My how you've grown

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Day 177 - Tom Price to Exmouth

Poor Tom Price, we haven’t really given it much of a chance to impress with our whistle stop overnighter! From what we can see it’s a nice little place (if a bit pricey in parts!) and the cuisine from the local Chinese restaurant comes highly recommended!

The town is surrounded by mines, huge mines and infact the town’s Pilbara Iron mines is one of the biggest in the world. Tom Price was named after an American who in the early 1960’s was a key player in convincing the big companies that it was worth mining here, his theory was later proved by the rich ore deposits found. Iron ore wasn’t all they found in the hills, they also mined asbestos from Wittenoom Gorge which despite being a beautiful place cannot be suggested by the regions visitor centres because of the ‘obvious risk’ associated to the area. What a shame.

Time to go so we stop at reception on the way out to swap the amenities key back into a $20 note! Always a good thing to remember to do!

As we drive out of the town we pass the ‘Isolated Area’ warning sign telling us to ensure we have plenty of water and to stay with our vehicle in the event of a breakdown. Another reminder to the dangers of travelling in this vast country and we’re not even off the bitumen! Not far past the sign we can see where the recent wild fires have scorched the earth and destroyed the trees, grass and shrubs that once flourished. The fire was started by two youngsters, aged about eight, near to the school but it rapidly got out of control and burned for days around the town. Luckily for us it’s not burning where we’re driving today so we don’t have to worry.

The next town is that of Paraburdoo and it’s a case of ‘blink and you’ll miss it’! It’s a very scenic drive in a rolling hills, rocky outcrops, spinifex sort of way but there’s so little traffic on the roads it’s quite unbelievable. We drive for hours without seeing a single soul, even Tom Tom doesn’t have a lot to say for himself with a practically straight road once we’re out of Paraburdoo!

We pass ‘Springs Community’, or at least the sign for it which was done in the strikingly beautiful aboriginal colours. Goodness knows how far off the bitumen the community actually is because there’s nothing in view from where we are.

We stopped a couple of times along the way to let the car cool down, everything gets red hot when we’re travelling for hours on end. The heat that comes off the road is astounding.

Apparently I nodded off at one point, shocking and I almost can’t believe it but when Darryl tells me what I’ve missed I’m glad I did. We see a lot of ‘strange’ things on the side of the road; trees with ‘stubbies’ covering the ends of the branches, termite mounds with yellow helmets on the top so they look like a group of miners, work boots tied to trees and so the list goes on. Today the view apparently topped the lot. As stomach churning as it is, somebody had stuck the head of a dead cow over the top of a signpost. How gross!

Our journey today offers us a choice of free camp spots and some of them look great with plenty of space, shade and toilets. Unfortunately those on the road from Paraburdoo were too early on for us to take advantage of but once we were back on the main highway we fully intended to stay overnight at the Barradale rest area. We fuelled up at Nanutarra Roadhouse and laughed when we saw a table tennis table in the café area on the forecourt! Sadly it had no net but even if we had more time the fuel attendant said that I would be no challenger for him as he’s just so good that nobody will play him anymore!! Where’s my bat?!

Back on the road we reached the Barradale rest area but somehow we just passed it by! It’s another three hours to Exmouth and Darryl now intent on us making it there today, before sunset!

We think this is one of the single longest drives that we’ve done on this trip so far and it’s a bit of a slog but we know the prize at the end of it will be worthy. Exmouth is so simplistic, so natural and so beautiful!

The sight of termite mounds along both sides of the road tells us that we’re on the final stretch, we remember these from our trip here a couple of years ago and we rightly remembered that this road goes on for ever!

When we do finally reach the town we’re amazed by how much it’s grown in such a short time. The new marina was in its early stages when we were last here but it now has a few luxurious looking houses dotted along the private moorings. .

There are a few campsites here but we take the opportunity to get another stamp in our Big 4 book and stay at the Exmouth Cape Holiday Park. The lovely lady in reception puts us on site 37 but when we pull round there is somebody already parked on the beautiful shady spot! Darn! I wander back to reception to let them know that we’ve parked on the seemingly free spot 36 but this seems to spark a bit of a drama! Da da da!!! The ladies in reception don’t know who is on spot 37 so they assume that somebody didn’t like the pitch they were given and have subsequently moved. They send their very nice groundsman out to try and sort things out. Eventually we establish that the ladies in the office have forgotten about a pitch swap so the chap on 37 is in the right place after all! We can’t stay on 36 because there’s a ‘Whiz bang’ (camper van with a sliding door in ‘caravan park management’ speak apparently!) already on it but they’re still out for the day. With a bit of patience on our part and re-organisation on their part we finally get on to a free pitch. Hurrah! Blimey that seemed like hard work and was made very dramatic by the lovely grounds telling the ladies over the radio to ‘hurry up because these people are hot and want a beer’! That was true but we didn’t say it out loud, he was obviously just very intuitive!

We packed up and moved to the new spot and then shot off for a blast around the growing Exmouth. The marina is really taking shape now and there are new houses going up along the edges all the time, it’s starting to look like another Mandurah although it would take a few more years to reach that level of commercialism!

There are plenty of yachts moored up and with the sun going down in the distance it seems a good spot to come back to at some point while we’re hanging around the area.

Back at the camp ground we afforded ourselves a shower and were thinking about crawling into bed when there was a knock at our window. The lady behind us had come over to make sure that we weren’t being disturbed by her air conditioning unit as the couple here last night had complained. We couldn’t even hear it so asked if she was being disturbed by my guitar playing or the TV!

A long story unfolded about how her husband was in hospital here in Exmouth with a prolapsed disc and is having to be flown home to Melbourne so they’re not able to continue with the trip. What a shame. They purchased a brand new Toyota Prado and Jayco caravan for their trip but have had no end of issues with both of them so in the morning this lovely lady, the car and caravan is being collected by a tow truck and driven to Carnavon which is a 5 hour drive south of here so that things can be looked at and hopefully fixed. We obviously offer any help we can and after a beautiful chat she bids us a good night.

We’re pretty whacked out too so hit the sack and look forward to the Elliotts arrival at some point tomorrow.

Dar and Sar

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