Just One of Those Days

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DAY 188

Moving day arrives again, Andy asked me what time it was, I peered at my watch and could just about make out that it was five to seven. He said “are you sure? It is rather dark.” I looked again and could this time make out the time a little bit better “Ah, it is actually five to six.” Great, another hour in bed.

At 7.00 Andy jumped out of bed, but I was far from being in the wide awake club. Andy reappeared at some point with a cup of tea for me, I sat in bed for a bit and drank it. Finally at 7.30 I thought I should get up, things to do.

I went for a shower, Andy said he would potter around and do things while I showered. 20 minutes later I came back to find that the tent was down and most things were loaded in the trailer. I was surprised as we usually do all of this together, so while Andy also made some repairs to the zipper on the cover for the trailer, its constant use seems to have pulled it apart, I went off to fry some bacon on the barbecue for a sandwich.

I realised that a couple sat at the table eating breakfast were the same couple that we sat and chatted to one evening at Kalbarri. They have been up to Steep Point, he tells us that it took 5 hours to get there from the bitumen; the road apparently had been chewed up previously in heavy rains so the roads were not in good condition. I am glad that we chose not to go up there; it may have been tricky with the trailer, even though the beach may have been worth a visit.

We say goodbye to our Tawny Frogmouth Owls, just before 10.00 we pull out of the campsite and roll in to the petrol station next door to top up with diesel at $1.31 per litre. At 10.00 we are back on the highway and heading north. We hope to meet up with the Travelin Trueys today; they sent us a text telling us where they would be camping tonight, so we are heading for Garalia Station.

Not long after setting off, we start to see road kill, there is plenty of it, Kangaroos, sheep, cows, birds all at varying degrees of decomposition. Did I say birds? When I say birds I mean a Wedge Tailed Eagle. Sad to see but they do not move that quickly when they are on top of their prey, they are very undisturbed, but if you stop they fly away.

A while later Andy pulls over so that I can take over the driving for a bit, there is an awful stench in the air, and something is definitely dead near us. Phew what a whiff! As I jump into the drivers seat I glance to the other side of the road and there it is, one very dead large red kangaroo.

We move on, and we count yet another dead Eagle, all in we must have counted four dead eagles today.

When Andy resumed driving later I sat in the passenger seat with my camera at the read, I was determined not to miss an Eagle today, I see a large dark object ahead of us with which appears to be birds floating around, I told Andy to slow up (providing there was no one behind us), I said “I can see an Eagle”, a car passed us in the opposite direction and the Eagle stayed put. However Andy pulled up as soon as he could but the minute we pulled off the bitumen the Eagle took flight, we waited and it waited in the bushes away from the highway, but the Eagle got fed up waiting so off it flew into the distance along with the opportunity to get my photo. Next time!!

Our journey today takes us over the line for the Tropic of Capricorn. The landscape is flat but you can see hundreds of termite mounds piercing the flat landscape. It has turned out to be quite a cloudy day today, but still very warm. The landscape shows a ridge in the distance and when we turn off the main highway onto the Exmouth Road we driv over the top of the ridge and the landscape flattens out again.

We arrive at Giralia at around 2.00, but there is no one to be seen, I ring the bell outside on the veranda, and wander around but still no one. I look around the back to find the campsites and they are empty too. After about 20 minutes waiting I ring the bell again, then a few minutes after I hear someone coming from round the back, we wonder if he was having an afternoon siesta.

Anyway, $9.00 each and we are checked in, the chap shows us around the back and where the showers are. I do have to ask a favour though. The electricity here is limited supply and only comes on at 5.30 in the evening and goes off at 9.00, once again our fridge is playing up and the fault light indicates that it is not getting enough power from the batteries. We are sure that the batteries are ok, the engine starts every morning no problem at all, we have dual batteries too, however for now we need to get the fridge onto power so that we do not lose all of our food supplies.

