Posts for July, 2019

We stayed in Alice Springs a few days, catching up on some business and having our vehicle serviced in preparation for the next leg of this journey.

Today we headed back to Uluru where we will start our travers of the Great Central Road, which is the south western leg of Australias (The Worlds?) Longest Shortcut. However, for us, Uluru is a long drive and we plan on ending the day at Curtin Springs and along the way take a detour to Rainbow Valley. Rainbow Valley it turns out is a small but colorful rock outcropping, the track in is typical red sand and the scenery a mix of red sand, light colored spinifex, and desert oak trees. .

It was cold overnight, we estimated (don't have a thermometer) in the mid 30°F. So consequently we did not hang around at our bush camp but got underway towards Uluru where our observations about the tourist season was further confirmed. Just take a look at the line of people climbing Uluru and what you can't see are the 1000+ vehicles parked just near.

While out for her morning walk Nina found these ants nests (see photo 1) positioned in the middle of a spinifex plant and with their entrance mound covered in spinifex "leaves"; we could not work out whether it was camouflage or some other form of protection.

Last night in camp some dark clouds accumulated and this morning they pretty much covered the sky, and of course we thought rain, possibly. This could be a problem because outback roads are definitely NOT all-weather. With even modest amounts of rain that red sand/dirt turns to mud and the roads either become impassable or get closed by the local police. So we did not want to get caught in that situation. Hence an early start was called for and an extra effort throughout the day to get as close to the end of the dirt as possible.

Another beautiful sunrise, more camels, lots more dirt road and dust clouds from oncoming vehicles and we are finally in Laverton; the end of the Great Central Road. Laverton turned out to be a very nice looking tidy town, which surprised us a bit as we have seen it described as "uninteresting". There was a nice new information center in the town that had the best maps and info sheets on The Great Central Road we have seen. Pity we could not have got those maps and sheets in Alice Springs or Yulara before we drove the road.

Our first stop today was only a few kilometers south of Leonora at the Sons of Gwalia Gold Mine. Anyone who was associated with share trading in Australia (like me) would have heard this name before, and maybe unlike me knew the origin and meaning of the name. The discovery of the gold deposits and starting of the original mine was undertaken by some Welsh immigrants. Gwalia is the Welsh name for Wales. Today the mine still operates, though now as an underground mine, rather than the original open cut. Next to the present day mine site is a museum and a collection of old equipment and old buildings including the mine managers house (called Hoover House). That house is now a Bed and Breakfast and a cafe. Interestingly Herbert Hoover (eventually 31st president of the USA) took over as Mine Manager in 1898 at the age of 23 and had the managers house built; hence the name.

Before departing Lake Ballard this morning we could not resist a few more photos of these strange little statues by the light of the rising sun.

About 100km north of last nights camp we came to the town of Wiluna. This is yet another Western Australian town that was once a major gold mining town and in the 1930s had a population of around 9000. Today the population is around 700 and is probably most well know as the southern entrance to the Canning Stock Route and the Western end of the Gunbarrel Highway. It is interesting to us that one of the motivations for the Gunbarrel was to place instruments as part of rocket development at Woomera. While at Woomera earlier in this trip we heard from an Airforce Officer just how valuable the Woomera Rocket Range is because of the length of flight path over un-inhabited territory it offers.

There is not much to say about today. Just another day traveling North on the Great Northern Highway with many road trains, mines and not much else. Just to illustrate the point; the app we are using to find camping places (and other places of interest) noted that near 25 Mile Well was a sight of interest called Sponge Bob mail Box. This is nothing more than the mail box for one of the local pastoral stations decorated up a bit. Other wise we just recorded some of the heavy vehicles we encoutered.

Today was really about getting to and finding a camping spot close to Karijini National Park so that tomorrow we would have an entire day to commit to exploration of the park. This is because we could only get one night in either of the campgrounds at the park. Todays photo record, starts with a few photos of Kumarin roadhouse and a few "along the way" shots as well.

We were at Karijini and starting our first "hike" by 8:30 thereby facilitating what turned out to be a very full day.

After yesterdays achievements, and in light of the fact that we could not camp at Karijini tonight, todays plan was to "do it all"; or at least our version of that. We would "do" Dales Gorge and hit all the high points. See below.

As you can see from the date of this entry we spent three nights in Tom Price dealing with some family business. This morning when we departed our plan was to head west towards Millstream-Chichester National Park. But we quickly discovered that all roads in that direction were unpaved and had a lot of mine traffic, particularly 4 trailer road trains. Now we dont mind dirt roads but in conjunction with road trains they are tedious and dangerous, and we are a bit weary of dirt roads anyway. So we changed plans late morning and returned to Tom Price with the intent of going towards the town of Marble Bar.

The first half of the drive into Marble Bar was on paved road with a good deal of road train traffic servicing local mines. The second half was a good quality gravel road with almost no traffic. Along both sections the scenery was interesting with striking red rock and soil covered in "buttons" of spinifex, some bright green patches presumably from recent rain and a few creek crossings with some water still present.

