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Monthly Archives: May 2009
Australia day 57 – Onslow, WA
The
Ashburton River is certainly a beautiful spot and particularly in the warm glow of early morning light; the eucalypts that line the bank reflected in its mirror still waters. In this area of the Pilbara trees only grow along river banks – the only places with sufficient water to sustain them presumably – providing an indication of river valleys long before the bed comes into view. The nights are now quite chilly and the chill doesn’t leave the air until the sun is well up. Even at 8am I still need a fleece to keep the shivers at bay. Tiny ants are everywhere in this camping area and they are very invasive. I have succumbed to wearing socks (the first time since we arrived in Darwin) with my trousers tucked into stop the little blighters running up my legs and forever nipping.
We spend the day in Onslow trying to find enough to occupy us until the evening, for we have come here specifically to see the Stairway to the Moon. This naturally phenomenon only occurs at certain points along the north-west coast hen only three days a month when the low tide and full moon coincide. As the moon rises light is reflected in the pools left by the retreating sea creating the effect of stairway up to the moon. The best place to see this is in Broome, but were there too early in the month. Unfortunately, there is too much cloud on the horizon tonight and the moonrise is completely obscured. It is only later that the moon emerges shrouded in streaks of cloud that a shaft of light reflects on the sea – beautiful still but not quite what we had hoped to see.
We spent the day pleasantly enough visiting Old Onslow – which was moved, literally, to it’s present site in the 1920s due to the silting of the Ashburton `River estuary – the beaches, walking along the foreshore boardwalk as far as the salt jetty and doing a spot of fishing (still nothing on the end of the line though! ) Onslow is small and very quiet – people come here primarily to fish – and doesn’t warrant more than a couple of days.
In the evening we return to the Onslow Bush Camp which tonight has attracted several other campers.
Australia day 56 – Onslow, WA
The drive from the bush camp into Onslow takes us past hundreds of huge termit mounds scattered on the northern side of the road and there are large milky blue pools saturated with salt and lined with salt depositis. This is a salt-mining town and a popular centre for fishing and there are no other distractions. It has a pleasant shady main street with trees down the centre of the road. A post office, supermarket, tourist information centre, a couple of petrol station, a hotel, two caravan parks a couple of other shops and a hospital. There are two beaches, Sunset and
Sunrise and a massive conveyor belt jetty which must be at least a kilometer in length and deposits salt onto waiting cargo ships for export. We have lunch and a spot of fishing at 4-mile creek just outside town. There are several others there, but no one is having any luck. So we drive out to 3mile Pools camping ground on the `Asburton River. This is beautiful spot right on the bank of this tree-lined river. No swimming though, as a croc has been seen in the area recently. No fish are biting either, but who cares, this is just a beautiful place to soak up the surroundings.
An Aussie stops for a chat, as Aussies do. It turns out that he is planning to take his 27 year old, 2wd van along the Gibb River Road (a challenging 4wd drive at the best of times, according to all the information we’ve received)! Perhaps we are just not crazy enough for outback travel?
Wild life is still proving to be elusive; although a feral cat or was it a dingo or even possibly a fox – it’s too dark to be sure – comes trotting passed our van after dark. On the other hand there is plenty of the irritating variety. Millions of little ants are scurrying everywhere and they bite. Trousers tucked into socks are the only way to prevent them running underneath your clothes. And having just read about hazardous spiders that come out at night, we notice an enormous big-bodied spider out for a stroll, and most likely it’s dinner, just by our feet! I feel the safety of the van calling. Time for bed.
Australia day 55 – Miaree Pool to Onslow Road Bush Camp
Back for 40 or so kilometres for a bit of shopping in Karratha. Karratha is the commercial centre of the Pilbarra and a mecca for shopping – which is not difficult in these parts since there are few towns of any size between here and Port Hedland 270 km up the coast. There is a reasonable shopping mall with a choice of four supermarkets which is quite something, plus a range of other retail shops. Karratha is a relatively new town, built in the 1960s and if the amount of new build going on is anything to go by it is still continuing to expand. Typical tropical architecture of single story corrugated houses with shallow overhanging roofs make for a neat if rather soulless town with plenty of roundabouts (traffic lights don’t seem very popular in the north). It was originally built to house the overflow of workers from the
port of Dampier just up the road and people are here to work in the iron, salt, gas and fertiliser industries.
