Travel Blog 4 to 10 August(Broome to Karratha)

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An exciting conclusion to an otherwise troublesome week.Yesterday Alexine gave birth to Olivia,our second granddaughter.Both are well and grandparents elated.This week we have travelled only 850kms to Karratha.We had been told in Broome that we had an oil leak from a transmission cooler but that we may be able to get to Perth if we kept an eye on it.Sadly it worsened and on Fri we got a local garage to check it and the advice was not to travel without repairs.We had options thanks to AA membership here and have decided that we are are more likely to get the job done properly if we get vehicle to Perth landrover agency(nearest going west).So tomorrow the car and van get a ride to Perth and on Tues we fly to Perth.Disappointments will be missing a section of the north west coast and not meeting up with Saskia and family near Geraldton(Saskia was Michelle's wonderful nanny).We continue to enjoy warm weather but temp. will drop as we fly south.Broome was nice but we didn't want to hang round another week for repairs there.Karratha is quite a place.It is mining gone mad.The whole town revolves around the mining wealth.Rents are $1000 pw and a very standard new home on a block of red dirt is $700k.Everywhere there are staff shortages.Even our caravan park costs $62per night-twice the upper level of charges we have met.Photos this week were from Broome-camel rides on Cable beach at sunset.Also the Sun Picture theatre where we attended for a Naomi Watts movie.It has been continuously running since 1916-the longest of any theatre anywhere.It is open air and we got a terrific fright when a Qantas plane went straight over the screen on 2 occasions.

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