Sunday, 12 September 2010
Exmouth
After a brief stop atop Mount Sheila we were back on the coast and Southbound again. Exmouth, no not Exmuth as we would say, Ex-mowth. How did it happen? If these places were named by original settlers that presumably came from the the original surely they would have pronounced it the same as they did when they left, so how come now Exmouth is Exmowth, Derby is Durby and unbelievably Launceston is Laun-ces-ton??? They don't like it when you bring it up though. Exmouth is the gateway to Ningaloo reef, locals like to tell you it's better than the great barrier reef and in someways I have to agree. It's huge popularity (evident by the fact you have to be at the park entrance at 0530 in the morning to guarantee a site on one of the national parks campsites) owes much to the fact that it is very close to shore and you can snorkel straight off the beach. The next big draw is the whale sharks that migrate through here regular as clockwork every year and we were there bang on time. Unfortunately the cost of getting in a small boat and finding a whale to snorkel with would have cost us more than a month in Bali. It's a shame really and I can't honestly see the justification in charging $385 each (roughly GBP250) for 6 hours. It includes a meal but really? 8 people on a boat $3000 for a day's work not bad eh?
Trains
Tom Price, the place and the man are one and the same. A stones throw from the protected Karajini park is one of the worlds biggest open cast mines. The area is hugely rich with iron ore (hence the red colour of everything) and an American geologist called Tom took a few samples back to his boss in American (early 70's I think) and they loved it. So they opened a mine and built a town and called it all Tom Price. The mine is massive. The trains that service the mine are even more massive and handily they also go in a very straight line back to the coast and have a service road running next them, less handily you need a permit to use this road. After signing our lives away and spending an hour watching a safety video we had our permit.
Karajini
Onwards South and West, Port Hedland, think we can skip over that (Iron ore and coal) as we can Karatha (iron ore and natural gas) but South of both of these is Karajini national park. As with a lot of parks in WA you can't really see what your gonna get, Australia isn't big on mountains but it is on Gorges which is kinda hard to get your head round, but the thing is the place is so bloody old and has so little tectonic activity that no new mountains have been formed and all the old ones have been worn away and it's this erosion that has created some unique features. At first glance Karajini looks like a range of modest hills (they do like to name them mount this and that though (size issues?)) with the odd escarpment; The truth is a water way has carved deep gouges in to them creating amazingly colourful chasms. You can climb down and around them aswell. There are plenty of warnings and understandably so. Some of the walking routes are not for the feint hearted, feet on one side and hands on the other inching sideways along a metre wide gorge over a river and using a rope to get down into one of the pools before taking of your shoes and wading the next bit felt pretty adventurous if if there are little discs to follow.
Broome
The caravan park at Derby (pronounced Durby(?)) had a small group of spectators watching the arrivals of the few who had made it out before all the roads we're officially closed. All looked exactly the same and the drivers all had that slightly adrenal induced look in their eyes. Talk then turned to where the nearest car wash was and I tell you someone could make a lot of money in Derby if they opened one! Broome was 2 hrs away and had a car wash and was chalk to Derby's cheese. Derby, small industrial town sat on a small peninsular in a hugely tidal King sound whose outstanding feature was a pier that stretched across the mudflats to facilitate boat loading at low tide. Broome, small historically significant pearl fishing town that successfully transformed itself into a tropical Indian Ocean beach resort when Pearl farming took over from fishing. Rich people have second homes here and escape the Souths winter to watch the sun going down over Cable beach while sipping speciality beers from their very own Matso's micro brewery. Monsoonal blonde was Kyms favourite I preferred the darker porter. Being a resort it is of course easy to spend money and camping isn't cheap but being Australia you're allowed to drive on the beach so on to the beach 2km up the beach into the sand dunes and we had our own piece of paradise. We liked Broome, we liked the vibe the size the people the brewery AND... you could swim in the sea!!!!
Gibb continued
The Gibb River mud show. It rained and it rained and all the good work that the graders had done over weeks was undone in less than a day by the likes of us getting the hell out of there! Moments going sideways into posts along the side of the track made you grateful they were only plastic and bent over when you hit them. All the vehicles we saw, which wasn't that many as rangers had advised no one to drive unless necessary, were the same colour, the colour synonymous with Australia, rusty red. We knew we'd made the right choice in going against the advise of the rangers when two weeks later we got a call from a couple we met at Kalumburu saying they had just got out and that was only with a special permit and a guide vehicle!
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