Tubbing Up

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DAY 194

Moving day out of Karijini National Park, Andy and I are taking heed of Kens message to us and we decide that we will travel with Kirsty and Andrew to Broome, and thus missing Marble Bar.

We are up at 7.00 and as soon as a cup of tea is made we set about getting things packed up, it will take a while longer as we have the awning up, but the extra time is worth it as it has protected us from the searing heat of this desert.

Andy blew his nose and a fly came out, we have no idea how long it has been lodging there, but the fly was dead for sure.

The day was already hot, it was tiring just packing up, but by 9.00 we were ready to roll, but one thing that was more important than anything else was “Tubbing Up”, in Andrew and Kirsty’s terminology, we would just say “we wanted a shower”, so we headed back to the visitors centre and paid $2.00 each for a shower. Kirsty told me that there were not many people, more men than women, so they guys could use the ladies showers if necessary.

However, I went first and there were two backpackers in there, one had just come out of the shower and her friend was just going in so I waited. But all I could hear was the running water and her grumbling that the water was “too hot”. The girl that came out beforehand told me that the water was lovely and hot. However I knew that by the time I got in there the water would be cold, as they would have used all of the hot water, I believe it must be solar heated here. It is a luxury to have a shower in this area let alone the luxury of hot water.

Kirsty came in about 15 mintues later and said “are you still waiting?” “Yes, still waiting.” Then the other girl came out of the shower and I went in. As soon as I turned the tap on the water came out cold and there was no sign of getting anything warmer, so I had a quick shower, enough to wash my hair and just feel fresh and clean.

Poor Kirsty, the water would probably be colder still. I went outside and got myself a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes for breakfast while I was waiting for everyone to finish. By 10.00 we were all out and ready to roll.

We leave the National Park heading towards Newman and Port Headland, eventually taking the road to Port Headland and leaving Newman far behind us.

The landscape is still amazing we are driving through gorges which suddenly put us out onto very flat landscape. We pull in at Auski Roadhouse, we were going to fill up but the prices are quite crazy here, so we just pull into the shade, go to the loo and have a short rest while Kirsty looks at the Zebra Finches, however while looking a Sparrow Hawk flies in and scares them all away.

Back on the long road to Port Headland, the landscape is flat as a pancake with shrubbery to match, there is no shade from the sun that is beating down, we pull in for lunch near a turn off for Marble Bar, it is another dirt road, but still we decide not to take it.

We get shade standing at the rear of Kirsty and Andrews caravan, we have lunch and a cup of tea and back on the road again.

As we near Port Headland, I log onto the laptop and plug in the broadband aerial in the vain hope that we may get some Internet access. I also carry on typing up the missing blog work. The phone is also turned on, as when we are in network range it will just spring into action if we have any messages.

Every now and again I look at the map and look for a landmark to check our location, at one point I say to Andy “The Great Northern Highway joins North West Coastal Highway in about 70 kilometres so we will need to take a right turn toward Port Headland.” Andy replies, “Thanks for giving me plenty of notice.”

Suddenly the bars come up on the internet indicating that we have access and the mobile phone bleeps with a message, great back in civilisation! At this point we are still expecting to stay in Port Headland overnight, however we discuss with Andrew and Kirsty the options because Broome is another 600 kilometres from Port Headland and they really need to be in Broome by tomorrow night, so we decide to fuel up and drive on another 100 kilometres or so to break into that journey.

I am online while Andy is driving and frantically trying to answer a few emails and upload a blog at the same time, knowing that as soon as we are out of Port Headland we will lose network pretty quickly.

Just before we pull into the petrol station, the phone bleeps again, it is a message from the Travelin Truey’s, “Hi, we are in Marble Bar, it is fantastic here, it seems that we were fed some duff information, the road between Newman and Marble Bar is almost perfect.” Ken goes on to explain what they have seen and it is worth a visit. However I relay this to Andy and we are both gutted by what we hear. However you can only go on the information that you have been given and the information that Ken originally gave us came from Tourist Information in Newman.

We fill up with Diesel, using the Hi Flow pumps as the normal ones were out of order, Andrew and Kirsty have to go back to Port Headland to find another Petrol station as this one does not have LPG, (they have a gas conversion on their Nissan Patrol, so they can use gas or petrol). We stock up on basic necessities such as bread, milk and biscuits (I know you cannot classify biscuits as basic necessities, but sometimes you just need a biscuit!!)

We drive on, and heading out of Port Headland we see lots and lots of termite mounds, these termite mounds have construction workers hard hats on them, it looked very strange, we come up to a level crossing and see a train waiting in the distance, it is a long one, we discuss on UHF how long it could be, some of these ore trains up here can be up 2.5kms in length with 600 plus carriages, they have been seen with 9 engines pulling. When we discuss what we are looking at a voice comes back over the UHF and says this one has 330, I say “thank you” to the strange voice.

We stop and get the binoculars out just to have a look, but you cannot even see where the train ends.

We drive on and the landscape is littered with dead cows, that have possibly been struck by road trains, it is not a pleasant site, but this is the type of terrain that we have to put up with, that’s life here.

I am still blogging and trying to get through emails, the bars on my laptop are going down, and I type faster still, eventually there is nothing and the internet dies on me. I pack up and check my map, I tell Andy that we have 9 kilometres before pulling off, everyone seems happy that I have calculated the exact mileage, that’s why the call me “Pocahontas”.

We pull in at De Greys river, it looks quite from the road, but as we pull down to the river we see probably a hundred campers or so, nestled in the trees and any vacant spot that could be found, I wonder if we will get parked it is so busy. We stop to look around and Andy notices a guy beckoning us toward him, we go over and he says you are both welcome to pull up here. We thank him and duly pull up in behind.

We were expecting to head off early in the morning as we still had quite a bit of mileage to do to get into Broome, so Andrew and Kirsty offered us a roof to sit under for the evening and their cooking facilities so all we had to do was drop open the tent from the trailer and that would make for a quick pack up in the morning.

I wandered down to the riverbank, feeling comfortable that there were no crocodiles here, but the sun was about to set and I needed, yes needed, that sunset photo. A man shouts over to me “don’t take a photo there, the aboriginals will get upset”, he laughed, I took my photo. The aboriginals do have rules on photos of people, especially do not show photos of dead people out of respect.

De Grey river is a very nice spot, and this river has more water in it than I have seen in a river for quite some time now.

I rush back and help Andy pitch the tent, and then Andy cooks up a nice Chorizo pasta for all our tea. We all go through some of our photos from the last few days, but soon the tiredness catches us and we need to go to bed, as per usual there are a few noisy people still cooking and talking loudly, they do forget there are others to consider.

Now we are near the coast the night is slightly warmer so we have more of the inner flaps open on the tent, sleep comes quickly despite some noise still. We hear the noise of the horn of the Ore train going through, it sounds ghostly, this brings back memories of our trips to Canada, we would lay awake at night in our camper van listening to the ghostly sound of the horns on the trains echoing through the night.

During the night I hear rustling in the bushes and the breaking of twigs.

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Photos

Red/Grey Road
You can tell which way is out, the clean vehicles come in on the grey road and the dirty red dusty ones go out on the red

Rig
Andrew & Kirsty's Caravan

Marble Bar
Consistantly the Hottest place in Australia

De Grey River
Camp site

Bullocks
A dead Bullock on the side of th road,

Sparrow Hawk
This Sparrow Hawk was seen on our walk