Port Headland - don't bother

We’re in for a few driving days, and yesterday was one of them. After another quick canoe we left Millstream-Chichester for the slow drive along the bumpy road to Port Headland. We had to have two stops to refill from jerry cans as we’d decided not to backtrack to Roeborne for fuel. It’s very handy to have the option with the jerry cans, but pretty stinky driving along with diesel scented hands. Luckily to fill the time on these driving days, apart from the nice scenery, we’ve started reading the last Harry Potter book, which I had been saving up. We’re encountering more and more road trains as we go, and really big ones – a lot of them around here have four carriages behind them, and we counted one with 82 wheels all up yesterday. Quite intimidating.

We only wanted to go to Port Headland to stay at a caravan park to wash clothes and ourselves, and that’s pretty much all we got. We spent a fortune at Coles, filled up the car and jerry cans, and squeezed into one of the last spots at the caravan park literally across the road from the airport, behind a servo. It’s not the most scenic of views and has bright lights left on all night, probably because the caravan park is being rebuilt at the moment so there’s holes everywhere, rubble and fences etc. The bathrooms certainly need redoing, and yet we got one of the last spots, and the two other caravan parks were booked out. Apart from grey nomads, most of it is mining people, as this place is full of demountable little cabins, which are so tiny they mustn’t have more than just a bed and loo if they’re lucky, but absolutely packed. As we got here late and had a couple of loads of laundry to do, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the pub on the other side of the servo that the owner mentioned, and which we thought might have cheap steak and a beer. We forgot of course that this is a mining town, and although it certainly wasn’t swish and everyone was wearing construction work clothes and/or thongs, they were still paying $40 for a steak. Having said that, at least it was a nice steak. We’re going to leave as early as we can basically today, and hot foot it to somewhere on 80 mile beach, looking for nicer surroundings.

Millstream-Chichester NP

Python Pool, without the pythons

Snake Creek, no snakes here either

building a dam at Snake Creek

en route to Millstream Homestead

Daniel's "the three stages of wattle blossom"

The pool at Millstream homestead

Nice comfy melaleuca

We had a nice walk this morning to the old Millstream Homestead, which is 3k from our campsite along a dry creek bed, and through different terrain like spinifex scrub and then snappy gums alongside the creek. There’s a few information plaques about plants along the way, and one of them we could actually identify was bush plums, which look like really tiny olives or eggplants when they’re ripe. There are quite a few flowers out here already which is really nice, there’s a purpley Mulla Mulla, and Sturt Desert Peas of course, lots of wattles, and right at our campsite there’s lots of Millstream palms, which apparently have had trouble competing with Date Palms and Cotton Palms introduced by the people at the homestead. There’s also a few different Melaleucas, some with really papery bark which looks great constantly flaking off.

This afternoon we drove to Python Pool and Snake Creek which were further away than we realised. And on top of that they’re basically on the way out we’re taking tomorrow so we really should have done it then and saved the fuel…. Oh well. Python Pool is an amazing deep pool (but quite small so they call it a plunge pool here) at the base of quite big cliffs, which you can swim in in summer. This national park has apparently many of the most culturally significant indigenous sites in the north west, and you can see why – not only is it one of the few places that has water all year ‘round but it’s beautiful. It’s quite different to Karajini NP, and perhaps it would be better to see them the other way around because Karajini is just so dramatic that it makes Millstream Chichester seem a bit less exciting, but it’s still beautiful in its own way.

At one point we bush bashed along the creek for quite a way, hoping to find some aboriginal rock carvings that are apparently nearby, but no luck and it will be almost dark now by the time we get home. We were really going in a bit blind as the rangers don’t really want you to know where they are so there’s no advertising and no path. Nick’s a bit disappointed, but I’m sure we’ll see some in other places. There are also apparently sometimes Sturt Desert Peas down there with white eyes (instead of just the red or black eyed ones) but we didn’t see them either. It’s been threatening rain all day, so we’ve tried our trick of putting the tarp over the tent, and hopefully that will mean that it actually stays away. When we came back to our car at Snake Creek we met an older lady trying to bang tiny tent pegs into the rocky ground with an even tinier hammer, she’s just staying the night on her way between Karratha and Port Headland in a rental car and is game since she’s going to be the only one at that campsite! She’s got a tiny little tent too so let’s hope it doesn’t really rain for her sake, although she’s always got her car I guess. I’m not sure if she realises that the road to Port Headland is all dirt from here and I’m not sure how her Yaris will go on it…

