NIGHTS 183 - 199, The Pilbarra.

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 13^th.  I tell myself that I’m not superstitious but I think I’m a bit in denial.  If Friday the 13^th 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 13^th 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 13^th.   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 14^th).

 

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?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through the Kimberleys; nights 170 - 182.

NIGHTS  154 & 155  -  ANDREW’S PLACE, LEANYER, DARWIN

Shana and I went to Uni with Andrew in the 90s.  Shana and Andrew were making films as communications undergrads; I was studying various movements within literature and learning how to structure a paragraph without embedding a swearword within it. (Everybody peppered their speech with ‘fuck’ in the ‘dirty realism’ of my upbringing).  We never kept in touch with Andrew after we graduated.

Many years later Shana and I had retrained as primary school teachers and moved to Newcastle.  One spring morning we laid out our towels on Newcastle Beach and Andrew and his wife Louise where lying next to us, a body length away.  Andrew said “hullo” in his deep, booming voice and, in answering our shocked “What are you doing here?”, told us that he’d also retrained as a primary school teacher and moved to Newcastle.  The similarities were too strong.  This time the connection must be maintained. 

Facebook had helped maintain knowledge of Andrew’s movements through the years.  We knew he was living in Darwin and we knew he’d like to see us.  We hoped, however, that he lived on a street wide enough to house a motorhome for a night or two.

Turned out that he did.

Undoubtedly time had grabbed each of us and given us a good shaking.   We all had our own ‘war’ stories to share.  Then Andrew gave us insights into Darwin over coffee or wine and we in turn entertained them with stories ‘of the road’.  Some people hate the word ‘nice’ but not me.  In the peaks and troughs of existence ‘nice’ smiles comfortably from the middle.  It’s a viable place to spend time, recharging and asking for little.  We had a nice time with Andrew and Louise over a couple of days.  We hoped to see them again before we left ‘the territory’.

NIGHTS  156  -  169 -  LEANNE’S PLACE, BATCHELOR.

Old friends and new friends.  We’d known Andrew for years.  With him Darwin was about reconnection.  We’d met Leanne once before in Brisbane and after our second meeting she’d volunteered to look after Morrissey for nearly 3 weeks.  It was our turn to repay the favour.  We  volunteered to housesit and look after Shelley (her red kelpie) while she went away for ten days.  It’s in Leeanne’s nature to be friendly.  She left us with the run of the house and the keys to her ute.

It takes a while to get used to the unfamiliar, and we had no initial familiarity with Batchelor at all.

For example, in Batchelor there is a distinct “thwack” that is made when a palm frond hits the ground after falling 10 mtrs from the top of a tree.  We’d never heard this sound before.  But both the front and the back yards at Leeanne’s contain many tall palm trees.  It ended up that we heard this ‘thwack’ a lot, each time thankful that when the frond landed there was neither human nor dog beneath it.  Everyone collects their fallen palm fronds in stacks along the footpath.  There’s a stack in front of most houses.  There’d be very few residents of Batchelor unaquainted with the palm frond ‘thwack’, (and very few dogs not continuously, and nervously, looking up).

 Similarly, there is a particular growl that a dog makes when he/she feels something has invaded his/her territory.  This growl rarely occurs during the day in Batchelor when it’s too hot for most creatures to do anything besides lie in the shade and continue breathing.  This growl occurs in the wee hours of the night.  It rouses you from your sleep so that city paranoia starts picturing rogue snakes or stealth cane toads lurking in the yard and looking to poison unsuspecting dogs.  You yell to the dogs from your bed, “settle down…quiet”, knowing that it’s futile.   You must go outside to soothe them and check that they’re not curled up in a poisoned heap.  You’re now awake.  Eventually you drift back to sleep, but not deeply.  In another hour the growl erupts again.  You try to ignore it this time but know you can’t.  (Thank you to Shana for this anecdote.  She heard the growl.  She rose to walk the night.  I slept through most of it most of the time.  I did wake up once and was a bit tired the next day).

