but there wasn’t much when we were there. We spent about an hour there, the boys climbed all the way up and over the top of the rocks, while Dale and I checked out the Aboriginal art on the walls of a cave, a bit higher up than the water.

 

We left there after all our exploring, and headed straight to Virgin Spring. Since we were there so early in the day, we had a bit of a look around before deciding to stay there for a couple of nights. The articles that Craig and Dale had said that there was hundreds of aboriginal rock art around the water course, but on our first quick trip we had only found a couple of bits. After we got the camp set up and had some lunch, we went for another look, this time walking straight up the water course (there was only a trickle of water over the rocks, so they were a bit slippery!). It was like we’d been walking around with our eyes closed the first time, cause we ended up finding art almost everywhere we looked on the second mission, so we felt a bit better after that. We cooked up a big roast for dinner (it’s a hard life…), and I think we had one of our later nights and didn’t go to bed until 9! Big night in the bush!

 

Sunday 23^rd

Had a later start, then checked out a bit more of the spring. We climbed up to some rock pools, and Craig and Matt (the crazy buggers!) had a swim in the biggest rock pool we saw all day, but it was bloody freezing! We climbed up a bit higher after that, then Dale turned back and the three of us climbed right up to the top. We were standing there feeling like we were the last people on earth when we heard these voices coming up behind us, maybe not as isolated as we’d have thought. The guys turned out to be shooters, and were out looking for camels and emu’s (obviously not on the top of the mountain) to cull. Matt and I ended up almost driving through their camp later on that afternoon on our way out to Lake Kerrylyn, then they followed us out there and we could hear them firing at god knows what, we didn’t see anything at all while we were out there. Had an early night as we planned to get moving early the next morning.

 

Monday 24^th

We left Virgin Spring at about 9, and moseyed on over to Talbot’s Waterhole. This was like a little oasis in the middle of the desert, it was picture-perfect! The boys swam again, while Dale and I had a bit of a wander and a look around. There was a bit more rock art here, and a couple of inscriptions as with Waterfall Rockhole and Virgin Spring. We ended up staying there for awhile, since the next campsite we were staying at wasn’t too far up the track. We got to Serpent’s Glen early afternoon-ish, set up camp and decided that we’d stay there for three nights so we could have a good look around, and also do some walking. Craig and Dale had a bit of a wander in the afternoon, then Matt and I climbed the rocky mountain that was directly above our campsite.

 

Tuesday 25^th

After a bit of a sleep-in (I think it was about 8 before we all were up!) we headed up through the middle of Serpent’s Glen, and saw the rock bridge that Craig and Dale had discovered the day before. Matt and I ended up walking/climbing right through to the end of the valley/gorge, and walked back around to the front and met up with C & D who had found the aboriginal art. We were a bit suspicious about some of the art, it looked like it had been done too recently compared to the other art we’d seen over the last couple of days. Have a look at the pics and judge for yourself.

 

We had a lazy afternoon, just hanging out at the campsite, and I think we all nodded off during the afternoon. Had another roast for dinner. : )

 

Wednesday 26^th

Got moving early-ish and went to check out Good Camp Rockhole, which probably was a great place to camp in the 1960’s when there’s no water around anywhere else! Matt and I reckoned that we’d almost walked right past it on our big walk the day before, it was that close to where we were camping! We then tackled M6, which was supposed to be a 2.5k round trip when you’re walking, but we drove further up a track we found and cut a fair bit of that off on the way up, thought it was pretty steep climbing and a bit hard-going. After a bit of a look around and a picnic on the top, Dale and I left the boys to go back the way we climbed up, and we took the more civilised (read: more gently sloping) route to the carpark where the boys were waiting for us for about an hour!  

 

Thursday 27^th

We packed up camp at Serpent’s Glen pretty early, so headed off straight away. We were trying to find an ochre pit just up the track from our camp that we’d seen the day before from the top of M6, but didn’t end up finding it. Our next stop was the Blue Hills abandoned station. That was really interesting, after walking around for a little while we found quite a bit of stuff that had been left behind when they left the station, by the looks of it. There was what looked like an old kitchen (outdoors, of course), the beams for a house, an old stockyard and fence, and a whole heap of tins that must have been where they dumped their rubbish. We had a look around there for quite a while before continuing on.

