Day twenty to Day twenty-six:  Spent in Broome.

 

I’ve put Broome all into one section because it’s much easier and it was so much fun.  I always had a feeling we’d have a great time in Broome and it didn’t disappoint. (Apart from finding out about the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett) Most of this fun I attribute to Emma, the girl that we have been staying with in Broome.

 

What a host.  She not only took us in to her home and gave us a room, she cooked for us, introduced us to her lovely friends, took us out and finally got us a free ride on her tall ship ‘The Willie’ for a sunset cruise at Cable Beach.

 

But just before I get to all of that, I still have to talk about our camel ride we had when we checked out of our apartment and the Sun Cinemas. But first the camels, hilarious.  It’s the most touristy thing to do in Broome so we had to have a go.  Our camels name was Rasheed and Rasheed had a small, mouth foaming problem.  (See pictures)

We had a 45minute giggling ride along the nudist beach (and yes we saw a couple of nudist but I wasn’t looking – they were about 70 good on them) and back and we even saw a massive sea snake that had beached itself.  Gross.  Our camel guide threw it back in the ocean on the way back.  After the ride we went into town to meet Emma and get a key to our new house.

 

That night we went to the Sun Cinemas which is the oldest outdoor cinemas in Australia.  It has been operating since 1916 and they’ve left it pretty much the same.  They even have photos of the cinema in its hey-day (all be it segregated seating) and it looks amazing.  It wasn’t too busy when we went on the Monday night, but being outside, sitting in deck chairs while planes flew over-head to the airport was quite surreal.

(We saw Sampson and Delilah and I highly recommend it)

 

Basically the next few days were spent hanging out with Emma, her boyfriend Toli, Zoren and Sally and it felt like we’d been hanging out with them for years it was so easy.  We just laughed and laughed and laughed.  Emma took us to the Zeebar for industry night where Zoren was DJing, she took us to the local beach where everyone had prepared a picnic and we went body surfing. We all went to Matso’s the local brewery and drank ginger beer and then collapsed into the couches while Emma cooked spaghetti.  Heaven.  I actually had a sad moment when coming home from the picnic, all six of us in a massive four wheel drive, thinking that I didn’t want to leave Broome - but all good things must come to an end otherwise you just overstay your welcome and everyone gets uncomfortable.

 

Our last sunset was spent on the tall ship The Willie and it was heaps of fun.  They threw a rope net out the back of the ship and if you wanted to you could jump out and sit in it while The Willie steamed along.  They just warned us to hold onto the bottom of your bathers as one girl had recently been cleaned swiped and had to re board half naked.  It was a great warning.  I was holding onto mine for most of the trip but I would’ve hated to have an underwater camera, I was mooning the marine life.  Another lady came unstuck and nearly fell of the rope. It took all five of us on the rope to get her back on. The rope sitting was supposed to look glamorous but was quite a bit of work and also gave most of us rope burn. 

 

Anyway, our end in Broome the next day began the same way it had started, with our arrival back to the markets where we had first met Emma to return her keys.  It was a nice circular way to end our holiday from our holiday.

 

 

Day twenty-seven & twenty-eight: Broome to Eighty mile beach caravan park for two nights.  Start time: 10:30am  Arrival time: 3:00pm  Odometer: 89028 

 

We checked into rehab (other people call it the eighty mile beach caravan park) at about 3pm on Saturday afternoon.  It had been a quiet ride from Broome, partly due to sadness and partly because I guess we’d forgotten how to travel in the kombi after relaxing for a week.

We’d decided to not bring any booze along and have a bit of a break – mind you we haven’t been drunk once this holiday but I’m not sure that drinking every day is any better for you.

 

On arrival we were told our site was going to be near the fish cleaning area which was both exciting and disturbing at the same time.  At least if we caught anything we’d be able to make someone else clean it for us, luckily when we got to our site the smell wasn’t too bad.

 

We set up and walked back to the shop to simply buy some bait, which ended up with Louisa wanting to buy a $70 ocean fishing rod.  I was able to talk her out of it when we went around to the weight and hook section and realized that we both had absolutely no idea of what to get.  We ended up with some frozen prawns for our $10 junior rod and took off to the beach for a fish with no luck.

 

We watched the sunset and then tucked into a magnificent dinner we’d pre-sorted from Broome along with an extra large glass of water and played cards till about 9:30pm.

 

Our second day at rehab was pretty chilled.  Breaky, walk along the beach, watched a movie, lunch, write in blog/read, dinner, bocce, sleep.  The only exciting thing to write about was how cute Louisa was collecting shells off the beach.  She bought them back to our site in a bucket, washed them with so much care, lined them up in a beautiful display on the table and finally declared, “Here are my shells”.  Cute.

 

Song of the day: Thanks to Louisa, the Romeo and Juliet cd – the whole thing.

Funniest bit:  Me trying to clear our table and accidently dropping our entire set of playing cards into our entre – pumpkin soup.

Buy of the day:  Louisa’s new crocheted blanket from the market.

 

 

Day twenty-nine:  Eighty mile beach caravan park to Port Headland.   Start time: 9:30am  Arrival time: 1pm   Odometer:  89297

 

Louisa, myself and my pink-eye (that’s what you get for de-toxing) drove a good 200km’s today when we thought we only had to drive about 100km’s. 

The problem was Pardoo, which I say is more like Pardon’t.  Their signs asked us to try their sausage roll (world famous) which we did, and with a bag of ice and a can of Coke cost us $17.  I asked for more change out of my twenty other than the $3 I got back – something I never do but thought I should – and got a receipt back in my face with the pricing.  No luck.

