Category: Australia

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 much easier to update via 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 at Ocean Reef, and a really beautiful drive started from there up into Exmouth, then back south and east into the Pilbara area to the town of Tom Price and Karijini National Park. I can’t say I was super impressed with Ocean Reef — mainly because it seemed a bit too crowded and overpriced. 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 Exmouth, the very northwestern tip of Australia. I ended up camping on a station just outside of the Cape Ranges National Park (since I couldn’t get into a campground in the national park during this peak tourist season up here). Exmouth was much warmer than Coral Bay (for some reason, even though it’s really not that far away), and it is full of exotic birds and other wildlife. The park was really nice, with gorges you could hike up in 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 interior-mined minerals are loaded onto ships for Asia. Aside from that, there’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 campsites 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 apart. I don’t mind the drive when there is something interesting or 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 from 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 a 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 travelled through Kalbarri 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 westernmost 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 kilometres 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 a 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 kilometres 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 shearer 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’s 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 for its protected reef and associated snorkelling 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 warm up into the upper 70s. 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.