Karratha/Dampier 20th May The towns and areas surrounding Karratha have a European history that dates back to 1699 when William Dampier first sailed into the Archipelago aboard his ship the Roebuck, landing at Pirates cove on Enderby Island. Another new town in WA, Karratha was established in the late 1960’s to serve the requirements of major local industrial projects, such as Pilbara Iron, Dampier Salt and later Woodside’s North West Shelf Gas Ventures. Karratha derives its name from an aboriginal word meaning ‘good country’. With a population of around 12,000 everything looks new and ‘ growing’ and appeared as a busy modern town that could provide all necessary services and industrial support to service the mining industry and community that has developed around them. Karratha is considered the shopping hub of the Pilbara and we visited ... read more

Exmouth 15th May One of the newest towns in Australia, Exmouth was founded in 1967 as a support town for the Harold E Holt US Naval communications station, and a joint venture with Australia, which is the main source of local employment (spying?). As we drove into Exmouth for the first time, it was evident that it was new and growing and attracting ‘money’. The magnificent Novotel Ningaloo Resort based next to the marina and the new estate being built on a canal system is the first thing that greets you, and it is pretty impressive. With no wet season, the region has a dry climate with hot summers and mild winters, Exmouth has around 320 days of sunshine each year. We were here at the start of winter and experienced weather temps down to 33 ... read more

Warroora Station Leaving Carnarvon, we went via the south Road to join the highway so that we could for a last time drive through all the Plantations and pick up some Carnarvon Gold (Bananas) from a roadside stall, fantastic. Joining the North West Coastal Highway (NWCH) again it was point the nose North West and eat up kilometres. The landscape now has become quite flat with red sand and scrub dominating. Occasionally we will pass by or over a ridge but we are now in the Pilbara and it is basically a hot, flat and red landscape, and it is winter! As we headed towards Minilya Roadhouse, our first and only available stop before our destination, we looked at some of the amazing stats for this state, Western Australia. With a total land area of 2,529,875 ... read more

Shark Bay 2nd to 5th April ‘12 This Blog entry covers our stay at Hamelin Pool Caravan Park and our visits within the Shark Bay World Heritage Area including Steep Point and the Monkey Mia Reserve. We left Kalbarri and headed west to join the North West Coastal Highway where we then had a run of 180 klms north to the Overlander Roadhouse, (diesel was $169.90/Ltr, so still not too bad), where we were to leave the highway again and head west into the Shark Bay World Heritage Area. This was also our first day of reasonably high humidity, so we felt that we were truly heading towards the northern regions of the Pilbara and the Kimberly at last! We also clicked over 20,000 Klm since leaving 7 months ago, so a big day all around ... read more

Lynton 28th April ‘12 As with Greenough, we felt that there was enough interest in this place to also support a separate blog entry despite us not staying here. On the way North to Kalbarri from Horrocks, we rounded a bend in the road to be confronted with a sign that read ‘Lynton Convict Depot’ and as we were in the market for a few wenches we pulled in to see what the go was. Unfortunately we were over a century and a half too late to get a new wench or two ! The actual date that the depot began is not definite, but a report in 1853 lists the Depot as only just started with a party of 60 men arriving on the 22nd May accompanied by a Sergeant Reddin, and a Prisoner Guard ... read more