NIGHT 183 - ROEBUCK PLAINS REST STOP, GREAT NORTHERN
HIGHWAY, WA
This rest stop really is just a red dirt diversion. It has four garbage drums and nothing else –
no water, no toilet, no shade. Luckily
we pulled in during late afternoon and the day had cooled. It’s nowhere near as hot here as it was
coming across the top from Darwin – you’ve gotta love a sea breeze. These are westerlies. I used to love westerlies in Newy. In Newy a westerly blew offshore, cleaning
the surf and holding the waves up. Here,
on the other side of the country, a westerly blows onshore. It stuffs the surf but blows beautiful cooling
breezes across our bodies.
I give the Roebuck
Plains Rest Stop 1 star out of 5. It
allowed us a place to park safe from being back-ended by a road-train.
NIGHTS 184 -
186 - BARNHILL STATION.
Barnhill Station tested our mettle and our resolve, and that
was simply accessing the place. It’s
10km off the highway; ten dirt road and rutted kilometres, dead straight
towards the coast. I was wary of the
drive in. I’d have happily driven past
it. Shana, on the other hand, who
researches for fun, was mad-keen to go there.
The reviews of the place were mostly glowing. She’d long pencilled it in as a ‘must do’. (And today was her birthday. How could I possibly say “no” to a beautiful
woman with freshly pedicured two shades of sea green toe nails?)
We met people at the gate who were leaving. They told us that the road was good. “You’ll have no problems” they said, failing
to alleviate my concerns. Shana opened a
gate and we drove through.
As a surprise to no-one, Shana had researched the best way
to drive over corrugated roads, which proved handy as, even though it was
pretty good, the entry to Barnhill was often corrugated. Fast is better than slow, but each vehicle
has an optimum speed. You determine this
speed by trial and error. We soon found
it to be 50kph for the ‘bago. At 50kph
my kidneys only occasionally lurched toward my throat and the contents of the
van only occasionally threatened to break through their confines and release
themselves noisily onto the floor. In a
motorhome everything is within earshot so every rattle in the cutlery draw and
every groan of the cabinetry announces itself like the portent of some possible
later drama. In the end we made it easily
but as I booked us in a nervous sweat continued rolling down my face.
Barnhill Station is gorgeous – picture perfect turquoise
water and deep red cliff faces. We
parked in an unpowered site out on the bluff and had uninterrupted views across
the water towards where the sun sets.
There were long beaches off in two directions and, following the beach
leading south, we found a sandy low tide cove between the rocks where we could
swim clothing optional. It became our
morning ritual to swim there. Also low
tide exposed rock pools and we headed for these in the late afternoon, sitting
among the shells as the sun went down.
Morrissey, unshackled and free, bounded along the beach and
between the rocks like the mad thing he is.
He chased little crabs and sprinted after birds and always came back
smiling even though he never caught a thing.
However, as pretty as the place was, the amenities were
disappointing. I loved that the
amenities block had no roof and was cobbled together from corrugated iron. It was quaint and suited the ‘feel’ of the
place, (even if you had to don a broad-brimmed hat to do a number two during
the day), but the prime season was over and the place was only a third full, so
why was hot water a scarce commodity?
And, more annoyingly, why was there never any toilet paper in the loos? You get used to carrying toilet paper around
when at a rest stop, but you shouldn’t have to do it at a station or caravan
park.
The saving grace was that at Barnhill they sell ice-cream in
a cone. Nothing highlights ‘the good
life’ to me like the feel of vanilla ice-cream as it drips from a melting blob
and runs along the cone and between your fingers. Licking these fingers is bliss. Doing so while looking across the ocean and
sitting in the shade takes bliss even further.
We give Barnhill
Station 2 ½ stars out of 5 plus 1 for being the site of Shana’s birthday (and
whim day). For $22 per night it is at
the expensive end of the ‘bush camping’ scale so we at least expected hot water
and toilet paper. It is gobsmackingly
beautiful though.
NIGHT 187 - STANLEY REST AREA, GREAT NORTHERN HIGHWAY.
