3rd August - Monday

It's been an amazing few days! From Northampton I blasted north, missing out Kalbarri. Kalbarri National Park is supposed to be very beautiful, but no dogs are allowed in any NP in WA! There's fox bait around, not to mention snakes and spiders, and Lally's so clumsy too! Oh well - I guess I'll miss out on a few things, but I'm really glad of the company.

I met Dave and his wife at the sausage sizzle; a couple from NZ who said they were on two triumph tigers. I presumed Dave's missus was on the other bike til the morning when I met another couple driving with them. Two-up, doing off-roading! Crazy!! They'd been away for 4 months already, having started in Brisbane. Flying out from there in September. Great to chat with them - really nice people.

I saw the railway carriage in Northampton, and in the morning I drove past the old convent. Seems like a really beautiful spot there.

From Northampton I drove straight to Denham. I managed to leave before the usual 10.30am only because there was a check-out time at the camping spot. A long drive but with lots of green and pleasant pastures next to the road! That soon gave way to the more familiar red dust, bush and spinifex . Miles and miles and miles of the same; red dust, bush and spinifex. Every now and then a goat leaps out to wake you up...

Arrived in Denham in the early afternoon. Walked along the sea front for a bit to stretch Lally's legs. She's been coping really well. I stop to let her stretch out roughly every 1.5 to 2 hours, and she's settling well into that routine. It's getting hot for her in the sun, so I'm thinking of introducing wet-tea-towel doggy air-conditioning! I've been thinking about it (as you do along miles and miles of red dust, bush etc) and I figure wind doesn't help if you don't sweat. Wind feels great to us mere humans who evaporate nicely, but to a dog it must be pretty useless. Wet tea-towel might do the trick. Lally looks *proper* grumpy when I splash her with her drinking water, so perhaps this will be a more dignified solution!

On the way to Denham I stopped in at Hamelin Pool to check out the old telegraph station and the stromatolites . Very interesting spot - all along the drive I've been looking out and trying to imagine the unimaginable hardship the pioneers and trail-blazers must've faced to forge their way through here. Even in an expensive 4WD it would be incredibly hard work!

In Denham I tied Lally up in the shade with water and visited the Shark Bay Discovery Centre. Pretty neat displays of shipwrecks, aboriginal artifacts, marine life etc. Not as great as I'd hoped for, but interesting. Then I looked at the glossy brochures and descriptions of Monkey Mia (whoever called it that??) and decided to give it a miss! 260km drive to Denham and I didn't visit Monkey Mia!! Lonely Planet describes it - the main draw-card is the semi-tame dolphins who rock up for regular feeding to swim around tourists' ankles - as "a bit of a circus", and I can well imagine it is. I seem to remember reading that dogs were not allowed either, so. What made the 260km drive absolutely worth it was the free-camping spots I found. I stayed at Eagle Bluff before going into Denham - a free-camp atop a bluff overlooking Eagle Island where sea birds nest. Such an amazing spot . The moon was clear and bright all night, and it was so peaceful. Met another couple there who had been travelling for 2 years! The lights on the coast on the horizon in the pic belong to a small settlement at the end of about 150km of 4WD track, called Useless Loop! I think this refers to the bay rather than the land, where some intrepid Dutch explorers went all the way round and found nothing useful!

The next night, leaving Denham, I stayed close by at Fowler's Camp, right next to the water's edge . This time I had the place to myself. Comforted by the presence about 1km away across the inlet of 3 surfers. I spent a very pleasant evening and morning walking Lally and watching the birds with my binoculars. I went to bed at dusk and woke up at about 2.30am. Lay awake half-dozing for about an hour, ignoring Lally vaguely asking to go out (she does that every time I move in the mornings), then finally dozed off again until just before dawn. I went out for a brisk walk along the water edge just as the sun came up over the red dust, bush and sp... Had fun playing with the swallows bathing in the condensation collected on my roof. They were too smart to let me take a picture! Such a peaceful spot - just gently rippling water, the odd splash of a bird or fish, a couple of frogs...

In Denham I ripped out the tape player from the van to see what might be wrong with it - I bought a tape adapter to play mp3's from the ipod, but the tape player keeps flipping in auto-reverse and doesn't play. It does this with normal tapes too. So I had the whole thing out and had a good look around. I think one of the cogs might be broken. So I went to find the local scrap yard which was of course shut (being sunday pm). Having driven back to Fowler's camp I decided not to go back. Now I've got my headphones going for driving and the speakers for camping.

Today I drove all the way back to the Overlander Roadhouse, and then along the incredibly boring and straight road to Carnarvon. I've never driven 200km of such unchanging landscape. Almost nothing broke the monotony, save for another roadhouse (resisted temptation to stop) and a lookout where I did stop to walk Lally and have a good look out! It took about 3 hours - the couple at Eagle Bluff had a 1989 Mazda E2000 with twice the mileage - they reckoned 80kmph was the optimum, so I decided to knock off 10kmph from the 90 I'd been maintaining to see if the fuel consumption would go down. So chugging along at 80kmph, we'd see the horizon slowly approaching, then come to a crest, wonder what was on the other side, then the horizon would fall away and we'd see yet another completely straight stretch of road laid out to the new horizon. On and on and on. The Nullarbor must be like that only worse!

*Finally* I arrived in Carnarvon about 2.30pm. I eagerly checked the reception for internet and phone and yes! Major dilemma to stay in a caravan park or carry on another 90km out of vodafone range, here I am at the Capricorn C-Park, unpowered for $22 (powered was $5 extra!!!). I'm looking forward to having a warm shower and spending some time putting up some photos I've taken over the trip so far. I need to organise the site soon otherwise it's going to get very long!

4th August - Tuesday

Wow, tell me please - does it get any better than this? Right now as I write I'm perched atop a sand dune. The view from my window is the Indian Ocean with about a force 4-5 blowing crashing waves over reefs between the shore and a mile out. The evening sun is warming us and I've got sand between my toes. I've got radio paradise playing softly along with the sound of the ocean and the breeze in the dune grass. Lally is snoring peacefully. I've got everything I need. It's one of those evenings which you wish the earth would just slow down for a couple of hours so the evening would last just a little longer.

I'm about 2km south of the Blowholes - very spectacular volcanic cliffs where the enormous ocean swell creates these awesome plumes of sea water (hopefully this .avi video clip will work; it may not on your computer) . The "honourary ranger" (whatever that means) is expecting a payment of just $5.50 per night. Compare this with the $22 it cost me last night to sleep next to the highway and a petrol station and several snoring fellow campers! I'm not complaining really - it was an excellent opportunity to work on the website and have a shower (still haven't tried out my solar shower yet - a rather fancy name for what is essentially just a black plastic bag with a tube!). Lally arouses so much interest from people! I'm quite sure if I didn't have her with me I wouldn't talk to many people at all, but she's a real ice-breaker. Absolutely worth her weight in gold in this respect!

I drove into town and tried to find the Harbourside Cafe. Following the lonely planet map and the gps led me down another rough sand track with rubbish and burnt-out cars littering the banks. I called them instead and got directions! They were pretty accommodating about Lally and I parked out the back and had a quiet spot to myself to work on the website. Lally slept (of course) in the shade and I was visited by a couple of smokers! I had beautiful poached eggs and bacon with a delicious double mac, made to perfection. Finished off the site in a car park in town.

I tried again to buy a scrap radio/tape player for the van, but the local scrappy couldn't help. Neither could Repco, who wanted $189 for a CD player! In the mean time the headphones are still good, so I'm happy not to spend any money on it.

By the time I'd done all that it was 2.30pm. Time to find the free-camp spot. I bumped into the 2-year travellers who had found some keys at Eagle Bluff and picked them up thinking they were mine. I'm discovering quite a camaraderie among the caravanners, who appear to make up a good 80% of the traffic up here! The other 20% is split between 4WDs, utes and these incredibly long road-trains. These last are sometimes 4 carriages long! Ah, and I've remembered I should add dead kangaroos to the red-dust, bush and spinifex!

