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

Mim met some fellow travellers who were two weeks into their road trip and a bit unsure about the cyclone and what to do with it. Of course they were a bit green weren't they, two weeks in, such little babies to the road-tripping world, haha! :) Anyway Mim gave them some tips, not really about the cyclone of course because we're as green as they were in that regard, but other aspects of travelling. 

Once we'd refilled the water tanks we headed north. Just out of the park we had to pull over for an oversize truck. We'd passed many oversize trucks but this one was very wide! Amazingly, as we were waiting for it to pass, another semi took the opportunity to overtake! It looked pretty unsafe but we could hear them arranging it over the CB radio so it probably wasn't as bad as it looked.

The road north was much the same as further south - pretty featureless in areas, although there were some interesting parts here and there later in the day as you'll see.

We stopped for lunch by the Gascoyne River, about 50km south of Kumarina.

Lunch at Gascoyne River

Surprisingly there was a moderate amount of water in it,
although it was muddy and not flowing

Lunch in the van

While we'd been driving yesterday we had listened to a radio adaption of Roald Dahl's "Boy" and "Going Solo". These are probably two of the least-known Roald Dahl's because they're not fiction stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - they're little autobiographies about his childhood and young adulthood respectively and were very interesting as books to read. The audiobook we listened to wasn't the whole thing unfortunately, they'd chopped some parts out for radio. But it was still interesting enough, with lots of different characters reading different voices, sound effects and so on.

We drove on and topped up the fuel tank from one of the jerry cans at Kumarina.

Kumarina Roadhouse

Just after leaving Kumarina we found the electric brakes for the van weren't working. I pulled over and checked out the things which had caused this in the past (cut wire, blown fuse, dodgy connector) and nothing seemed to work, so we carried on slowly. A few minutes down the road they suddenly came back on. I don't know what's causing it but it'll need some investigation.

!!! Standing water!

A little way up the road we suddenly found the left side of the road had this big open stretch of water amidst the long green grass, beneath which more water was visible! We were stunned! It came out of nowhere really, and on the other side of the road it was as dry as usual. It reminded us a lot of sections of the Plenty Highway and Birdsville Tracks (from October 2020) where great patches of water would suddenly appear from the late winter storms last year.

No sign of such lushness on the right side of the road.

A little way up the road we pulled into a service station just south of Newman. The Pajero was right down to empty so we refilled it and the jerry can we'd used at Kumarina. While here we saw an enormous haul truck tipper tray on the back of a truck, which looked like a giant swimming pool at first glance!

Newman BP

No not a swimming pool! A mining haul truck bucket!

Last stop was Newman where we had a quick look at a retired haul truck they had on display.

Newman

These trucks are huge!

We stopped for the night just north of Newman at a free camp but will head back into town for a better look tomorrow God willing.

Cyclone Seroja - 7pm Sunday night. We're located
off the top of the map and well inland

Cyclone Seroja

The cyclone has now hit the WA coast and we've just heard it's destroyed the Carnavon jetty! :( We were in Kalbarri and Carnarvon in December 2020, and Geraldton only a few days ago! It looks like it's going to be a rough couple of days, and we hope they're all as safe as can be!

Mim did a Spag Bol for tea, the kids did the dishes as usual, we did a reading and headed to bed.

-- Greg