Days just seem to be racing by and our progress down the coast has started to slow from the initial spurt on leaving Broome. By late afternoon we get as far as Onslow Road Bush Camp 7 km along the turn off to Onslow. No-one else is camping at the huge site sheltering behind a lone rocky outcrop a vast sparse plain.
It’s also a haven for flies – which fortunately are not biters – and some ferocious-looking insects bigger than hornets with trailing bottoms that look as though they could deliver a thoroughly nasty sting. Luckily they don’t seem too interested in us, but nonetheless we retreat to the van for some blogging in peace.
There is a full moon and basking in the warmth of a camp fire, sipping G&Ts (beer in Andy’s case) surveying this remote and endless scrub by the light of the moon. Magical!
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Tagged Australia, Miaree Pool, Onslow Road Bush Camp, Western Australia
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Australia day 54 – Roebourne to Karratha
The coast from Port Hedland through Roebourne all the way to Onslow is known as the Pilbara – a largely flat and featureless coastal plain Along this stretch there are only a few transport towns that ship tonnes of iron ore overseas, while inland are the mines and company towns that supply them. It is an inhospitable and harsh environment and it’s endless sameness doesn’t make for particularly interesting driving. As ever, the tourist bumpf makes it sound very inviting and the pristine wild and rugged coastline is certainly very beautiful and the interior is reputedly spectacular. Inland Pilbara is home to the national parks of Karijini and Millstream Chichester which sound very appealing with deep gorges, wonderful waterfalls and tranquil waterholes. Getting to them involves a detour of 450 km from the
Coastal Highway and access into the parks themselves is only by unsealed road.. So we plan instead to push on further south with the idea of spending some time on the Coral Coast around Exmouth and Coral Bay.
We get waylaid in the laundry by a Canadian who has been working out here for five years and must be living – temporarily or semi-permanently, we don’t discover which – on the caravan park. Before we know it, it’s 10am and we still have more laundry to do, showers to have and packing up to do. We get off around 11am to do some shopping in Karratha just up the road. After getting the daily bag of ice for the eskie and tonight’s dinner, lunch in a very pleasant park, we make are way to a local beauty spot and camp ground at Miaree Pool on the Maitland River. This is a delightful spot for a bit of fishing in the late afternoon light. Needless to say, no fish are biting!
We briefly chat with a young Australian couple who are travelling with a very large dog. Travelling with a dog or any type of pet is very limiting in Australia. Pets are not welcome at most caravan parks and are not allowed in the national parks. They had just come from Karijini National Park in the Pilbara interior and had had to leave the dog with some friends of friends in living in Tom Price. They were very enthusiastic about the scenery – the gorges in particular – and were sure that it was accessible by 2wd.
We are now considering whether we should make the detour to visit Karijini. But first we plan to go to Onslow and see the Stairway to the Moon, more of which later.
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Tagged Australia, Karratha, Roebourne, Western Australia
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Australia day 53 – Clearville Beach to Roebourne
After breakfast, we spend an hour walking to the far end of the beach. It is high tide or thereabouts and the beach has taken on a different character this morning. More sand, less rocks. It’s not a partcularly inviting sea, not the usual light blue beckoning you to swim. It has a more raw and wild appeal. There is no-one else on the length of the beach, and only a couple of vans are visible on the dunes at the far end.
Roebourne is a deadly quiet township noteworthy for its many fine old stone buildings dating back to the pioneer days of the 19th century. The tavern appears to be permanently closed and the hub of the town seems to centre on the General Supply Store – which sells every thing from food and clothes to TVs, music centres and fishing tackle – and the library – which confusingly is no longer housed in the original library building which fulfils some other purpose. The Visitors Centre is housed in the original stone gaol complex which includes the old courthouse and police station. It closes at 3.30pm and with the only access to a public water supply.
The tourist bumpf makes the coastline up to Point Sampson sound interesting and after spending some time in Roebourne library on the internet (payment only required sites requiring passwords), we visit Cossack at the mouth of the Harding River – a tiny riverside settlement with good views across the tidal flats – and on to Settlers Beach for a picnic lunch and a walk down to the sea which is a couple of hundred yards out. There are an enormous number of small crabs scurrying in groups hither and thither then suddenly burying into the sand to disappear from sight. There are lots of snails and starfish too. The lookout above the beach provides sweeping 360 views of the tidal flats, the beach and the enormous Rio Tinto loading jetty at
Cape Lambert further round the coast.
Tonight we are paying for our pitch – we need to do laundry and have a shower; and whilst we could do the former at a launderette we have yet to find any reasonable public showers.