In my notes of other things to mention, I have: The mighty Gascoyne River - a very wide and mighty tract of dry sand.

But right now the sun is setting, so I'm going to go and enjoy it!

5th August - Wednesday

It's too beautiful here to leave! Have spent a very relaxing and pleasant day chilling out watching the ocean. I've knitted a few more rows of my new socks, played my guitar, walked Lally on the beach and up and down the lane, chatted with neighbours, watched a white hawk (or something) hovering and catching some mice... And we were visited by a small bird in the van earlier! It flew straight in the side door and flapped around the pop-top for quite a while before I remembered to open the front, poor thing. Quite nice to have a visitor, but it must have been very stressful for it.

What else have I done all day...? Let's see... I dozed for an hour, sat in the sun and watched things with my binoculars, cooked some food, messed about with the solar panel and got Jerry (electrician neighbour) to explain the obvious; my panel produces just 100mA - not even close to keep up with the roughly 6A he reckons the fridge draws, but possibly enough to keep the engine battery topped up. The van battery drained completely after 24 hours here. I wonder if it's bad for the fridge to try to run on low voltage. Think I'll switch it off tonight. Jerry has 3 panels each producing 3.5A, which cost him $1400!

A very interesting family arrived today in a bus. The driver is very brown, wears only shorts, has knee-length white dreadlocks coming from his head and chin, and appears to be accompanied by several philippino women and children! Lots of smiles and waves when they drove past. They also have 4 large solar panels, while the ranger has a large-ish wind turbine.

I chatted with the ranger and his friends for a while just now, and a fishing boat came in straight through the reefs in the dark! He must know this coast like the back of his hand - I wouldn't want to try to navigate through the throng of breaking waves out there. I saw quite a few whales out there today too.

So I'm not sure where I'll go from here. The next obvious stop is Exmouth, possibly to do some sailing. I could go back to Carnarvon to email the sailing school, to see if I can park the van where they said I might be able to house Lally for a week. There seems to be no free-camping except in the national park (where Lally is not allowed). The parks are bound to be booked up and expensive, and it's a very long way off the highway up to Exmouth! Perhaps I can park the van at the marina, keep the pop-top down and say I'm staying on Madeline.

In the mean time, the ranger reckons at Quobba Station a few kms north of here there are dozens of small sharks swimming about in knee-deep shoreline. Could be interesting to see that before I go. I might not get to see much of Ningaloo at all, if Lally's not allowed into the park.

I wonder how much has been built in Exmouth since I was there last September. I saw an artist's impression of it with the footbridge that was there but surrounded by red dust last I saw it. The picture was full of brand new shops and apartments, expensive motor yachts etc.

7th August - What day is this?

Another amazing couple of days - I decided I'd better try to book a place in Exmouth so I went back into Carnarvon to get phone reception. In the morning I left that beautiful place - the ranger said "don't tell anybody about it"! I didn't mention it was published in the free-camping WA book! I can see why he wants to keep it a secret though. A funny place full of beach shacks and "grey nomads". It made me melancholic about there being too many people in the world. That in turn made me melancholic about being melancholic in such a beautiful, happy place. Happiness truly is a slippery customer.

Having left, I stupidly decided to attempt some mild off-roading to check out Quobba station. 8km later I'd just about shaken the van to pieces before I gave up and turned around. All the books had fallen out of the cupboards, the drawers had opened and spilled everything everywhere, the bed was nearly off the platform... This is no 4WD!

Back in Carnarvon I parked next to the inlet in the shade and spent a very frustrating 2 hours getting an intermittent net connection. I finally managed to sort out a few things and book a spot for 2 nights' time in Exmouth. By the time I left it was about 2.30pm so I only just made it to the free-camp about 60km south of Coral Bay. A fairly uneventful drive - the red dust is getting redder, the spinifex is getting spinnier, and to balance things out the bush is getting a lot less bushy! Still plenty of road-kill to remind me to keep my speed down. Leaving Carnarvon, we drove over the mighty Gascoyne River again (pic above).

The free-camp was pretty cool - about 25km up the Exmouth road, off the main highway, so without the road trains. Pretty empty and flat so the sunset was very beautiful - a few flocks of some large water bird flew overhead from Lake McLeod. Then the full moon rose, huge and red . I snapped some photos and chatted to a caravanning couple who were chugging wine and beer and very interested in Lally.

Drove to Coral Bay today. The landscape has given up the bush completely now, to be replaced by a city of termite mounds . Perhaps the mounds were there all along but hidden by the bush. It's like we're "above the tree-line". The wildlife includes enormous red cows and bulls, some dead - presumably snake-bitten - emaciated sheep, streaking emus - hilarious - families of goats, and eagles and crows who seem to thrive on road-kill. All of which seem to form a highly organised "woodland alliance", with the specific duty of keeping drivers awake at all times.

In Coral Bay I got to go in a glass-bottomed boat out to the reefs, and they actually allowed Lally to come with me! Very cool after getting rejected "no dogs" so often. Getting Lally into the ocean to wade out to the boat ramp was a little stressful. I think it must've been the first time she'd been that deep into the ocean - up to her belly. She was rather reluctant to move, but with some intense encouragement and sympathy and help from the two crew and other tourists we got her, wet, bedraggled and looking very pathetic into the boat . What a wretch! She stood shivering under my knees until she'd dried out a little, then relaxed and lay down to sleep. When we stopped to let everyone off for a snorkel, one of the crew dived under the boat and waved at everyone from under the glass. Lally was profoundly *astonished* by this behaviour - highly entertaining; she was staring over the barrier and seemed like she could not believe what she was seeing .

The tour was great - saw turtles and the reef like I'd never seen coral reef before . Amazing. I completely wussed out of getting in for a swim though. There were these enormous fish and it was cold and, and... *winge*! The tide had gone out by the time we got back so it was much easier to get Lally off the boat. I would've loved to spend some time in the water with her, getting more used to it, but I had to be in Exmouth by 5pm to get my camping spot.

So now I'm in Exmouth in a boring old camping site. I'm completely sold on free-camping now. So much better to have some space around you rather than being jammed in like sheep into a park full of people trying to camp in as much luxury as they can afford. It is nice to have a shower though, and *shaving* is my own little luxury. I arrived just before sunset, so I didn't go out to try to find Madeline, the yacht I did my sailing course on last year. She's supposed to be moored here but I didn't stay long enough in Carnarvon to contact the school. Hope I haven't come all this way for nothing!

In other news, I think I'm going to have to buy a new battery as the van battery is now completely drained by the morning. I guess that means it's dead. Perhaps it just needs topping up. Hopefully not too expensive - I could try to wait til I'm somewhere less remote, but I've got a feeling it's bad for the fridge to try to run on low voltage.

Well I managed to download a map of vodafone coverage - next hot spot is in Karratha, quite a few days away.

8th August - Saturday, I think...

Well Exmouth has turned out to be a flop and a bit of a waste of fuel. I was hoping to meet up with Madeline and get my Coastal Skipper practical course. I arrived and camped ok last night - I met another solo female traveller, Diane, who had been told about this crazy chick with a greyhound by the 2-year travellers I'd met at Eagle Bluff; Mary and Stan, is it? She introduced herself as I walked past her camp. I'll probably meet up with her again. Quite a network of travellers I'm meeting! There was also a family of 3, touring around in a Model T Ford! Sadly I missed them whenever I walked past them, but I did see they had a very young child with them, and their Ford had a pop-top! Nuts.

This morning I left for the marina. Madeline was there, but nobody aboard. Drove back into the town to buy some internet time at the Potshot hotel - extortionate at $4 for 30 minutes - but no email from Helen. Sent her one, and then went to tootle around doing other stuff.