It was only a short distance from Barnhill Station to the
Stanley Rest Area. We are in no hurry
and have worked out that fuel costs are blowing our weekly budget. It’s not surprising when you consider that
there can be a thousand kilometres between towns and the average price for
diesel is about $1.80 per litre. So rest
areas like this one are handy. They
allow you to bunny hop.
Stanley Rest Area is massive. It caters for well over 100 vehicles. We were one of only 10 on this night, which
highlights how our extended stay in Batchelor and Darwin has put us behind the
main cluster of road warriors. An old
guy recently told us the ‘rule of thumb’ for travelling the West Coast – “grey nomads leave from Perth on Mother’s Day
and leave to go back home on Father’s Day”.
Good. Father’s Day was almost two
weeks ago. We’re enjoying having fewer
people around.
I give the Stanley
Rest Area 2 ½ stars out of 5. It had
clean toilets and lots of shade and we had our choice of sites.
NIGHT 188 - DEGREYS RIVER REST AREA, GREAT NORTHERN
HIGHWAY.
IMPORTANT – THIS IS NOT YOUR NORMAL
REST AREA. Degreys River Rest
Area has people stay there for months at a time. This is because it is a stunning place. It’s almost inconceivable that you can stay
here absolutely free. I imagine that
someone somewhere will soon be getting ‘the rounds of the table’ over this
fact. Surely there’s a councillor
somewhere (lets imagine a fat old man with sweat constantly attracting dirt to
the creases between his many chins) lambasting a junior clerk because people
are parking their vans and motor homes alongside this flowing river. They are fishing and they are swimming. They are having campfires. Yet nobody is making a profit. The council even provides and upkeeps toilets
for these layabouts yet still they pay no money for the privilege. How can this be?
The thing is, you’d happily pay a small fee to stay the
night at Degreys, (but I’m glad you don’t have to).
It was a long trek to Degreys though, well for us anyway –
400km. Luckily 80 Mile Beach happened to
be about half way along.
80 Mile Beach has a caravan park and a beach. The caravan park doesn’t allow dogs – booo! -
but the car park is beyond the caravan
park’s control – yaayy! So, ‘in your
face’ van park, we followed the freshly graded dirt road to your gates and let
Moz wander as much as he wanted. Of
course nothing terrible happened. No
little children were mauled; no old ladies knocked over. He did a wee against a pole and then we went
to the beach.
The water colour at 80 Mile Beach is spectacular. It’s milky white. I’m not sure why exactly. The beach has millions of shells covering
most of the sand but I don’t think that’s got much to do with it. The water looked like it had tiny clumps of light-coloured
mud in it. Anyway, whatever the reason
for its colour, it made it an unenticing place to swim. This was compounded by the dozens of
fisherpeople lining the shores with beachrods in hand. The beach may be 80 miles long but there was
little room for entering the water. And
parked behind most of the fishing people was what seemed to be this season’s
must have accessory - a tricked out quad bike complete with rod holders, sun
shades and mini esky. Obviously one now motors
up to the water’s edge and tosses in one’s line.
So we didn’t swim at 80 Mile Beach but we had a great time combing
through and collecting shells. We didn’t
take that many but spent an hour or so searching for the most perfect example
of several different types. It was
relaxing, and Mozza didn’t sully the place too much.
I give Degreys River
Rest Area 4 ½ stars out of 5. This is a
rest area score. I’m comparing it
against other rest areas, not caravan parks.
As far as free rest areas go, Degreys is the best we’ve seen.
NIGHT 189 - PORT
HEADLAND GOLF CLUB CARPARK
Today was Friday the 13th. I tell myself that I’m not superstitious but
I think I’m a bit in denial. If Friday
the 13th comes and goes without me knowing about it then I’m
happy. It happens sometimes like that with
me. I generally know what day it is but
it’s rare that I know the date. That means all sorts of day/date combinations pass
me by. Or at least they used to. Writing a journal blog like this one keeps
the date front and centre in my days. I
knew yesterday that today was going to be Friday the 13th and I
didn’t like it.
In fact, I was feeling sick.
I had the headaches and groaning body parts that precede the onset of
the flu. And to top it off, we had today
entered Port Hedland.
