The Kimberley: Broome to Lake Argyle

We set off from Broome on the short trip to Derby, itself the last town for a while. On reaching the outskirts of Broome we found the (only) road was closed. We knew flooding was a problem on this road but later discovered it had been closed for a murder investigation at or near one of the roadhouses. Someone I mentioned this to casually remarked 'probably just black guys running around going crazy'. This blog is not the place to discuss the social issues Australia faces. Suffice to say it is a complicated and very sad problem.

Our only option was to go back to Broome and the next day back on the road to Derby. Derby is a dump, and not a place to visit without a good reason. Ours was that it is the last town before the start of the Gibb River Road. Our tyre problems in the previous week had dented our off-road confidence a little, so we were already in two minds about attempting the 600+km epic dirt road, particularly in November, when it can flood and having very few people on the road means help in case of a problem could be a very long way away. In the end our minds were made up by the fact the national parks and other meagre facilities on the way were closed or just closing for the wet season, so we decided to just do the short 100km or so via Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek national parks.

Bush Cath in explorer-mode

Windjana Gorge

Boab tree

After that we rejoined the main road (mmm, smooth tarmac) and headed to Fitzroy Crossing for the night. Stopping in town just for an expensive tank of fuel, we then stayed a Fitzroy River Lodge, a nice motel & campsite with a welcome pool and even more welcome bar. There were a lot of kangaroos just milling around enjoying the nice grass.

Next day we drove a long way to Kununurra, the last town in far north-east WA before the border with Northern Territory. We arrived late-ish and piled into an excellent steak. One thing Australian supermarkets have over England is very tasty and reasonably priced steak. It quickly entered our repertoire of campsite food, particularly after we discovered ready-made bearnaise sauce. Given that all Australian campsites have barbeques (usually although not always free) it is also generates very little washing-up. Winner.

Chef at work

Mmmm beefy goodness

Kununurra is fairly tropical and the campsite we stayed at had a lot of foreigners living there while working at local farms (specifically mangoes). It also had a lot of permanent residents, who live in their stationary (sometimes even bricked-in) caravans all year round, and make their 500 square-foot sites into strange little domains, erecting permanent awnings and fences. We would develop a bit of a dislike for 'permies' on the basis of not much other than that they are a bit weird.

We had 2 nights in Kununurra and spend the middle day pottering round the nearby sights, including the  Hidden Valley national park.

We set off the next day with a view to seeing Lake Argyle, a huge man-made reservoir, on the way to NT. The campsite there seemed pretty nice though so we decided to have a lazy day there. It had a pretty awesome pool!

By now we were quite far east but still on WA time, a full 3 hours behind Sydney. It would get very hot by 8am and dark by 6pm. Not good for lazy people like us who enjoy nice long evenings. We astonishingly got up for sunrise at Lake Argyle at 4:45am, which was just about worth the effort. It would feel good to put the clock forward 90 minutes as we entered Northern Territory.

The Pilbara: Exmouth to Broome

After 2 nights in Exmouth we set off on our longest day driving so far. About 700km to Karijini national park in the heart of the Hammersly Ranges i.e. mining country. Apart from Paraburdoo (a dormitory town with lots of mining vehicles and a surprisingly cheap petrol station) we saw nothing on the way. It was a long day and it was depressing hammering the tent pegs into the cold bare red earth at karajini 'eco-retreat'. When I thought things could not get worse a large coach full of 11 year-olds on a school trip arrived and camped right next to us.

We spent the next morning exploring Karijini national park, with its extremely bumpy tracks and spectacular gorges:

 After lunch we got back to the car to discover the left rear tyre was flat, probably a result of my impatient driving as 20km over rocks can get boring. It was pretty annoying as I had to first locate the jack under all our stuff and then work out how to use it (never seen a hydralic one before) all in 35° heat. Lucky I'd just had lunch or it would have been really stressful. We decided to carry on that afternoon up the main (only) inland road to Port Hedland, the next place likely to do tyres. It was a few hundred kilometers of crossed fingers and we saw a ton of road trains on this stretch. We stayed the night in Port Hedland, which is a pretty ugly place, with the exception that all the mining dust in the air makes for spectacular sunsets. The town is dominated by large piles of rocks and huge trains bringing in more large piles of rocks.