I found the Auto Pro and had a good chat with the guys there who tested my van battery. The test machine barely even registered a battery was there! I didn't ask what exactly it tested for. So it turns out my battery is just a normal 12V battery; hardly any wonder it didn't like being drained and re-charged. Now I've forked out $250 for a heavy duty deep-cycle battery, already charged, so I didn't have to charge it over night before using it. The *nice* boys gave me a 10% discount *and* one of them installed it for me free of charge! *smile* thanks guys. I've kept the old one as it's an RAC one which has a 3 year warranty - you never know, I might get some cash back for it. At least they might dispose of it in a useful way for me for free.

So having written a cheque as I wasn't sure of my bank balance, I went back to use the net to check. Turns out the Aussie Tax Office have refunded me slightly more tax than I was expecting for the last tax year - happy days. Still no email from Helen, so back to Madeline. Just as I arrived, a sailing student turned up and reminded me that Gary doesn't work weekend days. He lent me his phone for $2 to call Gary who explained the schedule and that I wouldn't be able to do the practical til next week. So after all that I decided to skip it for now. I didn't want to hang around in Exmouth for a week.

Before I left I thought I'd just try Lally in some warm, shallow water to see what she made of it. So I headed to the dog beach down the road from the marina. I managed to get her to paddle in it, but she's obviously not very keen. I splashed along while she tried her best to keep out of the water. Walked all the way back and I just wanted her to get beyond these very small breaking waves which I thought were putting her off. I got her to wade in to just about where her belly was in the water. Then she refused to go any further. I decided to give her body a good rub down with the salt water and just let her paws sit in it for a short while to help them heal. So fully drenched I decided she'd had enough. We slopped back to the shore and she immediately went into a frenzy, rubbing herself in the dusty, grubby sand! She got completely caked in sand from nose to tail ! Lots of grumpy huffing! I got the message. I think she doesn't like being wet at all! We walked back to the car and I managed to get most of the sand off. She got quite a bit in her eyes, so I bathed them, but she was *proper* grumpy with me! Then at the petrol station I left my door open and she lept out the driver's side and bolted down the street after a dog!! Luckily I wasn't near a main road, and she came back to me when she remembered that I don't punish her when she comes back to me. Sheesh!!!

Back on the road again, I got the cruise-control working. We'll see what that does for the fuel economy! Ticking along at 80kmph I'm using 15 litres of LPG per 100km. Given that LPG is about 65% the density of petrol but the same "heating value" (energy per mass) that's roughly the equivalent of 10 litres of petrol per 100km, which is what Stan reckoned his E2000 makes. still would be interested to know what would happen if I jettisoned several kgs of books, used batteries, 20kg of emergency water (on top of the 25 normal storage), tools I couldn't part with, camping gear, the tent...

Having left Exmouth pretty late, I made it about 230 km today to a beautiful free-camp close to the highway. Met some really great people here - one couple with a pair of westy terriers, and Lally could *almost* not give a damn about them! I think I'm just about forgiven for the swimming episode.

11th August - ach who cares what day it is, anyway?

More amazing few days. I decided to go off the highway and head inland to Karijini National Park. It was such a long drive on Sunday - too long really. I think I did about 400km or more, and was pretty grumpy by the time I stopped. I kept missing the free-camp turn-offs! I drove to Paraburdoo, having decided to avoid the town of Tom Price. I just imagined it would be a commune-style mining town. I've been curious about Tom Price since I first saw it on the map, but never imagined I'd actually go there!

It was about 60 or so km to the Nanaturra Roadhouse where I filled up for the extortionate price of 116c/l, then because I missed the rest-stops, by the time I got to Paraburdoo I had 350km on the clock and was running out of lpg. I switched to ulp for 30km and drove on to a free-camp that luckily I found this time! I was exhausted and pretty grumpy by that time. I think we set out at about 8.30 and didn't stop til 3.30pm. We had plenty of short walk-breaks along the way, but still it was too long a drive. It's getting hot too, in the middle of the day. Lally has the sun on her side of the car too, so I've started monitoring the temperature. In the direct sunshine it gets up to high 30's or more. I still haven't tried the wet shirt doggy a/c yet! I keep her in the shade with a light shawl. I splashed out and put the a/c on when we left Paradurdoo.

We started cutting across these long, straight sand-dunes and I remembered I'd seen these from the air when I flew to Exmouth and Broome. They completely cover the landscape, running west-east. I'd be interested to know how they're formed

The camp was pretty cool, again next to a dry river bed . It was the Bellary Creek this time, at the Halfway Bridge. Halfway to what, I wonder! Fellow campers were a couple from the north of England who'd lived in Perth for 20 years. Had quite a long chat with them. They had a jeep with huge, round tyres and an off-road tent trailer. Looked like loads of fun! A pair of huge motorhomes had just arrived when I got there, and a couple of frumpy, unfriendly wives went straight into the back and didn't say a word to anybody except themselves. They looked rather irritated and startled when I said "g'day" to them in the morning! A pair of fussy old men also turned up, so concerned with getting their caravan absolutely flat that they re-started the car about 5 times to inch it forwards and back, bickering with each other. Lally and I turned in just after dark.

Crack of doom we were up, but the last to leave. I enjoyed the brief moment of peace before heading off at 8.30 (we're getting better at leaving earlier!). I promised Lally we wouldn't do nearly so many kms that day. 30km up the road we refuelled at Tom Price (105c/l) - it actually seems like quite a nice, leafy town! The drive was getting increasingly spectacular as we approached. Less Great Australian Bugger-All, and some actual *features* on the land in the form of grassy foothills. Mount Tom Price loomed large , as did an enormous mountain looking completely mis-shapen by the mining activity. I crossed the rail track without looking (I presumed the lights and bells would be going), and glanced right to see a mining train coming down the track! It was a long way off and going very slowly, but still spooked me!

In Tom Price I went to the tourist information centre and asked what the unsealed road through the park was like. The ladies seemed a bit irritated with me for asking! The original plan had been to look for a day-kennel for Lally and book a tour. But they said the track was wide and flat, just very corrugated in places. I thought "pah! I can handle that". So I stowed Lally away in the back, put the silver sunshades on all the windows, the a/c on blowing into the back and headed off towards the park. From the turn-off onto the unsealed road to the main gorge - Oxer's Lookout - was pretty good, and I buzzed along at 60kmph. The conditions got worse and I experimented with going super-slow and then trying to find the "sweet spot" speed where your wheels just skip over the corrugations . Most times 50kmph would do it, but sometimes it got pretty hairy and the van bounced and banged around in a rather alarming way! I let a 5-second blast of air out of the tyres, but I didn't have a gauge to see what pressure it was. When I re-filled them it turned out I'd hardly let them down at all, so needless to say it didn't have much effect!

But it was so worthwhile - Oxer's Lookout was very spectacular . The viewing platform is at a dizzying height above the gorge and right on the edge of the cliff. It's that colour combination that I've only ever seen in paintings when I was in Broome. Here it was "in the flesh", and I realise the paintings don't truly capture the colours. The deep rust red rock streaked with black, the bright, lime green hillocks of spinifex, the bright, fresh green leaves and white bark of the gum trees, the blue sky... It's a wonderfully rich visual.

I was so worried about Lally being a stowaway in the van that I just raced to each sight, tried to absorb the view and imprint it in my head, then dashed back to move on and get the a/c back on. The sun-shades did a pretty good job though, and kept the temp down to about 25C. In this way I saw some amazing falls and more gorges . Realised how unfit I've become after heaving up the steps from the bottom of one gorge!

Having shaken every bone in my body, nearly destroyed the van suspension and collected several kgs of Pilbara dust, I decided to stop and camp at the park campsite at Dales Gorge. I'd done about 100km in total, of driving on dusty corrugations! In the dead of night I took Lally out to walk, hoping not to be spotted by the ranger! We went out at 6am - first light - and set off at 7am in the morning cool to catch the last two sights. The circular pool and the Fortesque Falls were well worth the long climb down. Then I had planned to catch a shower and the displays at the visitors centre, but they weren't open til 9am, so I decided to just hit the road again. Lally resumed her Chief Navigator position on the front seat once we'd left the park !

