The Pilbera

6th June to 18th June.

This leg of our journey took us to Karatha, Millstream Chitchester national park, the mining town of Tom Price, Karijini national park, Marble Bar and Carawine Gorge. The Pilbera landscape is dominated by spinafix, rocky outcrops on red plateaus and gorges with the occasional pool. Average day time winter temp is about 26c.

the Pilbera

The East Pilbera shire, where we have spent most of our time, is the biggest shire (municipality) in the world covering just over 376,000 square kilometers.

Karatha is all about mining, the infrastructure Rio Tinto has established is on a mammoth scale, with rail lines linking the various mine sites to the port. We applied for and recieved a permit to drive the Rio owned road from Karatha to Millstream national park, passing several trains which were 2.5km long and carrying $4,000,000AUD worth of iron ore.

Millstream NP Oasis

At Millstream we camped at the crossing pool site and had a swim in the stream, the area is a surprising oasis in the surrounding dry hills. Originally the area was a working cattle station with tennis courts, race track, swimming pool and a chinese gardener growing vegetables... that was in the early 1900's and droughts and cyclones have seen most of the buildings demolished.

Leaving the national park we headed back to Tom Price to stock up on supplies. Until the 1980's Tom Price was a closed town, owned by Rio, and if it wasn't for the demand driven by the mines it would be a ghost town. We took the mine tour to see some of the big machinery up close.  Everything at the mine site is on a huge scale, the tyres on the mine dump truck are over 4M in height and cost $44,000 each with the truck itself work several million dollars.

Mine dump trucks

Tom Price Mine

Leaving Tom Price we headed for Karijini national park. Karijini has several gorges and we explored most of them, the walks were mostly easy to traverse either along the ridge line, or along the gorge floor. However on each circuit there was always a very steep up or down to traverse. We took our time and enjoyed the scenery.... Making sure of our footings of course!

There were dingo's in the park, and signs everywhere telling you not to feed them or leave small children unattended, but we only saw one dingo. However we saw several out near Carawine gorge and heard then howling at night. 

Dales Gorge

Spinafix pigeons

Next stop Marble Bar, the hottest town in Australia. It holds the record thanks to 161 consecutive days where the temperature NEVER dipped below 37.8c(100f). The biggest surprise in Marble Bar was the chef at the pub. He was thai/Vietnamese and cooked the best Asian style meals we've had in a very long time, and as good a quality as in any capital city restaurant. Hope the pub manage to hang on to him. The second surprise about Marble bar is that the fellow who discovered the place mistook Jasper for Marble. So the town should really be named Jasper Bar.

Marble (Jasper) Bar

 The plan now is to head to Broome for a few days R&R before we tackle the Gibbs river road.

Ningaloo Reef WA

16th May to 4th June
The Ningaloo Reef Marine Park is world heritage listed, and stretches 260 kms along the coastline from Coral Bay to Exmouth. Apart form the majestic coastline, the reason we are here is to swim with the Whale sharks, which are in the area each year from April to July.

Our swim with whale sharks, was an amazing experience. We managed 5 swims in one day on the boat tour departing from Coral Bay. It's quite hectic as the dive boat drops you in the water in front of the 6m whale shark, then you have to wait till it swims past, then speed after it with fins, mask and snorkel and try to keep up.... once you loose the shark it's back to the boat to try and catch up with it again!

snorkeling day with the whale sharks 

The water is crystal clear, a pleasant 24C, and we had a chance to snorkel the reef before heading out into the deep water. I'm sure the crew do this to work out the various swimming abilities of everyone on board before the whale shark swim.... no point loosing a tourist.

whale shark

Each tour boat uses a spotter plane to locate the whale sharks, and luckily we found our whale shark before 11am. We felt very small in the water beside such a large fish, and whilst they only feed on coral spawn, krill and plankton, it's a little unnerving having a fish that big swim towards you.

Having left Coral Bay we booked into a few different camp sites in the Cape Range National National Park out of Exmouth. There's limited camping here, and the travel season is starting to get going, so we were lucky to get in. Although each of the camp sites is small (holding between 5 - 17 sites only) they are all lagoon/beach-side and provide fantastic snorkeling and fishing.

snorkeling lagoon

These few weeks have been about wearing our swimmers most of the time, and spending time in and by the water. We've seen turtles, beautifully coloured fish, coral, rays and even a few sand sharks. 

Thank goodness the camper-trailer has a fresh water shower as the ocean seems to be extra salty??  

There are several gorge walks in the park, which have small populations of the endangered black footed rock wallaby. We were lucky enough to stumble across a group on one of our afternoon walks. They are tiny little creatures.

The country side is arid to semi desert, with very little running fresh water. We've hardy seen a tree with gnarled acacia and spinifex being about all that grows. Yardie Creek is the only permanent fresh water in the National Park, so it's a popular spot for the wild life. There are dingo's in the park but I haven't seen any yet, just tracks in the sand.......

black footed rock wallaby

Yardie Creek

We've had a couple of trips into town to restock supplies,... and search out a latte and flat white.  Kevin's also met some new golf buddies, and played golf in the Saturday Exmouth Comp. 

When we've had enough of the beach life, we'll be heading to Karatha to check out some of the mining boom, then turn inland to Tom Price.