After a few nights we decided to let the dogs sleep in the house.  We didn’t really know what else to do.  That way they (and Shana) got a better night’s sleep.

Also, something happens in Batchelor after 10pm.  I’m not sure of the reason why but, after 10pm, televisions and music become louder.  Before 10pm all is fairly quiet.  You could sit out on the front step and hear very little.  Then, as if by town consensus, once 10pm rolls around, virtually every house starts vibrating like a large speaker, a jumble of voices and musical notes knotting the air like stormclouds.  It’s a bizarre thing.

We stayed in Batchelor for a couple of days after Leeanne returned, her and Shana quickly becoming newby besties.  We left vowing to see each other again soon.

Morrissey was keen to get back in the ‘bago but he was a pathetic sight.  It was with the most melancholy of doggy expressions that he left his girlfriend. Who’s ear would he nibble on now after breakfast?  With whom would he now share his food?  He entered the ‘bago and slumped down into his travel kennel.  Sad eyed and brave, he didn’t look back.

NIGHT  170  -  LIMESTONE REST STOP, VICTORIA HIGHWAY

To get from Batchelor across to the Western Australian coast required retracing our path back as far as Katherine.  It is from Katherine that you turn onto the Victoria Highway and head westward.

So, we drove past Speedy’s where we picnicked among the stromodolites, past the Adelaide River pub where we went to a market and saw the stuffed bull from Crocodile Dundee, past the turn-off to Robin Falls and the long dusty drive to the Daly River, past the turn off to Mt Bundy Station with its cluster of semi-working grey nomads, past the turnoff to Pine Creek with its pub made from termite mounds, past the turn-off to both Pussycat Flats with its reheated frozen meals and the Kakadu Highway, past the turn-off to Edith Falls with its deep and large coolwater rock pool and little fish that bite at your toes, past the turnoff to the Katherine vet that ignored Morrissey for a day, and, after a two hour journey, into the Woolworths carpark at Katherine, one of the most frantic Woolworths on the planet.

Here we shopped carefully.  There is a quarantine station between W.A. and the N.T. that confiscates fresh foods.  We figured we’d take three days to get there so we needed enough fresh food to last three days only.  We didn’t want to throw stuff out.  Then, after the quarantine station, we intended going to Lake Argyle, which is just across the border and before any opportunity to shop again.  We needed food to eat whilst there, but food that wasn’t fresh.  There we were, evaluating and comparing microwave versus boil-in-the-bag in the frozen meals aisle.  Ah, the joys of travel.

 

Shopping completed we drove the 70ks west from Katherine to the Limestone Rest Stop, back to the realities of life on the road again. At Limestone we found a flattish place to park and became re-aquainted with the stench and squalor of a rest stop pit toilet.  My nifty new little compass showed us where best to park so, with shade assured, we took out our chairs and opened a fresh packet of Mint Slice biscuits.

I give the Limestone Rest Area 1 ½ stars out of 5. I’m back to being a harsh marker.  You wont impress me by offering a pit toilet and a tree or two.

NIGHT  171  -  BIG HORSE CREEK REST STOP, VICTORIA HIGHWAY.

Part of me wasn’t looking forward to the long drives with nothing much in between that lay before us again.  No doubt my mind kept trawling through memories of the Barkley Highway; to the long straight stretches of road with nothing much on either side, the scenic equivalent of a Uriah Heep CD.  But the Victoria Highway is nothing like the Barkley.

In the roughly 250km we drove today, the scenery changed markedly three times, and each change brought with it ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ of appreciation.  It started off scrubby, the palms and ferns of Batchelor giving way to the greys and yellow greens of your iconic Australian bush.  It was familiar looking and, as such, comforting.  It could have been anywhere – western NT or western Sydney.  It was not exactly the same of course, but it strongly reminded me of the scrub of my boyhood.