At first view Port Hedland is as ugly as a landscape
gets. It’s not Nature’s fault
though. The landscape is ugly because of
what we humans are doing to it. Abuse of
the landscape was evident in whatever direction you looked – be it an assembly
of large cranes digging up the ground in the distance; or a mountain of salt
piled high beside a series of artificial ponds; or the million miles of wires
that seem to be forever criss-crossing above your head, dividing up the sky; or
the procession of road trains, each 4 trailers long, that buffet you as they
pass or almost nudge you as they loom large in your rearview mirror,
approaching at speeds the signs tell us they’re not supposed to go. When you see a palaver of signs announcing an
upcoming photo opportunity which turns out to be a brand new railway junction
and siding, well, welcome to The Pilbarra.
All this ugly activity brings prosperity though, and Port
Hedland the town lounges expensively dressed.
The Port Hedland art gallery is large, solemn and well
curated. It houses works by name artists
of note. The information centre is like
an art gallery itself, or a well-stocked bookshop. It is spotlessly clean and air conditioned
and offers every service that the perfect information centre should. There are sculptures on many street corners,
large depictions of local life carved from rock or formed from metal. There are murals and street paintings and
laser cut shade roofing that throws shadows of shells and starfish onto
footpaths and building walls. The city
centre is an artwork in itself. And if
you look closely, written somewhere off to the side on everything human-made
and beautiful are the words ‘sponsored by BHP Billiton’.
Shana says that the place is full of “ladies that
lunch”. She reckons that while the
well-to-do menfolk are out organising further debasing of the surrounds the
society gals have created a vibrant arts and café culture to give them
something to do. In fact, the Port
Hedland information centre provides a pamphlet called ‘The Girls Guide to
Hedland’ that provides information about clubs and societies for the new female
arrival in town with time on her hands.
To me Port Hedland has a distinct coloniser/ colonised feel,
similar to the things I’ve read about India under early British rule. Here the mining giants and their families are
the colonisers, taking what they want from the area and creating cultured ‘beauty’
as a way to mask it. We all get to
appreciate that beauty if we want – we can all go to the art gallery or the
information centre or sit in a refurbished park on a sculptured jarrah seat -
but we don’t really get a say in whether we’d prefer the beauty of an unspoilt
landscape instead. Decisions such as
that, Port Hedland seems to say, are best left to people who have financial and
political power. Passers through like us
should take a nice snapshot of the new rail yards or the salt works and
continue moving.
We continued moving.
The Port Hedland Golf Club has a carpark. It is a typical gravel carpark. In it there is a section along the side fence
that you can park your van/camper/motorhome should you want. It costs $25 to do so. You get no power or water supplied but there
are showers available.
It’s not a good deal, but it is the only deal in town if you
have a dog. Stay, park alongside the
fence, shower and shut up. I was feeling
ill. All I really wanted was a hot
shower and then go to bed. It was also
Friday the 13th. For the
first time ever, so they said, the club had run out of water. The water truck should be there sometime in
the morning (Saturday 14th).
I give the Port
Hedland Golf Club Carpark ½ star out of 5.
The British backpacker behind the bar had a nice smile and I liked her
accent as I handed her back the shower key.
NIGHTS 190 & 191 - THE
COVE CARAVAN PARK, POINT SAMPSON.
This was a very expensive caravan park. Shana chose it and insisted we go there, but
she had my best interests at heart.
After the debacle of the Golf Club carpark she wanted somewhere where I
could be the ‘little sicky boy’ and amenities were assured. (I think as much for her sanity as for my
health).
On the way, though, we stopped at a ghost town.
Really.
There was once a town called Cossack. It was a major town in its day – possibly the
most important town on the entire Pilbarra coast. In fact, Cossack was Broome before Broome
existed, the major pearling hub and port in North Western Australia. Broome only blossomed after Cossack died
out. There were several reasons for
Cossack’s demise – cyclones, a shallow
harbour, unsustainable pearling practices in the early 1900s, get-rich-quick fervour,
more cyclones. Eventually everyone moved
away and the town died, but the buildings survive. It’s freaky and cool. Most of the buildings are made of stone and
some have been renovated (it goes without saying that there is now a café in
one, which I guess means it isn’t a ghost town anymore). There’s an old well
and a one room schoolhouse and a couple of bizarre but original public toilets.
