The Pilbara

We are now in the land of mining, money and red rocks - and red dust! It’s certainly an eye opener to see and learn of the huge projects being undertaken in this area. Two thirds of every vehicle on the roads are mining connected and the go-to dress code is high vis yellow or orange! This area’s wealth is in  salt, iron ore, and gas.  Our first town of Onslow was surprising as it’s a small town with big projects in the pipeline - a new resort and caravan park. The road works coming into Onslow are an indication of the vastness of the new iron ore mine - I believe to be one of the largest to be undertaken, with roads suitable for autonomous trucks. Our stay in the caravan park there was very pleasant and we all enjoyed the soft fake grass underfoot as a change to dirt. They have a lovely board walk heralded by this magnificent war memorial.

We visited the old Onslow town which was relocated to the new site 20 km away in 1925, when the river silted and a port wasn’t accessible. All that remains are some stone remnants as all the wooden buildings were physically moved by horse and dray. The nearby Ashburton River is a very popular camping spot as it’s very picturesque with lovely big gum trees. 

Dennis’s kitchen opened up again, this time producing a lemon tea cake, served warm with cream! We wait to see what’s next on the menu! 

West Australia provides excellent free camping spots along their main roads and we enjoyed a lovely peaceful evening along side the almost dry Robe River, with some cows as our companions. 

We are now in Dampier and it’s obligatory to visit the Red Dog statue and recall the story of this special dog. We had wonderful views of the area with the mountains of salt in the distance.

Nearby Karratha is another surprise as it’s a city of some 25,000 people, and is very tidy and neatly set out. We had another excellent panoramic view of the town.

The visitor centre was very helpful in advising us what to see and in search of a fish & chips lunch, we ended up at Point Samson at a lovely spot over looking a pretty bay with ships lined up, waiting to be loaded with iron ore at Cape Lambert.

The vastness and complexities of the gas industry is overwhelming and quite frankly hard to comprehend but they are so successful, Woodside is building a new plant to complement the existing huge plant. At the visitor information centre, we saw the whole process from initial exploration to the refining and exporting. 

We are camped near the iron ore loading facility, but strangely there is little action at present - no trains or ships so we wonder if it’s in a maintenance cycle. When they are running, the trains are several kilometres long, bringing the ore in from Newman - quite a sight to see. 

Port Hedland is our next destination and our turn around point, so assume we’ll see more ore exports at the Port.  We  then head to Marble Bar, Tom Price and Karijini. We’ve been 6 weeks on the road and all is going very well. We  can’t believe how fortunate we are to be able to explore this wonderful country of ours. We had a bit of rain here overnight and hope that that expected rains at home eventuate. Love from the travellers ❌❌❌❌

Ningaloo coast

A very fitting way for us to end our time in this beautiful part of the world, was enjoying a delicious wood fired pizza at Bullara Station, listening to live music - all under a full moonlit sky! 
Bullara station is probably the best station stay we’ve ever had as everything about it was A1. They are well known in the area for their meals, coffees and scones for morning tea and are set up with  quirky rustic amenities and features. The sites are spacious and cater for all sorts of travellers - yet it doesn’t seem as if you’re on top of one another. 

This turtle was made from a fishing net found off the coast - and had killed the poor turtle caught in it.

The children in the camp next door were fascinated by this goanna who was strolling along the track with not a care in the world!

We used this as our base to see Exmouth and Coral Bay. We found Exmouth to be a nice little place but quite further away from the swimming and snorkelling beaches than we thought. We enjoyed morning tea at the town beach and learned that if you add water, luscious palms and tropical plants can flourish. Outside the town, the scenery is barren and desert like. 

We were directed to a great swimming and snorkelling beach and for novice snorkelers, we did pretty well and had a wonderful time viewing the beautiful fish swimming amongst the coral reef.

The next day we travelled to Coral Bay which was very busy - it seems to be a paradise for the international back packers who don very skimpy bathing costumes! We decided to take a glass bottomed tour and are so glad we did as it was excellent and gave us such a good insight into the coral reef - the photos don’t show just how magnificent the coral is  - or the fish we saw. It was like an underwater garden. 

