Highway One,12hr drive, so the Waif's song goes. It's apt, as there is very little else to mark your progress other than the time on the road. The NorthWest highway is the artery that keeps trucks, tourists and travellers flowing North from Perth to Broome in the winter and back again in the Summer. It's a slender highway that narrows to single lanes across the bridges that span the little dry creeks. The landscape is low Mulga scrub and spinifex as far as the eye can see. We are on our way South, to Exmouth once more.
We left Tom Price yesterday in typical Simister fashion. That's to say that we took the whole day to pack up, pulled out of the park with two hours before sunset and drove the last 100kms to our campsite in the dark with Tom on Cow lookout. To be fair, we did get held up by a convoy of monster haul trucks on their way to Paraburdoo, and we had to stop in Para to sort out our caravan brakes which were grumpy after 6 months of inactivity. However, there is no denying the fact that we are always about 2 hours behind schedule. It probably didn't help that we spent the entire day before climbing Mt Bruce, that slumbering giant of a hill that sits at the entrance to Karijini. It was a 9.5 km long walk and 1235m up, and it was our final challenge to ourselves and a wonderful way to farewell the Pilbara. The walk was sublime, alternating between a rolling easy track and some very challenging, exposed scrambles. There was a fantastic echo point on the top of the first ridge line which actually sounded like someone was repeating your call in its entirety. The weather was pleasantly warm and sunny and a bit breezy on the higher reaches. On the top, there were beautiful flowering eucalypts with attendant honeyeaters, a startling contrast to the paucity of flora on the lower slopes. We left the car park at 0930 and summited at 1230. Ned led the charge on the way down, keen to make it to his friend's house for one last play and so the descent only took two hours. Tom and I were immensely proud of the boy's efforts - this was twice as far as their biggest walk to date. We said our farewells to the park crew ( bye bye Walkers, Hellbusch's and the NZ contingent) and finally left, two hours late the next day.
We overnighted in the Beazley River free camp about 160km east of the Nanutarra roadhouse. An unremarkable stop, but with clean loos and plenty of bins and fireplaces. We were by far the youngest travellers there. It's such bliss to be able to get up and wander outside in the mornings in these camps and not feel instantly boiling. We arrived in Exmouth at 4pm on the 29th and set up for 3 nights at the Big 4/aspen park. Nice enough, lovely pool, but the boys were upset at the lack of jumping pillow and TV room! Tom wasted no time in squeezing in as many surfs as possible as the swell was up and forecast to drop over the next couple of days. He was up at 6:30 and back out at 3 for the first couple of days. The surf at the Dunes was lovely, about 3 ft, peaky with an easy shoulder and nice walls. A bit tricky to paddle into with the brisk offshore, but fun.
We have three weeks in the Cape Range National Park before leaving Exmouth for the last time. Looking forward to the stars....