Carnarvon WA

Well I have quite a bit to report since my last blog.

After leaving Cleaverville Beach we filled up with water at Karratha then drove for about 3 hours before deciding to stop at a little caravan park at Nanutarra roadhouse. It is a crappy little park and the roadhouse sold Autogas for $1.35 / litre, the highest price we have seen (so far) but it was bloody hot and windy and they had power so we hooked up, set up the satelite dish and watched the Commonwealth games with the air conditioning on. The fridge in the van was playing up pretty badly.

The next day we travelled 200 ks to Exmouth, still bloody windy so we probably didn't see it at it's best but we were a little disappointed. We got a fridge mechanic to look at the van fridge which he proceeded to pull out of the van by removing the door and upending the fridge 5 times to stir up the gases. $120 down.

Next on to Coral Bay which everyone raved about. Well, guess what. Bloody windy, expensive, crap water.
Not our favouite place but we perservered and went on a glass bottom boat tour which was ok albeit a bit rough and snorkelled in the bay.

On down to Carnarvon for one night to stock up with food and water before heading back 75 ks to Point Quobba at the blowholes intending to free camp along the beach for a week or so. Initially it was pretty windy so we set up camp behind the sand dunes in a nice little clearing, found plenty of firewood and settled in. We snorkelled there right off the beach and it was amazing. So many fish and different colours and very few people. On our 5th day we were sitting in the shade of the van awning reading when Bonnie jumped up and hustled the dogs inside because she had seen a snake slither between two little mound about 5 metres away. We discussed it and decided that it was probably not surprising and that at least we had seen and would be a bit more cautious so we bought the girls back out and had all just settled down again when Bon was coming out of the van she saw the bloody thing slither straight at us to within a foot of Charli. When Bon yelled I jumped up and the snake did a 90 degree turn and took off under the van into a bush behind it.
Well, needless to say, that was the last straw. We have never packed up so fast  and left a camp.

This is what it was, a Gwardar or Western Brown Snake, the deadliest snake in WA, perhaps Australia.
It still creeps me out to think how close it got to us. So back to Carnarvon wher we finally look like we have found someone to solve the fridge problem (blocked gas jet). Fingers crossed.

Carnarvon is not a bad place realy , quite like an oasis with all the fruit and vegetable farms after thousands of ks of desert so we are taking a deep breath here before we head down to Monkey Mia from where I will next report.

See you all.

Cleaverville Beach

Hi All,

We are currently camped on the beach at a place called Cleaverville which is about 30 ks north of Karratha in WA.
As you will see from the photos at the end of this blog it an idylic, if remote location offeringvery few facilities except rubbish bins and toilet dump points.
There are a few other people camped around but not near enough to prevent skinny dipping if one was so inclined.
This is our 6th day here and one very important saving grace is that we won't have to put up with any Collingwood supporters who I imagine are absolutely insufferable by now.
Yesterday I made a damper in the camp oven which turned out ok.
Today it was 35 degrees by 9.30am so Bonnie and I went for a swim at 7.30am, where we were joined by some turtles which was lovely.
We are starting to run out of water so will have to make a decision today as to whether we do a run into Karratha tomorrow to get some or move on down the coast towards Exmouth. However, we really don't want to get down that far before the WA school holidays finish at the end of next week.

W.ait for the next episode.

TTFN