Tom Price and the mine tour, then Millstream Chichester

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ready for the Rio Tinto 

mine tour

old digger

us drag racing the truck

Yesterday we were up and packed up early, said happy birthday to Jasmine and headed into Tom Price, this time early enough to make the mine tour. It was interesting, but a bit of a blur of numbers and statistics – the numbers are just so huge, in that they dig huge amounts of iron ore out of the ground each year, sell it for huge amounts of money, employ huge numbers of people, and all of the machinery is monster size, the truck wheels nearly come up to the roof of the coach we were in and they use a forklift to change the tyres (which takes 45 mins each tyre). It was fun driving along next to the trucks but otherwise I found it a bit horrifying to see what has happened to the mountain, and in fact the surrounding mountains (it went back much further than I realised), in that it used to be 100m taller than it now is. Having said that, it’s not a bad little town, Tom Price, full of families, 2 primary schools and a high school, drive in movie theatre, brand new swimming pool, Coles supermarket, Coles Liquorland and Coles servo - Rio Tinto isn’t the only company with a monopoly here! After we’d had lunch in the park, filled up with fuel and water, done a bit more shopping and bought some motivation from the town bakery in the form of a Pan au Chocolat the size of Conor’s face, custard tart, apple pie and chocolate brownie, and talked the kids into climbing up Mt Nameless, otherwise known as Jundrunmunhna. It was interesting to read a quote the other day in the Karajini NP visitor’s centre from a local indigenous person, questioning why the Europeans called it Mt Nameless, as it has had a perfectly good name for thousands of years….. Anyway the boys were absolute troopers and we very nearly made it to the top before stopping for the huge afternoon tea and enjoying the view. Of course the camera battery was flat so we have no proof…. It took us 55 minutes to get up, and 40 to get down as it was pretty steep. By this time it was getting kind of late so we drove only about 20ks out of town and camped by the roadside – all on our own which we haven’t had for a while. It was a nice spot though and it was nice to be able to light a fire and cook our dinner on it – in fact I was very impressed that we had a three course meal! Garlic bread, fried rice and yoghurt with biscuits crumbled on top, fantastic.

 It was quite cool at night, I guess Tom Price is quite high up, and cool again in the morning when we got up, so it was nice to light another fire and we even made French toast on the grill Jenny and Peter gave us (which is going great by the way). It was also nice not to have to rush, as we knew it wasn’t a very long drive today. It turned out to take longer than we thought though, as it was dirt and corrugated the whole way, so it was kind of slow. The scenery was stunning though, past beautiful mountains and the road even wound through a gorge at one stage, not very deep but still beautiful cliffs up each side and a narrow road. A nice photo opportunity was our first Sturt Desert Peas growing by the side of the road along a lot of the way, the red eyed version. I’m sure that I saw some when driving in Cape Range NP at Ningaloo although we didn’t stop to check, so having seen them for real today feels like we’re really near the desert!

We were pretty tired of driving by the time we got to Millstream-Chichester NP for a late lunch, but happy that we could than relax for the afternoon, what was left of it. We’re at Crossing Pool campground which is right on the river, next to lovely white barked snappy gum trees (which makes me want to sing the Snappy Tom ad every time I hear the name) and some of the local palms, and creepers etc. It’s nice to be amongst some taller trees again, the literature keeps calling this place an ‘oasis’ in the surrounds and I can see why, because it’s really quite green. There’s still red dust everywhere of course, and while I said the other day that it was still new and cool, now I’m starting to get sick of it, because our hands, feet and clothes are always covered it in and feel filthy. The tent is covered in it, the car, the trailer, it’s even getting inside the car because it’s on us, just everywhere. I feel like even when we finally get to wash our clothes in Port Headland it will just cover them again! Still, can’t complain when you’re somewhere like this…. And speaking of a wash, we’re very overdue. We’re really stretching out the clothes now, actually mainly just the socks and undies since we wear outside clothes for days and days but try and keep the bits underneath kind of clean. I think it will have been 10 days between washing machines and showers by the time we get to Port Headland, which I think is the longest so far. Of course we’ve had swims in the sea and in the gorge pool at Karajini in that time, but still, it’s overdue J. The local ranger has donated a canoe to this campground, even with some adult and child life jackets, and for a gold coin donation you can take it for a spin down the river, which is what we did this afternoon. It felt very lazy, and was a great way to relax after the drive. Now the boys are making spears out of dead palm fronds while there’s still a bit of daylight left.

sturt desert peas!

red dust all over the car

Karajini Day 2

Getting to Kalamina Falls

Kalamina Falls - I look like I'm from the 1900's

Kalamina Falls

Knox Falls, or Joffre, I forget which!

