Day 42 – Friday 10th August – Cape Range National Park, Tulki Beach campground Mark and I set the alarm for 6am and went for a pre-dawn walk along the beach at Kurrajong, looking out for wildlife and taking photos. On the beach we saw one euro and in the water we saw a couple of humpback whales on the horizon. Once the sun was properly up and the air warmed up a bit I went for an investigatory snorkel along Kurrajong beach. I saw loads of fish in the clear blue water and then found a small coral reef further along the beach which was teeming with fish. It was time to get the rest of the family in the water to see how amazing it was. We had been snorkelling for about ... read more

Day 40 – Wednesday 8th August – Karijini to Barradale Rest Area on the Warlu way We had a long driving day ahead of us so we got up early to pack up and managed to leave the campground by 8.30am. It always seems to take us at least an hour to pack up each time we have stayed for more than one night in a place and consequently used most of our gear. On the way out of the park we stopped at Mount Bruce, the second highest peak in Western Australia, and did a very short walk to a lookout over Marandoo open cut mine, one of the iron ore mines in the Pilbara. The mine was quite a long way away but because of the scale of the operation you could ... read more

Day 38 – Monday 6th August – Karijini National Park This morning when we woke up at 6.30, the temperature was 7 degrees. But as soon as the sun began peeking over the Hamersley range the air quickly warmed up and by 9am it was around 24 degrees! We had a slow start to the day, doing more diary writing and reading. Anna took a soft grey rock from Cape Leveque and has been grinding it into a clay paste for a couple of days, aiming to make some sort of clay animal. Let’s see what happens to this… At 10.30 we headed off to do the Dales Gorge walk. From the car park there is a steep descent into the gorge and before long you reach the very pretty Fortescue Falls, a fan-shaped ... read more

Day 36 - Saturday 4th August – Dampier Peninsula to Cape Keraudren We packed up in the early morning, filled the trailer with water and left Chile Creek by about 8.30am. None of us were looking forward to the very bumpy corrugated drive back to Broome but it turned out that the grader had done quite a bit of work in the few days we had been on the peninsula and it was much smoother than expected. That meant we arrived in Broome at 11am for a quick pit stop – fuel, a few groceries and coffees. The races are on in Broome today and the place was chockers. People taking an age at the petrol station, loads of people in the supermarket and a huge queue for coffees. After the unsealed road we ... read more

Day 34 – Thursday August 2nd – Quondong to Chile Creek, Cape Leveque Feeling really rested after our few days at the amazing Quondong Point, we packed up and headed further North up the Dampier Peninsula to Cape Leveque. We had been recommended Chile Creek as a really beautiful place to stay but first we had to get there. The 100kms of unsealed road was the worst we had driven along – big bumps, undulations, corrugations, deep sandy patches etc. So it was slow going until we reached the Aboriginal Township of Beagle Bay, which is famous for the Sacred Heart Church and its pearl oyster shell decorations. We briefly joined in on a photography tour for a few minutes and took some of their recommended shots. Driving north from Beagle Bay the road ... read more