I'm so glad I went to Karijini! What an experience! It's the essential WA to me, that scene of the red rocks and the white bark of the gum trees. Very beautiful .

The drive up the Great Northern Highway to Port Hedland was dull as all hell! Flat, featureless "bugger-all" . I did spot some interesting rocks along the way . They had been graffiti'd with "Lucie" and a heart, in silver spray-paint. I wondered what historians would make of this fascinating and intelligent rock-art in years to come... Some graffiti artists had a sense of humour though - I passed some rocks at the roadside with a triangle with two dots for eyes. The same marque had been added to the backside of a dead cow lying by the roadside!

We reached the T-junction with the Northwest Coastal Highway at about 1pm, and I decided to head west 20km to find a shady free-camp, where I now am. We arrived very hot, and very dusty . Everything in the van was completely caked in red dust. Just touching the steering wheel and my hands are brown! So I spent about 5 hours shaking out my bed linen and cleaning the kitchen from top to toe! I started trying to dust off the hatch at the back, but it was just blowing dust everywhere, so I'll have a go at that some other time. The problem is the van has this very clever ventilation system with a grill at the front and two grills inside the van at the back... Poor Lally was spluttering a bit from the dust.

So now everything (except me and Lally) is clean-ish and relatively dust-free. Think I'll try to find a washing machine in Port Hedland tomorrow. There's the promise of a net connection there too. Could be a day of sorting things out before the long drive past the 80-mile beach, skirting the Great Sandy Desert.

12th August

Now I'm in Port Hedland and finally I have coverage! Huge update all at once, and I think I'll try skyping some people! I've had the first shower for *days*, ohboyohboyohboy was it goooood. I've done laundry, I've splashed out on a *powered* camping site, and now I'm enjoying myself not having to worry about the laptop battery (well done Mum for taking such good care of it!) Happy days indeed.

Just waiting for the new photos to upload and trying to figure out how I can take even more full advantage of having 240V power! More later.

15th August

Well I'm sure the good people of Port Hedland must see a whole different side and community spirit. What I saw was rampant industry, everything caked in red dust. On the way into town, you pass a huge salt mountain at Rio Tinto Salt, with fields of the stuff drying out in the flats as far as you can see. You then fly over the railway track, complete with estimated 2km trains full of iron ore. They just can't seem to get it out of the ground fast enough.

My neighbour (everybody needs good neighbours) at the caravan park was little John, aka Panda - an enormous and very friendly bloke with bald head, huge beard, a motorbike and a big heart for dogs. He did a little chiropractics on Lally and produced a raw chuck steak one morning which was all but inhaled! He was working nights as a road-train driver, but we chatted at length about stuff in general before his shift. He reckoned I could walk into a job paying huge money there. I said I'd think about it...

It was great to stop, do the website, do laundry, have luxurious showers etc. etc., but I didn't want to hang around. I left the following morning and headed up the road towards Broome. We passed a city of termite mounds on the way out and a road gang had put their hard hats on the top of each one. Then someone had sprayed a bikini top on a couple of them!

I missed out Cape Keraudren and drove straight to the Eighty Mile Beach Caravan Park turn-off to find "No Dogs" writ large. I back-tracked 10km to a free-camp which had been fenced off a short way down the track. Nobody else was there, but plenty of used toiled roll, empty whisky and beer bottles, a couple of old camp fires. Not wanting to go on another 100km to the next camp, or backtrack to Cape K, I decided to stay there. Night fell at 6.30pm, and with nothing much else to do we were asleep by 7.30. I counted road-trains - 12 in that hour.

2.30am I predictably awoke, and a few minutes later a diesel engine pulled in to the parking bay, the other side of some bushes. My heart pounding, I could hear male voices and wood cracking, wondering who these people were and wishing they'd leave. The engine cut off and they stayed for an agonising 20 minutes while I tried to get Lally to lay still and quiet. Eventually they left and I breathed out!

First light was about 5.45 - the moonlight is mixing with the dawn at the moment. A very foggy morning and all the bushes were bejewelled with hundreds of dewy spider's webs . I promised Lally a long walk and we set off. We reached the Eighty Mile Beach turn-off again, and this time I was better prepared for the track. I covered the bedding and kitchen stuff and stuffed things in the vents. We hammered down the straight corrugated track pretty comfortably at 60kmph, passing some nervous campervans doing about 5kmph the other way! 10km later we were at the beach.

And what a beach it is! Almost deserted at that time of the morning, Lally absolutely *loved* it! It was SO good to be able to just let her go without worrying about other dogs or rabbits or groups of old ladies! The tide was out quite a way, so we went far away from the dunes and she could just go. She ran over to one guy just walking on his own, then ran back to me full pelt! I stupidly hadn't taken my camera - it's an awesome sight when Lally's running at you at 50kmph or whatever it is. I heaped on loads of praise for coming back to me, and she went trotting off again. Then I turned around, caught her attention and ran back away from her. She hates being behind people, so she ran as fast as she could to catch me and overtake me. It took her a full 20m to slow down once she'd caught me! WOW!

Then we mosey'd back to the van and I wanted to get my camera and go back to photo her on that beach . She was *exhausted*! Poor girl. All that exercise had completely done her in! She almost refused to walk back to the beach !

Back to the car, and she opted to go into the back to stretch out. I was worried about the temperature, so put the sun-shade up and stopped a couple of times to check, but it stayed below 30C.

16th August

Last bulletin got interrupted! Arrived in Broome after free-camping at Goldwire rest area. While I was there, around 10pm a diesel engine pulled up and a gang of workmen got out to empty the bins - these must have been the people who turned up at 2.30am! Funny how the night time makes everything seem a bit strange and scary. Decided against the 50km corrugated track to Port Smith and just kept going straight to Broome. A circus has arrived and camped in the large park here. I drove straight to one of only two campsites that accept dogs. It's quite far out, but a very relaxed and peaceful spot. The signal there was pretty bad, so I spent the afternoon and evening making some notes on what to do here.

I decided to try out the solar shower. The instructions innocently tell you to "fill the bag" and "hang bag up". Firstly, trying to get water into a large bag without spilling it is difficult at best. Lifting 15kg of water off the ground is one thing. Hanging it from a height that's in any way useful for showering purposes is damn near impossible! So having had a big fight with a nearby tree, lifting the bag, covered in water, sand and leaves, then trying to negotiate a branch and the bit of string and hook provided to "hang bag up" I really really needed a shower! I was tempted to just go to the camp shower, but not to be defeated, I hung up a sarong and managed to have a shower in my bikini. I even washed my hair! The big problem with it is that if you were anywhere so remote that there was no camp shower, you wouldn't want to go wasting precious drinking water on such luxuries as personal hygiene. I estimate I used about 3 litres to wash myself, and a further 7 to wash my hair.

I like Broome. Right now I'm in a shady spot at Matso's Brewery, in the courtyard of an old (by WA standards; 1900) building overlooking turquoise Roebuck Bay and the mangroves (I tried to take a photo of the bay, but the colours simply do not come out). The accommodating staff found me a spot outside where Lally was allowed and where there was a power point for me to work. I've had eggs benedict and coffee and a banana milkshake. Nice and cool in the shade.

Earlier I took Lally to Cable Beach. This time there were a lot of people and several dogs running free. I thought "what the hell" and let her off to see what would happen. She immediately bolted off to go and intimidate the nearest young pup she could find. She had her muzzle on, but when I caught up with her the owners seemed pretty grumpy at her presence. No damage done, and she just seemed rather bemused by the whole affair. She'd run up to one dog, intimidate it, then see another dog running off and immediately go to join the "race". When she'd caught up, she'd realise there was no race, and look for another running thing to beat. She didn't seem to be able to figure out why the race didn't ever seem to last very long! I wonder if she'll ever figure it out.