 

Anyway, we thought that the P on the road signs was Port Headland but instead was Pardoo.  We swapped drivers at Pardoo and that’s when I decided to go on a Donna Summer singing rampage.  Luckily for Lou she could immerse herself in her book because I wasn’t going to stop.

 

We arrived at Port Headland and checked into the Big 4 Caravan Park (very pricy but the only one in town) and immediately went for a game of Ping Pong in the common room, (I won overall, 3 games to 1) and caught up on the latest Michael Jackson stories thanks to a wonderful invention - television.

 

After that we drove into town to top up on supplies and then meet my friend Rene (who I had met in Puerto Rico 5 years ago) for dinner. 

 

 

Song of the day: Donna Summer – the whole extended 12inch cd that Jude Tsai made me.  I’ve never sung so much and so loud in all my life, and being the extended mix I only got through 8 songs in one and a half hours.  My favourite being, Last Dance, MacArthur Park, Dim the Lights (which, if by memory she wrote for Rod Stewart originally) and I Feel Love.

Honourable mention for song of the day:  Dolly Parton, Joelene.

Kill of the day:  Lou managed to kill another two birds whilst driving.

Funniest part: Seeing about 3dozen termite mounds being covered with safety hats and chalk drawings (see pictures)

Other funniest part:  Going to dinner with Renee and realizing that The Best Western is the best place to eat in town.

Not funniest part:  We are starting to see clouds, rain clouds.

 

 

Day thirty:  Port Headland to Tom Price (Karijini National Park)  Start time: 8:30am  Arrival time: 3:30pm Odometer: 89844

 

Things are starting to go downhill.

I wore my bed shorts all day today.  Driving, passengering, into town and in the supermarket.

I haven’t had a shower in two days (although I could have) and I know I won’t be showering for at least another two days.

I haven’t brushed my hair in over a week.

And most of all Louisa managed to fix (with her bare hands) the drivers side mirror that I couldn’t fix four weeks ago with a spanner.

I must take a good hard look at myself.

 

On the uphill side of things – I must talk about the excellent overtaking Sunny did today on a huge hill.  There was an overtaking lane and a big road train in front of me, I started to overtake and then slow down at the same time.  I’ve never seen such a slow overtake in all my life.  The truck was doing about 50kms and Sunny about 60kms (in a 110km zone) – I was pissing myself the whole way up but we finally managed to overtake with only metres to spare.

 

The rest of the day was quite unusual.  We have altered our itinerary to include Karijini National Park because so many people have told us it is not to be missed.  They also mentioned the town Tom Price which is in Karijini.  We made the mistake of going to Tom Price straight away without checking that the walks we wanted to do were about 100kms back from the direction we’d just come.

Boo.

I hate back tracking but we did it.

 

On the way back in we spotted a man riding his pushbike.  Now we’ve probably seen about 7 of these people (if you don’t include the big group we saw early on that only remind me of how my flat mates must look when they are riding in Cambodia) and I must say I’m impressed.  I sneakily took a photo of this guys bike because I can’t believe anyone can actually ride ANYWHERE while carrying this much stuff.  I know I’ve had trouble riding home from Safeway with just ONE bag on each handlebar!

 

After paying our entry fee we arrived back at the Dale Gorge Campground at 3:30pm where I fell asleep in the back of the kombi for a couple of hours and Lou set up and made dinner. 

 

Funniest part: Me trying to pull a ‘Pricilla’ out of the sun roof and not even being able to move my face because so much wind was running into it.

Other funniest bit:  Me trying to warn Lou about running to the loo in complete darkness and then watching her run straight into someones tent rope.

Best mountain name:  Mt. Bruce (my uncles name)

Best Gorge name: Dale gorge (my brother-in-law)

I’m half expecting the rest of my family to show up in some form of nature.

 

 

Day thirty-one:  Karijini to Barradale rest area  Start time: 9:30am  Arrival time:  4:30pm  Odometer: 90374.

 

This morning we went and had a look at a few look-outs and did a small 1hour walk to a beautiful spot called fern pool which had beautiful pools of water and cascading waterfalls.  It was one of the better walks that we’ve completed as there was actually water where the signs said there would be water.

 

Then we took off with no particular destination in mind except to be a lot closer to Coral Bay where we will be snorkeling and swimming with the Whale Sharks, the biggest fish in the ocean.  I am so excited about this and about getting back to some sunnier weather as it was quite cold in the National Park, I almost had to bring back my thermal arm warmers.

 

It was a cloudy day so we decided the best thing to do was to just keep driving.  And as we sat down in our camp spot near our fire at the end we realized that we’d done over 500kms.  Not bad for a days driving.

 

Louisa had selected our campsite and gone off to get two big logs of wood (see pictures) while I watched the end of Nemo and cried.  Not having to deal with any emotions while you’re on the road only makes you extremely sad when you watch a movie and think of how sad it would be for a cartoon fish father to lose his cartoon fish son.

 

We made a massive fire and had some tuna pasta then played John Farnhams greatest hits dvd with all his video clips.  I think we may have kept the neighbours up.

 

 

Funniest part: Me making my morning coffee and hearing our next door neighbour do one of the biggest farts I’ve ever heard.  We all ended up doubled over laughing our heads off – it was like thunder in such a quiet camp spot.

Not funniest part:  I finally killed something while driving and it wasn’t your ordinary ‘run over it’ kind of kill.  I hit a bird (probably two we’ve decided) but one hit the front of the car and then bounced of the windscreen.  I screamed for about a minute after that.

Breeder of the day:  Louisa’s clothes bag which I swear gives birth to more clothes and gets bigger every day.

Song of the day:  Rapture, ii0

Best creek name:  Considerable creek.