I’ve never been a history buff but I
really enjoyed Cossack.
Port Sampson isn’t far from Wickham, which is another mining
town in The Pilbarra. Port Sampson is the closest seaside place for the miners
to go. As such, it’s also had a lot of
money spent making the town cultural and pretty. It has intricate sculptures and spectacular
parks with paths of different coloured gravels. It was all similar to Port Hedland except
the sponsorship signs here read ‘Rio Tinto’.
The Cove Caravan Park was new and all the facilities worked
perfectly. The hot water ran freely and
with a solid stream. It was the weekend
so I watched the footy – the station ‘Gem’ shows the NRL. Nearby was a small sheltered bay (The Cove) where
Shana and I familiarised ourselves with our new snorkelling gear. Shan was feeling a bit poorly herself so we
didn’t exert ourselves too much. The
gear got a taste of salt water, but not a very large taste.
I give ‘The Cove’ 2
stars out of 5. It was all new but
without personality or verve. It felt
very sanitary, which I guess was a good thing when feeling ill. Maybe it’s because I was ill that I feel
unkind towards it, but I do feel that way and they get 2 stars and maybe that’s
being too generous.
NIGHTS 192 – 196 -
CLEAVERVILLE BUSH CAMPING RESERVE.
Luck was on our side once more. Cleaverville was 15km off the highway along
another bloody dirt road. It was mainly
public road though, which we hoped meant a higher likelihood of upkeep. Our hopes proved valid as the road had
recently been graded, so recently in fact that we followed the grader along the
last kilometre. It wasn’t as good as tar
sealed - dirt roads never are - but it was as good as a dirt road gets. It was a cruise onto the coast where we found
a great spot, beside a sand dune with a vista of beach, sand and turquoise
water. And, given that we were to stay
for a week, we were thankful that the better-than-nothing long drop toilet
wasn’t far away.
At Cleaverville we engaged more with the local wildlife than
with other campers. We spoke to other
people but it was through our interactions with various animals that the place
revealed itself. These interactions led
to the creation of some new verbal expressions, some of which I share below:
·
The most
ferocious of animal can sometimes be the smallest. Here I refer to midges, or
sandflies. By themselves they are almost
undetectable as they fly nearby. They
are that small. They are so small, in
fact, that they can fly through the holes in insect screening, and they do
exactly that. In the early mornings, or
on the late afternoon, they pass beyond the flyscreen to form squadrons off to
the side of the van, somewhere near the sink.
These squadrons then join together to form clouds, which by now makes
the sandfly highly visible. Like
football hooligans they then develop bravado in groups, and they launch
themselves toward any unexposed skin.
You can easily detect these clouds as they approach, but there’s little
you can do. Shana took to launching
counter offensives, filling them (and me) with ‘one shot’ fly spray. I tell you, in our van ‘one shot’ referred to
the name not the application. She
pressed that spray like it was the trigger of a machine gun. Some mornings we cowered beneath the cover of
a sheet, waiting for the hours to pass so they’d fly away. By the end of day two we both looked like we
had chicken pox. I used to hate mozzies
most of any creature, then, while in the top-end, I developed a distaste for
crocs (both the footwear and the
animal), but sandflies are by far the worst.
We left Cleaverville two days earlier than planned because running away
seemed the only escape. There are only
so many layers of insect repellent that human skin can endure.
·
As dumb as
an octopus. At low tide Cleaverville
had many wide and shallow rock pools to explore. These rockpools were the homes to many
critters, the dumbest of which was the octopus. Now, by using camouflage, over
time the octopus has evolved an amazing self-defense strategy but, for some
bizarre reason, when that strategy would be at its most useful, the octopus
does the exact opposite. You see, you
don’t even have to know an octopus is nearby.