My plan here is to find a kennel and take a 4WD tour of the Kimberley. Will try to post an update before I set off.

18th August

Aah Broome. Broom broom! Such an interesting and relaxing place. Having been here for a week previously, I feel like I'm an old-timer. I actually know my way around fairly well, having explored the town on foot for the week and almost exhausted all the obvious attractions that time. It's busier this time, with lots of 4WD's buzzing around the place, making ready for great adventures.

Yet again I've flopped a bit, but it's all come good in the end. I turned up at the Conservation Volunteers office just as they were making ready to leave for a 1-week trip up the Dampier Peninsula - bugger! Fully booked, so no chance I could join them. I kicked myself for not having emailed them before. I guess I presumed they'd be crying out for volunteers, not turning them away at the door. A big opportunity missed, but I'm glad I just caught Jules - the woman who I was working with at Minyirr Park here that week.

After they'd gone and the dust had settled I had a long chat with her colleague and got loads of ideas of what else I could do. There's a Cane Toad "muster" in Kununurra from 9th september, for which they're even paying volunteers' flights! Cane Toads are one of many unwelcome and destructive species here in WA. They're poisonous to eat, from tadpole to fully grown toad, so they're reproducing uncontrollably and killing off several other species in the process. Every now and then they round them up, kill them humanely (asphyxiation by CO2, I believe) and then liquidise them into fertiliser! They call the concoction "Toad Jus". Yummm!

I was feeling rather cut adrift after my Broome plan had failed so spectacularly. Lally and I sat in the shade for a time, wondering what to do with ourselves. We walked to the tourist info centre to ask about tours - all very expensive at around $1700 for 1 week. I asked around a bit to try to work out a way to make it cheaper, perhaps by doing a one-way to Kununurra and then taking a Greyhound (haw haw) bus back to Broome. Nothing was working, and I was just about to give up and was thinking of driving away to Kununurra and trying to tour from there... On the off-chance I thought I'd see if this one company had any cancellations, and I got 20% off the price and booked myself on a excellent 8-day tour from Monday!

The tour takes in loads of stuff I really want to see up in the Kimberley; the 4WD-only Gibb River Road, an old stock route to Darwin, gorges, falls, bush-walking, fresh-water crocs, croc-free swimming holes, and the Bungle Bungle mountain range. It all promises to be very spectacular and adventurous. I've booked Lally into the only kennel here in Broome. At $22 per day, it's way more than I usually spend on a camp-site for the pair of us! In fact the campsite I'm currently in is only $15 with power! But she'll be fed very good food, let out to run around off the lead, and the kennels are part of a vet clinic, so there's peace of mind if anything goes wrong. I'll be leaving first thing Monday morning, returning the following Monday, and I'll be out of contact til I get back *smile*.

Now I have the rest of the week to kick back in Broome, sort a few things out, see some things I missed before, read, walk Lally...

Yesterday the battery drained completely after a lot of stop-starting failed to charge the "house" battery. I went window shopping for a solar panel. There follows a bit of geekiness, so skip to the next paragraph if you're not into it! The panels run at just over 20V, so Jerry's (neighbour at the blowholes) 3.5A would make 70W. Jerry reckoned my fridge was 6A on a 25% duty cycle, so that's 6 hours per day at 6A, making 36amp-hours. He reckoned the alternator produces 15A, so (after it's topped up the engine battery, ~15 mins) it would take over 2 hours of continuous driving to top up the house battery after 24 hours running the fridge.

Back to the solar panels, and there's a shop here dedicated to 12V auto electrickery. They do a 3A, 60W panel for $870 - ouch! That would take 12 hours of sunshine to recharge 36Ah. The 80W panel is over a thousand bucks. Is it worth it, I wonder...?

Anyway, I jettisoned the dead battery for free at the electric shop, so that'll save dragging 20kg or whatever it weighed around Australia! I'll put the savings in a pot for that panel. I might have enough by the time I get to Tassie!

Speaking of fuel, I did some more fuel consumption calcs. Jeez I must be missing being a geek for a living! With the cruise control on and with a small tail wind I managed to get it down to 13 litres/100 clicks on lpg, and 9.5 litres/100 kms on ulp. Where lpg is $1 and ulp $1.40 per litre there's nothing in it for fuel cost. Back in Perth, lpg is about 55c/litre, ulp about $1.20, so it's well worth it there to run on lpg. Interesting to know (Well I think so!)

What other news? Today I was too hot and lazy to do anything much at all! I sat in the shade and read my book about aboriginal australians. It's a pretty dry, academic text, but it has a lot of interesting stuff about the attitudes of white australians towards aboriginals and vice versa. One of my first impressions of Australia was disappointment to discover that "european" aussies seemingly think very badly of aboriginals. For their part, many aboriginals in Perth do behave very badly. I view it as a chicken-and-egg thing. In the UK we have homeless drunks and a prison population, but here those people are mostly abo's.

One of the reasons I really like Broome is that here the aboriginal population is relatively high - 25% or so, I think - and there's something of a history of cooperation between the two cultures. Of course there's history of ruthless exploitation too, but there seems to be a glimmer of hope here.

About 4pm I finally stole myself to drive into town to buy Lally a steak (she's been getting cat-fussy about her food, would you believe). They had a "quick sale" chuck steak pretty cheap, and right next to it a very tasty looking rump steak - I treated myself too! We drove to Cable Beach to watch the sunset. With almost no dogs on the beach I let her off again, but she soon found some races to take part in. There was one adorable puppy which immediately rolled onto its back as soon as Lally caught up to it. If she hadn't had her muzzle on it would've been mincemeat!

I chatted with its groovy travelling owners for a few minutes, and then I just saw Lally nip at the puppy and then her jaw was stuck open. A second later she was letting out this almighty and dramatic crying and yelping and carrying on. My heart pounding I grabbed her and her bottom canine tooth had caught on a bar of the muzzle! I tried to prise it off with her writhing around powerfully and screaming. Then I held her still while another guy managed to bend the wire a little and got it off her tooth. I was shit-scared she was going to break off that tooth too. The opposite tooth in the lower set has already broken off, perhaps in the same way. She got away with a small cut on her lip. Jeez, all that crying and wailing was so scary. Everyone on the beach was staring at us, and a vet nurse came running over to see if she could help. If it would teach her not to nip at things it would be great, but within minutes it seemed like she'd forgotten all about it (attention span like a child!) and was looking around for another race to join.

Once my nerves had settled we marched back to the van in the setting sun and drove back to base. I've negotiated a powered site for $15/night here. Unpowered is $12, and powered usually $27! I explained I didn't have anything that would use $15's worth of power per day, so they let me have power for an extra $3 per day. It's a pretty cool, shady spot where Lally is welcome, so I guess I'll hang out here til the trip.

21st August

Wow this page is getting long now, eh? Most "blogs" have the most recent date first. I've always found this rather annoying, as if you've only just come across the blog you have to scroll to the bottom of the page and read it from the bottom up. Like "top-posting" on newsgroups, it just doesn't seem to make grammatical sense. Perhaps I could put the most recent date at the top of the page so you'd know if it was worth scrolling down!

I've been having a very lazy time. I'm enjoying having power so my battery doesn't run down, and while I'm not using fuel I'm saving cash just staying put. I scored two large jerry cans when some people returned from a trip and were giving away heaps of stuff. It would be a great time to buy a 4WD if I was inclined to. It's pretty tempting actually, to swap in this van (not a good time to sell, perhaps) for a 4WD. It would mean access to a lot more places, but also more fuel, expensive tyres etc. A lot of people are travelling in these enormous buses and towing a 4WD! Why not, if you can afford it!?

It's heating up now, and is apparently especially warm for the time of year. Too hot to go out in the mid-day sun, so I've been only venturing out in the morning or after 3.30pm.

