Half-lap Day 83: Exmouth

It rained for a lot of the night, not heavy but quite persistent. Our temporary job of fixing the leak seemed to do all right, we didn’t end up with a puddle inside the tent, although there was still water coming through and running down the outside where we’d directed it (a trickle, not a flow).

I was up early and went down to the camp kitchen to catch up on the blog and organise my photos. Having been away from internet access for most of the past week, and being out of power for half of that time, there was quite a lot to catch up on and I had a lovely relaxing morning playing on the computer. The kids came and saw me and then brought me some breakfast, and they wandered around the park a bit more and I met them at the tent mid-morning.

Tony was cooking pancakes which were very yummy, and the kids had found a maths code/puzzle book in my activities tub – they’d always found this book a bit hard, today they were working at it together and between the 3 of them they were figuring out the puzzles. They played with it for hours.

It rained for a good part of the morning then, while it stayed cloudy, the rain stopped. For the rest of the day it sprinkled occasionally but was mainly overcast, dull, cold and a little windy. I did some washing and put it on the line – some of it got dry fairly quickly.

I went out to see if I could find out what to do about the leak in the tent, and do a few other messages. I was able to buy a heavy duty patch, although we’re not sure if it will work because it will need to be over a seam. I organised for us to get new tyres (desparately needed) when we come back through Exmouth on Thursday. I got some information on some tours we might want to do, and discovered that there is nowhere in Exmouth to buy a child booster seat. Millie’s has been damaged so we really need a new one – it will do the job until we can get to Carnarvon.

Back at the tent we had a relaxing afternoon. I tidied a few things up and the kids played on their iPads and did more of the puzzle book and played with the magnetic shapes. Tony went for a bike ride to buy some more reef shoes, another replacement for our toast mesh on the stove (this one only lasted a few weeks) and to get groceries. I spent a bit more time on the computer, and went up to reception to book us on a Glasss-Bottomed boat tour for later in the week. We had a closer look at the leak in the tent and Tony sewed parts of it back together, hoping that we’ve sealed the gap well enough.

The kids wandered around the park some more and discovered that the pool wasn’t too cold, so they went for a swim. It was colder than they had expected so they didn’t stay in long, only about 10 minutes, but they did enjoy it. I read my book and watched them, while Tony cooked Butter Chicken, then they all went and had hot showers. We ate our dinner and it was soon dark.

Today was the coldest day we’ve experienced for months – I think it was around 19 degrees, and rather damp. We had hot chocolates and marshmallows after tea. The kids wanted hot water bottles to make going to bed a bit more cosy, so we all went down to the camp kitchen and did the dishes and filled the hot water bottles. Back to bed and read Inheritance for a little while then went to sleep.

Half-lap Day 82: House Creek -> Exmouth

It rained a little overnight, our first rain since Batchelor. In the morning there wasn’t much dampness anywhere – the rain always sounds heavier in the tent than it actually is. While we had breakfast and started to get organised to move on, the rain came and went, never very heavy and it didn’t really slow us down. We did quite an efficient pack up, and were able to get the tent down in between showers, at a point where it felt quite dry. We chatted to our friends as we packed and it was quite a pleasant way to get ready. I went for a bit of a walk around the campsite. The kids played and had a lovely morning, and we were all ready to go by 9.30.

We’d decided to head all the way to Exmouth, I wanted power and phone signal and a couple of days to get ready to go to Cape Range National Park, our friends were going to Emu Creek Station. We said goodbye – then saw them again 60km later at Nanaturra roadhouse. We hung around there for a while, getting fuel and then looking at the souvenirs and the maps of Western Australia with distances from here to all the major towns – over 2000 to Kununurra, it’s amazing the distances we’ve travelled on this trip. Millie and Caitlin both bought a sour roller thing, which wasn’t too expensive. Tony was eyeing off the home made sausage rolls – we decided to get a couple and some chips, as the kids had been a bit restless in the car this morning and we still had a long drive – a nice hot lunch might cheer everyone up. This is the first time we’ve bought lunch on the trip and we quite enjoyed it.

We said goodbye to our friends again and also saw the couple that we’d seen at the Handrail Pool a few days ago (they had stayed at the same place we had overnight, Tony had seen them there). While we were eating a truck with a horse float came in to get fuel, Caitlin enjoyed having a long good look at the horses (who were not happy to be in the float).

We drove on from there and the landscape became flatter – there were still hills but not as big or as rocky, much more sandy now. The trees were stunted, we discussed how it looked as if they needed to work very hard to live in this area. It looked more like desert than we have seen for a while, and it was marked as desert on the map. Not much grass or spinifex here, and the trees were all dark. There were a lot of roadworks along the highway and we were stopped at stop signs for quite a while, several times. It made the journey take longer, although we were listening to Harry Potter, book 6, so that helped pass the time.