The next morning we stopped off to get the flat tyre repaired, and replaceed our airbed kmart, which also had a puncture. We also checked out the port, home to some of the world's largest boats, designed for carrying prodigous quantities of iron ore to China.

After that we set off on the big empty road up the north-west coast to Broome, planning to stop the night at an isolated campsite on eighty-mile beach. After about 200km the spare tyre (which was still on from the day before) blew out. We could only be relieved that the other tyre had been repaired that morning. Unless you enjoy lying in the dirt under a broken-down car in the middle of a hot day in the outback, it would be stressful situation. We nervously drove the next 50k to the campsite, the last 10k on a corrugated dirt road, and decided to stay for 2 nights and wind down. It was a pretty nice place, they obviously made a lot of their own water so it was nice and grassy (unusual in that area at this time of year) and the eighty-mile long beach next door was absolutely awesome.

The beach is also a nesting site for turtles, so we set our alarms to wake us up at high tide and went to wait on the beach, only to see a lot of very obvious tracks. We were too late! Anyway after our first day of doing nothing in a long time we set off early (before the roads get too hot) on the remaining 400k to Broome, extremely nervous now about not having a spare wheel. We had seen a lot of cars in WA carrying two spare wheels, which always seemed a bit excessive, we resolved to join them. Fortunately we arrived in Broome without a hitch and the next day bought 2 brand new tyres for Sheila, put one of the old rear tyres on the spare and bought a used steel rim for the other. Now we were prepared.

The further north we got, the warmer the nights felt. By the time we got to Broome it wasn't dropping below 25°c at night. We had given up on using the tent's flysheet, just using the inner to keep the bugs off. At the campsite some assholes commited the most heinous of crimes and stole the steaks we had bought for dinner! We also camped next to a group of backpackers who thought it was ok to play their noisy music and videos until 11pm. Given that it gets dark at 8pm and light at 5am this is seriously uncool. We started to become experts on what kinds of people to camp near. In order of preference:

1. Nobody. This is how camping should be
2. Grey nomads. Retired Australians like to hit the road in their caravans or ridiculous campervans, sometimes for years at a time. They are typically lovely.
3. Foreign couples. Usually quiet, unless they get arguing.
4. Small Australian families. The kids get up early and start running around but realistically you've already been woken up by the birds so get over it.
5. Large Australian family groups. These guys come out during the school holidays, and are ridiculous. They come away with trailer-tents the size of a small house and turn campsites into horrible favelas. Some even bring their own fridge-freezers and TVs from home, not to mention enormous fishing boats on trailers. Avoid.
6. Drunk backpackers. Friendly enough but with no concept that tents are not soundproof, or you might not want to hear every thought that enters their tiny brains.
7. Drunk middle-aged Australians. Unable not to shout, they come away in groups for the weekend and basically compete to be the most brash. We overheard 4 women of 50+ having a farting competition whilst screaming approval at each other. Possibly the worst people on earth.

Anyhow, Broome's main attraction is Cable beach. Like all beaches in WA it is beautiful, and faces west for you to enjoy the sunset. We were happy to oblige.

Broome has a reputation as being an awesome tourist destination. Perhaps it was because we visited in the low season, but this was not obvious. The rainy season (just known as 'the wet') starts late October/early November when we were there. Most Australians wouldn't consider going up north from October to March, as it's hot and wet and people get weird. We took a bus (rare in Australia) to Matso's, really nice brewery, and the driver gently warned us that it was not safe to walk around there after dark and we should definitely get a taxi home. The taxi driver also complained how a lot of the local kids like to throw rocks at his car.  Our experience of Broome was that is was well equipped (supermarkets, places to buy tyres, tourist services etc) but not particularly charming.