I'm looking forward to my trip and getting everything organised for it. This includes emptying the fridge of fresh food. I scored some smoked salmon reduced in the supermarket, so I had delicious scrambled eggs with salmon and cracked pepper! Who says you have to live rough when you're camping??

Yesterday I went in search of a replacement radio-cassette player to replace the van's broken one. The search took me to the local scrappy. No luck there, but he knew a guy who fitted car stereos just down the road. That guy had a couple of old tape players that he'd taken out to fit the new stereo, so he just gave me one for free! He told me what wire colours to put where, so I took it back to base and the job for the afternoon was splicing wires into my dashboard. I wired everything up and hey presto! New, working stereo! I can now play my ipod through the cassette adapter gadget that I bought and not have uncomfortable headphones. *smile*. I do so love fixing things. Getting something good for free because you did a bit of work to fix it - it Makes Me Happy.

That interaction with those kind of people makes me happy too. It's something I miss from moving around so frequently, is getting to know the places and people where you can get stuff done. *Being* a person that gets things done for the community.

The previous day I took my short wave radio apart and fixed that too. The volume control was cutting out and the contacts just needed a clean. So I am fully wired for sound! I've been catching up with a bit of news and hearing all about England's "crippled" batsmen on the cricket team! Now I need to find out what times the world service broadcasts on ABC.

The two-year travellers, Stan and M, turned up yesterday! Stan walked up to me in the supermarket without his glasses on and I was completely bewildered at first, thinking this stranger must have me mistaken for someone else. Then he put his glasses on and I recognised him. They spent a week camping at Cape Keraudren and said it was amazing! I missed out there, it seems, although I'm half tempted to back-track and go back.

Not many adventures to report this week. When I arrived, I noticed this strange black thing hanging from an overhead telephone wire. It reminded me of freshman shoes which adorn the streets of uni towns in the US! Yesterday however, it fell off and I discovered it was a huge dead bat! It was enormous, pitch black, with these cute white teeth. Pretty glad I couldn't smell it though! Lally wasn't interested luckily, which can't be said for the old bones and other rubbish that land next to the bins and which she always picks up and tries to eat before I take it off her. It's a wonderous world of experience for her in many ways; she got completely spooked by something the other day and took off suddenly. I was looking away from her at the time, and just suddenly felt this wrench of my arm almost out of its socket! I spun round just as Lally was landing at lead's length away from me. God knows what it was! She got spooked by a couple of plastic bags the other day too, and almost refused to walk anywhere near them! This morning she saw a 12" lizard crawling along, giving it that look of astonishment she has now adopted.

Last night just after sunset I saw the brightest shooting star I've ever seen! It looked more like a comet or a firework. The sky was still fairly bright, with just a couple of stars out. The shooting star was brilliant blue with a large, red tail. I wonder what it was, coming through the atmosphere?

Ho hum - so that's my news for the week. I am supposed to have vodafone coverage here, but it's not working for some reason. I'll keep trying and hopefully post this up before I leave for the Kimberley.

1st September - OK so it's September now, but this is all about August, so it goes here!

Well I arrived back in Broome yesterday after a fantastic 8-day loop around the Kimberley. I meant to write some notes on what we did but we were too busy! I'll see if I can remember everything...

Sunday, I dropped Lally off at the kennels. I'd been having a very lazy, rather boring time, camping at the Broome Pistol Club which was acting as an overflow camp site. I left at about 1pm after a record stay of something like 7 days. It was very cheap, and I had power there so I was saving my battery. I was starting to feel like one of the long-term residents! It was such a wrench to leave Lally after she'd been my constant companion for 2 months, and I felt rather bereft when I handed her over. But it was a relief to be able to do some last-minute stuff without having to worry about her in the van. I bought a couple of things for the trip at the supermarket and window shopped for light, cotton trousers. I caught a movie at the outdoor Sun Cinema. I love this cinema; it's one of Broome's original buildings and has loads of character with its deckchairs and geckos crawling over the screen looking for moths. At the Sun I watched "The Cove", a documentary about secret dolphin culling in Taiji in Japan, which is also one of Broome's sister cities. A very shocking and thought-provoking movie. Then I thought I'd get away with hanging around for the second movie. The cashier asked me to line up for a second ticket and when I said I'd just leave she let me out the front door where I walked out into a crowd of new movie-goers! I had my pillow (for the deckchair) and plastic bag full of munchies, and looked like a vagrant being evicted! Heh heh.

With not much else to do in Broome on a Sunday night I went straight to park outside the tour operator's office to catch the tour at 5.30am. Crack of dawn the tour guide arrived and 6.30am I parked the van in the lock-up area out the back and we headed off. We collected 16 other punters and left Broome at around 8am. Now I have to remember what we did each day...

Day 1; We drove to Derby (pronounced Der-bee, and not Dar-bee as its English counterpart) to see the prison Boab tree . They marched aboriginal people in neck-braces and chains up to 45km per day across this region, and when they needed to water their stock they put the prisoners inside this huge, hollow Boab tree. Pretty shameful photos of the prisoners accompanied the information boards there .

We continued on past Derby and then onto the famed Gibb River Road. This was the road I wanted to travel the length of so I was full of eager anticipation when we hit the dirt track. It's an old stock route, cutting right through the centre of the Kimberley all the way to Kununurra. I was also interested to check out if the van would have made it through. By the end of the track I had decided it most certainly would not!

Our first stop was Tunnel Creek. I'd never seen anything like this tunnel before - about 1km long it cuts right through the rock, eroded by the incredible volume of water which flows across the Kimberley during the wet. Wading through waist-deep water, we saw small crocodiles - "freshies", fresh-water crocs - colonies of ghost bats, large and very tiny black bats, enormous caverns of stalactites and flat pools carved out at the sides. Walking right through to the daylight at the other end , , the first swim of the tour was in a permanent water hole at the far end of the tunnel. what a wonderful, liberating feeling to jump into wild water for a swim!

The journey continued along the Gibb River Road and then turned off towards Windjana Gorge. Too many crocs here to swim - one was not large enough to get you, but the mob would soon have you! A very peaceful and photogenic spot.

That evening, our first camp under the stars at the entrance to Windjana Gorge, and the sleeping arrangements were made clear for the first time! Jason took down a swag each from the top of the truck, and tents for anybody who wanted them. He said he did have the fly sheet in case it rained, but as nobody had seen a single rain cloud for weeks we just used the mossy net. I opted for rolling out my swag on the ground and pitched my tent close by in case the wildlife got too wild. It was the first night I'd used my new down sleeping bag since I bought it. Together with the swag I was far too hot and battled between the conflicting desires to stay insect bite-free by keeping covered and cool by keeping uncovered. The canopy of stars was just amazing - lack of city light, moonlight, pollution, cloud or smoke revealed the most stars I've ever seen! It turned out the mossies were not too many, but I still didn't sleep very well - I was too excited! Everyone got their first taste of swag-packing in the morning.

Day 2; On our way to Bell Gorge we started to pass through more rocky terrain. Generally I was surprised the Kimberley was less hilly than the Pilbara. I guess I didn't do my homework very well, but I was expecting a redder, rockier version of the Pilbara. In fact the Kimberley is more yellowish and black rock, much of which is ancient "Devonian reef"; long-extinct coral reef. The black colour is created from sino-bacteria which are among the oldest species still alive on the planet. The terrain is flatter because it's older. I suppose the Himalayas will look like this in several million years' time!

We passed Queen Elizabeth Rock, a profiled rock on the Gibb River Road , and a look-out . A short walk to Bell Gorge took us through hot landscape where these yellow flowers and the Kimberley Rose add splashes of colour. Bell Gorge itself was the venue for our second swim, with a bigger and better pool and spectacular falls. The trend for increasingly stunning swimming venues continued from here on! , . Most of us managed to climb up a rope ladder onto the first rock ledge for a dive in; this is a snap that fellow tourist Meaghan took of me . How refreshing after a long, hot walk, to dive into a beautiful clear, cool pool of fresh water?!

