camping up the cape

Everyone should have a cape to their north where you can head off for a few days in a four wheel drive for a bit of adventure.  In the time I spent in Queensland, I never did make it more than a little way up the Cape York Peninsula, but there was something reassuring about knowing it was always there, hanging over us with mysteries to be revealed and adventures to be had.  Over here our cape is not quite so famous but no less alluring.  We'd been up a couple of times last year, but not since Little Bird was born, and not in our car either.  But the heat and humidity of the Wet are closing in and we decided that if we were going to take Little Bird camping any time soon, then we better get out and do it.  I also had a long long weekend off work, so we had no excuses for moping around town.  We loaded up the car, strapped in the baby, and headed north.

The Dampier Peninsula is a big flat red triangle of land that sticks out northward between Broome and Derby with a sandy corrugated road up the middle of it.  We were nervous about how Little Bird might handle the corrugations, but needn't have worried.  She slept most of the way, waking at the end of the dirt just before Beagle Bay.  We pulled into the community there for a bit of a rest and to stretch our legs (photo above) and then cruised on north to Cape Leveque, at the tip of the peninsula.  Kooljaman Resort at the cape is locally owned with a full range of camping/glamping options - we decided that this time we'd set ourselves up in a beach shelter for the weekend and save some of the more glam options for something special.  Little Bird seemed to approve of the decision, as you can see from her face here as she helps me with setting up camp:

The weekend was a winner all round - cool breezes and hammocks, short walks to the beach, cool swims at least a couple of times each day, sunsets and sunrises.  I finally got my kayak out and paddled around the cape and out to see Leveque Island, and also did some snorkelling just off the beach where I was saw my first blue-spotted ray.

On the Saturday we noticed a poster for the harvest party and Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm, just across the peninsula from us.  We decided it was worth a look, and we managed to score a beautiful seafood dinner, some live music from Beagle Bay, and the biggest bonfire we've ever seen.  We were probably the first people to head home from the party, but we also had the youngest party-goer with us, so I don't think we lose any cred on that one.

The drive home at the end of the weekend was a dream, with our little girls sleeping through almost the whole trip.  We got home refreshed and with that "why don't we do this every weekend?" feeling we seem to get (almost) every time we go camping.

dos abuelas

Broome is 'home' now, but it's also a long, long way from 'home'.  For six months of the year we can get a direct flight to Brisbane (one per week) or Sydney (two per week) and we can be back 'home' in a mere four or five hours.  For the other six months we might as well be in a different country as getting 'home' is an all-day flying adventure.

We feel that distance more now with Little Bird, and not just because the prospect of seven-and-a-half hours flying time with an eight-and-a-half-month-old (plus an hour or so spent in Perth airport between flights) is a bit like the prospect of an all-day visit to the dentist.  But more we feel it because we see our little one growing, learning, and changing so much in between our visits to family and friends back east.  We're really glad to be building some close connections in our hood here, but we really miss all you people and would love to have her growing up surrounded by your love.

So we're so glad for all the visitors we've had here, and especially that Little Bird's grandmas have both had the chance to come and visit recently for some slow Broome family time and to keep building their relationships with our little girl.

Home now

And so Broome is home now.  We've been taking things pretty easy the last few weeks - a couple of short trips out of town with friends, but mostly just settling into our new place and enjoying having our own furniture and knowing that we won't have to pack it up again any time soon.  Feeling strangely settled and curious as to how long that feeling can last.

West 3 ~ Karijini & the Pilbara

Five gorges in one day was our challenge on our first day at Karijini National Park.  Having arrived late in the evening after a long day of outback driving, we got to camp for free in the "overflow" section.  Next morning after breakie, we were off and into the gorges.  Karijini gorges are beautiful - they cut right into the deep red rock of the Pilbara, and each has it's own character, some tight and narrow, others are broad open canyons.  One nice feature is that you can basically park at the top of each gorge and walk straight down into it, making the five in one challenge achievable.

We started with Weano Gorge, initially following the open walking trail down the upper gorge, then slipping into our wetsuits as it got tighter and wetter further down.  We didn't bother taking the wetsuits off to climb out of Weano and down Hancock Gorge to Kermit's Pool.  We ate some lunch on the drive to Joffre Gorge, a big open gorge with a stunning waterfall and big cold swimming holes, and then ducked over to Knox Gorge.  The Sun was sinking as we got into Kalamina Gorge, but we marched on down to the Natural Arch and then had a swim at the top of the gorge that was partly to refresh ourselves, but mostly so that we could say we swam in all five gorges.

Next day we packed up the camper and spent the morning walking and swimming our way through Dale's Gorge before heading northward to the coast.  On the way down from Karijini the Great Northern Highway winds down through Munjina Gorge.  It's a pretty impressive sight, especially with the massive roadtrains rolling down, and we decided that one of us had to ride a bike down.  HJ took the honours, I got to be the cameraman.

