21.10.2009

It’s funny, you live in Australia your whole life and know it’s big but man, this country is huge. We left Broome three nights ago and arrived in Exmouth this afternoon and I don’t know how many times I commented as we drove how big the place is. Even today after we turned off the highway we drove for 1 ½ hrs through dead flat, grassless and virtually treeless land to Exmouth and one of the worlds great reefs, haven’t seen that yet though.

Anyway, the last few days has been a bit of an eye opener to yet another part of Australian life. Travelling South from Broome we passed a whole lot of nothing, sickness hit our camp the day we left with Zali quite ill with flu and throwing up also so that made the day a little more challenging for us. We left Amber and Ross after their cameo role in our grand adventure and took our sick little girl, our boy who is crazy for diving at Ningaloo and our overloaded car and left, driving for about 4hrs to stay at a free camp. Next day was a big push for Karratha, 7hrs in the car to stay at another free camp by the river just South of town. Our plan was to do the free camp and go into Dampier and Karratha where we would stay the night, possibly two and then down to Exmouth.

Well, let me tell you, the tourist marketing gurus at Karratha have done a number on everyone, Dampier and Karratha were a big let down. Both towns are built entirely for the iron ore industry , the entire town of Dampier is owned by Rio Tinto and to rent a three bed house in Karratha costs $1100/wk. Look at the brochures though and both towns are beach side paradises, it’s not possible to swim at Karratha and Dampier is a little Port that I wouldn’t swim in, even the caravan parks were $60/night. Apparently it’s very nice offshore but we’re not made of money and these are towns that live for money, one caravan park would let us use their laundry, but we’d have to pay to use it then pay the normal coin operation fee, so it was another day in dirty clothes. It’s not so much that we can’t afford these things it’s the principal of the matter as much as anything.

We’d managed to score a little car fridge in Broome (for free) but it worked so pathetically that we swapped it for a book in a second hand store in Karratha, we did our shopping at Coles (very expensive) and went North again to Point Sampson. Point Sampson was lovely and redeemed our otherwise disappointing day, a little port town, with a small fishing fleet and an absolutely massively long jetty about 2km long for loading iron ore just to the south of town. Point Sampson’s attraction is it’s beautiful protected beaches, clear, calm and warm water, an ideal location to test out the snorkelling gear we bought in Broome. We’d managed to strike a great deal on some brand new gear, fins, masks, dive socks, the lot and the whole family was pretty chuffed to try it out in the bay. It was great, the gear was comfy, the bay was nice but now we are at Exmouth it’ll be awesome.

Leaving Point Sampson that arvo we decided to stay at the same waterhole as the previous night, just south of town. It was a great little place with a safe swimming hole and a rope swing, there was a pile of locals and a few campers having a laugh in the creek when we arrived, so we hit the creek, Lachlan hit the swing and we had some fun before setting up camp, the best things are free.

Picture this camp site; you drive in about 1km up a gravel road and into a car park/camp area about 60m around on the side of a hill, about a 5 degree pitch with only two level spots. At the bottom of the area two 4WD tracks drop 20m to the waters edge (some guy had managed to get a big dual axle van down one of these and got it out this morning) one level area is at the top right of the hill and the other at the bottom left, both only big enough for one car, and that’s the entire site. Why I describe this site is for the events of last night, it was about 10pm and we were all sound asleep when I could hear this bizarre screaming noise in my sleep, it slowly woke me and I was most impressed to hear and see a car trying to reverse up the hill. At first I thought someone was in our car, which was hitched to our trailer still, and about to drive off with us dragged behind. It was with obvious relief that I realised eventually that it wasn’t but then disappointment when I realised the truth. Someone was looking for a camp spot in a bomby old ’91 Magna, fan belt screaming and headlights on high beam, they reversed a little, shone their lights on us for a minute, turned around and drove up the hill, shone their lights on the Winnebago that was there, turned around and came back toward us. Once their lights were directed just nicely through our window they stopped the car, left the lights pointed at us and set their tent up. I patiently watched in bemused disbelief for 15minutes while they set the tent up. I was being fair see, next they set up their chairs and table and started cooking dinner by the light of their headlights, that was enough for me, I got up and asked them to turn their lights off, not to rudely. They very accommodatingly did so and turned on the lantern they had sitting there the whole time! I shut our windows and we drifted back off to sleep. Sometime later we hear; knock, knock.....knock, knock, knock....knock, knock. It’s the same...tool that woke us before doing something with his cooking, he did this for a minute or two then quite. Again we drifted off to sleep until; knock, knock, knock....knock, knock, he was at it again, we decided that in the morning we wouldn’t make the kids be quiet when we woke up. I was absolutely devastated when the kids woke up late.
This morning we woke up, ignored our new neighbours, packed up gear, had a swim and took off, I grudgingly said hello to the neighbours before we left, but like a true bearer of a good grudge didn’t chat and left. Now here we are in Exmouth, we’ll be out of power in the national park alongside the beautiful beaches and reef of Ningaloo so I’ll update when we shower next.