We took it a bit slower this morning, and did a longer drive to some gorges further away – there was a lookout at Kalamina Gorge, then we tried a couple of walks at Weano Gorge. One of them, which went down to Junction Lookout was nice and flat and easy but the view of all four gorges there converging was just amazing. The bottom of them is about 100m down from the lookout so I was holding on tight to the railing, but it was pretty spectacular. At this location most of the walks are harder so there were less options for us, but another we tried we didn’t make it through unfortunately, as we gave up and went back when the path seemed flooded with mucky brown sludge/water and Robyn and I weren’t keen. Nick would have done it but the thought of all having wet sludgy sneakers for days just wasn’t appealing to me…. so back to the carpark and just the shorter Joffre Falls and Knox Falls lookouts. We were all feeling really tired by then, I guess still recovering from a big walk yesterday, so unfortunately we missed out on walking down to some of them which looked stunning. They would have been quite hard for the kids though (that’s my excuse).

It has cooled down quite a bit this afternoon and is threatening rain but hopefully it will blow over. It’s our last night with the Ralhs as they have to go to Port Headland tomorrow to get their car serviced and we are going through Millstream Chichester, after a second try at the mine tour at Tom Price. I’ve at least booked us in this time, and we know when we have to be in there tomorrow morning. It’s quite good timing as it’s Jasmine’s birthday tomorrow (she will be 7) so we’ll see them briefly in the morning before we go our separate ways. We’re hoping to catch up with them again around Broome or when going up to Cape Leveque.

Karajini NP Day 1

Walking Dales Gorge with the Ralhs

Circular Pool from above

The iron ore in layers

Goanna we saw near Circular Pool

Circular Pool

Rock garden

Fortesque Falls

Fern Pool

Swimming in Fern Pool

 

 

 

 

 

I expected it to be a bit colder here, being higher up, but it’s really not bad at night, and warm during the day (high 20’s). Even though it’s a huge campsite with about six different sections and lots of people here, you really don’t notice it, because of the way the sites are all situated on a circle drive around the centre BBQ’s, and we’ve faced ourselves away from the centre of our section so we’re looking at the trees around the edge which is really nice. This morning we took it a bit slower and started with the Visitors’ Centre out here, which is great, lots of easily accessible information about the park, including lots of stories from indigenous people about how it used to be living and working on the station which used to be here, some of which involved some stolen generation stories, and some which were quite positive about life then (even though they weren’t paid!). I really enjoyed it even though the kids didn’t take in too much as usual J Then we had lunch back at the tents before going on a big walk this afternoon for 3 ½ hours through Dales Gorge which was spectacular. The rock is layers of iron ore and silica apparently, broken into jagged rocks everywhere when the gorge split apart. If I remember rightly, the when the iron came into contact with the oxygen in the atmosphere created by the stromatolites (them again!) it oxidised and became iron oxide, which is why there’s layers of it all through here. It’s what is obviously what’s being mined around here, and I think there’s quite a bit of pressure for more of it!

We actually really went on three separate walks, one along the top with lookouts which then went back down through the gorge, a side bar to Circular Pool, and another side bar to Fern Pool which was beautiful. Along the Dales Gorge walk we turned a bend and came upon what we called a rock garden, where someone has built about 30 or 40 rock towers, ranging in size, which looked fantastic and the kids thought was really magic. We also saw quite a big goanna on the way to circular pool, which surprised me in its ability to climb up the rocks – I thought it would need something like a tree trunk to stick its claws into, but it somehow managed to scale rocks as well. The water is an amazing bluey green and we even all jumped in at Fern Pool, most making do with just their undies, and swam across it to the waterfall. The water of the pool was breathtakingly cold to start with, but really refreshing by the end – we were all due a bath anyway! We’re all now feeling very proud of ourselves, not only for the walk but for getting into the water, and being back at the tent in dry clothes, beanie on and a stew Nick made this morning heating up…. Couldn’t ask for much more.

The red dirt everywhere looks really cool, and the funny thing we noticed is that the tarmac road here looks like it’s split in two – the side of the road coming into the national park is just tarmac, but the side of the road going out is covered in red dust, which seems to get in everywhere.

