Month: August 2004

So I bet you’re all curious about the drive… It seems far more interesting when you venture away from the flat coastal scrub along the edges of Australia and head up into the interior. I will have a chance to drive through another beautiful area when I venture into The Kimberly after leaving Broome during the next week, but to date it’s been a lot of boring driving.

So yes, I’ve logged about 5 or 6 thousand kilometres so far. I can’t remember the exact figure, but it’s somewhere around there. I keep myself company while driving by listening to my CD collection. I invested in a MP3 player in for my car a few months back and ripped all my 300-400 CDs onto about 25 disks that fit nicely into a single CD wallet. It’s pretty cool to squeeze 15 CDs onto one MP3 CD. You can’t hear the difference in sound quality on most car stereos.

I try not to drive more that 4-5 hours a day, and preferably less (unless I’m really stuck in a boring area). It can be pretty stressful to drive for longer periods due to a variety of factors: The roads can be monotonous and boring which can be hypnotizing. They are not anything like the big smooth relaxing interstate highways in the U.S. They are bumpy and narrow and there is nothing separating your lane from the oncoming traffic lane (at 110 kph).

Of course, there rarely is any oncoming traffic — so you don’t have to worry too much about that. In fact, there are so few people driving on these roads that when you do stumble across someone travelling in the opposite direction it is common practice to wave. It pretty funny, actually. The locals do it, and then all the tourists pick it up and start doing it. The only problem is when you’re driving against most of the traffic. Then you’re seeing cars who are expecting you to wave back at them every few minutes because you’re the first car they’ve seen in the past hour.

The heat is another factor and it can make you feel sleepy. I alternate between using my air conditioner periodically and rolling the window down periodically. I don’t want to use the air conditioner too much because it really adds to the already expensive fuel costs. The further north I travel, the more this becomes an issue.

And then there is the wildlife factor — especially around sunrise and sunset, as well as the livestock factor. Like deer in North American, kangaroos are most active during twilight. I must have seen about 25 of them hoping across the road at various places on my drive up to Broome from 80 Mile Beach this morning. Big ones, little ones, and tiny ones I thought could have been rats if they weren’t hopping. I’ve also seen the odd emus darting across the street. Wildlife may be erratic, but at least you can predict when they’ll be a problem. You see plenty of dead animals along the road, but you can assume they were all hit at night. The solution? Don’t travel at night or during twilight.

Livestock, on the other hand, seem to be out all day. Yes, there are no fences keeping large beef cattle and sheep off the road along many of Australia’s outback highways. I’ve actually seen a couple of huge cows rotting away about 50 feet from the road. Eyes open, legs up. Straight out of Monty Python. I can only imagine they were hit by large road trains (consisting of large trucks with 3-4 trailers, 52 meters long) which don’t stop for anything and drive all day and night. At least with livestock, they seem to move a lot slower and more predictably than wildlife. In either case, my eyes are always scanning the horizon for any animals and I always drop my speed way down when I spot them.

There have been a few other interesting things along the roadway. At one point I saw a little yellow sign stating that the road I was travelling on doubled as an emergency runway for the Royal Flying Doctors Service. I suddenly noticed the road widen and there were actually landing stripes across it to designate where planes should touch down on the ground. It was really odd to suddenly find yourself driving down the middle of a airport runway!

My only other road story would be the short cut I tried to take into Tom Price. It was a dirt road, which looked to be in pretty good shape. It was 70 km long but looked smooth, so I thought I would give it a shot to save some fuel on the alternative 150 km way. I travelled pleasantly along for about 20 kms and then I noticed the condition of the road start to rapidly deteriorate and get very bumpy. They have something they like to refer to as “corrugated roads” here that are just like what they sound like. Before long I noticed that there were actually car parts lying alongside the roadway. It was like a car part graveyard. To make a long story short, my little car finally made it into Tom Price and I vowed to never take any dirt roads again. Not for any serious length, anyway. I have to make sure my car can make it back to Perth.

So my usual strategy for finding decent places to camp in popular areas is to be there asking around 10AM. This is when most campgrounds have their checkout time and have the most places available. The worst thing you can do is drive all day and roll into town at 5PM looking for a spot. I made that mistake in Coral Bay and learned to get into towns much earlier. In order to get into a place by 10AM, I usually camp just outside the place I want to visit that I know will be popular. It’s been working well ever since I left Coral Bay.

