Cape Keraudren

To break up the drive between Broome and Karijini we stopped at a little place called Cape Keraudren. We had no idea what to expect, but were pleasantly surprised! Whoever's been keeping this place a secret is both brilliant and selfish!

 

We camped just above the water's edge. Here, just 20 metres from our campsite we took photos of the sunset over the Indian Ocean.

 

In the opposite direction of the sunset was the hues of the night sky. The sun came up from here too - over water.

 

A large rockpool above the low-tide line was running out to sea as we stood by. We liked this place.

 

Sunrise.

 

Broome Times

Minus the little Rav we checked into Cable Beach Caravan Park to sit out our days in Broome while we awaited the new clutch. Lucky for us our AANT membership provided us with a zippy red Hyundai Getz and paid for our accomodation while the Rav was with the mechanics. AANT membership - just paid for itself.

 

 

Once a month in Broome at this time of year all the tourists flock to the eastern side of Broome to watch the moon come up and create a staircase to the moon effect. Not something to plan your trip around, but was quite beautiful to look at, and as a bonus they had market stalls selling tasty curry for us to enjoy.

 

May the 20th brought Lachy Mac's birthday which the Caravan Park kindly celebrated on their notice board. We thought the picture had quite a striking resemblance....

 

We had some of the delicious Matso's Ginger Beer with lunch as a warm up for dinner at the brewery restaurant that night.

 

 

 

We spent some time on the very beautiful coastline around Broome and were even lucky enough to come across two indigenous chaps using traditional spears to fish for yellowfin tuna right off the shoreline. They were happy to tell us their hot fishing tips and let us take some snaps.

 

With snorkel and masks in hand we were devastated to learn the crocs we thought we had left behing in the Territory had ventured to Broome. Lachlan, recently scarred from his Mary River experience, obligingly obeyed the sign.

 

We did venture quite close for some feet dipping, although for once Lachlan was behind me in the brave stakes and he stayed further back using photography as his excuse.

 

We spectated the obligatory but stunning Cable Beach sunset with the camel rides wandering past.

 

While Lachlan spoke to Elle and Grant to receive some birthday cheer.

 

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We needed to wait at Matso's to be seated for dinner and much to Lachy's delight they had retro game machines to enjoy! From here he engaged in some serious steak eating while sampling each and everyone one of Matso's beers....

 

Halls Creek to Cape Leveque

Just near Halls creek is the Geike Gorge National Park. We followed a walk along the Sandy bank of the Fitroy River. We forget the stat exactly, but it is apparently the largest river in Australia, by volume, and you can understand why.

 

The gorge was on average about 200 metres wide and judging by the white stains on the side of the gorge walls, (caused by the high level of lime in the water) there's a shed-load during the wet season of the summer months. Compare the size of Peta to the height of the white stains.

 

It's a fair drive from Halls Creek to Broome, about 700kms, so out I got again to fill the tank from Jerry and Jerry. At least here we had views of stunning Boab trees.

 

We passed through Broome pretty quickly and headed up to Cape Leveque, and it wasn't too much longer before we had our snorkel gear on and in the water. Never mind that we just travelled across 100km of sandy road with the little rav just having clearance at times!

 

The life in the small rockpools was impressive. Who knew there was so much happening at your feet!

 

Cape Leveque, like much of the nothern Western Australian coast, has beautiful white sandy beaches with contrasting red (Pindan) sand and rocks next to them. Where the two met you could sometimes see pink sand!

 

Maybe a little excessively, but we used our new underwater camera to capture almost everything we saw in the rock pools.

 

We were sad to leave our campsite at Cape Leveque, check out the view from our kitchen! (and bedroom and entertainment area)

Unfortunately on the return to Broome the clutch in the Rav blew out. We thought it would make it back to Broome to get it fixed but, it didn't. With no phone reception (even with Telstra) Peta volunteered to take a ride with a passing couple into Broome. I waited with the car for three hours until a happy looking Peta returned with the Tow Truck and the driver, Jason.