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Tagged Australia, Clearville Beach, Roebourne, Western Australia
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Australia day 52 – Afghan Well Roadside Site to Cleaverville Beach, WA
Another long day of driving racking up a further 450km. The scenery approaching Port Headland is more hilly providing a bit of welcome interest. Some wags have placed hard hats on top of the termite mounds just outside town – a eccentric reminder of its industrial heritage. We stop here primarily to replenish our water supplies but can’t find a standpipe anywhere. The standpipe that should be in the Community Park seems to have been removed as part of what looks like a general facelift. Port Headland as it’s name might suggest, is a huge port supporting the mining industry that dominates this corner of north-western Australia. It handles the iron ore that is mined in Normanton. As a consequence it is not a picturesque town with a rugged foreshore. Useful for topping up on our food stocks but not a place to linger.
About 190km further south, just past Roebourne we take an unsealed road towards Clearville Beach. The road hasn’t yet been graded and is badly corrugated to begin with causing the van to rattle and shake alarmingly. Fortunately it improves and we make good time along most of the 13km to the coast. For $7 it is possible to find a completely secluded spot, without facilities of course, on the sand dunes overlooking the beach, and with a bit of judicious parking so as not to get stuck in the sand, even a 2wd can camp here. The tide is out, a long way out, revealing a great expanse of sand and rock. Such gloriously pristine surroundings all to ourselves! As the sun sets we take a stroll along the shore and remind ourselves once again how lucky we are.
Posted in Australia, Western Australia
Tagged Afghan Well Roadside Site, Australia, Cleaverville Beach, Western Australia
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Australia day 51 – Broome to Afghan Well Rest Area, WA
We finally prise ourselves away from Broome to continue our journey south. The highway between Broome and Port Headland, some 800 kilometres further down the west coast, traverses the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. This is not a desert in the commonly understood sense of arid sand dunes and no vegetation. Along the coast it is an endless plain of scrub; sometimes only grasses, sometimes interspersed with a few shrubs and trees. Many of the latter looking like up-turned besoms; all intertwined twigs converging in a point and no leaves. The Great Northern Highway follows the coast running straight and monotonous. There is nothing along this stretch apart from a couple of roadhouses (petrol stations, usually with caravan parks attached, which provide meals and some supplies). The horizon seems very close and the extent of the vistas limited giving a peculiar sense of being hemmed in despite the vastness of this desert – on the map a white featureless expanse stretching east from the coast and devoid of any other roads apart from the odd track here and there leading to the sea.
We drive all day, covering about 450 km with aim of stopping overnight at the Afghan Well Roadside Site just past Pardoo Roadhouse. According to the book there is an old, shady and secluded camping ground back from the highway marked only by a palm tree. In the days when the Afghans travelled with their camel caravans, they would plant a date seed wherever they camped. Most died apparently, some came to nothing, but some flourished. (Later we discover that these ancient camel trains were manned by drivers from Northern India and not Afghanistan, but the story is still rather romantic nonetheless.) It sounds ideal, but can we find it? After all a palm in this landscape should stick out like a sore thumb. We realise we have gone too far and turn back, but still can’t locate the spot. Only by clocking the distance exactly from the Cape Keraudren turn off, do we find the small track leading well back off the highway to several date palms surrounded by paperpark trees; a delightful little hidden spot providing the only shady for miles. In it’s midst, the marker palm sans fronds – no wonder we couldn’t spot it from the road! And, at last, we have found a place which, not surprisingly, we have all to ourselves.
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Tagged Afghan Well Rest Area, Australia, Broome, Western Australia
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Australia day 50 – Broome
It’s proving hard to drag ourelves away from Broome; so pleasant and laid back as it is. There is just the right balance of things to hold the interest without being blatantly comercialised. And like all the towns in the north, it’s quiet, hardly any traffic, despite the extensive road network or perhaps because of it. There is always somewhere to park … and it’s free. And like elsewhere we have found the people incredibly friendly. In this unhurried of places, everyone has the time to chat.
We spend the morning visiting the bird observatory 25km outside Broome – about 15km of it down an unsealed road which makes it a long trek. This is an important staging post for hundreds of migratory species that congregate here on their way to or from Asia and Siberia. Some 800,000 birds arrive each ear, some travelling 12,000km. As seems to be our way, we have an wonderful nack for visiting on the wrong day (a notice informs us that Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are going to be the best days this week) and the wrong time – high tide is when the waders congregate. Ah, well, we make the most of it anyway and take a walk circular walk through the Pindan to the viewing platform. There are only a couple of waders which must have been as out of touch with the migratory timetable as us.