A quick dry off, then lunch en route to the next gorge and another swim at Galvans Gorge , . Much to everyone's delight, Jason our tour guide climbed up the long limb of a white gum tree and let out a cry of fright as the branch snapped and he followed its fall into the pool. Another star-spangled night under the stars at Mt Barnett station. 4WD's only at this camp, and I looked around to see if there was anybody I'd met on the way up. I never did bump into anybody but I looked with interest at the different types of vehicle people were tackling the road with. There seemed to be every type of gadget you can think of; canvas pop-tops, telescope-style pop-tops, triangle-shaped flip-tops, trailer tents, high-top 4WDs, high-clearance 4WD buses... you name it!

Day 3; Now this was a fantastic, adventure-filled day! We left the tents at the station and walked to the river bank where we each took a polystyrene foam box for our belongings and swam across the river to the trail start. What fun! Nobody lost their camera over the crossing, and we quickly dried off to continue for a long-ish walk to the Manning Falls. Torrential during the wet, these falls cascade over a long, broad section of eroded black rock. At the top of the falls we saw two goannas basking in the sun. Jason had to show off and jumped from a dizzying height of around 8m into the deep blue-green water . After a lot of encouragement, a practise jump and a leap of faith I managed a death-defying jump of about 4m; here is the evidence: . We were accompanied by brilliant red dragonflies which apparently signal the start of the wet when they suddenly disappear later in the year.

On the way there I had noticed several cairns built up on rocks, dotting the landscape. So I built my own small cairn to remember my two grandmothers, Mollie and Joan whose names are now my middle names . In a lot of ways there couldn't be two more opposite characters; Mollie - a rock, strong mother, solid, permanent, she lived in the same house which my father and us kids enjoyed when we were little; Joan - a traveller, a party-girl, fiercely independent, light-hearted and fun. Both of them were incredibly strong women with an unshakeable sense of self. I reflected on their lives as I walked back to camp.

We swam back across the river, dried off and jumped back on the truck

Further down the road we stopped for lunch at the junction between the Gibb River and the Kalumburu roads . The Kalumburu road had allegedly claimed two 4WD roll-overs in the season and written off several other cars. A very technical, rocky road with deep creek crossings, deep sand and high rocks to negotiate. The sort of road you take a convoy of 4WDs to dig each other out. Sounds like terrific fun!!

We continued along the Gibb River Road and arrived at the Pentecoste river floodplain which is flanked by the Cockburn Range. This was the scenery they used in the film Australia, and at the look-out you can really imagine droving thousands of cattle across the vast country.

Continuing on, we arrived at El Questro, a great stretch of the country taken over and claimed for grazing cattle, and now also home to a large tourist�£B�£B°}&ï!ø£B°£B¼H°£Bm her cancer therapy - not bad! We passed through a lot of land where the indigenous people had been rounded up and moved off, but now they had reclaimed it following landmark native title land rights cases. It makes me desperately sad that the invasion of Australia happened at a time when the British were in such a know-it-all frame of mind. My history is a little shakey, but as I understand it around that time the feeling was that humans had learned everything there was to know. Discussion on Darwinism was raging and in-vogue, and it was fully believed that natural selection was taking place and that the aboriginal people could not survive and would soon be extinct. What a mess.

Day 4; We set up camp and stayed two nights and a full day in the El Questro area. First stop was Zebedee Springs (yep, he does!), a geothermal spring with beautiful clear flowing water at around 32 degrees C. (Bit blurry, this photo) . After a long soak and a play in the hot tub pools we went onwards to our second walk of the morning to Emma Gorge. Jason brought cake and oranges and we splashed about under the waterfall there.

After lunch in the shade back at camp, a few people stayed behind to spend the afternoon reading and relaxing (and in the pub!), while the rest of us went to conquer the El Questro Gorge walk. We were starting a little later than advised, at around 2.30pm, and Jason was a little concerned about the time and finishing the walk before sunset. El Questro Gorge is pretty dark anyway, even in the high afternoon sun . But we were moving fairly quickly and arrived at the halfway pool after only about 30 minutes . Again, here a few people decided not to continue on, as the track was meant to get a lot harder, with loose rock-hopping and some climbing and scrambling. About 10 of us continued on for a further 1.5 hours to the very top. We climbed up some falls which were just trickling at this time of year, shimmied up a dead tree acting as a ladder, climbed over enormous boulders which had fallen into the gorge, rock-hopped and waded.

After about an hour, I was right behind Jason at the front of the group. I asked him if we could make it to the top in time, and he said if we weren't such a large group there'd be no worries. I said "let's go for it", and he dropped back to help people along while I steamed ahead as fast as I could go. For the next 30 minutes I was alone, powering ahead up the gorge, climbing, scrambling, paddling up the creek bed, following the little red tags to mark the best route. Finally, around a bend there appeared an incredibly tranquil scene; a deep turquoise pool, a waterfall, with a rather good-looking guy sitting relaxing under the falls. I threw off my shirt and trousers and dived into the cool water. What a reward for a hard climb! 5-10 minutes later the rest of the group caught up and everyone jumped in for a dip. Lots of laughter and cries of relief and happiness. Jason turned us all out after just 5 minutes, as I think we'd already gone longer than he wanted.

We charged back down as fast as we could in safety, back down the climbing falls and back to collect people at the halfway pool. To celebrate our successful expedition we all went out for dinner at the restaurant and had a few beers in the pub (I had ginger beer!).

Here's a rather bad photo taken using my binoculars as a zoom lense, of a blue-winged Kookaburra we saw the next morning! Bird life has been a colourful feature of the trip.

Day 5; I took the drivers' cab passenger seat for the day while we spent the day just driving, first to Kununurra and then on to Purnululu Park. No air-conditioning in the front, so it was a sweltering day but excellent fun nonetheless. Jason re-stocked the truck in Kununurra, so we had 1.5 hours to cruise around the town. I checked email and collected a flyer on the cane toad muster at the tourist centre, then went to check out an indigenous art gallery. Some amazing artwork there but prohibitively expensive. The cheapest pieces were under $1000, but most were several thousand. One piece I really liked was 5 figures!

Later in Broome I had a discussion with some fellow campers on aboriginal artwork. Perhaps I'm missing the point, but I rather feel much of it is a bit of a con! The ubiquitous dotted paintings often depict fairly uninteresting things like bush tucker. Perhaps there is deep, spiritual meaning behind a series of pairs of bush bananas, berries and witchety grubs, but you can imagine a painting of apples and oranges wouldn't be particularly meaningful. Sometimes the simple block colour combinations are very pleasing, and some of the artwork tells a dreamtime story, or is an abstract representation of a place like the bungle bungles. These I like, but much of it seems to be regurgitated simplistic "tourist tat". My sincere apologies to the artists!

We left the Gibb River Road on the way to Kununurra, and were on blissfully smooth tarmac until the turnoff to Purnululu. Then what a contrast! The Purnululu Road was 53km long, probably about 20km as the crow flies, and took us 2 hours to cover it! Great fun sitting in the front while Jason took us over rocks, sandy river beds , through deep creeks and wild corrugations. We set up camp again to stay for two nights in the park. No showers here, but a few of us had a moonlight wash under the bore water taps around the camp.

Day 6; This very brave bird joined us for breakfast and was taking scraps out of our hands . We set off early to walk around the beehive domes of the Bungle Bungles. These hills were only discovered by "whitefellas" in the 1960's or so, but of course have been inhabited for around 40,000 years by aborigines. The stripes are formed from layers of flood debris, black where the bacteria are prevalent and orange where the pindan dust has stained the outer surface. Inside, the rock is yellowish-white. Each layer itself is made up of several hundred flood-event layers. I was curious why there would be several years forming a white layer, then several years forming a black layer, etc. etc. but Jason couldn't answer that. Jason did tell us all about hydrodynamics, which carves out interesting shapes in Picaninny Creek bed;
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We came across another tour group at a look-out, and did a camera-swapping exercise to get a group photo;
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Walking further around the range we arrived at Cathedral Gorge. Jason described this place as being the equivalent of a church to the aboriginal people. We were not to disturb the water here at all, and treat it with reverent respect. It really is an awesome place, with a great natural round ampitheatre . We had an hour to kill, so most of us took a chance to just lie down and take it all in .