So the Ningaloo Reef is all it’s supposed to be and we probably could have spent longer there - but we’ve got places to be and things to do! We’ve now set up at Onslow - and already we’ve seen the scenery change to the deep Pilbara red and witnessed mining in the form of salt, gas and iron ore. We are looking forward to exploring this area before moving further north. Until our next issue, we hope alls well with our readers. ❌❌❌❌ from the Brays & Greenwoods 

From red dust to sand.

Our detour inland turned out to be everything we expected. The campground at Mt Augustus was great and provided an excellent base for exploring the mountain. Mt  Augustus is an ‘Inselberg’, rising 715m out of the surrounding plain and is actually the largest of its type in the world. In contrast to the vegetation around, the beautiful white gums are quite spectacular. 

Darryl and I did all the walks except the huge summit walk which takes hours & is a big challenge - even for those younger than us. Our longest walk was a 6km hike up to Edney’s lookout which provided excellent views of the area.

From there we traveled to the Kennedy Ranges and were very happy when we came across Luke, who catches and trains wild camels. We follow him on YouTube so it was great to see him in real life. He was walking these camels to Broome - walking about 30km a day so no easy feat!

The Kennedy Ranges are spectacular with rock formations quite unique - especially the ones in Honeycomb Gorge.

At the Temple Gorge campgrounds we had a very social night around our campfire as all other travellers joined us. We all enjoyed meeting different folk and learning of their travels.

We were back in Carnarvon on Sunday to refuel and grab some supplies before heading out to the Quobba Blowholes. There’s a low cost camp there we were told was great - but when we arrived, it was jam packed and not really appealing so we went on to Quobba station. Here we enjoyed a long walk along the beach - although it’s not a swimming beach. 

We also cleaned much of the red dust out of our vans and cars - which was promptly replaced by sand! We furthered our knowledge of the HMAS Sydney tragedy as it is on this station that the German survivors landed in their life boats. They must have been dismayed to land in this desolate, waterless landscape. Strangely enough, these sailors ended up being interred at Murchison Vic, before returning to Germany after the war. 

Quite a feature at Quobba are the blowholes which are really something special, and the ‘aquarium’ which is a sheltered swimming and snorkelling beach. We swam here and despite not having snorkeling gear, did see beautiful little fish swimming around us. We were also very fortunate to see a whale breaching - he was a little too far away for cameras. 

We are heading further north towards Exmouth and have booked into the very popular Bullara  station. We are learning more about WA as we travel -  their roads, even outback dirt ones are excellent (so far!) but our GPS is absolutely hopeless once you leave the main road! Follow their directions and you’d be lost! We also are surprised at how desolate the land is - right up to the coast line, and the population is sparse. Totally different to the east coast. We found out the hard way about the liquor restrictions  as the bottle shops are  closed Sunday & Monday and don’t reopen till mid day Tuesday!  Oh, and they also have millions of flies! 

We are enjoying lovely weather - low 30’s during the day and pleasant nights for sleeping. We also see beautiful sunsets over the Indian Ocean. We hope it’s not too cold at home and that it rains again soon. Till the next instalment, love from us ❌❌❌❌

Carnarvon and Gascoyne Junction.

After nearly a month since we left home, and about 5,500kms, we are now in the Upper Gascoyne region, which is quite remote. The shire is one of WA’s most remote local governments, covering an area of some 57,809 square kms with a population of 250! 

Following our lovely stay at Gladstone Bay, our  travels continued northwards, through some desolate country to Carnarvon where we were surprised to learn that it is in fact a food bowl, growing bananas, mangoes and vegetables.

We found the town to be quite picturesque with a lovely sea front area. We were very impressed with the sea wall which had plaques for the lives lost on the HMAS Sydney. There’s  a memorial too for the German destroyer also lost in that battle. 

We settled into our caravan park, happy to be on green grass with all amenities. Our dear husbands kindly took us out for Mother’s Day dinner at the Carnarvon Hotel and I must say my salmon dish was 10/10. 

Monday was a washing, shopping and cooking day for Tops and I and a purchasing new batteries day for Dennis and car cleaning day for both men. 