Then, as we approached Victoria River, sheer rock faces began rising from the ground, looming above the height line of the scrub.  The faces were vivid red, contrasting energetically against the clear sky blue surrounding it.  Each twist in the road offered a glimpse of an upcoming range.  We stopped at the Victoria River Caravan Park to take it all in.  Parking there was like parking in a crater, surrounded completely by walls of vibrant red rock. I took lots of photos but all failed to capture the tingles of awe that swept through us. Breathtaking.

Maybe 40km further west the scenery changed again.  The composition of the rock faces altered.  Vibrant red gave way to a muddy grey but each face had at least one streak of darker grey slashing across it.  The darker grey was a type of natural terracing that gave the hills a look as if humans had terraced it, similar in feel to pictures I’ve seen of Machu Pichu. The tallest ranges had terraces just below the tops of the ridges.  From a distance these slashes of dark grey looked like the tide line of a once great flood.  Now I’m no bible scholar, but has anyone looked for an Ark in western NT?  In all that water and confusion who knows where Noah got swirled along to.

We stopped at Timber Creek, the closest thing resembling a town we’d seen for hours.  After a brief rendezvous with civilisation we drove to ‘The Big Horse’, where there were boab trees everywhere (see separate entry) and a boat ramp into the Victoria River.  The boat ramp saw people not catching fish and we allowed Morrissey a quick if dangerous dip.  He was sooo hot and I guess we rolled the dice against a saltie prowling nearby.  We got away with it.  He immerged from the water with all his limbs and organs, but he was only in for about a minute.  Still, it was the longest minute I’ve experienced for a while. 

 

I give the Big Horse rest area 2 stars out of 5.  It’s a well laid out rest area that cost $3.30 per person per night, (the GST component sending us scrambling around looking for loose change).  The toilets are diabolical though.  They are hybrid long drops.  I’m not sure what that means but they smelt the worst of any toilet I have been in and, to make matters worse, we were parked directly downwind.

NIGHT  172  -  SADDLE CREEK REST AREA, VICTORIA HIGHWAY

I’m not going to rave about the constantly changing and gobsmacking scenery any more.  Let’s just take it for a given that, until I say otherwise, driving along the Victoria Highway and through The Kimberleys is a visual feast.  If you ever get the chance to do it then do so.  You don’t even need to go into the National Parks to be overwhelmed.  Just driving along is spectacular.

Okay, changing topic, has anyone heard of an explorer with the last name of Gregory?  We hadn’t, but so what.  A long time ago he carved his name on a boab tree and that very boab tree was only 3 ½ kilometres off the highway along a dirt road.  We love a boab tree and so turned right off the highway and bounced along what turned out to be a corrugated and unwelcoming track.  We were becoming boab buffs.

Gregory’s tree was pretty cool actually.  Mr Gregory himself didn’t carve his name into the tree.  His exploration team included an artist and this artist carved calligraphic lettering announcing the date they arrived at the site and the date they left (October 1856 and July 1857).  They’d made virtually a small town on the site complete with stables, veggie garden and forge.  They also had a fence to keep the crocs away.  It’s all gone now though.  Nearby there was another boab tree and they’d carved the words ‘letter in forge’ into the trunk to inform anyone arriving at the camp where they had gone, etc.  It was pretty interesting actually.  We’ve decided that history is much more interesting whenever boab trees are included.

 

Saddle Creek campground was set beneath an escarpment that glowed red in the setting sun.   There was a cool breeze blowing and there were no mozzies at all.  We spent the night outside at our own open air cinema, watching episodes of ‘Orange is the New Black’ (thank you Andrew) on the laptop and eating all the fresh foods we had in the fridge.  Tomorrow we’d cross the border.

 

I give Saddle Creek Rest Area 3 stars out of 5.  The escarpment was spectacular, the toilets clean, the chocolate at the movies cold, hard and crunchy.