Bet you weren’t expecting another entry so fast! Neither was I, but I ended up here in Broome a little quicker than I expected. I tried to stay at the station listed in Lonely Planet but they had a big sign up on the main road saying they were forced to close to the public. Instead I camped across some dunes from 80 Mile Beach, which was quite spectacular. In fact, it’s 80 miles long (supposably), nice and wide with a very gradual slope into the ocean, which had beautiful azure waters. Only problem is that they advised against swimming — which didn’t leave much else to do around there. I took a long hike up the beach yesterday afternoon and kept running into 4WDs using it as a highway. Looked kind of fun, actually.

Broome seems huge compared to the other places I’ve been visiting. Most towns consist of nothing more that a handful of little shops, but Broome seems like Grand Central Station with all the tourists around. I’ve been warned repeatedly that it would be extremely expensive and I will have to get out of town quickly — but lo’ and behold, I found a camping spot on the town beach for $11 a night. It’s very nice. I will have to see if there are any surprises with it over the next 24 hours. If not, I may extend my stay. And to think others are spending $400 a night here…

Broome is an old pearling port that was once run primarily by Japanese investors up until WWII (if memory serves me correct). It was in the middle of nowhere until Lord McAlpine got stuck here in transit and fell in love with the place. He built a huge expensive resort (The Cable Beach Club) and now it’s overrun with tourists (at this time of the year, anyway) with directly flights from Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth (and probably Asia) dragging people in from all over. Broome has a reputation for being very multicultural. It even has a Japanese graveyard and a Chinatown that is supposed to have really good Chinese food.

I will post more about Broome after I get a chance to explore a little more…

Yes, this blog would be a lot easier to update through mental telepathy. I will have to look into it… As it stands, it is very difficult to update as I travel through some very remote regions here in northwestern Australia. I haven’t seen a traffic light since I left Perth. Many of the places I’ve been camping have no electricity or fresh water. Internet connections seem few and far between. My regular bedtime has been around 7PM every night since there is nothing much else to do after the sun sets and the temperature drops. That being said, the past ten days or so have been fabulous. I’ve been camping for about 12 straight days now and loving it. I sleep really well with all the fresh air.

Thankfully the long boring drive ended in Ocean Reef, and a really beautiful drive started from there up into Exmouth, and then back south and east up into the Pilbara area to the town of Tom Price and Karijini National Park. I can’t say that I was super impressed with Ocean Reef — mainly because it seemed a bit too crowded, over-priced, and expensive. A happy paradise for yuppies, it seemed. The snorkelling was pretty good, but I’ve had better snorkelling on Rottnest Island near Perth.

I went from Coral Bay up to the very northwestern tip of Australia to Exmouth. I ended up camping on a station just outside of the Cape Ranges National Park (since I couldn’t get into a camp ground in the national park during this peak tourist season up here). Exmouth was much warmer that Coral Bay (for some reason, even though it’s really not that far away) and it is full of exotic bird and other wildlife. The park was really nice with gorges you could hike up into during the mornings, and absolutely fantastic snorkelling you could dive into in the warmer afternoons. There were hundreds of species of beautiful big, medium, and tiny fish there, right off the beach. They seemed perfectly comfortable with you swimming amongst them. It was like swimming in some big rich exotic aquarium.

From Exmouth I drove to Tom Price, which was absolutely beautiful. Tom Price (named after an American, incidentally) is a big wealthy mining town in the middle of the Hammersley Ranges. The movie “Japanese Story” was filmed there if you want to check it out. It was about as beautiful a landscape as I’ve ever seen, with dark red soil, white barked trees, and Spinifex grasses that made the mountains look like they had been dusted with light green snow. An absolutely exquisite landscape.

Near Tom Price is a fabulous national park called Karijini that has a similar landscape, but with deep gorges that drop 100 meters into fabulous swimming holes. There were lots of great hiking trails throughout this whole area. The only problem with it was the fine red dust (much like paprika) that got into everything.

Anyway, I’m now in Australia’s largest port (by tonnage): Port Hedland. This is where much of Australia’s mined minerals from the interior get loaded onto boats for Asia. Asside from that, it’s nothing much to write home about. I’m about to head off towards Broome. I like camping on stations and will try to stop at another station on the way there to break up the 500 km trip. There are also supposed to be some nice beach camp sites along the way. Broome is supposed to be very nice, but I’m afraid it may end up as another Coral Bay. Nice if you’re rich!