I expected it to be a bit colder here, being higher up, but it’s really not bad at night, and warm during the day (high 20’s). Even though it’s a huge campsite with about six different sections and lots of people here, you really don’t notice it, because of the way the sites are all situated on a circle drive around the centre BBQ’s, and we’ve faced ourselves away from the centre of our section so we’re looking at the trees around the edge which is really nice. This morning we took it a bit slower and started with the Visitors’ Centre out here, which is great, lots of easily accessible information about the park, including lots of stories from indigenous people about how it used to be living and working on the station which used to be here, some of which involved some stolen generation stories, and some which were quite positive about life then (even though they weren’t paid!). I really enjoyed it even though the kids didn’t take in too much as usual J Then we had lunch back at the tents before going on a big walk this afternoon for 3 ½ hours through Dales Gorge which was spectacular. The rock is layers of iron ore and silica apparently, broken into jagged rocks everywhere when the gorge split apart. If I remember rightly, the when the iron came into contact with the oxygen in the atmosphere created by the stromatolites (them again!) it oxidised and became iron oxide, which is why there’s layers of it all through here. It’s what is obviously what’s being mined around here, and I think there’s quite a bit of pressure for more of it!

We actually really went on three separate walks, one along the top with lookouts which then went back down through the gorge, a side bar to Circular Pool, and another side bar to Fern Pool which was beautiful. Along the Dales Gorge walk we turned a bend and came upon what we called a rock garden, where someone has built about 30 or 40 rock towers, ranging in size, which looked fantastic and the kids thought was really magic. We also saw quite a big goanna on the way to circular pool, which surprised me in its ability to climb up the rocks – I thought it would need something like a tree trunk to stick its claws into, but it somehow managed to scale rocks as well. The water is an amazing bluey green and we even all jumped in at Fern Pool, most making do with just their undies, and swam across it to the waterfall. The water of the pool was breathtakingly cold to start with, but really refreshing by the end – we were all due a bath anyway! We’re all now feeling very proud of ourselves, not only for the walk but for getting into the water, and being back at the tent in dry clothes, beanie on and a stew Nick made this morning heating up…. Couldn’t ask for much more.

The red dirt everywhere looks really cool, and the funny thing we noticed is that the tarmac road here looks like it’s split in two – the side of the road coming into the national park is just tarmac, but the side of the road going out is covered in red dust, which seems to get in everywhere.

En route to Karajini

The big prawn outside Exmouth

Have just remembered that we promised to be at Uluru on 2^nd July so I really have to ring them today and try and move it. I was surprised that we managed to move our booking for Broome after having to book so far ahead. I rang up a while ago and they took 10 days to work it out but still managed to move it to the middle of July, I guess other people cancel all the time too since it’s so hard to judge when you’ll arrive somewhere. We were woken this morning by a loud chorus of birds which was nice, there’s all these river gums they were sitting in alongside the Beasley river, which is currently only a puddle. We were camping a distance away from the toilet at the site so had to use our own, and discovered that we probably should have emptied it after we’d used it for a few days at Warroora Station. It hasn’t been a problem in the past, leaving it for a while, while we’ve been in cooler weather, but obviously when it gets this warm and if we leave it sitting for a while some serious fermenting goes on and when Daniel had to use it last night it really stank the tent out. First job to do when we reach Tom Price! Hope you enjoyed discussing that paragraph mum and Alain.

We were hoping to go on the tour of the big mine at Tom Price today and rang up as soon as we had reception, found out the bus left at 10am so we had to really gun it to try and get there – on a dirt road which had dips and crests like a roller coaster so we managed to get airborne quite a few times in an effort to make the bus. Luckily it was a well graded road, but unfortunately we missed the bus by only 10 minutes. We then did a bit of shopping, got fuel, went to fill up with water, and discovered that both ends of our the hose into our water tank were broken! It must have been all of that bumping at great speed on the dirt road in the morning – and wasn’t even worth it since we didn’t even make the tour! I’m just happy that we discovered it before heading into Karajini (where there’s no water). Still it was a bit of a dilemma with bits come apart and other bits snapped, but Nick was a trooper and fixed both of them while the kids played at the skate park and I blogged and made lunch. The only catch was that he drove off to the hardware store with the cap to the water tank off and sitting on the side of the wheel arch… so of course it fell off. So I spent about half an hour retracing his route around the town (which wasn’t very far luckily) and couldn’t believe that I actually found it, 50m from where he started, which means that it stayed on the whole time he drove around the streets, only to fall off when he did a big loop to come back and park next to the water tank again. Very happy to find it anyway, and all up it only delayed us a couple of hours, and we were lucky that our friends went on ahead to the national park to reserve us a campsite. The national park is still another hour from Tom Price and it’s a lovely drive through the mountains which are all red dirt and big rocks, with some white barked gums sporadically spread over them along with scrub around the place. Lovely colours. We arrived at about 4pm, tired but relieved and ready for a beer with the Ralhs. It’s a nice campsite, although very rocky red dirt on the ground, and being a national park, no fires. It’s also only a few minutes’ drive from quite a lot of walks so that makes it easier to get out and do things without getting up at crack of dawn – the thought of being able to set up for a couple of days and just venture out in the car is really nice.