For our last night on the road we camped at Cape Keraudren, a beautiful, bare little peninsula about an hour from Port Hedland.  We got in at night and it looked like everyone was asleep in their caravans, so we crept around setting up the camper and went pretty much straight to bed after a couple of quiet card games.  In the morning we had a slightly successful spearfishing expedition.  I say slightly because the one and only fish we caught was floating upside down when we found it.

One long final stretch of driving along one of the flattest dullest sections of road around brought us to Broome.  We had both survived nine days on the road, ten gorges, one cave, multiple attempts to find more caves, three bike rides, five snorkels, one skateboard ride, one bogging, three sci-fi audiobooks, innumerable inane conversations.  Whether our friendship survived remains to be seen.

~ Photos ~
Gorges clockwise from top left: Weano, Hancock, Knox, Dales, Kalamina, Joffre.
HJ riding down Munjina Gorge.
Camp at Cape Keraudren.

West 2 ~ Cape Range & Ningaloo

When we travelled south through WA back in April we thought about making the side trip up the North West Cape to Cape Range, but it was still too hot, and Little Bird was still too small, and everything was too exposed - trees not being a major feature of the landscape here - so we bypassed it.  We got our taste of Ningaloo Reef at Coral Bay, and then kept motoring southward.  Not this time.  I'd booked 3 nights at Kurrajong campground, just behind the sand dunes (like every other campsite we saw in the park), so when we arrived in the afternoon our site was all ready for us.  Over the next couple of days we went walking up through the range at Mandu Mandu Gorge and Yardie Creek Gorge, riding bikes and skateboards up and down the roads, and snorkelling at the Oyster Stacks, Turquoise Bay, and just off the beach at our campsite.

The whole peninsula is basically made of limestone, making it prime caving territory, with at least 600 caves in the area.  As usual, their locations are kept secret so that clowns like us don't go crawling down them and get stuck.  That didn't stop us looking though, and we ended up finding a couple of promising holes in the ground, but the best of them were blocked up with rock fig roots, so we never managed to find something we could squeeze into.

The snorkelling was amazing, and we got in the water at least a couple of times each day.  The national park covers a long stretch of coast with Ningaloo Reef immediately off shore, so anywhere you stop and jump into the water is rewarded immediately with coral reefs and fish.  We both thought it was some of the best snorkelling we've ever done, and definitely the most impressive coral gardens we've ever seen.  Much better than anywhere on the Great Barrier Reef that we've seen.  We spotted a lot of big fish, as well as a couple of turtles, some eels, a shark, a big stingray and a humpback dolphin.

A little highlight for me was the birds at our campsite.  There was a constant twittering in the scrub around us, but I struggled to get a look at which birds were there.  Each morning and evening I prowled around with my binoculars and camera trying to get a glimpse, but the best I got was a little wren-shaped bird disappearing over a sand dune in the evening twilight.  Turning my fount of knowledge - my phone - I worked out that they were most likely to be white-winged fairy-wrens.  Still I struggled to get a look to confirm.  Finally, as our second last morning was wearing out, I stepped out the door of the camper and right in front of me, about three metres away, were three or four little birds on some sticks.  All but one were the usual vague brown fairy-wrens, but one was a male in his breeding colours: dark all over except for a patch of white on each wing.  He disappeared instantly, but it was enough for me to confirm the sighting.  Fairy-wrens are a bit of a favourite bird of ours, and I've given myself the challenge of seeing all the different species in Australia.  We've see our Superbs at Saltwater Creek and Splendids at the West Macs, Red-Backed at Parry's Creek Lagoon and Red-Winged at Pemberton, and we've seen Variegated Fairy-Wrens pretty much everywhere.  Adding White-Winged to the list, I'm now left with three more: Purple-Crowned, that we hope to see on some future ventures through the Kimberley; Blue-Breasted, that we might spot on another trip to southern WA; and Lovely, that will have to wait until we go to Cape York some day.  After that I guess we'll have to go to PNG to see the rest of the world's fairy-wrens.

One last highlight was spotting a couple of Black-Footed Rock-Wallabies at Yardie Creek Gorge.  There's only up to about forty of these shy little creatures living around the gorge, apparently they used to be a lot more common before foxes cleared them out in all but the most inaccessible places.

West ~ attending to business

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.

East ~ a touch of winter

Having decided to stay in the tropics, we were left with a dilemma: what to do with Little Bird's beautiful woollens that had variously been acquired, gifted, or - best of all - knitted lovingly by her grandmothers.  We had no choice.  We had to get her somewhere cold while we had the chance.

And so to Brisbane.  Sure, it's not a very cold place by most people's reckoning, but it's cold enough by our standards.  And incidentally while there we had the chance to meet up with lots of friends and family, for Little Bird to have time with friends, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.  Thanks to all of you who welcomed us back into your lives - we wish we'd had longer with you!  Come visit!  And those we missed - here's hoping we'll see you next time.

Mel and Bird stayed in winter for three weeks, I on the other hand left after 10 days as I had some business to attend to...