Well so far my trip seems to have been made up of mostly driving. Australia is a huge place, and the things worth seeing are far between. I don’t mind the drive when there is something interesting of beautiful to see, but there have been some pretty long boring stretches. You can easily drive for hours at 110 kph without ever seeing anything or anybody (aside for the odd handful of oncoming vehicles). Perhaps I’m being unfair: I’ve found myself taking on extra long distances just to find warmer weather as I drive hard towards the equator.

The first day of driving was quite nice this time of year. The drive from Perth to Geraldton was full of beautiful rolling green pastures and sheep. Traffic wasn’t even that bad, with only a few giant trucks to deal with (transporting massive mining equipment) and lots and lots of SUVs pulling caravans. You think you’re cutting edge venturing out into remote parts of Australia, and all you bump into are friendly, elderly retirees doing “The Big Trip” (as it’s called) around Australia.

I spent my first night at a Youth Hostel in Geraldton. I was able to get a private room with key for $27. Not bad. In an historic old hotel right on the beach (which was unfortunately undergoing rehabilitation). But $27 is a lot more expensive than camping, and with all the fuel I’ve been having to purchase, I’ve been looking to cut a few corners. Now that I’ve invested in the right camping equipment, I’m enjoying camping a lot.

From Geraldton I traveled through Kalibarri past spectacular gorges, natural bridges, and cliffs on up to Denham, a tiny tourist town with roots in the pearling industry. Denham’s claim to fame is that it is the western most town in Australia. It is a beautiful spot, but I got there fairly late and had to settle for a less than ideal camping spot in a tent slum — but with an ocean view. I packed up at dawn and made the obligatory side trip to Monkey Mia to see what all the dolphin fuss was about, and I just happened to get there at the perfect time. They feed dolphins there from the beach every morning at the crack of dawn and have been doing so for at least 40 years. It was a pretty cool setting, actually. I think CALM (Western Australia’s Conservation and Land Management) does a pretty good job designing facilities to blend in with the environment. Afterwards I took my time driving the 150 kilometers back out to the main road, visiting what there was to see along the way. Yes, it was a 150 km dead end street!

After my camping slum experience in Denham, I vowed to never stay in such a place again. I always thought it was peculiar how Australia was so empty, yet there were millions of people who insisted on congregating around little pockets (like they do in the cities). As soon as you drive out of a place like Perth, you find yourself driving for miles and miles without seeing anything or anyone. Then, all of the sudden, you stumble across a recreational park or tourist destination and it’s wall-to-wall people all huddled together. And they all seem happy that way. I find it very odd.

So sure enough, it looked like Canarvon would have to be my next sleepover, and I’ve camped in a tent slum there before (13 years ago) — so I vowed to make the effort to get outside of town and find something special. After taking a late day gamble, I ended up on a really cool station (ranch) about 70 kilometers north of Canarvon. It was along a very rough coast that seemed to attract regular onslaughts of 20 foot waves that were really spectacular (and dangerous, of course — lots of warning signs). The facilities on the station were a bit rustic, but that was all part of the charm. I slept in a tent, but other people were staying in sheep sheerer quarters. I felt like I had a lot of privacy there — even though there were other people around, mostly fishermen. They had hot and cold running water, including showers in demountable trailers heated by burning wood, which were really all I needed.

So I’ve now found myself in yet another tent slum, but this time in Coral Bay, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Once again I found myself driving all day to get to this little town — far isolated from anything else. You don’t really have any other choice but to settle for what you can get if you don’t have time to get to another town or legal camping spot. It a little odd being here because so many people are visiting from Perth, even though it’s a three day drive. There are still plenty of other people visiting from other parts of the world. A few young women from Perth pulled into the tent site next to me. They are also getting started on their six month “Big Trip” around Australia and are making Coral Bay one of their first stops.

Coral Bay is a nice little laid back place. It is famous of its protected reef and associated snorkeling and diving. I will have the chance to check out what’s below the water this afternoon when it warms up a bit more. After all, it is still winter here. The nights are still pretty cold — even if the days to warm up into the upper 70’s. The really hard part of winter camping to get used to is the 14 hour nights and 10 hour days. Since all you can really do at night is sleep while you’re camping — it makes for some long nights waiting for the sun to come up again.

Anyway… I really am enjoying myself (even if it doesn’t sound like it). I will have lots of pictures to see soon. From here I am planning to head to Exmouth for another few days. Exmouth is at the northern end of the same protected Ningaloo Reef, but there appear to be far more camping options in national parks.