We were almost out of drinking water in the van but unfortunately we couldn’t fill up at Lighthouse Bay as they had limited drinking water and even the salty shower water came from bore holes. Instead we set off to Coral Bay, another part of the marine park just own the coast, hoping we’d be able to fill up there instead. On the way we called into town as Matt insisted on buying a silly looking hat with a net attached to keep the flies off. That is the problem about Exmouth - there are hundreds of flies everywhere many of [View Full Entry]

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After some serious debating we decided to spend another night in the area so that we could go on the turtle tour in the evening. The tour was based at a place near the national park entrance about 40km from where our current campsite was based. I didn’t like the idea of driving back that distance through an area of countryside that was full of nocturnal animals so we decided to move to a campsite called Lighthouse Bay as it was only a few minutes drive from the turtle beach. We spent the morning trying to find somewhere with internet access [View Full Entry]

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I wasn’t impressed when the alarm woke us up at 6.30am. Being woken up by a beep isn’t something I’ve ever enjoyed, but since being away I’ve begun to hate it more and more. I dragged myself and Matt out of bed and by 7.30am we were climbing on board our safari 4x4 bus. There were seven of us in total on the tour - a couple from Barnsley, a mother and son from Melbourne and a lady from Switzerland. Dave was our guide for the day and after he’d given us a brief guided tour of town, we drove out [View Full Entry]

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After a bit of a debate about where to go, we settled on Exmouth which was slightly out of our way on a peninsula. There were two potential settlements that provided a gateway to the Ningaloo Reef Marine Park and this was the largest of the two, so there were more tours running from there, plus it gave us access to a national park with lots of stunning scenery and wildlife. The other option had been Coral Bay, but we figured that we could spend a night there afterwards if we liked the look of it as it was on the [View Full Entry]

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This was the first time in a long while that we’d not been parked under a tree overnight, so we were woken as the sun beat down through the gaps in our curtains turning the van into an oven. Even with the aircon on it was steaming. We’d read the guide book the previous night and had decided against spending a night at the Karijini National Park. That was only a few hours away. It was supposed to be beautiful but the sites there were all unpowered and the temperatures reach 40 degrees so I didn’t think it was a good [View Full Entry]

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We were both a bit worried about the journey today. It was the longest stretch we’d done before and although it was on a good road, we knew there was going to be very little on the 600km route from Broome to Port Headland. It was a long way, through barren red soil, and there would be no mobile signal either. In preparation, we filled up the water tank and diesel before setting off around 9.30am. Getting out of Broome proved difficult. You’d think that GSP would make it a synch but instead it got a bit confused and kept trying [View Full Entry]

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After another lay in I kicked Matt out to go to the office to book us in for one more night before the 10am deadline, while I got started on a cooked breakfast as a treat. It was lunchtime before we set off into town. This time everything was open as it was a weekday. We visited the photography galleries we’d been looking forward to and were amazed at some of the spectacular images (check out www.reddirtphoto.com.au). I wanted to buy some prints but Matt persuaded me to wait and order them online when our credit card bills have been all [View Full Entry]

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We allowed ourselves a lovely lay in until 9.45am seeing as we didn‘t have to be anywhere. It’s funny as at home we’d think nothing of staying in bed late on a weekend, but while travelling we rarely get chance as we have to check out of the sites by 10am and it takes a couple of hours to get up, have breakfast and pack everything away ready for the journey. It was Sunday but we expected everything in town to be open as even the small towns on the east coast didn’t close up until late. We arrived at the [View Full Entry]

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We got up for breakfast early as our flight shuttle was booked for 8am. After a buffet fry up we started to make our way up to our room to get our bags. To get there we had to leave the restaurant and walk across a courtyard to some external stairs to our block. Just as we got to the stairs we heard a loud smack that we instantly knew was a car crashing. We both ran towards the high fencing of the motel to see if we could see through the gap, but before we got there we heard a [View Full Entry]

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We had to check out for 10am so spent the rest of the morning in the campsite internet room passing the time until our airport pick up shuttle arrived. This time I made sure that I had a camera to hand on the flight so that I could try to capture some of the amazing scenery from the air. Through the speckled glass windows it really wasn’t possible to capture just how beautiful the outback looked from the air. We flew over the endless red plains, patches of trees, perfectly straight bright orange lines which were dirt tracks and beautiful white [View Full Entry]

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