In fact, the camouflage is so good that you can rarely see them from a
distance as they blend in with their surroundings. Get within a meter though and the octopus
panics. In a completely pointless act it
takes aim and spits water at you.
Admittedly the aim is pretty good, and it sometimes gets you, but it’s
only water. So now you’re a bit wet but
you know that there’s an octopus nearby and you know approximately where it
is. Approach further and the octopus
becomes even dumber – it abandons its camouflage all together and, before your
eyes, changes its skin colour to neon blues and vibrant browns. So, at the point when it is most in danger,
the octopus goes from something hard to detect to becoming blatantly bloody
obvious. For all I know most of the
animal kingdom is scared off by neon blue but fisherfolk aren’t. If you ever want to catch an octopus for bait
just walk the rockpools and watch as the dumb-ass creature panics itself into
capture.
·
As green
as a blue tuskfish. I caught a
fish. No big deal. The fish was there and I tricked it with my
bait and caught it. (Maybe this fish was
dumber than an octopus?) The fish was a
glorious green colour and it had teeth that protruded from the bottom of its
mouth through the top lip. I’d never
seen a fish like it and must admit that I was equal parts wary of its unusual
appearance and entranced by the beauty of its colouring. Shana took a photo and we let it go. (It wasn’t a big fish). We Googled it and discovered that our exotic
green tropical fish is officially known as a ‘blue tusk fish’. We still haven’t worked out why.
·
Not every one
looks like Flipper. We’ve all seen
dolphins I’m sure. We all know what they
look like in a way that you probably don’t realise until you see a ‘not
dolphin’. A ‘not dolphin’ gets the heart
racing much more than a ‘dolphin’ because when you see a ‘not dolphin’ your
survival instinct says “I don’t care what it isn’t – what the fuck is it?” You instantly realise that, even though it
looks a bit like a dolphin, it’s something else entirely. Maybe the dorsal fin is different or its
swimming action is back and forth rather than up and down. If sitting on the beach it becomes academic
and interesting. “Mmmm” you might muse,
“wonder what that is?” However, when a
‘not dolphin’ is viewed from the water, then your whole body automatically
screams “shark”. Generally panic ensues, and rightly so. Sometimes, however, a ‘not dolphin’ actually
is a dolphin, but not every one looks like Flipper. Flipper is the pin-up of dolphins; the
Jennifer Hawkins; the David Beckham. He has
all his curves in the right places. At
Cleaverville we saw a ‘not dolphin’ from the beach. It had a stubby dorsal fin,
kind of ugly really. We, as you would, thought shark, which was
disconcerting because we’d been swimming in the area an hour earlier. But it moved through the water like a
dolphin. It was like a dolphin with a
shark’s ugly dorsal fin. And so to Google we went (again). Google informed us that our ‘not dolphin’ was
indeed a dolphin, just not your sleek lined bottle-nosed ‘they call him
Flipper’ variety. What we saw was a fairly rare ‘stub-finned
dolphin’. It is a dolphin endemic to the
northern coastlines of Australia and not commonly seen. There were two, playing together and exposing
their tales like a whale sometimes does.
We only saw them for about 10 minutes and then they were gone. They were weird looking but still very cute.
We give Cleaverville 4 stars out of 5. The sandflies were more than we could handle
but we have been told that they aren’t always that bad. Apparently they get worse around a full moon,
and the moon was full and bloody huge while we were there.
NIGHT 197
- BALMORAL CARAVAN PARK,
KARRATHA
Karratha
is another Pilbarra mining town with clean streets and a superficial
smile. Of itself there’s not much to
see. The good bits are all a short drive
away.
First
we went to see the petroglyphs. Before
we read about Karratha I didn’t know what a ‘petroglyph’ was. To me it sounds vaguely like a dinosaur. A caravanning magazine informed us that a
‘petroglyph’ was a form of indigenous art where images are scratched into the
rock rather than painted over the top.
Basically it’s indigenous etching and, about 20km out of Karratha at a
non-signposted site that resembled a quarry, there are thousands of petroglyphs
scattered in amongst millions of rocks.
Just
sitting there.