 

After an hour or more we finally made it to the Canning Stock Route, and went straight to have a look at well 5, since that’s the well we were closest to. As you’ll see in the picture, it’s been really nicely restored, and Craig and I wound up a bucket of what would pass for drinking water after a boil. The other wells were a bit disappointing after seeing well 5, because none of them have been looked after, or restored like this one has (none of them on that end of the stock route, anyway). The next well was 4B, pretty shabby, then we headed on to Windich Springs for lunch. That was probably the most amount of water we’d seen the whole time, so we all jumped in, then quickly back out again, it was a bit fresh! Onwards to another couple of wells, then we found my furry red trees at well 3. I finally found out what they were, thanks to the plaque! By this stage, it was early afternoon, and by the time we made a quick stop in at well 2 (it was a really quick stop since there were two sheep carcasses in the well!), we made a beeline for Wiluna, thinking that we might just get a room each at the pub for the night.

 

And then we actually got to Wiluna and very quickly changed our minds… On our first drive past the (one and only) pub, all the windows were barred up and it looked like it was closed. We thought that was a bit strange for a Thursday night, so ended up heading to the police station to ask there. The dude Matt and Craig spoke to assured us that the pub would be open, we just had to go around the back through the gates though, and knock on the door if it looked closed. Apparently it was pension day, and they don’t like to have to pub looking to inviting, or do over-the-counter take-aways because the (indigenous) locals like to indulge on payday (surprise, surprise). We were a bit hesitant, but were hungry, so ventured around the back of the pub, which looked like it should have been the front, cause that’s where everyone was! We got A drink at the bar, ordered, ate then left straight away. The boys actually went to wash their hands in the bathrooms, but there were no sinks in there, and god only knows what smeared all over the floors. They highly recommended that Dale and I didn’t go to the toilets there, who knows what state they might have been in…

 

So, we ended up driving pretty much straight back to Newman, and ended up getting back here at about 1:30 in the morning. Matt and I crawled into the caravan, and Craig and Dale rolled their mattress out in the back of our car, and we all slept through the sun coming up, as well as all the mine vehicles in the carpark around us leaving for the morning. Tired much!

 

And that was our trip to the Carnarvon Ranges and Canning Stock Route. I’m sure there’s probably bits and pieces I’ve left out since I’m trying to remember this all now, but I reckon there’s enough there to give you a fair idea of what went on. It was a pretty cool week, fairly easy-going (apart from the last day!), and just good fun. It was very nice to have a decent shower and scrub after the week away though… : )

Saturday 29th August

Craig, Dale and I took ourselves off to the BHP Mt. Whaleback mine tour this morning. Pretty interesting, with all the facts and figures that just seem to huge to be true. It was a bit disappointing not being able to get off the bus more than once, but I guess having a bunch of tourists roaming around your mine site probably isn’t the safest thing. There’s a couple of pics up of the site.

 

Matt spent the morning working while we were on the tour (he’s a good boy, isn’t he?), then we decided to head out to Opthalmia Dam for the afternoon. We were amazed at the amount of water it holds! The boys went for a swim (again!), and Matt tried to wash some of the red off our now red and brown dog. Made a bit of a difference, but not much…

Sunday 30th August

Went up to Weeli Wolli today. It was about a 60k trip from Newman, but so worth the trouble. We took the corrugated roads out to the river, and ended up spending a couple of hours out there, with only two other groups. The first surprise was that the water flowing over the rocks was warm! Everywhere we’ve been over the last week or so (including the pool at the caravan park) has had absolutely freezing water, but this was actually warm! We all jumped in, and had a bit of a wallow since the water wasn’t hugely deep, then cooked up a bit of a barbie for lunch.

 

We had a bit of an explore down river after lunch and another swim, and ended up pretty much following the river down for a couple of k’s. It was all looking pretty similar, so we ended up turning around and heading back on a track that ran parallel to the river bed.

 

After crossing back over the river, Matt found another place to swim! The boys only this time jumped in, while we sat on the warm rocks in the lovely afternoon sun!

 

A lovely day. : )