The rest of the journey to Broome was done on the back of the tow truck. :(

The Little Rav

The Tanami Track

It's a 1200km dirt road from Alice Springs to Halls Creek. It had opened just a week or so before we attempted to travel across it, thankfully. The last fuel stop was Yuendemu before a 784km stretch of no fuel until Halls Creek. We carried 40L of extra fuel on top of the car, but we weren't 100% sure about how far that would last. It was going to be pretty close by our calculations added to that was the risk of the dirt road chewing more fuel. We were both a little worried, although we didn't let on to each other at the time.

The Rav was doing pretty well across the track up to the end of the first night. The start of the track was rocky and corrugated but as we entered into the Tanami Desert the road turned to red sand. Due to the above average rainfall of the 2010/11 wet season the desert wasn't really desert-like. Instead it was filled with small green plants and spinifex grass (those buggers sting).

Our campsite sunset was spectacular. Here's Peta setting up the tent while I just walked around taking photos. As soon as the sun went down it got cold! I now understand how it can be 30 degrees during the day and 0 degrees at night!

The stars were spectacular. I finally got a snap of the stars rotating around the southern pole.

Other than small green bushes and spinifex grass there were long stretches of beautiful golden wattle that lined the road and went as far as the eye could see. They looked amazing, like we were driving through a maze of wattle.

A slight disappointment was the defaced Welcome to Western Australia sign. I guess it reflected our sadness of leaving the NT... No more Paul's Ice Coffee.

The next night's camp site was the Wolfe Creek Meteorite crater, the second largest in the world. It was quite impressive. Peta was a little worried about a deranged murderer coming to torture and kill us in the middle of the night (re the Wolfe Creek movie). Luckily we were spared any type of murderous rampage.

Finally it was time to leave the Tanami Track and re-join bitumen road. It was a sad thought that we had finished our journey across the dirt track, but this was soon forgotten as we enjoyed the smoothness of highway driving! ahhhhh.

Halls Creek itself is only a bit more than a fuel stop and a couple shops, but the campsites towards old Halls Creek were amazing! There was some 4wd action and the Rav was love being back on dirt road, crossing small creeks and bumping over pebbly beaches. See the next post for some footage.

The Centre

We spent the night at Kathleen Springs which despite it's no camping sign had quite a merry troop of campers checked in. We made a bright and early start and headed to King's Canyon in the morning. We overtook quite a few of the early walking grey nomads on their way up the canyon including a particularly vocal lady with a T-shirt sporting the slogan "Ageing - everyone's doing it".

Lachlan is demonstrating exactly what the signs said not to do and was forced to explain to an eight year old that it indeed was not a good idea and he really was being rather silly.

The rock formations on the top of the Canyon look like enormous bee hives and surprisingly there were no climbing prohibited signs here.

The views from the rim of the canyon overlooking a 300m drop really are spectacular. The sheer size of it is difficult to convey on camera, but here is one of Lachlan's panoramas - his new favourite photo technique.

Next stop was the famous monolith that is Uluru. It seems like an obvious statement but this rock really is big! The base walk is 10.5km and makes you really realise the enormity of the site. We grappled with the concept of climbing the rock (in Lachlan's case momentarily) and then decided to have a go. We were foiled by high winds closing the rock on our first two attempts so started with heading to Kata Tjuta and then the base walk.

Whoever named The Valley of the Winds walk at Kata Tjuta was really being quite literal. The goretex jackets made their first appearance as we wandered through the giant rocks.

The base walk was very beautiful and we did repetitively marvel at the contrast of the blue skies, red rock and green bush. The flies however did become tiresome and it wasn't long until Lachlan caved to the concept of the fly net (after earlier being heard to mock others with these accessories). The wildflowers were abundant with Peta's personal favourite being this number which closely resemble mini microphones.

Photography and touching the rock is prohibited for much of the walk but there were a few amazing spots we could get close and have a look.

Along with everyone else that visits Uluru, we lined up to view the sunset and try and get the ultimate postcard snap. In our case this involved climbing on the little Rav's roof racks. On our second night we were treated by Port and John with a gift of a sunset dinner so the sunset viewing style went a little more upmarket.

On our final morning the rock was open to climbing so up we went. It is a very steep incline that has the calves burning on the way up and quads trembling on the way down. Not to mention Peta's heart racing with a slight case of vertigo... Not surprisingly, the view from the top is amazing and it is clear why this place is considered sacred.

We then headed back to Alice where we were treated to another night of Doigy's lovely hospitality.