Cape Keraudren… "Where..?", I hear you ask. Well, have you ever heard someone explain where a place-out-of-the way is and say, "Drive to the middle of nowhere and then turn left"? Cape Keraudren is just such a place, except you turn right, I suppose it depends on which direction you are heading. It is a small outcrop of rocky land surrounded by turquoise water, 450 km south of Broome and 150 km north of Port Hedland in Western Australia.

We left Broome once the new starter motor had arrived and had been fitted to the Pajero and headed south-ish along the Great Northern Highway toward Port Hedland. Once out of Broome, past the Roebuck Plains Roadhouse and turning south onto the Great Northern Highway, the landscape quickly becomes very flat and almost equally as barren. The road from here on is flat and straight for kilometres on end. The few hills and curves that are in the road are insignificant and pass by almost without noticing. We have travelled this type of road in the past on our previous trip up the centre of Australia through Alice Springs and up to Darwin, but the great expanses of flat land are always breathtaking. It was a bit of a surprise to find this landscape in this area, we had thought that being close to the coast the land would be a bit more undulating and interesting. We cruised along for a couple of hundred kilometres until we came to a roadside free camp and decided to set up camp for the night.

The Stanley Rest area is a good roadside camp as far as they go, it is a hundred metres or so off the highway and has a modern, clean toilet block. We set up well away from a couple of caravans and made ourselves comfortable. The day turned into evening, a few more caravans and motorhomes arrived and we had just started cooking dinner when we heard music. It was quite loud and we figured some moron had decided that there was too much quiet and everyone else would need to listen to some crap music, as happens in caravan parks and camp areas from time to time. A song or two later it went quiet. Yay! Ten minutes later, I was walking back from the toilet and the noise started again, only louder this time, and it sounded different. As I walked past a large motorhome I noticed where the noise was coming from, and could not believe what I saw. Here we were, 200 km from the nearest town on the side of the road, and a couple of oldies had pulled up in their block-of-flats-on-wheels, fired up a generator, unpacked a karaoke machine (complete with large TV screen and microphones), cranked it up and started belting out the tunes!! And, they were awful!! Kathy and I were in hysterics! We could not believe these people thought they were actually providing entertainment for the whole campground. They continued for an hour or so, whining out the Bee Gees and Johnny Cash and other horrors, complete with commentary about each band between songs, before finally shutting up just after 7pm. Definitely the strangest thing we have seen on our trip.

The next day we woke in a lazy mood and decided to stay put for the day. We had booked in at Cape Range National Park, near Exmouth, and we had a couple of weeks to get there, so there was no urgency to keep moving. After a lazy day in the free camp we continued south-ish to Cape Keraudren. We didn't really know much about the place, apart from what we read in the Camps 6 book that we picked it out of. We knew it was a low-key campground, on the beach and cheap. The 10 km road in to the Cape is red dirt (not surprising) and corrugated (also not surprising), but not the worst road we have seen. We paid for three nights, found a nice spot overlooking the turquoise water and the rocky shoreline, and made ourselves comfortable.

Once the camper was set up we went for a walk along the rocks and out on the sand flats. In northern Western Australia the tides are huge. There is something like an average of 5 to 6 metres height difference between high and low tide, so when the tide goes out it goes a long way out and exposes a lot of the ocean floor. The rock formations along this stretch of coast are very rugged and sharp. There is a mixture of volcanic rock, old coral reef, jagged sandstone and some sections of rock are completely covered with oysters. Most of them are too small to eat, but their sharp edged shells make walking around the rocks careful work and discourage swimming at high tide. Kathy also managed to find a few shells to add to her growing collection of travelling memorabilia. The next few days were sunny with blue skies but very windy, and the wind was cold! The nights here were freezing, down to 6 degrees with the cool easterly wind making it feel so much colder. As the insulation properties of canvas is almost non-existent, the inside of the camper was far from warm and we slept in a trakkie and a beanie!! Ridiculous! We are still in the tropics and we need to go to bed with a beanie on - Not funny. Anyway, we decided to stay for a bit longer and see what the weather does, and for a change the weather got better. The wind disappeared and the ocean flattened out, and the nights became warmer. Much better!

We have now been at Cape Keraudren for 13 days, it has been hard to leave the blue sky and ocean view! From our camper we have watched the tides come and go, watched the sun rise and set, seen dolphins swimming past not far offshore on numerous occasions and even had a surprise fly-past by a very nice Spitfire replica (which was very unexpected way out here…). We have walked along the rocks and along the start of the 80 mile beach to collect shells, and we have managed to do a bit of successful fishing. I attempted catching fish off the surf a couple of time without luck, but persistence paid off and on the third day I landed 2 whiting, 3 Threadfin Salmon and a nice Bream. It was a good arvo fishing, and there was even a funny story (funny at my expense) to follow… I had been fishing for a couple of hours and managed to catch 6 fish, well done Paul, and then Kathy walks the 600 metres from the camper to where I was fishing to see how it was going. She sees my bucket-o-fish and decides she'll have a go herself. So, after a couple of unsuccessful casts with the bigger surf rod, she gets the bait out a bit and hooks a fish within 3 minutes, another nice whiting. Cast out again and another 5 minutes passes before the rod bends over, she reels it in and there are two Threadfin Salmon on it, one on each hook!! Bloody woman!! Anyway, now for the part where I look like a fool… When I hooked my first Salmon I was not completely sure what sort of fish it was. It was a predatory looking thing with two big dorsal fins and a big mouth, and I had a feeling it was a Tailor. Don't ask me why, but that's what my mind was telling me… Tailor. I didn't have a fish identification book on me, but it sounded familiar so I went with it. The fish ruler I had with me had Tailor listed on it as a 30 cm minimum size in WA. My fish was 34, so in the bucket he went. The next two "Tailor" I caught also were legal size. Then along comes Mrs I'll-show-you-how-to-catch-fish-in-five-minutes, and hooks two "Tailor" on the one line. I measured them, one was 29 cm and the other was noticeably smaller. One centimetre undersized is still undersized, so they both went back in the water. Kathy landed another good whiting (in under 5 minutes again…) and then we decided it was time to head back to camp. On the way back along the beach we stopped to talk to a couple of other blokes fishing. "How'd you go?" they ask. I opened the bucket to proudly display my catch and one of the guys looks in and says, "Yeah nice, Threadfin Salmon. They are good eating and there is no size limit on them either". What…? Threadfin Salmon? No size limit? I just threw back the two fish Kathy caught, both over 25 cm and there is no size limit!! F%#K!! Kathy wont let me forget that in a hurry! Oh well, I'll just keep reminding her of the massive hole I dug for her while gold detecting in Wedderburn to collect a Pepsi can… we'll call it even. When I got back to the camper, I checked my fish identification book... Tailor look nothing like Threadfin Salmon.... stupid brain, where the hell did you get that idea from..?? Oh well, live and learn.

Since then the fish have been a bit quiet, but I still manage to get a couple of whiting here and there, and the guy next to us, John, went out on the edge of the reef and caught a heap of Trevally. He had too many and some ended up in our fridge, so we are living off fresh fish at the moment.

The wind has picked up a bit today again, but it is still warm with blue sky and that fantastic turquoise ocean. We'll leave here on Monday and start meandering our way down to Cape Range over the next week, we hope we get good weather there and can do some snorkelling on Ningaloo Reef.

But for now, I think I'll go and chuck a line in off the rocks, stand in the sun, stare at the water and then come back for a fresh fish dinner while watching the sunset with a beer. Yep, sounds like a plan.