Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Karijini Drive to Tom Price

These are some of the views we got as we drove down the Karijini Drive to Tom Price, to say it was breathtaking might be an understatement... I think I ooo and ahh'd all the 100k or so till we got to our friends place.
Note the pink tinge to the clouds :)


Albert Tognolini Rest Area

What a beautiful spot this is over looking the Munglina East Gorge where you can set up for the night, sit on your chairs and just take in the view, absolutely lovely! We thoroughly enjoyed staying here as well did the other travellers there on the night.



Saturday, July 21, 2012

Yule River Rest stop

I forgot to mention the Yule River rest stop, we stayed here before we got to Port Headland it's not far from the Great Northern Highway, which is the one we're taking to come back down the state. It's on someone's property so you have to go through a gate and make sure it is shut behind you. There are rubbish bins and picnic tables, its right on the sandy shore of the river. Again there is bird life galore!

Port headland

We actually went to Port Headland to meet a friend but when we got there he was home in Greenbushes so we topped up supplies and stopped in at a caravan park for the night to enjoy hot showers, catch up with our washing before moving on to Tom Price to visit another of our friends. I took very little photographs of the place because we thought it best to move on to see Steph as she was home and expecting us. There was an awful lot of road works at Port Headland making it seem real dusty. The place it so large I think we got lost once or twice and after staying in bush setting for awhile it seemed too busy for us, so we moved on.
I took these for my grandsons to look at from a moving bus!!! roflol....

Sherlock River 24 hour stop site

On the NW Coastal Highway heading towards Port Headland we stopped at a beautiful spot... Sherlock River, it's not a very big spot, luckily we got there after lunch and even then there were a few caravans already parked, so if you'd like to rest up here I suggest you get in early. There are no facilities so take everything with you but the river is beautiful and the bird life wonderful, altho the corellas there do get a little noisy, there was a great big flock flying around making all sorts of noise but we enjoyed watching them.
I even stumbled upon some quail running around the ground trying not to be noticed, well, if I were one I would not want to be noticed, there were hawks flying the skies searching the ground and water.... oh yes, spotted some black swans in the distance as well....

Karratha

Karratha is an Aboriginal word meaning “good country” or “soft earth it is located 1,535 kilometres north of Perth. Karratha's economic base includes the iron ore operations of the Rio Tinto Group, sea-salt mining, ammonia export operations, North West Shelf Natural Gas Project, Australia's largest natural resource development and the newest Natural Gas Project called Pluto LNG which is situated adjacent the existing North West Shelf LNG facility.This area has cyclones and since 1910 there have been 48 cyclones that have caused damaging wind gusts in excess of 90 km/h in the Karratha, Dampier and Roebourne region, the buildings are now built for these events. The cyclone season runs from mid December to April peaking in February and March so just be aware of these.
Well, we loved karratha and really did not expect it to be so big with so much building going on and so many new houses!!! Of course we headed off to the beach to take the photographs.. I hope you enjoy seeing karratha as much as we did.


Old Onslow Ashburton River campsite

As I wrote in the last post this place is a place to visit for a rest from driving... it's peaceful, even if the cows walk past in the mornings, its just a beautiful spot to sit back to catch your breath.
Our bus parked in the sun for the solar panels, we found it to be a comfortable heat, was warm during the day and really pleasant at night, oh, we even got internet here :)