Half-lap Day 96: Cliff Head North -> Perth

I had been a bit worried about staying so close to the coast (especially at a place called Cliff Head) after some of the windy nights we’ve had recently, I thought we might get blown away. There was hardly a breeze all night though, so we were safe and comfortable and I was so glad we’d taken the risk. LiAM had a bit of trouble with his asthma in the night, ventolin fixed him up though and then he slept well.

I was up early and went outside to a very dewy (there was water on everything) and very cold morning. I sat overlooking the water and did some blogging and drank my tea, until my burning toes reminded me that I probably should have put shoes and socks on, instead of sitting in my thongs. The sun rising over the hills behind us and slowly lighting up the beach and ocean was pretty cool. The oil rig shone gold in the morning sunlight, and occasionally I saw splashes on the horizon from whales breaching.

The others gradually woke up and joined me out in the cold. It was a lovely place to sit and take our time over breakfast. Once the sun was up it became much warmer and even more pleasant. We started packing up and it seemed to  take ages – we put extra blankets and our sleeping bags in the car and the trailer, rather than on top of the bed where they usually go, because we’ll be staying with Tony’s cousin in Perth and not opening the tent out. Doing things in a different order slowed us down a bit, and we also wanted to wait until the dew dried out before we packed up the tent, which took a surprisingly long time to happen. By the time we were ready to go it was after 11am.

Oil rig

We drove further south through more farmland, seeing lots of old stone farmhouses and sheds and more beautiful scenery. We called in to Jurien Bay to look at the Harbour and see if we could see any seals or sea lions. We walked down to one of the beaches and stood on the shore for a little while, the waves were crashing in and it was interesting how different the sea looked here, compared to 100km or so up the coast, it was much rougher here. 

Our next stop was Nambung National Park, to see the Pinnacles. At the gate the lady said that we could unhitch the trailer and drive and/or walk around the Pinnacles, or we could leave the trailer on and park and just do the walking track. We decided not to unhitch, and just do the walk (it was only 1.2km). The van next to where we parked looked like our friends from Murchison Station. We had a quick snack then walked up to the toilets and the Information Display, and found our friends there. We chatted to them for a while and then headed off on the walk.

I’d seen lots of pictures of the Pinnacles, and there was lots of information and pictures of them in the display we’d just looked at, but seeing them for real took my breath away. We walked around a bend and there was a large sandy hill with tall, thin rocks spread all over it – we all stopped walking and just stared for a moment, it was an incredible sight. Some of the Pinnacles were like stalagmites, some were wider and shorter, some were just little mounds. The walking trail wound it’s way through between the formations, and there was so much to see in every direction. We came to a lookout in the middle of the walk, and stood there for a while looking at the Pinnacles in all directions. One really cool thing was that from the lookout, and any hills in the area, we could see the ocean in the distance to the west.  It was a great view – desert, with these amazing formations, then bush, then the blue of the ocean.

As the walk continued, the Pinnacles kept varying, slightly different colours, or a lot that were a similar shape to each other but different from those in other areas. The sun was getting lower in the sky and the shados of the rocks were lengthening which was pretty cool too.  I was so glad we’d had the time to stop and see them, so different to anything else we’ve seen on the trip.

Back at the car we had some sandwiches and then kept driving. The landscape kept changing, at one point we drove past areas which were filled with the trees that look like Grug (from the books). I’d never seen so many of these trees in one location. As we got close to Perth we were driving through bush again, and it felt like the type of bush we get at home, we could have been in Victoria.

We arrived at Tony’s cousin’s house, in the northern suburbs of Perth (near the beach) around 5.30. They have a 10 year old son and all 4 kids seemed to hit it off straight away. They’d arranged for us to use the main bathroom and a couple of bedrooms, so we really had our own space, it was very generous of them. The kids went out the back to meet the dog – called Buckley just like our dog! We had a delicious spaghetti and meatballs dinner – weird to be sitting at a table in a house to eat a meal. Great conversation and a very relaxed environment. After dinner we watched the Collingwood game on TV while the kids played in the playroom.

The kids were sleeping in their cousin’s room (he was in with his parents) and I went in and read a couple of chapters of Inheritance to them, then went to bed in the study. Very very weird to be sleeping in a real bed, in a house! Tony sat up and chatted with his cousin for a while, its been a while since they saw each other and it was great to catch up.

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.