Several people had booked a helicopter ride to view the range from the air, so our next stop was the airstrip I declined as it was $295 for just 30 minutes. We caught Elephant Rock on our way and stopped to snap a couple of photos . Back in Broome I met Meaghan for a coffee and she gave me some of her snaps she took from the helicopter It did look amazing, but I still didn't think it was worth the money!

After lunch we drove around to the northern end of the range where the rock is mostly conglomerate. We checked out the incredible Echidna Chasm; very tall and narrow and carved out of the conglomerate by water flow. We saw a bower-bird bower on the way and Jason took great delight telling us about how the male bower gets all the girls... . Here are the snaps of Echidna Chasm;





Back outside, blinking in the sunlight, we stopped off at the Osmond look-out - that's the Osmond range to the right and the conglomerate cliff to the left .

Day 7; Another long travelling day, we stopped off near Halls Creek to check out the China Wall Many a tourist has been fooled into thinking this is a man-made wall, but in fact it's one of a few quartz-filled faults which march across the landscape. The surrounding rock has been eroded, leaving the wall standing upright. Everyone was feeling rather tired, quiet and a bit blue on our way back down the highway, so we absorbed ourselves in the film Australia as we trundled towards Fitzroy Crossing. It was quite fun to watch this film while the same featured country was rolling past the truck window. We stopped off for a brief visit to a community, where two young white people told us about the art gallery they'd set up there. Nobody bought anything, and the most admired exhibit was a very friendly dog!

Finally we arrived at Fitzroy Crossing, a rough outback town, and everyone enjoyed the hot showers immensely after two days' cat-washing. We had another huge bbq with fresh kangaroo and beef steak. Jason saved some sausages for me to give to Lally.

Day 8; The last main tour activity was a river cruise up Geike Gorge - another Devonian reef formation. Bottle swallows, water birds and small crocs were among the wildlife. Here are some snaps;







On our way back to Broome we stopped at the old Fitzroy Crossing, the original highway We stopped here for a last swim, carefully looking out for crocs. A quick stop here for watermelon in the shade of the truck, and Tai made a quick thankyou speech and we gave Jason a cash collection we'd made The very last item was a quick stop at a 1000-year-old boab tree so huge it was completely hollow and just about big enough to lie down in!

So back we all went to our respective hotels and hostels, and we arranged to meet up at the Zee Bar in Cable Beach for dinner. I recovered the van - filthy after sitting under various trees for the past 2 weeks - and it started fine as I'd left the mini solar panel plugged in to keep it topped up. I drove straight to the kennels to collect Lally. I couldn't wait to get her! I burst open the door to the kennel area and her eyes went as huge as saucers! She was very excited at being let out, and as soon as I opened the van door she jumped straight in without a moment's hesitation! I took her to the Zee Bar and everybody fell in love with her, of course!

Overall we had a really great group of people and we all got on famously. There were two youngish German girls, Sophie and Nina, who had flown out only for this trip, a German couple, Marc and Nadine who had been working in Broome - Marc is a chef, so he helped Jason with the cooking. Another German couple, Sandra and Stefan, had flown from their home over east, so the German language was a feature of the trip. Dennis and Tai, his Cantonese wife had flown from over east. Dennis was such a character; quick-witted, great fun and hilarious sense of humour. Walter and Leigh, another couple from the eastern states, had to pitch their tent as far from the group as possible as Walter snored so loudly! Meaghan, Sharen, Ray and Pauline, Jason's parents, Cindy and her daughter Emma and myself made up 17 people for the trip. All of them were really lovely people - not demanding, not judgemental, just good fun. Pretty lucky really for a random group of tourists!

After dinner I drove out to a free-camp along the Broome road. Tuesday I drove to my favourite shady spot in the car park opposite Matsos and spent 3 hours using up my brackish old water to give the van a top-to-toe scrub. At the Pistol Club I had been parked under a lovely flowery tree where birds with long beaks were sipping nectar from the flowers. This meant the van was also dripping with nectar, so it really needed a good clean! I drove to Tarangau caravan park where I'd booked a spot and bumped into the guy who had the puppy on Cable Beach which Lally had nipped at and caught her tooth in the muzzle. He'd given up the puppy to someone else and was preparing to leave town. I was invited over to the caravan next door for champagne and orange juice. I cracked open my cold bottle of ginger beer and fielded curiosity about my non-drinking! It'll be 3 years around the 15th September with not a drop to drink. We discussed aboriginal art and art in general and had quite an interesting discussion, for once going beyond the same repeated talk of greyhounds and caravanning.

In the morning as I was leaving the campsite I caught a glimpse of the Model T Ford I'd spotted in Exmouth! I stopped for a chat and snapped some photos. I discovered they are an Argentinian couple with a young toddler in tow! They travelled from Argentina to Alaska in the Model T and wrote and published a book "Spark Your Dream". I bought a signed copy from them and chatted for a while about the merits of giving up worldly possessions. These people must work incredibly hard where ever they go; the Model T was packed up and "on display" as I was leaving the campsite. The guy did very well not to appear as though he'd said the same thing a hundred times before, but they must attract the same comments everywhere they go!

I drove in to meet Meaghan for coffee at Matso's at 11am. She left to go into town on the bus at 1pm, and I stayed a further 4 hours writing up the website! Jason turned up too for coffee with a couple of friends, so we chatted briefly. Filling in the feedback form for the tour, I only had 3 negative comments; the complete lack of interaction with indigenous people, the shocking volume of food we wasted (Jason got rather fed up with my complaints at this) and the fact that very little information on what to expect from the sleeping and other practical arrangements had been given in the literature about the trip. Generally though it was excellent value - Jason was very well informed and worked incredibly hard preparing dinner and making us as comfortable as possible. He said he gets paid $280 per day when he's touring and just $20 per hour cleaning up the truck etc. afterwards. For this he works almost without a break, but I guess he gets to see the country, sleeping on top of the truck and swimming in the pools with everyone. He had some nightmare stories of other tourists, so I'm glad for him that we were all relatively easy-going.

So that's me up-to-date! Right now I think it's Thursday! Last night after I'd finally had enough of blog-writing, I packed up and drove out to Willie Creek, right off the beaten track part-way up the cape Leveque road. About 10km of sand and corrugations, I started to wonder about the wisdom of driving alone out to such a remote place. I arrived in tact though, and enjoyed a blissfully quiet night with a 3/4 moon. This morning I woke before dawn and sat inside in the cool mossie-free shade in the van, writing up more blog. Right now, 3 guesses where I am? Yep, I'm back in Matso's! I think I've had enough of Broome for now. I do like it here, but it's time to make a break for the Northern Territory. I've been trying to figure out what to do from here. Options at the moment include stopping in Darwin for the wet season, getting some work and day-tripping out to the national parks up there. It's going to get incredibly hot and humid up there over the next month, and the rains will start to close roads from October onwards. It might all prove to be too much heat, in which case we'll bolt south through Alice Springs towards Adelaide and visit the south coast road, Melbourne and Tassie for the summer.

By the way, I realised I forgot a hilarious thing that Lally does in her Lally web-page. Kim and Marco first mentioned that when she farts it always surprises her! She poinks up her ears and turns around suddenly to see what it was! Fabulous! Bless her - I wouldn't be without her for the world.

Not sure where the next vodafone coverage area is, but it might not be til Kununurra or even Darwin! Til then, cheers for by - more later!

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