Tag Archives: Exmouth

We have clocked up 6000 kilometers since we left
Darwin and we have still some 1200 between us and Perth.  At this rate we may easily clock up another 2000 km at least before we finish the trip.  Heading south we stop at the Nanutarra Roadhouse for ablutions (the bush camp has no facilities and insufficient vegetation cover to protect our modesty from the other campers), to replenish water supplies and have breakfast.  There is a pretty rest area alongside the roadhouse on the banks of the Ashburton River and we only have to share it with a flock of noisy White Corellas. 

It’s a long drive to our next destination – the North-West Cape.  As we leave the Pilbara behind the landscape is dissected by ridges which from afar look like long straight walls across an otherwise flat and arid  landscape.  It is hard to comprehend that, in another season, this north-west country can be under water.  But the numerous floodway signs along the Coastal Highway are constant reminders that much of north-western Australia can be flooded and impassable in the Wet.  What a transformation that must be!  Dry creeks beds and shrunken rivers also bear testament to the effects of the dry and the extent to which the character of this country changes from one season to the next. 

Next stop Exmouth is on the east side of the North-West Cape peninsular.  It’s the gateway to the Cape Range National Park and the Ningaloo Marine Park on the west side.  Numerous trips for snorkeling, diving, fishing and swimming with whale sharks are based out of here and the sandy coastline offers many wonderfully unspoilt beaches.  The town itself is nothing special and is only of interest as a place to stock up on supplies.  Although there is a huge marina under-development which may well make this a destination in its own right.  

We are hoping to camp in the National Park where there is several small beach-side camp grounds strung along the coast, but so popular are they that by the time we arrive at the Exmouth visitors centre around 2.30pm there are no pitches available, in fact all the grounds had been full by 9am!  To be sure to secure a site for tomorrow night we must be at the ranger’s office at the entrance to the park by 8am!  So we take a pitch at Yardie Homestead which is the nearest caravan park to the national park.  It’s probably the busiest site we have stayed on by far.  It’s an opportunity to catch up on our all our laundry and have showers as there will be no facilities once we are in the National Park apart from long drop toilets.

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