Blog 16th Feb - Victoria, the Home straight.

I think for the most part we can let the picture do the talking…

We have covered approximately 5200 kilometres from Broome, WA, in less than 7 days to get to the town where my Dad (Rob’s) and his family arrived first after leaving Holland, way back in 1958.

The reason we left Broome in such a fashion will be unpacked on the blog in the coming days, but all I will say for now is that the road from Broome to Darwin was flooded and the humidity averaged 80%, temperatures at night were consistently above 28 degrees - bad combination. We were faced with a choice between a wet, muggy, flooded tour of the top end, or a shorter trip and ‘unfinished book’ which will be completed at a later date. I think for now I will leave the blog at that, and I will endeavour to update it again at the weekend- when conditions are more favourable.
Over and out

Wed 11th Feb - Meekatharra

Well… God be praised our car is back on the road. On Monday we approached a local Broome mechanic and seeing the 25 plus cars in his yard already were very doubtful of getting the car fixed within 2 weeks, let alone immediately. After a few prayers for help we walked inside and they took the car straight through!
They then were kind enough to drive us to Broome main street where we walked around for 4.5 hours. Quite a feet when we didn’t know how much to spend as we didn’t know the hourly rate for a mechanic up here (ask us when we get home if you want to know but it’s nothing to sneeze at) . We ended up in the Broome visitors centre watching info documentaries. There is a natural 'phenomenon' where the tide changing rushes between a gorge so quick that it creates a horozontal waterfall. 11 thousand litres a second or something going through the rocks.
We left Broome 1pm Monday arvo and have been driving since (apart from sleeping time). Our country really is huge! We are now about to get diesel in a small town and heading into remote areas so if you don’t hear from us - have no fear - we will catch up with you soon.
Over and out!

08 Feb - Broome

Well since we last wrote we have been busy busy bees, covering 1500km, but having a blast. We left Ningaloo Reef and headed for Karijini NP, famous for its gorges and natural spring swimming holes. The day we visited was 35-40 degrees so we kept our observing to most of the lookouts as the climb in and out of the gorge would have been quite a feet. The info booklet had a scoring system for the intensity of each walk/hike so we picked one in particular with a swimming spot and off we went. On the way down I (Em) found the trek quite easy, descending about 250 rock steps until Rob reminded me, what goes down must come up (in our case anyway). We ended up at ‘circular pool’ and it was beautiful. Defiantly a highlight of our trip with little waterfalls creating natural showers.

We then drove on to Port Hedland, largest Port in Australia distributing Iron Ore, mainly to Asia. Here we decided to take some time just to sit and watch, its amazing how much the ships can hold. We watched a ship get loaded with 167,000 tons of Iron Ore - that’s the equivalent of 66,800 of our hilux.
Its also a very expensive place to live. Chatting with a local, houses go for $700 a week rent - minimum. I don’t think we will decide to stop permanently in Port Hedland.

rob escaping the flies just out of port hedland.
Next stop is where I write this blog. Broome. We arrived on Saturday about 6pm, decided to spoil ourselves and looked into a motel with air-conditioning. We decided to go for the only thing apart from a bar that was open on a Saturday night and went to the open air sun cinemas. We decided to drive there as we didn’t know exactly where the cinema was located and ended up parking 100mts down the road from our motel after going the long way around. We watched a strange Will Smith movie called ‘seven pounds’ which we didn’t understand the plot until about 2/3 of the way through. Being out first cinema experience since well before we left we enjoyed the night out. Today we spent the day trying to be touristy but no attractions are open until Monday 9 am so the extent was a swim at cable beach.
It was here in Broome where we started to hear a grinding noise and vibration from the back right wheel, thinking ‘this can’t be good’ we began the process of elimination. We have (rob has) concluded that it is the rear wheel bearing, thankfully Rob had the foresight to bring spares but with the requirement of a special tool/machine we are headed to a mechanic in the morning. We hope he isn’t too busy and unable to help us. We don’t really want to hang around here any more than we have to, with the humidity at 80% (seriously), so we’ll probably have to do some negotiating, but hopefully not!
We will let you know how we go in a few days!
Over and out!

03 Feb - Ningaloo reef

this is a very short and delayed update... (read as Tues 03 Feb)

We are sitting at “Ned’s camp” which is the highest north camp site on the cape range national park (Ningaloo reef). It is 700pm and still 31.5 deg in shade. This doesn’t sound like much to you Melbournians at the moment, but I can tell you that after a day of being un-sun smart, our sunburnt bodies yearn for a cooler climate. We are hiding under the one tree in about 30 km that provides shade and are hanging out for a post sunset swim. Today we spent about 3 hours underwater admiring what is arguably the best offshore reef in the world. Some time ago we were told to go to “Oyster Stacks” for great snorkelling, and our advice was right. No one there because of medium-difficult access, and we got to swim with REEF SHARKS !!

Yesterday we met a turtle in the water and some stingrays, but today we helped rescue a 80-100kg turtle who got wedged in between rocks at high tide. We didn’t want to add to the 10 person , but when asked to help, we obliged, only we were smart and brought a hammer- no, not to put the turtle out of his misery- but to “shift” some of the rocky matter out of the way. Anyway, 5 minutes, 1 winch strap and 4 muscle men later, and the turtle is home free. The most memorable moment followed soon after with the wife of another saying, “I just got off the phone from the Ranger and he said not to move the turtle at all.” oops!!

over and out