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Day 26 Karijini - Nanutarra Hi again from the travellers!
We are camped at Nanutarra Roadhouse on the road between Karratha and Exmouth at the cheapest site so far (except the two nights we spent at the side of the road) only $6 for the site and they have toilets and showers - but not very nice ones! No, to be fair we have been in better places, but then again this is fine for us 'cos we really only use the place to pitch the tent and the loos. Last night we paid $8 in a national park and had to walk 100 metres to an organic loo (i.e. no water ) and had to take all our rubbish home with us! It was a bit quieter though - right now we can hear a very large truck (or a coach we can't really tell) ticking over about 30 m away and as this is a 24 hour roadhouse I guess this may happen throughout the night! Oh well, we'll just see how it goes.......
Last night it got really chilly in Karajini so when we woke up it was a bit cold and damp from the condensation. On that basis we didn't waste much time in packing up and had a cup of hot chocolate for breakfast - yummy. We then did pretty much all of the short walks to lookouts in Karajini in the next three hours! Staring at about 6.45 we first off did the Gorge Rim walk at Dales Gorge (catching the sunrise in the process), then on to Kalamina to the lookout there to look at the falls and down to the bottom, next was Joffre falls and gorge and finally a lookout at the junction of Knox, Wittenoom and Red Gorges! Are we tourists or what. All of these places have longer walks down into the gorges - but we haven't really got the time today and they are all much of a muchness. What is different here from the Kimberley is that we are on the top of the gorges looking down rather than being in the gorge looking up. Hild pointed out that there must be a fundamental difference in the geology here such that the 'ground' hasn't been eroded except where the water runs through, whereas in the Kimberley (or rather along the Gibb River Road) the 'ground' has all been eroded except for a few areas where the water has only eroded the gorge. If you can follow that you're a better man than I am Gunga-Din, but I'm sure Hild will explain it to you next time you see her.
So, now we have seen gorges from the top and the bottom and are are bit engorged with all the gorgeous views having gorged ourselves full. (Can you tell that Tap-Tap has a thesaurus in him?) Just as we left the park, we came to Mount Bruce (how could this be anywhere but in Australia) and had a short walk up to a lookout from there over to a newish iron ore mine run by BHP's arch enemy - Hamersley Iron. Hamersley opened up mining in this area around 30 years ago and they built a number of towns and a big railway to take all their ore out via Dampier. Whereas BHP have built a railway for their ore to Port Hedland and their operations are centred at Newman. Far be it from us to sit in judgement, but having driven through Tom Price on the way out, we reckon Newman is better. Of course this is a totally inadequate survey 'cos as well as Tom Price, Hamersley has built Paraburdoo, Roebourne, Dampier and probably a few other places which we haven't seen, but we just like Newman, that's all. OK? Back to Mount Bruce, there is a track all the way to the summit, but it is 9 k each way and not on our itinerary this trip, so we carried on after a brief photo stop and drove on to fill up in Tom Price. We debated going the long way round from here to take in Paraburdoo, but decided against it and took the unsealed roads which saved over 50 k. One thing those two dumbos managed to miss on this road though was Mount Lionel just as we got to the Nanutarra-Wittenoom road. Fancy not stopping for a photo of my namesake, I've a good mind not starting tomorrow just to spite them. But I won't 'cos I'm not that sort of a car. Anyway, after we met up with the sealed road out of Paraburdoo things were pretty uneventful as we whizzed along to Nanutarra. Lunch was a nice stop at a dry river bed (one day we'll find a river with some water in I'm sure) and we were looking forward to another short cut on gravel to save us 30 k towards Onslow, only the road was closed to all traffic - even me! Now what do they think they are doing, closing roads to me - don't they know I can go anywhere and through anything? So we had to go all the way to Nanutarra and then turn right and go north up the North West Coastal Highway to the turn off to Onslow - Hild was not amused 'cos this means that we will be coming back the same way for longer than is absolutely necessary and she never likes doing that - she is a real round-trip person.
So you are probably wondering (as I am) why we are going out of our way to visit a small coastal town with very little there? Well, because of its name of course. Don't tell me you haven't seen Keeping Up Appearances with Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced bouquet), and her brother-in-law - Onslow. That kind of tenuous connection is enough for Hild to send us off on a 250 km detour. But actually it was quite interesting. On the way into Onslow, there are lots of swampy looking pools which have signs about Onslow Solar Salt Project on them. Now we didn't actually find out what his was about, but it looked fun anyway. And then when we reached the ocean we could see a few islands and Hild was sure one of then was Barrow Island, which she knows lots about because it produces lots of oil which is treated as onshore oil (despite being 40 k offshore) and so revenue comes back to the state government and not the federal government! Sounds like a bit of a fiddle if you ask me. The other thing on the lookout there s a monument to 7 sailors who died on two boats which sank in 1995 during cyclone Bobby. There was a bit of a scandal about this 'cos it was maintained that the boats were refused entry into the harbour for shelter, I'm not sure how it all came out in the end, but I guess it wasn't going to bring the sailors back anyway.
Well, Onslow turned out be a good detour and we were glad we had a look even though it meant we had to stop here at Nanutarra. This leaves us about 280 k tomorrow to get to Exmouth, which is OK for us 'cos we will get up early and get going by around 7 as usual and probably be there by about 10. This should be plenty of time to suss out snorkelling or some other kind of boat trip on Ningaloo reef. This is one of WA's best kept secrets as it is a reef system as good as the great barrier reef (not as big perhaps) but which hardly anyone knows about - so don't you go telling anyone - OK? So we should have a look tomorrow and stay somewhere around there, which leaves us two days to get back home to Perth. Its a funny feeling really, it will be nice to get home and not drive hundreds of k every day, but we've sort of got into a routine now and we're enjoying it. Maybe we'll just carry on when we get to Perth and keep going somewhere else. No, I guess not, Hild and Rob have got lots to do when they get back and I wouldn't mind a bit of rest myself. And that nice long shower they promised me at Car Lovers, mmmmmm, I'm beginning to have dreams about it! In fact I think I'll go to sleep and dream about it now. Night Night Lionel |
