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Juuuust in case you're new here... read this post first! :) https://theroaming5.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html

Saturday, 12 June 2021

Wrapping up

Well what an adventure it was! We'd planned for 11 months away and ended up with 16 and a bit! In total we travelled about 53,000km and the car scarcely missed a beat! We have seen some incredible parts of Australia, but most importantly we've had really valuable family time together while doing it.

Thursday, 10 June 2021

June 10 (Day 399) - Wilmington to home


During the night we'd heard sheep and goats bleating on the hills nearby. I daresay they were cold because we sure were! After a morning cup of tea (for the kids too) for our sore throats, we left our campsite early again and headed straight into Wilmington.

The view from our camp spot near Wilmington

 

Wednesday, 9 June 2021

June 9 (Day 398) - Marree to Wilmington

June 9 is the day we expected to finish our trip, however the best-laid plans of mice and men so often go astray!


Sunrise

Our camp just out of Marree

7am outside Marree - the cold is well and truly upon us!

7 degrees!

Tuesday, 8 June 2021

June 8 (Day 397) - Oodnadatta to Marree


 Oodnadatta is a pretty small town, similar in feel to Birdsville. We dropped into the Pink Roadhouse for a coffee and a bit of food. Fuel was about $2 per litre so we were thankful we filled up all the jerry cans at $1.52/L in Marla.

The Pink Roadhouse, Oodnadatta


Inside the Pink Roadhouse - included a decent enough sized store


Monday, 7 June 2021

June 6-7 (Day 395-396) - Alice Springs (NT) to Oodnadatta (SA)


 We enjoyed the Memorial Meeting on Sunday with Nat and his family in Alice Springs, along with a Sis Lisa who joined us for the day. We tuned into Cumberland's meeting where Bro Trevor Gore exhorted on the lessons we can learn from the rebuilding work of the wall of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. After that we enjoyed a roast lamb lunch (thanks Nat!) and packed up.

Our camp in Alice Springs!

Lunchtime - Nat, Lisa, Keelan, Bek, Roha, Jude, Elora, Ollie, Matt, Mim, Greg

Saturday, 5 June 2021

May 21 - June 5 (Day 379-394) - Kununurra to Alice Springs (via the Tanami Rd)

Kununurra

We stayed in Kununurra for a few days. We had one night at the Hidden Valley caravan park. Next morning we found one of the caravan tyres had a slow puncture. The tyres were getting very low anyway and I had been debating changing them in Kununurra (expensive) vs taking a risk and hoping they'd limp us back to Adelaide (cheaper). The puncture tipped the scales in favour of replacing the tyres so we got four new tyres put on at the Bridgestone dealer. They weren't actually too expensive, I think about $210 per tyre compared to $180 or so for a comparable tyre in Perth.

New tyres for the van!


Thursday, 20 May 2021

May 10 - 20 (Day 369-378) - Derby to Kununurra via the Gibb River Road

 

660km drive along the Gibb River Road

Monday May 10 - Tuesday May 11 - Mount Hart Station

EDIT: We have a video we hope to have of a lot more content of the Gibb River Road. When we have it finished we'll update this post but for now the priority is getting the content updated!

We set off from our overnight stop on the side of the Gibb River Road. This section of the road is all bitumen so it wasn't anything unusual.


Our rest stop for the night
Fixing the back of the toolbox

About 20km along the dirt road appeared ahead of us, so we pulled over just to check everything was nice and tight. The rear toolbox was slightly loose, but in the process of tightening it up I managed to break one of the bracket bolts holding it on. This led to 30 minutes with drill and angle grinder to set things right!




 

Sunday, 9 May 2021

May 9 - Broome to Derby (Day 368)

250km

 Sunday May 9 - Broome to Derby

Mother's Day!  The kids made some cards for Mim. We also presented her with a necklace we'd sneakily bought at the Broome markets last Sunday while she was buying her hat! Hee hee! :)

Happy Mother's Day Mim!
Mother's Day pancake breakfast!
The red sand beach of Roebuck Bay

 

Saturday, 8 May 2021

May 1 - 8 - Sherlock River to Broome (via Port Hedland, Roebuck Plains and Dampier Peninsula) (Day 359 - 367)

830km

Saturday 1 May - Sherlock River to 80 Mile Beach

We enjoyed a lovely quick morning swim in the Sherlock River. As the water was quite murky we didn't want to hang around too long to see if there were any crocs. :) 

Sherlock River

Friday, 30 April 2021

April 24 - 30 - Exmouth to Karratha (via Onslow, Fortescue River and Millstream) (Day 352 - 358)


950km
 Saturday 24 April - Exmouth to Yannarie

We left Yardie Homestead around 10:30 after packing up and then cooling off in the pool. We had seen on the map as we were coming into Exmouth that you could get right out to the tip as there is a ship wreck there that you can see from the shore and possibly swim out to. Firstly though we revisited the lighthouse we had been to last time we were up here. I remember it was so blustery and we were trying to hide away so that we didn't get so cold. But this time it was quite a hot day and the view was just as beautiful.


Vlamingh Head Lighthouse

The view from the base of the lighthouse


Friday, 23 April 2021

April 19 - 23 - Karijini, Coral Bay & Exmouth (Day 347 - 351)

 
620km

Monday 19 April

We woke nice and early so that we could make a good head start on our drive to Coral Bay today. The countryside out here is still pretty red, not so much just red sand but a lot more rock mixed in with it and fairly flat in some spots and mountainous in others.