NIGHT  173 & 174  -  LAKE ARGYLE CARAVAN PARK, WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

“You’ll have to go back.  You can’t bring dogs into Western Australia”.

With these words Shana, for a millisecond, saw our trip flash before her eyes.  It was said by an older guy, serious in tone and with the right look of someone official. We were at the quarantine station and the guy turned out to be just a bloke waiting in the line, having a joke and doing it well.  Shana saw through it quickly but, for that millisecond, …

The actual quarantine guy didn’t take long.  He didn’t ask to look in any of our outside hatches or under the van like we’d seen him do with others.  He looked through all our internal storage spaces and went through our fridge.  He found a lemon which he confiscated.  Jokingly, Shana said she should have hidden it in her bag.  She likes a gin in the afternoon and lemon is a vital ingredient to her mix of choice.  He didn’t smile at the joke.  On the NT/WA border, fresh fruit is not a topic for humour. 

As soon as we drove away from the quarantine station 1 ½ hours disappeared.  The Earth stayed at the same point in its rotation and the sun never altered its position in the sky but instantly time vanished.  We drove into the quarantine station at approx. 10:30am and we drove out, about 10 minutes later, at 9:10am. Now I’m well aware of the different time zones and how crossing them alters time but it’s a surreal thing to happen when driving.  When you’re in a plane it makes sense.  ‘Jet lag’ is a well known phenomenon that exists as part of the ‘exotica’ of international air travel.  You fly from Australia to, say, France, and you expect the time to be different.  You know you’ll have to adjust.  It is easily reconciled in the mind.  For it to happen when looking at the same scenery and driving 100mtr is less easy to reconcile.  When you lose time just because someone has confiscated a lemon, well, that’s a freaky thing.

The Lake Argyle turnoff is not far from the border.  We’d been told to go there several times.  In fact, one day when we were at Batchelor we met a woman in the information kiosk who’d done ‘the lap’ more than once.  Naturally she was full of advice.  We asked her to name her favourite place and she didn’t hesitate in saying “Lake Argyle”.  She insisted we go there, that we’d regret it if we didn’t.  Well, it was on our way.  It was easily accessible.  We had the time so we heartily followed her advice.

But we didn’t care much for Lake Argyle.

 We are not being deliberately contrary in saying this.  We are not just going against popular opinion to position ourselves as ‘outsiders’.  ‘Lake Argyle’ the lake is beautiful to look at.  It is man-made - made by damming the Ord River - and has filled the Argyle Valley to become the largest fresh water lake in Australia.  On a clear day the water reflects the surrounding hills and looks like a picture. However, ‘Lake Argyle’ the lake features little in the experience of ‘Lake Argyle’ the resort.   

The resort ‘Lake Argyle’ sits high above the lake itself.  The main feature of the resort is the ‘infinity pool’, a swimming pool that has a ‘disappearing’ back wall so that, if you frame it perfectly in a photo, it looks as if the pool itself becomes part of the lake.  In such a picture the lake serves as a spectacular backdrop for the resort, which is equally true of the place in general.   It had a restaurant, a bar, a shop, live music and movie nights; in other words it was self-contained.  Once there, once you’d had enough of the view, entertainment was laid on.

 

 You could access the lake itself.  Mainly people go on boat tours of the lake, spending an hour or two tracing the shores of the many coves and bays.  A big selling point is that, when on a cruise, you can have a nice swim in the lake, presumably somewhere deep and remote.  You can swim in the lake without going on a cruise, as Shana, Moz and I did, but it’s not a pleasant experience.  While in no way frowned upon, the infrastructure of the place doesn’t encourage it either.  If you want to swim in the lake (without taking a cruise) you can use the floating jetty, but you have no easy way of getting back onto it.  No stairs or ladders from the water are provided.  You can enter from the shore but the only accessible place is the boat ramp.  We swam there and got moved along as there were boats launching.  And boat ramps by definition continually have boats, often with petrol and oil spilling into the water etc.  As such, swimming in Lake Argyle was disappointing but, with a change in focus by someone with clout, it could easily be fantastic.  I’m just not sure anyone is much concerned though.  And, judging by the comments of those we met previously, many nomads like it just fine as it is.

