Day 17. A quiet day in Onslow, with a drive out to Old Onslow first settled in 1883 as a port town for transporting wool bales from the stations along the Ashburton River, the oldest being the Forrest family’s Minderoo Station. In 1925 the old town was abandoned due to floods and sand bars blocking the river. In WW1 camel trains carried copper and lead to the port for England and Singapore. Pearling was also an important industry. The new Onslow was settled on...

Day 16. Up at daybreak we packed up camp and headed out onto a corrugated red dirt road about 30km to the western gorges of Karijini NP. First a view down into very deep Joffre Gorge, a little scary taking photos even behind the safety barrier. A beautiful deep pool below. Next a short drive to reach the highlight of today, Oxer Lookout where we viewed 5 very deep narrow gorges and pools at their junction - Weano, Wittenoom, Hancock, Red and Joffre Gorges. We s...

Day 15. After breakfast we headed out for a long walk down into the bottom of Dales Gorge. Climbing down the hundreds of steps into the very deep gorge we first viewed Fortescue Falls flowing into a deep pool. Further up the gorge we encountered a special place known as Fern Pool with its small waterfall and wide deep pool fringed by white snappy gums and maidenhair ferns. Down the gorge we followed the path through dense paperbark forests and scrambling over ro...

Day 14. We joined a morning bus tour of BHP’s massive open cut iron ore mine operation at nearby Mt Whaleback. We watched an ore train pulling in to load over 300 ore carts, 2.7km long driven by 4 diesel engines. Train drivers are paid 360k and haul tip truck drivers 180k. The rail line to Port Headland is over 300km long and 7 trains make the journey every day. Then after lunch we headed out 200km northwest to reach one of the highlights of our road trip, ...

Day 13. A long drive further north towards the Pilbara. Left very early after a great sleep in our donga, again passing many mine sites for gold, nickel, copper, manganese, lead, silver and uranium and many long road trains over 50m long. The huge Mt Keith Mine has so much spoil it has been piled up to look like a mountain range. Very deceptive! Closed gates and ‘do not enter’ signs everywhere. We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn before midday and arrived in...