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".

From Carnarvon we turned north along a minor road that eventually took us onto a narrowish strip of land between the Indian Ocean and Lake Macleod (Rio Tinto runs a salt mine on Macleod). This strip of land is a popular fishing and surfing spot, has some rugged rocky coastline with a few impressive blowholes and a number of primitive camping grounds.

After a bit of exploration we decided to spend the night at Quobba Station. Settled in the late 1800s as a sheep station the property is now both a tourist business ( see this slick advertisment) as well as a working station raising damara sheep for meat. For a little more detail see this link