The Station owner shows me where we can put the fridge to have a continual power supply. Great, problem solved for now, but Andy thinks we should drop into Beaurepairs to have them check out the batteries, otherwise we may need to drop the fridge into a service agent to be looked at.

In the usual record time we unpack and the tent is up, while we put the tent up a caravan pulls in, so at least we know we are not alone here tonight, we are still not certain in the Travelin Trueys will show up as yet, it is not a far drive from Exmouth and maybe they chose to push on a little bit.

I get the gas cooker ready so that we can have a cup of tea, and then find that the arm is all floppy, hmmm, another problem! Andy investigates further and we now find that there is a fractured pipe inside the cooker. We knew the cooker was playing up as we could not get enough gas to the burners but we thought there was a blockage or that the flexible hose was leaking but now we think that this pipe must have been fractured for a while and today it finally gave up the ghost. It is a good job that we had a proper lunch today (oh yes and the bacon sandwich) it looks cheese and crackers tonight! It’s tough out on the road you know.

We cannot find the Camelbak, I cannot find my Lonely Planet, it seems that we are having one of those days. I speak to the people that pulled in behind us with their caravan, they kindly boil the kettle so that we can have a cup of tea.

Anyway, we both rest in the heat of the afternoon; it is quite cloudy so we do not have to worry about shade from the sun. I type up the blog for yesterday, by late afternoon I get the feeling that the Trueys are not going to come, there are probably a number of reasons why. Though disappointed we are not too worried we have a comfortable place for the night on this station and at least they have flushable loos.

A little later on Margaret and Clive pop round with the offer that we can use their portable gas oven if we needed to cook our evening meal, we thank them kindly and explain that we are not going to cook tonight, but Margaret does put the kettle on for us to have another cup of tea.

We are sitting outside the tent chatting to Clive when the guy that owns this place turns up, he said there will be a phone call for you in about 20 minutes, they just rang, it was a family that stayed here last night, ah! The penny drops, we are a day behind and it seems that the text message must have been a day behind.

We wander over to the house and wait for the phone call, Andy spoke to Ken they confirmed that they stayed last night and tonight they are in Tom Price ready to drive to Karajini National Park in the morning. They are going to the same place as us, however we are behind so hope that they are able to stay a few nights at least so that we can get to see them.

Interestingly Andrew and Kirsty will be making their way over to Karajini too, but they will be a day behind us, so we hope to see them too.

However we have the problem with the gas cooker, now if we cannot get something sorted in Tom Price we may have to change our plans and head up to Karratha or the next decent size town. Although we are happy to cook over a fire we have to be sure that we can get firewood and that there is no fire ban in the National Park. We have not been able to put the fire on here as the chap that owns this place says the grass is too dry.

Not an exciting evening after tea I am typing the blog, Andy is reading you can hear the crickets playing cricket outside and some other large insect (or just a huge cricket) keeps thudding the side of the tent, we found this out earlier when I thought Andy was messing around and when he said not because he was standing on the opposite side we had to investigate.

This station is 685,000 acres it was a thriving station until it was sold in 2004 to Department of the Environment and Conservation (DEC) to be turned back to its natural state, so now it is a bit of a tourist thing but the electricity is only on between 5.30 and 9.00 running off a generator. The rest of the place runs on solar power when the generator is not running.

They used to have an aeroplane, but now it is not a full working station they do not need it anymore, the airstrip is still here. We have been told that you do not want to be up here in the summer, it is way too hot at 49 degrees, he even finds it too hot and he has lived here all of his life. His wife actually comes from Kent in England, but we have not met her.

Oh yes, in the meantime I do manage to find the Camelbak and my Lonely Planet guide on Australia, things are looking up.

So I am going to say goodnight before the power goes off. It is a very black night out there and as it has been one of those days I think an early night is in order.

Until tomorrow.

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Photos

Gascoyne River
Empty!

Almost Empty
Just a few puddles remain

Levels
This shows where the water level has been in previous years.

Happy
Termite Mound

Termite Mounds
Hundreds of these pierce the landscape