Perth to Broome

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This photo album documents our drive up to Broome and back from Perth in Western Australia. Our intention had been to drive to Darwin and drop off the car there. Heavy rains had washed out roads in the Kimberley region so our plans were thwarted at Broome.

Much of this is documented in other blog entries, this is a capsule summary of our travels. The picture at left is a fellow walking along the road in the very empty country near Exmouth. Note the green and the bug mask to keep the flies at bay

In Western Australia there's a large bit of sand dunes near the Pinnacles. We stopped there briefly and at the Pink Lagoon near Kalbarri. We visited the National Park at Kalbarri just north of Geraldton and south of Shark Bay -- it's all very dry ruggged country with not too many people visiting. Western Australia is a vast area, lightly populated and very rugged.

We stayed in Exmouth for a bit to explore the Ningaloo Reef and Cape Range National Park. That's the top western corner of the state. We got in a lot of swimming in many fine bays in the park but it was alway too rough to go out on a boat to find and swim with the whale sharks (we did that on our return). It's a fringing reef close to the shore and you can easily swim out and explore the coral without a boat. We did so from the many fine bays and access points

We saw lots of critters in an around the park. Huge termite mounds are every where. Emu are large and quite amazing. And brumbies (wild horses) are common too. We did see a Perentie one day in the park -- they're huge lizards about 6' long. "What the fuck is that crossing the road!" Quite an amazing sight to see. A bit frightening too!

We drove up into some higher ground around Exmouth for the views of the area. Shothole Canyon is only a bit off the main roads, gravel road access and well worth a visit. It was hot and dry, very much like Death Valley or Arizona. But there had been the wet season so things were pretty green.

From Exmouth we headed inland to Karajini National Park. There only a few roads you can take, they're pretty good, but the gas stations are few and far between. You need to fill up when you can. At a gas stop one of the road trains had a bit of run in with the awning over the gas pumps. He'd got himself into a position where he couldn't go back and couldn't go forward. He ended up wrecking some of his truck and some of the gas station shelter. He'd have been a long way from the next place that could fix him up.

The red dirt of Western Australia is a bit of a "gold" mine -- the red is iron ore. At Tom Price and Mount Sheila there's a huge mine, huge trucks for mining the stuff and long trains to carry it to ports on the north shore where it's shipped to China and other places. They can just dig it out of the ground and send it off as raw ore to be processed elsewhere. It's that high in iron content.

At Tom Price (the only town near Karajini National Park) we stayed at the very expensive but tired and spartan Karajini Lodge. Their clientelle seemed to mostly be miners who don't live here but fly in and out for weeks long work stays. The dining hall (don't go looking for a fancy dancy restaurant -- you're in the outback) was efficient but again spartan. Thankfully they did have wine.

We did explore some of the rugged canyons and gorges in the park. We swam in a small river at Fortesque Falls but roads were closed to much of the park -- it's the rainy season. This meant for some glorious fields of wild flowers.

Between Karajini and Broome we had arranged to stay at a rest station around Pardoo which turned out to be even worse than the worn lodgings at Tom Price. The hotel rooms were converted cargo containers (you know the steel boxes they load onto boats, trains and trucks) and just not good enough for us. We decided to drive on (always a bit of a risk because there's not to much to drive on to). We ended up staying at a caravan park at 80mile beach arriving just around sun set. This was quite lovely, a nice park model trailer all to our own with a beach that went on for miles and miles.

The next day we arrived at Broome to discover we could go no further towards Darwin. We stayed at "The Pearle". I've documented much of our stay in Broome elsewhere and won't repeat that here.

Our drive back to Perth after our visit to Broome had us drop in to Coral Bay and the Ningaloo Reef where we were finally able to swim with the whale sharks. That was a memorable experience. Another interesting thing about Coral Bay was the locusts. With the recent wet weather there had been a plague of frogs, when we were there it was a plague of locusts who had stripped all vegetation bare. It doesn't rain very often but when it does nature responds.

Geraldton is a large town between Coral Bay and Perth -- we caught a sunset. The next over night was in Yanchep National Park just outside of Perth. We had a very nice room and were able to explore a bit of the park land -- they had some Koalas to view. But the most interesting part was to see all the Kangaroos come out at dusk to graze on the lawns around the hotel. There were a ton of them.

From Perth, where we dropped off our car, we flew on to more adventures down under.