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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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. 

April 8 (Day 337) - Geraldton to Mullewa

170km

We had a reasonable night sleep. There was a fair bit of traffic going past as we were just in a roadside rest area and I woke up about 6am but went back and slept until about 9!

Current projected track of Cyclone Seroja
(at 11pm 9 April)

Cyclone Update

Pretty quickly we checked the cyclone update only to find there was now a third cyclone joining the party off the north west of the WA coast! This interaction makes it difficult to plot where it may go. However it was firming up that the coastal regions would be terrible places to be. We wondered if we could have made it up to Shark Bay to get out to Steep Point (the western-most mainland point) and then cut inland, but the roads all looked pretty rough. We also had the broken caravan safety chain to sort out. So we decided to head back to Geraldton to get that sorted out, and then head inland towards the Great Northern Highway. One option which is looking the most promising, in terms of the projected cyclone path and our own limited time, is to head up to Karijini National Park first (which is roughly due east of Coral Bay and due South of Port Hedland), then come across to Coral Bay and Exmouth after the cyclone's past. This will allow us to basically mirror the cyclone's current projected track.

April 7 (Day 336) - Perth to Geraldton

 

450km

 I say 'Day 336' because according to my calculations that's what we're up to in terms of days actually travelling, rather than total time away from home. Our last day of travelling on the road as such was heading back to Perth from Kalgoorlie in January.

After another slower morning than we'd planned for, we managed to get packed up and left the Bundesen's. What a lovely family and what a lovely couple of days of relaxation after a busy pack-up week and a busy weekend together!

Getting ready to leave the Bundesen's

As always seems to be the way when we're leaving, there were various odds and ends to attend to, even though yesterday I made a special trip out to attend to what I thought was the full list of odds and ends! We dropped into a Jayco dealer to pick up a door handle that broke this morning while packing up; we then had to do a bit of shopping to stock the fridge with some basic supplies, after which we were famished and got Subway for lunch. After having had a bit of junk food over the weekend we wanted something a bit healthier than white bread cheese and bacon rolls from Woolies which had been the plan. But at last after 1pm we got onto Leach Highway, then Orrong Rd, through the Graham Farmer tunnel under East Perth, and out onto the Mitchell Freeway northbound.

Travel Plans - April 7

One is reluctant to plan too much as it seems to change so often! But here is the plan for the last leg of our trip as it stands on April 8.

• April we plan to drive up to Coral Bay, Exmouth and Karijini National Park - basically the Gascoyne and Pilbara regions.
• May we plan to go through the Kimberly across the Gibb River Road to Kununurra
• First week of June we'll be starting the trip down to Adelaide, either via the Stuart Highway via Daly Waters, or via the Tanami Rd which runs from Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberly down to Alice Springs

Kids are due back at school on June 15 so we hope to be home a week or so before that.

All God willing! Who knows what could change! 

-- Greg

April 1-6 - Pinjarra Bible School, and at the Bundesen's

Our last week in Perth was pretty hectic getting stuff together, having final catch ups and making sure we had the necessary bits and pieces for our next leg of the trip up north all God willing and also making sure the kids had all their schooling stuff. They are going to still be connected to Perth Heritage until we return to Adelaide so that work can be sent until the end of Semester 1 which will be very useful.

As always there is always something that gets left behind so Greg took Jude back to school to pick up the final bits and pieces and made an outing out of it for morning tea.

Morning tea with Jude

 Along with our up north preparations we also had to make sure we were ready for Pinjarra Bible school (held at Fairbridge Village campsite) over the Easter long weekend as we are in a house with other families and a large number of teenagers.

Pinjarra Bible School

Fairbridge Village mud map

Pinjarra Bible School is hosted on a large historic property called 'Fairbridge'. It seems to be an old town with a number of old houses. Because these were full houses people once lived in, they each have their own amenities (kitchen, toilets etc) so you're fully self-contained in this house while at the camp. A number of families stay in each house, where you share meals and time together, in addition to the studies and some communal meals in other common areas of the campsite.