The long drive north

Everything about Exmouth The drive from Coral Bay to Exmouth was painless, our shortest journey so far, 150ks. Saw lots of termite nests on the drive. They are amazing and huge! Massive termites nests, all along the h'way from Coral Bay to Exmouth We have seen lots of wildlife on the long drive including kangaroos, emus, eagles, goats, cows, (all by the roadside) and sharks and manta rays, plus a few lizards and big bobtail goannas in the campsites. I won’t even start on the birds! Apart from the funny aggressive yellow ones, oh and the pointy headed ones here in Exmouth ! Emus, wandering casually through the campsite, Exmouth We arrived at the RAC Caravan Park about 10.30 and made the grave error of setting up camp straight away. It was far too hot ! About an hour later and very red faced and sweaty we were able to rest under the pergola. Note to selves - next time just wait until it’s cooler.... Cooling down at the Froth Brewery, after putting up the campsit...

Carnarvon Okay so we thought Denham was windy, then we hit Carnarvon - 50k winds? Huh, we’ll see your 50k winds Denham and raise you to to 56k an hour!!!!!  As I write this we are still standing. Richie went to the local camping store and bought some more giant sand pegs and so far we are holding up. Best attraction in Carnarvon You can see the giant satelite dish as soon as you arrive I had chosen the Coral Coast caravan park, as it had the best reviews on WikiCamps but it turned out to be a rather desolate camp with very few trees and very uneven ground - not much use for a tent. So we are staying at Wintersun instead. They went out of their way to find us as good a spot as possible but it’s still pretty windy. Oh well all part of the experience. The camp is quite nice, lots of lovely ghost gums and a nice pool. My favourite camping activity, drinking coffee and spying on the other campers. Carnarvon isn’t quite what I expected (bit of a theme here). It’...

Sharks, stingrays and the best cakes in town. Coral Bay, what a magnificent place. The beach is to die for, multi coloured, calm and teaming with wildlife. It’s a protected sanctuary, so no fishing around the bay.  It was also fairly wind free, due to being protected on three sides. Contemplating Coral Bay Coral Bay is really small, just one street and has a vibe a bit like Rottnest, only slower. The pub, Bills Bar was great fun and very busy on the Monday we spent the evening there. The bakery was really fantastic. Considering it’s the only bakery in town and they have a monopoly on the market - they had a huge range of pies and cakes and all the ones we ate (which was quite a few) were really good. Drinkies at Bills' Bar, Coral Bay We really spent the four days doing nothing, hanging on the beach reading, swimming and looking at the marine life. We walked for about 45 minutes up the beach to another bay which was full of reef sharks and manta rays. It was am...

The long, long road to Denham On the road to nowhere Denham Denham and Monkey Mia are on a peninsula and a 150k drive from the Great Northern Hway turn off. Amazing 150k of nothing but scrub. We were very happy to reach Denham, the white sand and windy foreshore are strangely welcoming. We spent four enjoyable, if windy nights in Denham. First evening we went to the Shark Bay Hotel, for a few pre dinner drinkies.  It was a bit feral with a good range of mullets on view. Lots of interesting pictures of craggy local fisherman, including a bit of a shrine to one old geezer. On that note, there was also a very nice park dedicated to another local character. Was good to see the local people celebrated in this way.   Denhams' windy forshore Denham, Shark Bay We stayed at the Denham Seaside Caravan Park, for four nights, with an ensuite at the back corner. It was a nicely protected spot, just as well because the wind got up to 50 k’s one ...

Kalbarri continued..... So we spent our second night in Kalbarri drinking with our new camp neighbours, Ross and Elena. Ross was an indigenous man from Geraldton, who was borne in 1960 (good vintage) and Elena was 37 and worked on the mines in Tom Price. Unusual couple but we had fun with them. Ross gave us a very large jar of homemade chilli - very generous. They’d planned to go fishing this morning and had promised us a fish dinner. However it’s now 5.30 and they’ve gone out.... not too worry, I have to cook our chicken breasts tonight anyway . We finally visited the Kalbarri National Park today. Last attempt, two years ago, we gave up half way as the road was so bad, we didn’t think the hire van would make it. Now the road has been paved all the way and it was painless. Natures Window, Kalbarri National Park The look out and views are spectacular and well worth a visit. However there were a lot of people there, including a group of very loud Chinese tourists. The gir...

and we’re off....... This will be a short blog to record our trip to Exmouth and back. We’re planning on three weeks but as this is our first long camping trip, we’ll play it by ear. We had to delay our trip several times because we sold two properties - yeah! One was one the market for 5 months and the other only 2 weeks, but they sold within a month of each other. So once all the paperwork was finalised, we were free to hit the road. Yodie was packed off to catty prison again, apparently she was most unhappy, as she hasn’t been there since March and it was a bit off a surprise. We now have a LOT of camping gear, having steadily increased our collection over the past year. We have a fabulous fridge, to keep the beer cold, a double stretcher for our double mattress, kettle and, toaster, an electric frypan. Our little camp site is like home away from home (minus Yodie). We left Perth at 4 am so the drive up the freeway was like a hot knife through butter. It was a great d...