What with our change in plans, we were now in the situation of having our car and camper trailer, along with much of our other stuff, parked in Perth, more than 2000km from home. We considered having them shipped up, but where's the fun in that? A better idea began to form in my head, and I sent this text message to my esteemed friend HJ in Orange NSW:
"So I might need to bring our car and camper from Perth to Broome. This would involve: a rendesvous in Perth; a lot of driving through red, dusty outback; listening to sci-fi audiobooks; canyoning at Karijini; swimming at the beach at Broome; scrambling around rocks. I would supply: car, camper, fuel, food, amusing anecdotes. You would supply: scintillating conversation, humourous observations, unreasonable demands. I would contribute to you flying there and back. You would contribute to me having an enormous headache."
Needless to say, HJ could not resist such an offer (who could?), nor could his wife and children induce him to stay. He even made special roadtrip T shirts to commemorate the occasion. In the event, we had all of the adventures that I had originally promised him and much, much more.
Our first few days on the road involved fairly constant movement, interspersed with little adventures: climbing up rocks and down little caves at Yanchep National Park (just north of Perth), riding bikes around the Pinnacles Desert in Nambung National Park (a little further north), getting the car bogged on a sandy track trying to find the eponymous cave in Drover's Cave National Park (a touch further north again), and playing 'Lost Cities' while eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Geraldton. And that was just on day one.
We camped our first night at a basic but picturesque camp site at Coronation Beach. Got moving early on day two as once again we had a lot on our agenda. First priority was a visit to The Principality of Hutt River, a dusty little place that declared independance from the rest of Australia back in the 70s, and is still kicking along with it's own currency, postage stamps, and Academy of Science. We stopped long enough to learn about the discovery of the speed of gravity, and to have our T shirts signed by Prince Graeme who was kind enough to pose for a photo. HJ wanted to kneel and kiss his finger, but his highness is a true man of the people and preferred a good solid hand shake.
On from Hutt River we stopped at Kalbarri to see if we could find any surf. Nothing at our standards (we're pretty awesome) but we did stop to watch a guy getting towed into some heavy waves. We thought about getting in, but we didn't want to show him up so we just had a quick little dip in the lagoon and went on our way.
Onwards from Kalbarri we pulled into Hamelin Pool to pay our respects to our distant ancestors, the stromatolites. These rock building bacteria apparently once dominated the earth, but they've now retired to a dusty little caravan park at Shark Bay. We took a look, and kept rolling.
The sun set as we left Hamelin Pool, and it was dark when we reached Gladstone Beach, another basic camp site in the middle of nowhere. The main feature there is an old wharf where apparently dugongs gather in the Summer. Unable to resist a sign that says "DANGER!" we both jumped off the end of the wharf for a refreshing morning dip. No dugongs to be seen, so we got moving.
We made a stop at Carnarvon for supplies and to look at an enormous space antenna dish thing. There was not much more for us in town, so we drove on. And on. Just made a couple of re-fuelling stops and otherwise kept on going, listening to our sci-fi audiobooks, all the way to Cape Range National Park, and once there, we stopped.
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