From Marble Bar we had no idea of which way we wanted to head, the lady in the museum had suggested heading up through Shay Gap, the town is now closed, but she said it was a nice drive and that we could probably camp on the DeGrey river before Shay Gap.

So our first point of interest to stop at was Coppin Gap. This turned out to be a lovely gap through the mountains with quite a large pool of water in it. Here we only found an elderly couple that were retired farmers from the wheatbelt. A lot of the rock in this gap is red Jasper which looks stunning when you wet it down.

Here we also found an abundance of bird life, unfortunately they were camera shy and we didn't get any photos. We saw Rainbow Bee-eaters, Firetail Finches, Budgies and Grey Cockatiels, it was wonderful and we sat there for quite a while watching them.

Back on the road heading to Shay Gap, the road was quite good despite there being mining trucks and lots of dust. The countryside was varied form open plains of spinifex to small trees.

At the DeGrey river we were disappointed to see the station owner had put up signs announcing that there was no camping allowed. Not that we blame him, it has been very disappointing to see how people have left other camping spots.

We stopped here for lunch and as we were about to move on a couple pulled up for a chat. They too had hopped to camp here and were looking for a place for the night. We mentioned a spot we had seen on Wikicamps not too far up the road, they said they had seen that too and it was agreed we would probably catch up with them there.

Where this spot was was in an amazing valley with great rocky formations around it, but it turned out to be quite small with no shelter from the sun, we both agreed to push on. We lead this time and turned down a track that looked to have some promise, only to find nothing. Our new friends said they would keep going to Eighty Mile Beach. It was a caravan park on a station along Eighty Mile Beach. It sounded good, so we followed them there.

As expected the park was very busy when we arrived, but the owners have done a good job with amenities and spacing out the sites. We chose a spot just behind the beach and booked for the one night with the option to extend. The beach was beautiful and the sunset amazing, they have an area on top of the dunes for you to sit and watch the sunset.

The following morning we booked for another night before going for a long walk along the beach collecting shells. After lunch we walked in the opposite direction without as much luck in the shell department.

Before leaving the next morning we got to know our new friends a bit better. They have been travelling Africa and Australia mainly, for around eleven years, we had quite a bit to chat about.

Back on the road, we didn't have much choice other than to follow the Great Northern Highway to Broome. Firstly, there really aren't many, if any options and secondly, we were booked into a caravan park near Cable Beach.

In Broome and Cable Beach we did the main tourist things, watched the sunset over Cable Beach, walked around China Town, visited the Saturday Market, went to the museum, walked along the beaches looking for shells and visited the points where they have a light house and a port.

We enjoyed everything we did and saw, however we were disappointed that Broome, or more correctly, some of the businesses were not prepared for the influx of visitors, so there were quite a number that were closing early because of a lack of staff and others that were just inundated with customers and Broome was packed with tourists, most forgetting about the need for social distancing due to Covid-19. We stayed for two days, three nights.

After having stayed in paid accomodation for the last week, we decided to visit a place recommended to us, James Price Point, it's north of Broome, on the coast. On the way to James Price we stopped in at Willie Creek Pearl Farm. Here we paid for a tour and learnt all about Pearl Farming, from breeding to collecting the pearls. We even watched, via a very small camera, as a pearl was removed from an oyster and a new 'seed' implanted. Very interesting.

James Price Point was great, most people had left and we were able to get a nice spot to ourselves on top of the cliffs, overlooking the sea. We spent two days here looking for dinosaur footprints and generally beach combing. We also watched as the huge tides came and went. The down side here was peoples lack of respect, we had a number of people drive around our campsite, between our camp and the cliff top. Even after I put a crate in the middle of the track into our spot we had two people drive around the crate to invade our privacy.

From James Price we were booked into Kooljaman at Cape Leveque, the very tip of the Dampier Peninsula. It was a long and in places rough road to the top. Maybe I need to say that the rough bit is in the southern part and that they are currently putting a new road in, so in another few months it will be bitumen all the way.

Kooljaman is promoted as a wilderness camp, we wouldn't call it that and were quite disappointed in the way the camp was run. It was a lovely place, with great beaches and beautiful scenery, but it could have been so much better. We were told that due to Covid-19 they were understaffed, but you can only blame Covid for so much. We spent two days here before heading off again to where we are now, Derby.

The road to Derby was noticeably quieter and the scenery has changed again. My preconceived idea of the country up north was for open spinifex country, it has, for the most part been very wooded and grassed. On our way to Derby though, there has been many more Boab trees and more open grass lands with many termite hills. Quite spectacular.

Sorry for the long blog, but we have done so much and seen so much. I'll write about Derby in another blog.