Pannawonica

A totally Rio Tinto created mining 'town' is very unremarkable in many ways, but will always be remembered by Angie & I for one thing. It is where we woke up to find an email from Murray informing us that Izzy is pregnant and we are going to become grandparents. Everything else pales into insignificance as we sit there, a bit stunned, watching the white cockatoos feeding on the town sports oval in the early morning sunshine.

An uneventful journey along the tarmac road, once we'd got out of the flood damaged road of Exmouth saw us decide to turn inland and head for Millstream NP so we could have a couple of easy days drive before meeting Chris and jenny at Karijini. It means missing out on Onslow and Karratha, but time does not permit to go everywhere. The road is, typically for us, untouristic and quiet, but travels through pleasant country with flat topped mountains (mesas as they are known). Our book of cheap campsites says there's one at Pannawonica but the town just seems to be a small collection of small miners shacks and a few family houses. Someone directs us round the back to the sports oval where there are three bays for camping with electric and water points, right next to the sports showers and toilet. Everything we need all to ourselves! A notice says pay a 28 dollar fee in the box (which doesn't exist) next to the notice or go to the town library which happens to be open on Tuesday nights and it's a Tuesday! We've also noticed the road out of town has a big sign stating 4wd only and we're a bit concerned whether to take the trailer and there's tourist info at the library. Now bearing in mind there's only one road out of town besides the one we came in on, the lady in the library informs us she's not been out on that for over a year and she has no idea what the state of it is. After much debate about alternative routes having gone back to the coast and the possibility of going on some roads marked private, I asked several times how one gets a permit. On the third attempt, she says 'Well I could issue you a permit and they're free, but you have to watch a 30 min safety video'. We settle down to watch said video.

A meal at the miners sponsored pub/restaurant proves amazingly good and sizeable and we settle down for the night. The cheap phone we purchased in Exmouth for 30 dollars seems to pick up signal and allows us to hotspot the iPad. The night is disturbed by miners being picked up by buses to go to start the 5 o'clock shift and the oval irrigation springing into action, but apart from that it's very quiet. A young couple come to the oval to try to put up the new trailer they've just bought and want to make an offer for our trailer. They ask us to call them at the end of our trip. A trip to the police station finds the local policeman also not knowing the state of the road, but he makes some enquiries and says we should be OK if we go slowly as the big problem is the rocks will rip up the tyres. We decide to take the risk and proceed at 30kph.