After a visit to the hairdresser on Tuesday morning, we set off eastwards towards the Kennedy ranges and Mt Augustus. It was evident that there had been rain and when we arrived at Gascoyne Junction, we learned that all roads were closed due to overnight rains further inland. So our plans changed and we booked into the caravan park there. This little town won the National Tidy Town award last year and we can believe that as it’s the only place we’ve ever seen that looked so immaculate. In 2010,  old pub, caravan park  and service station were flooded and the new town was relocated on higher ground. So everything is new and extremely well kept. 

The roads were opened next morning so we set off bright and early towards Mt Augustus - we had some river crossing and most creeks were running well. Some areas had quite a green tinge and the few stock we saw, looked in good condition. 

Our travels came to an abrupt halt however, when we reached the Gascoyne River crossing, as the river was flowing very fast at a height of 400mm. A fellow traveller was waiting on the edge - he’d walked it and was almost knocked over by the force so we thought it too dangerous to cross. We waited a while then made the decision to camp over night and tackle the crossing in the morning.  We enjoyed a beautiful quiet night under the starry sky - but no aurora sadly! 

We are now at the Mt Augustus campground which is a little oasis, nestled under the shadow of the huge Mt Augustus! We’ve lots of exploring and walks to do so that will be in the next blog. 

Hoping all our readers are well and safe, love from the Brays & Greenwoods. ❌❌❌❌

 

Shark Bay and Monkey Mia

Our experiences at this Shark Bay world heritage area were very happy and probably better than what we had expected. Our first visit was to Shell Beach - a unique environment where the miniature cockles are the only living forms to survive in the sea which is twice as salty as the normal sea. Over the millennia, these shells have washed up on the beach which is 15km long and 1 km wide and up to a depth of 10metres. The pristine white beach is made up entirely of these shells and not sand. In past eras, these shells formed a hard rock like substance which was cut into blocks used for buildings. An example of these buildings was this old building in Denham. 

Once in Denham, we actually entered the world of boats! We’ve never seen so many boat trailers lined up along the Main Street - Darryl thought he may trade his Stacer for one of the more substantial ones we saw being launched!! 

We weren’t really looking forward to the caravan park stay as we thought we’d be squashed in - but we had spacious sites across the way to each other and found it quiet - plus we had a bit of a sea view. We were fortunate to experience a beautiful sunset from the viewing area along with a glass of champagne and a beer!

We popped over to Monkey Mia which was only 30km away and were impressed with the resort which was very clean and tidy and had a pretty swimming beach. Our luck was in as even though we missed the formal dolphin feeding time, we saw several dolphins quite close to shore. And on the jetty, we saw a few big turtles cruising around. 

Denham is a very busy tourist town - a far cry from the early days when the smell of discarded oysters from the pearling industry was over powering! It was sobering to see the memorial to the HMAS Sydney which disappeared off Dirk Hartog Island during WW2. For a long time, the disappearance was a mystery but now is thought that a German ship disguised as a Dutch frigate fired on the unsuspecting Sydney, sinking it and the entire company of 645 sailors were lost. The German ship also sank but 317 of the 397 crew were rescued - which poses the question. - why were there no survivors from the Sydney when most of the Germans did survive? 

From there we didn’t have to travel very far to this rustic beach side camp at Gladstone Bay. We are camped right on the beach edge, can enjoy a camp fire, have novel artesian fed showers and flushing toilets. Once again we enjoyed a lovely sunset whilst sitting by the fire relaxing with our drinks. We’ve enjoyed a rest day and were even treated with freshly baked scones from Dennis’s  kitchen for morning tea. 

This is the evening view from our campsite - how lucky are we?

 We will continue to head north to Carnarvon where we will stock up our supplies and head inland where we plan to visit the Kennedy Ranges and Mt Augustus. We are hoping there will be less flies there but aren’t that hopeful. Our fly nets are a necessary accessory and we hope for a breeze to keep them away.  The days here are warm and nights mild so we’ve packed away our winter woolies. We have our fingers crossed for the rains to reach home so hope for good news!  Good luck also  to the sporting families tomorrow - we hope for good news there too. Till our next blog, love from us travellers. ❌❌❌❌