I give Lake Argyle Resort 2 ½ stars out of 5.  Flat sites and clean amenities are important to a comfortable stay, and the resort had those, but to be exceptional requires a more inclusive relationship with the surrounding environment than having it merely providing a pretty background. Or at least it does for us.

NIGHT  175  -  KUNANURRA SHOWGROUND

A few times we’ve been denied access to a caravan park because we have a dog.  At times we’ve argued with caravan park owners that allowing dogs entry based solely on how much they weigh is a ridiculous concept.  Kunanurra Showground, however, gives us the opportunity to thumb our noses at these places.  You see, at Kunanurra Showground, you MUST have a pet to be allowed to stay.  Take that people travelling without pets – you must go elsewhere.

People without pets missed nothing.  Kunanurra Showground offered very little – dirty encrusted toilets and filthy showers.  It also seemed to house those in the local area who were ‘down on their luck’ because, beside us, there were five people living in a tent.  They had a kitten so they met all the requirements.

The people beside us yelled at their children often.  The children didn’t like getting yelled at and so cried often.  The parents yelled at the children to stop crying.  Not once did it work, but the parents continued with the strategy.  Shana and I closed the door of our sweat box ‘bago.  We started watching the series ‘Orphan Black’ (thanks again Andrew).  The show was okay but the night was generally unpleasant.

 

We give the Kunanurra Showground 1 star out of 5.  We still like the idea of getting one up on those uppity non-pet owners but the reality was that it sucked.

NIGHTS  176 & 177 – SPRING CREEK REST AREA, GREAT NORTHERN HIGHWAY.

At Spring Creek braman bulls wander unchecked.  They’re large creatures and they’re prepared to pass within metres of your campsite. It’s scary at first.  They have horns and beady eyes and bull brains that you can’t predict.  When they first walked towards us we tried to act cool.  I told Shana I’d shoo them away if they passed a certain rock.  They passed the rock, I made a shooing motion, they chewed the cud and ignored me completely.  I didn’t know what to do so I did nothing. The bulls took to chewing leaves off a tree beside the van.  Morrissey watched but was confused into inaction.  He’d never seen other dogs this big before.  He laid in his bed staring at them, not even growling.  I know how he felt. 

The bulls obviously belonged to some nearby cattle station.  They hung here because Spring Creek still had several largeish pools of water where most everywhere else was dry.  One of the larger pools was directly below where we were camped.  Not only did the pool attract bulls, but thousands of birds came and went during the day, either diving into or drinking from the pool.  Shana began twitching (meaning bird watching - she didn’t develop uncontrollable body movements).

 

Shana twitched so happily during the morning that we decided to stay for another day.  It was great.  The rest area cleared out and, with less people around, even more birds appeared.  We didn’t have to go anywhere to have a relaxing couple of nights and Shana’s bird book is now covered in the semi-coherent scrawl of the blossoming twitcher.

We give the Spring Creek Rest Area 4 stars out of 5.  It had no showers and primitive toilets but the birds liked it.  Who are we to disagree with the birds?

NIGHT  178  - MARY POOLS REST AREA, GREAT NORTHERN HIGHWAY

Driving allows lots of time for the mind to wander.  The scenery through The Kimberleys has been spectacular and we talk often about the things we are seeing but, even so, there’s still hour after hour left to the whim of the mind.  We passed through Halls Creek today, stopping to refuel.  It made my mind spend the following hours thinking about supermarkets.

Or, more to the point, is it a good thing that supermarkets now own petrol stations?

One side of me says yes, another side says no.

It certainly seems to make fuel cheaper.