Driving north once we got to the cape where Exmouth is we saw a RAAF base (we didn’t know there was one here) and remnants of WWII history, a couple of bunkers and some memorials. Until recently I had no idea that the Japanese bombed anywhere other than Darwin, and I was surprised to learn they’d come as far south as Exmouth. Suddenly we saw the Exmouth gulf on our left – it was a cloudy day and the water was a deep grey and very choppy. Always exciting to see sea water though.

We decided to stay the Big 4 –it’s forecast to rain over the next couple of days and we wanted to be somewhere with lots of shelter and options for places to spend our time. Everywhere here was quite expensive so we figured we might as well go to the best set up caravan park. We got to our site and then it started raining quite hard, so we waited a little while before we set up. We talked to a couple who are about to head towards Karajini, and were able to give them some useful information about where to stay and ideas about what to do there.

The kids explored the park, and once the rain eased we put the tent up, and added the annex straight away. I went and found a quiet place to talk to a friend from home and it was nice to relax and catch up a bit on home news after 2 weeks without much contact at all. The kids roamed around – I’d found a very cute puppy and they went to play with it, and explored the park some more. After my phone call I helped Tony set a few more things up then went to have a hot shower – great to get all that red dirt off and really enjoy the hot water after nearly a week without a shower. There had been no hot water earlier in the day due to problems with the park’s gas supply – I was so glad they had sorted it out by the time I was ready for a shower.

We had leftovers for tea and Tony watched the Collingwood game on his phone. I took the girls for a shower (which took ages, Millie took a long while to get organised both before and after her shower) and then we were all ready for bed. LiAM had spent a lot of the afternoon playing with magnetic shapes and then Millie played with them for a while as well. As I was about to head to bed I noticed that the tent was leaking a bit – a seam near the middle pole had ripped a bit where part of the supporting fabric had pulled out, and water was slowly dripping into the tent – it had been raining steadily for a couple of hours now.

We tried several things to stop the flow of water, and ended up changing the height of some of the poles so that the water wasn’t pooling in this spot, gaffer taping over the worst of the area, then putting a cloth through the hole (where the annex pole comes in) in the side of the tent to direct the water outside. This seemed to work well enough for now and we’ll have to figure out something more permanent later.

Tony made me a hot chocolate, which I managed to spill as I was getting in to bed. I’ve been feeling a sore throat and stuffy head coming on (all the kids have had a bit of that this week too) and combined with the dripping tent and the spilt hot chocolate I was quite upset for a minute… Then I recovered and read Inheritance for a while until everyone was asleep.

Half-lap Day 81: Karajini -> House Creek

Tony was up first and rode his bike down to the Fortescue Falls lookout to watch the sunrise. There were no clouds today and he said it was really beautiful. I got up not long after he left and started the pack up – as always our stuff had spread everywhere in 4 days, and we wanted to travel a fair distance today so didn’t want to linger.

Pack up went quite smoothly, the kids didn’t get up early but we were able to do quite a lot while they were still in bed, then once they got up we quickly put away the beds and folded up the tent. Caitlin rode her bike over to our friends to get our ice, and brought it back to put in the fridge. The ice we’d bought was still mainly frozen and all our things still cold, so we hadn’t lost anything by the fridge being out of power for 2 days. She also had a look to see if she could see the family we met at Circular Pool on the first day – she found their site but they weren’t about.

Our friends came past around 9.20 to say they were leaving, and they took our rubbish with them to drop off in the rubbish trailer. We planned to meet in Tom Price (the nearest town) – where there would be phone signal again so we’d be able to get in touch. We were ready to leave by just after 10, very happy with that effort!

It was funny driving out, seeing all the red dirt on the outbound side of the road, while the inbound side was clean. The dirt here is even thicker than the red dirt we experienced up through the middle, and it really does get into everything. Millie and LiAM look like they are heavily tanned, while it’s actually a layer of dirt. The white bottom of my runners are now completely red, and all our clothes have a much more red tinge than they used to.