The word ‘pindan’ means ‘waterless open bus’ and is term alo applied to the characteristic read loamy soil of the area which is rich in iron oxides but gereally low in nutrients. Pindan soil supports a scruby oodland dominated by Acacia and Eucalyptus, spinifex and other coarse grasses including Sorghu and Aristida species. The circular work turns out to be rather informative abut the local fauna including the Conkerberry shrub which when burnt is effective in repelling insects – we could do with some of that!
On the way back, we stop in an isolated spot over-looking this beautiful, wild coastline. Still no birds but a the view alone is worth savouring and we sit with a brew and spend a while catching up on the blog.
The highlight of the day, though, is a visit to Sun Pictures. This is the world’s oldest operating picture gardens. Partially open air, the seating is rows of deck chairs. We munch on popcorn and choc-tops as we settle down to watch Clint Eastwood’s recent film ‘Gran Tourino’ under the stars. There are two films showing tonight, one at 6.30 and Clint at 8.30. We had half expected to be the only people here, but it is surprisingly busy – although by no means full. Much nicer than Brixton Academy!
Australia day 49 – Broome
The nights are distinctly cooler in Broome, although the day time temperature is still around the low to mid 30s. From sweltering through the night we are now shivering and the sleeping bags have had to make a reappearance. Unfortunately temperatures can only fall as we travel south toward Perth. Let’s hope it doesn’t get too chilly! But for now, it’s another languid day of sun, sea and sand in Broome. A bit more browsing around a very quiet China Town, stopping for a while to look round two pearl luggers which are in dry dock at the back of a pearl showroom. It is amazing to think that as recently as the mid-1970s pearl divers were still using copper helmets, weighted boots and rubber oversuits. Finally bought some books on India and Bali. We now just need to work out our itineraries! Both Indonesia and India require evidence of onward flights as a condition of entry so we need to make decisions about just how long we are going to spend in Indonesia.
We round off the day with a walk along Cable Beach at sunset; a more magical and vivid sky tonight … but still no camels.
Our small lay-by of last night has suddenly become very popular and we find ourselves in a convoy of three campers turning in for an overnight stop. Followed shortly after by another four; we have a little itinerant village springing up here!
Our road trip hits 4000km and we are still not half-way.
Australia day 48 – Broome
Bites galore! Andy reckons I must have between 50 and 60 on my back alone, not to mention the ones over my shoulders and down my arms! Mozzies or sandflies; not sure which are responsible, but either way we won’t be coming back to Willie Creek!
There is a small arts and crafts market in the shady grounds of the Court House on a Saturday morning. It’s mainly clothes, jewellery, some aboriginal art and crafts, with a few foods stalls as well and we spend a pleasant hour or so browsing.
Another visit to the internet cafe, which at $5 an hour is the best value we have found bar MacDonalds. Here we’ve found we can charge the laptops, do a bit more research and check emails. We have an email from Wicked confirming that they are refunding three days hire – which is a result.
We are now thinking of spending a few weeks in Indonesia before making our way to India via Kuala Lumpur and then home. It may even work out cheaper to do that than fly direct to India from Perth. So we have booked flights to Bali for 13th June.
Reddell Beach on the south of the Broome peninsular is a rugged, rock and sand beach just beyond the deep water port. Andy tries another spot of fishing, but quickly gives up as the water is just too shallow. The red low cliffs have been weathered into smooth, overhanging curves and isolated outcrops. We stroll along the waters edge for a while.
Sunset at Cable Beach doesn’t quite live up to the rapturous descriptions in the tourist bumpf – perhaps we have seen too many exotic sunsets? And where are the iconic camels silhouetted against the setting sun? Camel trains are supposed to ply the length of the beach particularly at this time of day, but there is no sign of them There is a story in Lonely Planet suggesting some skulduggery over the issuing of licences to provide camel rides on the beach which involved putting two of the three operators out of business and the payment of considerable sums – perhaps the camel scandal has put paid to rides for the time being?
We are stay at a small, free camp area (more of a lay-by actually) on the highway outside Broome, courtesy of the book. We’re joined by an English couple who emigrated to New Zealand eight years ago and are now working their way round Australia and have just finished a three-month stint at Fitzroy Crossing during the Wet. Apparently, quite an experience. They appear to be inveterate travellers and we have lots to talk about.