 For example, before we got to Halls Creek, we drove through a place called Turkey Creek.   There’s not much at Turkey Creek.  There’s a roadhouse/ caravan park and an Aboriginal community. (There could also be a police station but I didn’t see it).  Anyway, being the cautious gent I am, I pulled into the roadhouse to top the fuel up.  They were charging $2.13 per litre.  Outraged, our quick calculations projected we had enough fuel to make Halls Creek.  We drove straight back out again.  Until now we’d never seen fuel priced above $1.99 per litre. 

As we drove into Halls Creek we couldn’t believe that the servo was a Coles Express.  The fuel was $1.84 per litre, before the 4c Coles docket discount.  That’s still expensive, but not by ‘outback’ standards.  It turned out that the servo was also a Coles store, although it was the smallest supermarket I’d ever seen.  It didn’t have trolleys or anything.  It didn’t have a wide enough variety of stock to warrant them.  It did sell some groceries though and, if you spent enough money in one transaction, you earned your 4c discount on fuel.  But is that a good thing?

There is another grocery store in town but they can’t offer any petrol discount scheme.  It’s a bit unfair having a massive behemoth like Coles stride into town.  But, in the Coles/Woolworths supermarket war, Coles have captured Halls Creek. I guess it makes it cheaper for the people in the area and, anyway, we used a docket and saved 4c per litre on fuel.  I think I’d have rather spent the 4c per litre extra though.  It might have set my mind wandering somewhere more pleasant.

Mary Pools rest area is large and, according to what we’ve read/heard, it is normally crowded. There weren’t many there though.  We’d been wondering about this.  It seems that our house-sit in Batchelor had the unforseen effect of putting us behind the main pack of nomads. We’ll see.  It allowed us our choice of sites though.

Mary Pools is a series of small rock pools containing what’s left of the Mary River (der!).  The pools weren’t big enough for us to sit or swim in but Morrissey threw himself in over and over.  All we could do was watch, feeling a tad jealous. 

 

I give Mary Pools Rest Area 3 stars out of 5.  It was here that we first encountered Bikini Pants Guy (see separate story).  For that it will always remained burned into our retinas.

NIGHT  179 – FITZROY CROSSING CARAVAN PARK

Fitzroy Crossing is a large town in these parts (like Halls Creek it also has a Coles Express service station).  It houses a large and swanky new resort – The Fitzroy River Lodge.  It looks beautiful in the brochures - new amenities, green grass, the river shimmering below an a la cart restaurant with people sitting on the deck sipping wine.  It’s on the eastern river bank, just before you cross into town.  It doesn’t accept dogs.

 

On the western bank, as you cross the river on the edge of town, sits The Fitzroy River Caravan Park.  It is a caravan park rather than a lodge.  It accepts dogs.  It probably has to.

The Fitzroy River Caravan Park complex incorporates the Fitzroy River Hotel, which is the oldest pub in the area.  The Lonely Planet recommends you go there for the experience, but only once, and not for long.  That’s because most of the patrons are blind drunk at 3pm in the afternoon.  After that they start swearing loudly at each other, usually along gender lines.  The drunken women swear and puff themselves out at the men; the men swear back louder and clench their fists into a weapon.  It was neither pretty or pleasant, and we were camped only 100mtrs away.

While there we learnt a new word – ‘humbugging’.  We saw it first as part of a sign that said ‘No spitting, no fighting, no humbugging’.  I knew the word ‘humbug’ from Dicken’s novel ‘A Christmas Carol’; it’s the word Ebenezer Scrooge used to dismiss Christmas, as in “bah humbug”.  That definition didn’t make sense in this context though.  I’m sure people weren’t being warned against spitting, fighting and dismissing Christmas.  Turned out that ‘humbugging’ means something like ‘bludging off somebody’.  If someone comes over to you and persistently asks for money, or for you to buy them a drink, or to give them a cigarette, and they wont let up, then they are humbugging.  It is banned because it pisses people off and causes fights.