Once
you find the site part of the fun is spotting the petroglyphs. The rocks are in a huge jumbled mountain of a
pile a kilometre or so round and there appears to be no logic as to why one
rock has been etched while those around it haven’t. The whole adventure sounds a lot like this: “There’s one. Look, over there. Follow my finger straight up from that small
rock at the front and then around to about two o’clock. See it? It’s on a
medium sized rock. It looks like a
lizard. What do you mean you can’t see
it? Look, it’s right there. ”
It’s
an amazing place to be. Some of the
petroglyphs are thousands of years old and they sit unpreserved and unprotected
about 2km from a large nitrate plant. The juxtaposition is quite jarring but there
seems to be no local ladies lunching together and discussing how to conserve
the petroglyphs.
Next
we went to Dampier, which, unlike Karratha, is on the coast. We’d read that it is a pretty town and it
is. Not sure about the palm trees
though. I’m not sure that anyone needs
to encounter a row of planted palms to understand that they’ve reached the
coast. Surely the big blue water is a
give-away. At Dampier we took in the
sights and then settled into the yacht club car-park. Shana went and got fish and chips (two sit
down meals put into take-away containers for us) while I set the TV up. Then we watched Newcastle beat Melbourne
unexpectedly in the NRL finals. We got
more excited than we thought we would.
In fact, we were going to watch the sunset but we became so engrossed in
the ending and the after game back-slapping that we cancelled those plans. The sun would set again tomorrow.
Our
last stop was an extremely large natural gas plant on the way home. It had been recommended to us as a ‘must do’
by the girl at the information centre.
“Make sure you go there at night though” she told us, “it’s much more spectacular
in the dark”. We couldn’t believe we
were going. Who wants to see a bloody
large industrial power plant as a site of interest? It’s what we had mocked Port Hedland for.
Well…it
was amazing. As you rise over a hill the
darkness retreats, driven backwards by the sudden impact of thousands of lights
concentrated in one small area. The
lights follow pipes and chimneys and the whole metal maze of the place looks
like some future city from a science fiction movie. (I expected a hovering
security vehicle of some sort to stop and check the validity of our
papers). You drive past the lights and
turn up a hill. At the top of the hill a
gigantic flame becomes visible, rising what must be hundreds of meters into the
air from a tall white chimney. Another
smaller flame burns beside it, rising from a smaller chimney. You open the door and step outside and become
instantly exposed to a continual roar like the sound of ten large jets landing
simultaneously. And all around there’s
the smell of fire burning but no smoke.
It is ghastly and it is horrible.
It is beautiful and inspires awe.
I still don’t know what I think about the
place. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’m glad we went though. Thank you information centre girl.
The Balmoral Caravan Park gets 2 ½ stars out
of 5. It had everything we needed and it
all worked. The staff were
friendly.
NIGHT 198
- ROBE RIVER REST AREA, NORTH
WEST COASTAL HIGHWAY, W.A.
It
a long drive through a lot of nothing to get from Karratha to Exmouth. There’s nothing really to see. The Lonely Planet calls it ‘the big empty’
and that’s an accurate description. It’s
also very windy and strong surges blow at an angle from our left and into the
front of the van. Being a box on wheels
the wind throws the ‘bago all over the road.
It does this for hundreds of kilometres at a time. We were happy to pull into the Robe River
Rest Area, but only because we can stop driving for the day. The rest area itself has nothing much going
for it – stinky toilets, road noise, a river with no water.
We give the Robe River Rest Area 1 ½ stars
out of five – I repeat; stinky toilets, road noise, a river with no water.
NIGHT 199
- BARRADALE REST STOP, NORTH WEST
COASTAL HIGHWAY, W.A.
More
driving, more wind, more big empty, and our sandfly bites had yet to stop being
itchy. We selected a rectangular prism of dust, parked, and sat inside,
scratching our skin and telling each other how glorious Exmouth will be. Tomorrow we leave ‘The Pilbarra’ for ‘The
Coral Coast’… and Ningaloo Reef… and Cape Range National Park…and…and. Just one more sleep (just one more night in a
dust bowl carpark).
It’s another rest area. Who cares?
No comments:
Post a Comment