Karrijini to Broome

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So this blog has no photos.
I will tell you why later and then we will have a brief pause to mourn.So we arrived at Karijini earlyish and still the campground was full! This was annoying and then we found the overflow campground. This was a free for all, no layout place. It also featured an assortment of Winibago type motor homes that make me think the circus has come to town.So we found a corner and set up the swags, we had a lovely outlooks of caravans.

No campfires meant a dull evening and an early night and I was lulled to sleep by generators.Everyone seemed to wake up at 5:30 to start packing up and race to the queue to get into the proper campground. Having looked at it we decided to forget it, we would enjoy one of the beautiful gorges and then get out of the National Park and bush camp.So we had a pleasant hour watching the frantic packing of the Caravan club. There were a few young and groovy types who slept in and then had a beer breakfast and strummed their guitars - I admired them greatly.

In the Dorban pack up we discovered 2 new facts1) a drinks can in the car had mysteriously rupture in the night.2) both our iPhones had been in an adjacent compartment which flooded so our phones has been marinating in cider for 10 hours.RIP our IPhones ?This was a bit of a blow and much gnashing of teeth and wailing happened.

I also began to question again whether our run of bad luck might be a Sign and perhaps I should have enlisted some energetic prayer support earlier.Anyway its first world problems but my phone is a company phone so I'm probably in the brown and smelly stuff.

So we packed and left and headed for Dales Gorge. My knee makes the more challenging bush walks out of the question, I'm all for having a go but not when I make a nuisance of myself and have to be rescued, so we did the walk to the bottom of Fortescue Falls and on to Fern Pool. The pool was so utterly divine I had my clothes off and my swimmers on before you could say Naked.There was a ladder and I enjoyed 10 minutes of totally blissful wild swimming while Brian watched. He doesn't really swim much.Now since my knee op I have not been in my usual fitness regime and so am not in the best of shape so there will not be lots of swimwear photos but I will upload some photos of Karrijini as it is breathtakingly beautiful and the geology is interesting - I thinks it's petty much solid iron ore.So after our explore of Dales Gorge and Fortescue Falls we got on the road and headed out onto the Northern highway hoping to make some progress and find a decent bush camp.

The road from Karijini to Port Hedland was interesting and 9 out of every 10 vehicles that passed us was a mining road train. Nothing describes how big, noisy and scary these are. When we passed the first couple my pelvic floor was severely tested. I am talking an ENORMOUS truck towing 4 cars each of which might have 6 wheels, these things are HUGE!

Anyway, stand by for my thoughtful bit.

Australia is massive and to get to places you must pass through many hundreds of km of "nothing". This "nothing" is endlessly entertaining to us, it changes all the time from rocky to flat, bushy to treeless its is endlessly varied and always captivating. Anyway this section of road included lots of mine sites, some Aboriginal land and some cattle country. There was one area of the Pilbara that had many rock formations, they glowed red and were fascinating. They looked ancient and sacred even to me and what type of idiot do you have to be to stop you car and decorate these rocks with "Jason, Ben or my personal favourite, "Ballbag"?Also the land seems ripped open and wounded by these mines and there slag heaps. These are huge, I don't know about space but these are clearly visible at 37000 feet. But this industry helps generate the revenue to pay for the contract that my employer won that paid for me to be here- it's a hard equation and my conscience is not clear.

Any we found a 24 hour rest stop and dodged the crowds to find a lonely corner for 2 swags and a campfire which was fine for us. Today we banged on and reached Broome a day early. We have run out of audiobooks so Brian decided to cure the boredom by coming up with mental maths tests like some daft wheel ratio and " if I drive at 95km/HR for 2.375 hours what time will I need diesel?"

Luckily we arrived in Broome before I was forced to chastise him.We are in the Broome YHA tonight which is lovely and airy with a pool, bar, free wifi and hammocks. We had a curry at the local Indian and found that without iPhones we can still talk to each other over dinner. I'm not joking last week we watched an older couple who sat in the pub and neither spoke or looked at each other all through their meal.Tomorrow we will find our accommodation and explore properly while our iPhones sit in two boxes of long grain rice so please pray for them and us!

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