Lunch stop on way to Exmouth
Writing now from Exmouth......
We have spent the last 2 weeks travelling down WA's north west. So vast and can travel hours before reaching a town or roadhouse. When we left Broome next stop was Barn Hill a small caravan park that is part of a cattle station. It was right on the beach and absolutely beautiful. We met up with a family we first met at Airlie Beach, and again at Kakadu, pretty cool to meet up three times on our travels. Our kids had a great time playing together on the beach. We also saw a few humpback whales spouting and breeching in the distance, turtles and sea snakes.
After we left Barn Hill, I had not checked the distance to the next fuel stop!!! After travelling half an hour we realised didn't had enough fuel get us to the next roadhouse 160 kms away......so we stopped in at a property off the highway after Benn contacted them on UHF. Luckily for us and property owner was home and we were able to buy diesel from him. Turns out he was a student from The Armidale School, Kane, finished school the year before me. He growns watermelons and sweet corn in the Great Sandy Desert, and also owns property at Mataranka. Rather amazing hey!
Port Hedland was our next stop, here we had the Hilux serviced and got a good taste of a mining town. The price of houses is so expensive here, many people are permanent residents of the caravan parks. The average price of a three bedroom house is $650,00! Apparently, a house is usually part of the employment package for the mine employees. We went on a bus tour of the iron ore setup, no mine here (that is at Newman - 400 kms away). We saw the world's longest train at nearly 8 kms long, just amazing.
Point Samson was our next stop for 3 nights, lovely place on the beach. We all did lots of bike riding, walking, fishing and eating fish and chips! The caravan park was excellent, showers and toliets were spacious and clean. The kids enjoyed watching builders put in some changes to the playground area. Benn and Jacinta went fishing, Jacinta caught Brim, Snapper, and a few others, very happy.
We also visited Dampier, a very strong mining presence here as also in Karratha. While at Dampier we visited the North West Gas Project, it was huge. At the vistor centre we all found the information about the project very interesting. Just down the road from the Gas Project centre are hundreds of Aboriginal artwork on numerous rocks. We were told they date back to 40,000 years ago. Just amazing, we spent hours here walking over the rocks and enjoying spotting different pictures of animals and people. We were also able to take the boat out to visit Sam's Island. Just off the Dampier coast and Sam built his own house and lived alone on the Island with his cat for 40 years, only passing away a few years ago. Luke said the cottage remindered him of the cottages at Wyoming, at Nan's place.
We then had long drive to Exmouth, very close to the Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo Marine Park. There has been a small amount of rain and wind, but absolutely beautiful beaches. On Friday Benn went scuba diving at the Navy Pier, absolutely loved it, he swam with Grey Nurse Sharks, huge Cod, Angel, Brim and many schools of colourful fish (and many other sea life but I don't know what they are called!). Yesterday we went to Lakeside Beach, the water is turquoise. Benn went snorkelling, we saw a couple of turtles. We also went to the SS Mildura Wreck, Lighthouse lookout where once again we saw whales in the distance spouting, and we visited the Jurabil Turtle centre. This afternoon we are all going on a whale watching cruise, very exciting! Tomorrow we are travelling to Coral Bay.
