Well as usual we aren't keeping this thing up to date very often!
We left Carnarvon ages ago and have been snorkelling along the Ningaloo reef at Coral Bay - pricey and congested and we have been to the other end of the reef in Exmouth where we spent a week in the Yardie Homestead Caravan park to hide from all the little kiddies that were on their holidays!!! You could enter the reef from the beach at the national park there and it was so good to do the same as we did in Coral Bay without it costing us anything. Managed to bump into a dutch couple from Carnarvon and had a cool day with them just snorkelling and sitting on the beach. From there we went to a mining town called Karatha and we stocked up on food and went to another national park called Millstream. We intended to stay the one night and move on to the more famous Karijini national park but because it was so nice at Millstream we spent a week there and the camp hosts wanted to adopt us because we could drink so much wine each night! - Pretty wierd reason but then so were they!
From there we travelled to Tom Price and on into the Karijini national park where you could explore the gorges and do walks down into ice cold pools of water and you would have to climb up and down knotted rope to get in and out of certain areas! Good fun but our muscles hurt for days afterwards through all of the scrambling around!!
We saw the worlds biggest open cut mine in Newman before heading back towards the cost stopping off at Marble Bar which wasn't a very interesting town and with no evident industry to support its 100 or so inhabitants. I celebrated my birthday there in the Iron Clad Hotel and in the caravan park we met camel catchers and gold prospectors on their holidays so it was interesting to listen to them in the evenings.
Headed to Broome from there and did the tourist bit around Cable beach and learnt some about crocs at the crocodile farm there. Bumped into the dutch couple again and spent the day on the beach with them again. We liked Broome but it was pretty expensive and touristy - not so good for the budget traveller so we moved on.
After Broome we did the Gibb River road 650K's of really nasty unsealed road. Managed to break a weld on the exhast and got it fixed at a homestead there for 70 bucks. Stayed at national parks along the way and working cattle stations at the end. The national parks were cool as Winjana Gorge allowed us to view crocs in the wild, we even got within 4 metres of one. We then did Tunnel Creek which is pitch black and our torches were useless but we stumbled through there sometimes in water up to our knees in the dark with crocs and bats in there. Damn scary it was but i'm not sure if the fact that we couldn't see much was a good thing or not as it was we couldn't see the crocs so hopefully they couldn't see us and we both emerged with all four limbs so couldn't have been that bad!
Didn't get a flat tyre on the Gibb and am very proud of that as every time you mention it the locals go nuts about how many spares you were carrying and how many flats you changed and how much it cost to get the tyre fixed and on and on they go.
We are now in Kununarra and have met up with Rich and Raechel, friends from Carnarvon. They are both working but it didn't stop us being told off for making too much noise at midnight last night in the caravan park - oops!
Will stay here a few days then back track to do the Bungle Bungles in another National Park before zooming off to get Rosie from Darwin for six weeks, and see Barney for 10 days.
We are still having a great time and are well and happy. Really excited about having 3 of the 4 seager/lund kids reunited with an honoury Phil! Hope you are all well, will update soon........