The West Coast: Perth to Exmouth

Our first day on the road was a gentle day, less than 300k. On the way we stopped at The Pinnacles, an odd bunch of rock formations in the desert. Pretty cool to see, not sure if I'd bother doing a day trip from Perth for it though!

This was also our first encounter with Australian flies. European flies are generally focused on unattended food, and are easily scared off. Australian flies are brave and have no interest in your food. Their one aim is getting in and around your mouth, eyes, nose and ears. They are infuriating.
Our first argument over how to put up the new tent would be in Cervantes, a small and fairly forgettable beachside village. Here we also cooked up the first of many chilli-con-carnes.

Next day we continued north, stopping in Geraldton to register the car. Geraldton is a unattractive town of about 40,000 people. It is the biggest town in the 3000km-ish stretch from Perth to Broome, so we hit the supermarket too. North of here you are in the outback, and need to get used to 250km stretches between fuel stops let alone Woolworths'. In the afternoon we visited Kalbarri national park, which had some beautiful gorges (all the more beautiful for being empty).

We stayed the night in Kalbarri village, by the coast. It was here (the second night in the tent) we really noticed the birds for the first time. From now on we would be woken up just before dawn by various screechings. Australia has a lot of very beautiful and spectacularly noisy birds. Having evolved in a world without cats and foxes they are also fearless. I'm not much of a birdwatcher, but any ornithologists out there could go to Australia just for that. Expect to see quite a few more photos of birds on this blog! As usual for Western Australia, we were also spoilt for sunsets:

The next day we drove to Monkey Mia on Shark Bay, stopping on the way at Hamelin pool, where there is a colony of Stromatolites. These are made of tiny primiative bacteria, and are thought to be largely responsible for creating a lot of oxygen and, thereby life as we know it. Read Nick Lane's book 'Oxygen: The molecule that made the world' for a better explanation than I could hope to give.

Monkey Mia, where we would spend 2 nights, is a tourist park where they feed some wild dolphins at 8-ish each morning, so you can be pretty sure of seeing them. Nowadays it is quite heavily regulated so there are only a few of the wild dolphins they are actually allowed to feed, and they do not feed them much (nowhere near enough for the dolphins to get lazy and stop hunting for themselves). So for the dolpins it is more of a social call, dropping in to see those crazy humans lined up on the beach to see them. So it was pretty cool to see them, despite the hundred-or-so other people there at the same time getting in the way:

On our 'day off' whilst staying there we took Sheila onto the sandy tracks of nearby Francois Peron national park, a deserted and stunningly beautiful wilderness. We took the tyre pressures down and engaged the diff locks for the first time to get more grip on the sand. To our relief, Sheila owned it. The 'Big' and 'Little' lagoons were both phenomenal.

 

We stopped for lunch at a cafe in Denham, and had 2 of the worst sandwiches ever made. Denham is fairly typical of a WA outback town.  It feels like a place which has survived a war. It sells extremely expensive food and petrol. Unsurprising really when you think it is probably about 200km from the nearest roadhouse and 4-500km from the nearest town.

Back at Monkey Mia the campsite got invaded by an aggressive emu:

  

The next morning we went to see the Dolphins again and continued up the coast to Carnarvon. Australia has a lot of places called Shelley Beach but the one we visited on the way really lived up to its name

Carnarvon was a forgettable overnight stop on the long drive up to Exmouth, at the north-west corner of Australia. Exmouth is a small town just next to Cape Range national park, which is itself surrounded by Ningaloo marine park. The next day we had an awesome time snorkelling just off the beach in the national park, seeing a ton of fish including some reef sharks, and a couple of turtles. This was our favourite place in Australia so far...