We came across some really pretty spots that had
the perfect lighting so we had to stop and take some photos.

Sunday, 18 April 2021

April 15-18 (Day 343-346) - Karijini National Park (plus a day trip back to Kumarina!)

 

Thursday 15 April

As with any 'crisis', it passes and better things lie beyond. And so it was on Thursday. It looks to be a lovely morning today. Plenty of sun to dry out our wet clothes as we pack up. We moved into Dales campground and thought we'd visit Kalamina Gorge as it was the closest one and only gorge open.
A better view of the setup under the verandah
One solitary puddle remained as a reminder of last night's flood!


We set up camp and gathered what we needed for our walk, putting on sneakers, making sure we had plenty of water, hats and some snacks. Jude has been trying to find his brown akubra hat but couldn't find it anywhere. Seems we might have misplaced it somewhere along the road.

On the dirt road out to Kalamina Gorge there were some washouts which had warning cones to make them more visible and still quite a few large pools of water across the road from the recent rains but that wasn't going to stop us, in fact Matt particularly was pretty keen for us to drive straight through them. We did go through a few of them and ended up with a nice coating of red/orange.

Driving out to Kalamina Gorge

Thursday, 15 April 2021

April 12 - 14 (Day 340 - 342) - Newman to Karijini rest area

 Monday 12 April

We spent the night about 4 kms just north of Newman so that we could come back easily in the morning to go the visitors Centre to get a key so that we could empty our porta loo. This is the only place that we've needed a key for a dump point. Anyway after emptying and filling up the water tanks I did some food shopping. This is the last big shop we will come across until maybe Exmouth or later. Once we'd packed it all away we found a cozy spot to have our hot dog lunch.

  


Suburban streets in Newman

Wednesday, 14 April 2021

April 12-14

 Just a quick update before we go out of signal for the next few days. Using the free wifi at the rest stop on the corner of Great Northern Highway and Karijini Drive.

April 12 we headed into Karijini, drove 80km to get to the entrance only to find a sign to say the gorge walks were closed due to impending rain. The same happened with the next gorge we tried. So we ended up going back to the free camp.

April 13 was raining all day so we were stuck in the van. Played Monopoly if I recall with Jude.

April 14 we'd hoped would be better. It had some patches of no rain but it was still raining in parts of the day. The van had a couple of water leaks so in the evening we spent about two hours shifting it under a shelter at the free camp. And then it stopped raining.

Tomorrow April 15-17 we go into Dales Gorge Campground in Karijini when the weather is supposed to have cleared up. We intend to do several gorge walks. Then on Sunday 18th the plan is to drive out towards Coral Bay. We stay there the 19th and 20th, and then head up towards Exmouth.

Hopefully by Coral Bay we should have signal back again.

God bless!
- Greg and Mim

Sunday, 11 April 2021

April 11 (Day 339) - Meekatharra to Newman

375km

We checked out Cyclone Seroja's track, which was still showing as moving towards Kalbarri and Geraldton as expected.

Cyclone Seroja's estimated track as at 12pm

Karalundi Caravan Park

As you can see, the morning was calmer than last night, and the clouds were starting to dissipate. It was looking like a much nicer day than the last few have been.

We were nearly out of milk, so Matt cooked pancakes for breakfast while I fiddled around a bit with a couple of new solar blankets. We had a chat to the managers of the park who are Seventh Day Adventists. Their group runs the caravan park and the adjoining Aboriginal school. It's not a big park, maybe 14 berths or something, plus several cabins, but Kez the lady is run off her feet trying to manage the place on her own, do most of the cleaning, run the shop as well as home school her two young kids! But she's very much a people person and loves the caravan park lifestyle. 

Karalundi Caravan Park

Saturday, 10 April 2021

April 10 (Day 338) - Mount Magnet to Meekatharra


240km

As our morning is becoming, it started with checking the cyclone warning to make sure we were still heading in the right direction (or more to the point, that Cyclone Seroja hadn't decided to head in OUR direction!). All looks good so far.

While we are inland a fair way, you can see from the photo below the sky is still heavy with cloud. We haven't had a sunny day for a couple of days now and we've had spots of rain too although not a lot of it.

 

Grey skies. Thanks Seroja!

Morning coffee

We packed up the site fairly promptly, but once again were cursed by flies! Oh they were horrible - just like before, they get in your eyes, nose, mouth, ears, between your fingers! Yuk!

Lord of the flies


Friday, 9 April 2021

April 9 (Day 337) - Mullewa to Mount Magnet

 

Cyclone Seroja

Last night I was trying to find more information about the cyclone. There were a few sites - Bureau of Meteorology, Emergency WA, Department of Fire and Emergency Services, but they all just seemed to refer to each other. I'd tried a couple of phone numbers but they just had pre-recorded voices reading the same information on the websites.

So after breakfast I rang the Bureau of Meteorology in Perth to get some advice - specifically, whether we would be safe going up to Karijini National Park, or better off down in Perth. To help you out, here's a map showing the current cyclone path map (as at 10 April), and Karijini so you can see what we're trying to do:


As you can see, Karijini is well out of the danger zone (600km east of the coast), however it's in the Pilbara region and all the forecasts listed the Pilbara as an at-risk area. The Bureau wasn't a lot of help but they said to ring the SES in Tom Price (which is the closest branch) who said the area should be quite safe so long as we got up there reasonably soon.