Life’s a beach
We are still enjoying ourselves in WA – how could one not! We went to the open air cinema in Broome on our last night there and saw “La Vie en Rose” which is all about the life of Edith Piaf. I wanted to go just for the experience of sitting on a deckchair under the stars watching a film but in the event it was an interesting film if a bit disjointed in places. The cinema had opened in 1916 and is the oldest open air one in Oz.
On 4th October we left Broome. We have got into the habit of getting up early: it is good to get some driving done before it gets too hot. We drove down to Port Headland, a town based on mining and shipping. Apparently it is the biggest commodity port in Australia and the 4th biggest in the world. The town itself is nothing to write home about so I won’t bother. But it was just a stopover for us on our trek further south to the Karijini National Park. We arrived at the park by lunchtime the next day and headed for the campsite. In contrast to the one at Port Headland which was very plush with a swimming pool and all mod cons this was a bush camp with only a bush toilet and a BBQ (all Aussie campsites seem to have a barbie even if they have nothing else). We did some hiking in the afternoon, the big feature of the area being Dales Gorge which has 3 pools in which you can swim. So we hiked the gorge in the heat and jumped in all the pool as we came to them. You don’t have to worry about crocs there either. The highlight of the walk for me though was seeing some huge bats hanging in the trees in the gorge. And the trees themselves were amazing: collosal paperbark trees which must be very old indeed. There wasn’t much else we could do in the park without a 4WD vehicle so we decided to head for Exmouth the next day. We were serenaded by dingos again in the night.
Although the drive to Exmouth was over 600km it was quite pleasant and we went through some of the most remote country we have encountered so far: over 200km without any signs of civilisation at all. And then all you get is a roadhouse. There were lots of cattle on the road and also a huge lizard wandered across in front of the car. I thought the dinosaurs were extinct but not here! I saw a dingo standing at the side of the road too.
Exmouth is emu territory: it says in one of the tourist brochures we picked up that they are unpredictable in their observance of the Green Cross Code! Let’s hope we don’t have a similar experience to Michael Parkinson. Our campsite in Exmouth is lovely and has a huge camp kitchen. Katie has been dying to get her hands on a barbie so we bought some sausages and she singed them for us for dinner. We then sat down to watch England v Australia in the rugby but were thrown out of the TV room at 10pm (halfway through the second half) because it has to close at that time. So there are “jobsworths” even in Oz. We didn’t find out until the next day that we had won! So we can hold our heads up again for a while.
Yesterday (Sunday) we drove to the Cape Ranges National Park on the other of the peninsula to our camp site. This is an amazing place ( I know we keep being amazed but everywhere here is amazing!) and we visited Yardie Creek, a limestone gorge which runs down to the sea. From the rim of the gorge you can see the sand dunes and beyond that the blue sea with waves crashing on the coral reef. Magic stuff. We then went to Sandy Bay where I had to have a swim because it was so beautiful. A curve of lovely sand with water so clear and blue and white waves on the reef. We were the only people there apart from one guy fishing. You see pictures of places like that but I didn’t believe they really looked like that in the flesh.
Then on to Turquoise Bay, which lived up to its name, for yet another swim and lunch. We thought we had better do something worthwhile as well so we went to the visitor centre and learned all about turtles, which lay their eggs on the beach nearby and the humpback whales that you can see offshore (we saw one the night we arrived). It is apparently a bit too early in the year for the turtles to lay their eggs yet.
We are going out in glass-bottomed boat to the coral reef this afternoon and we can also snorkel as well from the boat.
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