The drive to Tom Price was pleasant, nice to see Mt Bruce again and beyond that to see more of the Hammersley Ranges. We found a trailer parking space near the Visit

ors Centre, and walked over to Coles to get supplies – running into our friends on the way. The kids all stayed outside to play in the playground and look at the statues of Australian animals, Tony went to Betta Electrical to get a new fuse for the fridge, and we mums went into Coles to get supplies. We all met back outside – Tony had bought a fuse and also a new cord for the fridge, and it was plugged in and working again. I took the cold stuff back to the car and brought lunch supplies back to the picnic tables. Our friends had contacted a family that they’d met in Broome, who live in Tom Price, and they came down and joined us for lunch too. The kids all played in the playground, we chatted and ate, and planned the rest of the day. We agreed to try to get to a free camp a few more hours down the road, and stay the night there next to our friends. She was going to drive the dirt road, while we’d go around the long way on the bitumen, so she’d try to save us a spot next to her if she could.

They left and we went down to the Visitors Centre while Tony went and filled up our water containers. We bought a few gifts for people at home and the kids got a couple of souvenirs. On the way out of town we stopped for petrol, and saw the family Caitlin had been looking for that morning, also on their way to somewhere else today. LiAM and Millie and I walked across the road to see the massive mining tip-truck that was on display at the entrance to town. It was seriously huge – the wheels were twice my height, and the whole thing weighed 98000kg. The town is surrounded on three sides by rocky hills, and they framed this large machine beautifully.

We headed off, through Parabardoo (where there was another mining vehicle on display, a green one this time) and then west. I had a little nap in the car (my first car nap) and we listened to more Harry Potter – finishing the 5^th book. There were a lot of cows on the road today, we had to slow several times to drive carefully past them, and a couple of times they seemed determined to walk in front of us. We saw a snake on the road at one point and stopped to look closer - it was a (very long) black headed python, which had been run over, quite sad to see.

The landscape was similar to the area around Karajini, lots of rocky hills, with plains in between. Some of the hills were quite spectacular, with interesting crevices and valleys. The plant life was mainly quite low to the ground, lots of spinifex and the occasional tree.

We arrived at House Creek rest area a bit after 5 – we’d been worried we wouldn’t make it before sunset then realised that sunset would be a little bit later today as we’d driven so far west. Our friends were there, all set up, and had a space next to them where we could go. There was time to set up before dark – Tony and I did the quickest and most efficient set up we’ve ever done, I think. The 3 big kids went exploring to find wood for the fire, while the girls played with their toys on the picnic rug. We had the fire going between our tent and their van, we cooked our dinner separately then all sat around the fire and ate it. Once again it was great company and the kids enjoyed playing together. After dinner we all had marshmallows and s’mores.

It was a bit colder tonight but quite pleasant in the tent. The girls had moved inside to play and were very reluctant to go to bed, eventually we were all ready to call it a night and they agreed to stop playing for now. It was a dark, cloudy night and felt so peaceful except for the occasional truck slowing and pulling in to the cattle station opposite us. We headed to bed around 9 and read a very exciting chapter of Inheritance.

Half-lap Day 80: Karajini

It was great to wake up today with no set plans – we had the whole day in Karajini and had already done most of what we wanted to do, so we could take our time and just see how the day unfolded.

The kids’ friends walked over to our tent at about 9am, and the five of them played until their mum came to get them so they could do the Dales Gorge walk. Tony had made her a coffee so she stayed and chatted to us while she drank that, then they headed off. The little girls had been playing with Millie’s toys again and didn’t want to stop – the plan was for the others to come back after their walk so the girls could have a long play together in the afternoon, and that made them willing to stop playing for now.

Tony had bought a roast in Port Hedland and we weren’t able to have campfires here, so he decided to try cooking it in the camp oven over occasional heat, kind of like slowing cooking it. He seared the meat and put lots of potatoes and liquid in the big pot, got it boiling, then we set it up in the sun, with the grill plate reflecting sunlight onto it, and black tarp on the ground around it. Throughout the day we’d put it back on the stove and get it bubbling again, then give it some more time sitting in the sun. The heavy, black, metal pot stayed pretty warm and we could see that things were cooking in there.

Tony and Caitlin went for a bike ride to the Visitors Centre (a bit over 10km each way). They had a head wind on the way there and Caitlin found it really difficult at times (the road was quite undulating as well). They had an ice cream when they got there, looked at all the information displays and Caitlin bought a little sand filled turtle. The trip home was easier as the wind was behind them.

LiAM and Millie and I hung out at the tent while they were gone. Millie played with her animals, LiAM played with her for a while and then played on the iPad, and I mainly read my book, in between occasionally organizing a few things or keeping an eye on the meat. It was great to really relax and do not much at all for a few hours.

Tony and Caitlin returned and had a bit of lunch, then rode their bikes to the Three Ways Lookout, and walked back down to the Circular Pool to have another swim. They said it didn’t seem as cold today (it was a sunnier day as well) and they had forgotten how beautiful it was down there. I had a little nap while they were gone (possibly my first nap of the trip) and then read my book some more.