The caravan park complex also housed Fitzroy Crossing’s picture theatre.  It was in an old tin shed and played only on the weekends, unless a special event occurred.  We were there on a Wednesday but we lucked out in that there was a special event on that night and we were invited to attend.

 

Some local schoolchildren, teachers and support staff were having a viewing of the movie ‘Satellite Boy’.  We’d never heard of it but found out that it was a movie made in the area and starring local kids.  It was made by the ABC and mainly starred…  It was a contemporary take on the Aboriginal experience, made last year.

 

It was a fantastic experience for us.  We were welcomed, a bit warily at first by the kids, but when the lights went down it didn’t matter.  The movie was interesting and well-made and the kids, all of them boys between maybe 12 and 15 years old, laughed and carried on with each other as you would expect.  They weren’t naughty though.  The teachers brought around popcorn (we were offered some but declined) and drinks and we watched as on the screen two similarly aged boys enacted an adventure from the outback to the city (well, Wyndam to Kununurra anyway).  To be in a tin shed watching a movie about young Aboriginal boys while with a group of young Aboriginal boys was something we hadn’t expected.  We hoped the respect and privilege we felt was fully expressed by our smiles and our sincere gratitude.  It was one of those experiences that came from nowhere and resonates long after it is over.

We give The Fitzroy Crossing Caravan Park +5 and -5.  +5 for the theatre experience and the cool, cool croc free river.  -5 for everything else, including the brightest flood lights I’ve ever seen – surely prison grade.  They burned all night long, placed inside the caravan park.  We could have been in Finland because it seemed that daytime never went away.

NIGHT 180  -  NULLIBUBBICA REST AREA, GREAT NORTHERN HIGHWAY.

Infamous for the great Bikini Guy standoff (see separate story) but not much else.  A red dirt rest stop along a long, long road. 

 

I give the Nullibubbica Rest Stop 1 ½ stars out of five.  It provided a place to poo that had a flushing system but had little shade.

NIGHTS  181 & 182 – BROOME’S GATEWAY CARAVAN PARK

We drove past it on the way to Broome.  We knew it was there but rejected it as being too far away.  It was 28km out of town.  Unfortunately the only caravan park in Broome that would accept dogs was profiteering by charging too much for a site and then adding a ‘dog surcharge’ on top.  Shana and I rebel against stuff like that.  We surprised the woman by rejecting her overpriced park and walking away.  I’m sure she thought she could pretty much charge what she wanted.

We spent the day in Broome before we drove back out.  Our first glimpse of Cable Beach brought tears to our eyes.  It is beautiful, with water a deep turquoise sea green, a colour I’d never seen before.  We were soon in the water and, even better, dogs are allowed on the beach as well.  You have to walk 200mtrs or so from the flag area but we didn’t care.  Like us, Morrissey ran to the water with excitement, holding his head in the air as he hit the first breaker.  We drove back to Broome’s Gateway satisfied and exhausted.

 

The next day brought for me a change.  Normally I say to people that there is nowhere else I’d rather be than where we are, doing the trip.  I mean it when I say it.  But today is Todd’s birthday.  I don’t like missing Sam and Todd’s birthdays.  Sam managed to join us on her birthday this year.  Todd couldn’t make it though. He has TAFE commitments.  So, today, there is somewhere else I would rather be.  I’d rather be with Todd, singing happy birthday out of tune and making him cringe with my poorly thought through jokes.  We’d probably be at a skatepark somewhere.  I’d be watching a little boy still tentative on a skateboard while everyone else saw a grown man; confident, competent and a more capable rider than his father ever was.

I give Broome’s Gateway 2 ½ stars out of five.  It’s a long way out of town, and the sites are non-powered, but the showers are massive and new and have a seemingly non-ending stream of hot water.  There was a nice fenced run for Morrissey to play in.  It’s only new and, although the red sand is soft underfoot, it will be better as more grassed areas grow in.