Port Hedland is a major shipping port for iron ore mined in the Pilbara Area of Western Australia as well as being a major service center for such mines and having a major salt mining operation right on the outskirts of the town. With a population of 14,000+ it feels like a small city.

We took a little tour around the Dampier area this morning including stopping at the information display at the town entrance where we read about the Red Dog. It seems a red dog named, among other names, Tally Ho became a well known figure around the Pilbara region as it traveled the region by getting rides with and adopting as temporary owner a bus driver and other travelers. It is said that the dog was made a member of the Dampier Salts Sport and Social Club and the Transport Workers' Union.

The little town of Exmouth sits towards the top east corner of North West Cape, and is surrounded by Cape Range National Park and is the gateway to Ningaloo Marine Park with its coral reefs, colourful fish and migratory whale sharks. Not surprisingly then Exmouth is definitely a tourist town and the population swells from 2200 to over 6000 during the height of the tourist season. In addition North West Cape is the sight of an RAAF base and a Naval Communications base.

We set out today to get a small taste of the sights of the North West Cape. Yesterday we discovered that there were a myriad of boat tours of the Ningalo Reef all included swimming and snorkeling and offered the chance to swim with whale sharks or some other exotic sea creature. Since we are not really into snorkeling at the current temperatures we opted for the glass bottom boat tour so that we could see some of the coral and sea life without getting wet. Unfortunately as we approached the pickup point for that tour we got a phone call telling us the tour had been cancelled due to high winds. Thus our chance to see the reef at anything like close quarters was gone. We contented ourselves with viewing it from afar, the bright turquoise water and the surf breaking over the reef some hundreds of yards off shore.

There is not much to say about today. It rained lightly off and on all day and we stayed inside our temporary appartment taking care of chores like washing and planning the final leg of the "troopy" part of our trip into Perth.

Today was mostly a travel day, we needed to take a big slice out of the distance to Carnarvon. However we did make a couple of scenic stops. The first, Shot Hole Canyon just a few kilometers south of Exmouth and around lunch time we dropped into the village of Coral Bay a very popular spot on the Ningaloo Coast.

A few hundred kilometers of the coastal highway with its red soil and low scrub brought us to the town of Carnarvon. Originally a shipping port for the local wool industry, the town is now perhaps more well known for its role as a major tracking station for NASA's Gemini and Apollo Programs and of course there is an extensive museum of paraphernalia from that era. In addition to visiting the Tracking Station Museum we spent a little time exploring the towns beach front and its now closed but impressive "mile long jetty".

After retracing yesterdays drive from Carnarvon to Quobba our day came to an unexpectedly quick end. For some reason we were both feeling sleepy, and even took the unprecedented step of stopping at a rest area, putting up the tent and having a sleep. This convinced us that rather than continuing with the our original plan of spending the night at Hamelin Pool (a day of about 300km) we should stop early. As luck would have it we were not far from Wooramel River Retreat when this decision was made so that became our nights stopping place.

While packing up this morning I noticed that the solar panel was coming adrift from its mounting. The panel had been afixed to some aluminum L sections on the roof with pop-rivets and all the vibration from the rough roads we have travelled have worn the heads off the rivets. As a result one entire side of the panel was no longer fastened to the L section. A few kilometers after leaving Wooramel we stopped at Wooramel Roadhouse and borrowed an electric drill and got some self-tapping screws to re-fasten the panel. That first photo is yours-truly demostrating his balancing skills while installing the new self-tappers.

This morning we finished our exploration of Francois Peron NP by driving the remainder of the sandy track to Cape Peron where we spent some time trying to get the "perfect" photo contrasting the red soil against the white beaches and blue ocean. It was a lovely morning and in addition to the great scenery, the great luck of spotting a goanna sunning itself under a bush we enjoyed the bouncing bucking ride along the sandy tracks.

This morning we spent our time attending the Dolpin Feeding Experience, the reason we came to this place. Each morning starting at about 8:15 the rangers invite guests to stand on the beach front and watch a feeding "experience". After about 15 minutes during which one of the rangers does a monologue about the dolphins of the area a small number of members of the audience are invited to feed the dolphins with fish provided by the rangers. Each dolphin is limited to three fish at each experience. So this morning only three guests got to feed a dolpin as there was only one adult dolphin lining up for food. The "experience" is repeated 2 more times if the dolphins show interest.

Today was spent in the Kalbarri National Park which has the Murchison River and its associated gorges as its key attraction. Somewhat to our surprise the Murchison had flowing water, we found out from talking to a park worker that this is a result of 6 inches of rain in June. In addition a lot of flowers were blooming including the red flowered flame trees in the photos.

We spent a little time this morning in the town of Kalbarri. This gave Nina a chance to complete her daily walk (and achieve the necessary 10,000 steps) and allowed me to do my morning physio exercises. There after we travelled down the coast south of Kalbarri, which has some nice coastal scenery and is part of the Kalbarri National Park.