Our friends called in after their walk to say hello and drop off a water bottle they’d filled for us at the water tank. They took our techni-ice back to their freezer so we could use it in our fridge tomorrow (they had taken our freezer packs the night before) and they went back to their tent to have lunch.

We’d been surprised at how few birds we’d seen at Karajini. There was an occasional crow, a very occasional raptor flying over the gorge, and we sometimes heard the littler birds but hadn’t seen many. Today though we had a few spinifex pigeons wandering around our campsite, which the kids and I were quite happy to see.

Once Tony and Caitlin were back I went for a walk myself. I wanted to do the rim walk along the top of Dales Gorge. With it being such a warm sunny day I was also keen to swim at Fortescue Falls, the one place we didn’t swim on our walk the other day. It was great to be out walking after sitting all day so far, and I love walking on my own and setting my own pace. I had my telephoto lens with me and was able to take lots of photos that I hadn’t been able to get the other day with only my shorter lens – the ghost gums along the top of the other side of the gorge in particular, looking fantastic today with blue sky behind them and the vivid red cliffs below.

Fortescue Falls

I walked down to Fortescue Falls where there were several people swimming. After taking photos of the reflections of the cliffs in the water on the rocks, I got ready to go in the water. It was hard to get in because the rock shelf along the edge of the pool, where the water was shallow, was extremely slippery. The water was cold but not like the other pools that we had swum in, this was cold at first and then quite comfortable. The water here was flowing more than some of the other pools we’d been in and it felt different – also the first time I’d swum here with blue sky so the cliffs looked starker and it felt so spectacular. The sun had obviously been on the water earlier in the day, by now it was lower in the sky so the water was in shade, with the southern cliff face still in sunshine.

I talked briefly to a guy who was bringing his baby down to the edge to have a swim (warning him of the slipperiness) and then swam around to the falls. I sat on a rock at the base of the falls with the water running over me. It was very cool to twist around and look at the water bouncing down over these terraced rocks – each terrace is only about 10cm high and the water hit each one then bounced down to the next. The waterfall water was a bit cold, and so refreshing. I sat and soaked up all the sensations of being there for a while, then swam back, meeting the guy with the baby on the way, both of us so thrilled that we’d chosen to get in and swim to the waterfall. His wife was sitting on the edge holding the baby. When he got back we started chatting and he asked if I’d mind holding the baby so he and his wife could swim to the falls together – she wasn’t as confident in the water. I’d been wondering whether I should offer to do just that, so I was happy to help. The baby was an 8-month old boy and he sat happily in my lap, looking at the trees and the cliffs and the water. His parents went for their swim and then came back for him, and we had a good talk about travelling with kids.

I felt so happy and content by the time I left to walk up the long staircase to the top of the gorge. It seemed longer than when we did it a couple of days ago, but it wasn’t difficult. I set off on my rim walk, with the light getting redder as the sun approached the western horizon. I’d been thinking of going over to the Circular Pool lookout to watch the sunset, so the timing of my walk ended up being perfect. Along the rim I could see a lot further down the continuation of the gorge, where the walk doesn’t go (to the east of the Threes Ways Junction). It really struck me how different these gorges are to the others we’ve seen on this trip. Everywhere else we approach the gorge from the level of the bottom, then walk along the gorge or climb to the rim. Here, the land is mainly hilly, with large flat areas in between, and the gorges drop down below the flat area, deep into the earth. We approach them from the top and walk the rim, or else climb down into them. I would love to see this area from the air – I imagine it would look like there are lots of long scars cracking the earth.

The rim walk was pretty easy and quite pretty. I got to Three Ways lookout and found myself less concerned with height of the drop off, without the kids there with me. I walked along to the Circular Pool lookout and enjoyed seeing the pool again, and had a bit of vertigo which didn’t worry me overly. It wasn’t quite sunset yet but the light was beautiful, and I was happy to watch it for a little while and then move on.

I got back to camp and the 5 kids were happily playing. Tony was finishing off the lamb on the stove, and the other kids’ mum was just arriving back from her campsite, after having had a few hours over there by herself, something she hasn’t had often on this trip, without another adult around. She bought a bottle of Baileys, and some steamed vegies and cheese sauce, and they joined us for a roast dinner.

It was a lovely evening – a big glass of Baileys each for the adults, and a delicious roast lamb with lots of vegies, and great conversation. The kids really enjoyed their very long play. Having now spent more time together, it was enjoyable too for the conversation to start to move beyond just trip related stories, we’re sharing stories about our lives before the trip and really getting to know each other.

Eventually the others headed back to their van and we got ready for bed and read a chapter or two.