January 31st, 2025
We were up early, showered and out of the campground in Karratha by 6:30 am – just wanted to get back on the road and make some time and mileage up. It was already over 30C / 86 F at that time and it only got worse as the day progressed. This part of the country is pretty much the same landscape over and over but as we said in the last post, much greener than normal due to the rains from the cyclone ten days ago. We even saw some cattle grazing taking advantage of the green stuff. It’s got lots of red dirt, red rocks, “hills” called “mounts” and lots and lots of nothing.
We’d read about “turtle rock” and that was right along the Big Lap Road. It was called “split rock” on our maps and it did feel like a better name.
There is less and less traffic in this region and even fewer RV’s. School starts on Monday so we figure everyone has gone home (and we made it through the high season!). We saw very little wildlife: a perentie and for the first time a dingo in the wild! But he was off into the grass pretty quickly. This region has more aboriginal communities and we did see more than usual in Karratha.
Once we got past the port city of Port Hedland (a major iron ore port), mining trucks and equipment began to dwindle as did the piles of rocks and mining signage. After the Pardoo Station, the land got very flat and a bit drier looking but there was still plenty of green grass and bushes.
There were several rivers to cross (on bridges of course), many dry but a few with water.
We wanted to see the 80 Mile Beach which has a marine park but we read that the campground there has very limited cell reception (and we are addicted to being connected) so we drove to the parking lot at the beach, had breakfast and saw that it did fluctuate from nothing to two bars – not good enough!
We walked over the dune to the sea and took a short walk (it was far too hot to go too far and there was NO shade) and Fran of course, had to dip her feet in – it was quite warm but rough looking and even the sign at the gate, said “not safe for swimming”. The beach had a lot of shells on it and was rather narrow and it was a bit too windy to consider putting an umbrella up so we opted not to stay here despite the $25 a night price for a powered site.
We knew that 40km / 25 mi down the highway was a roadhouse that offered powered sites for $35 so still a good price.
There were peacocks, roosters and peacocks roaming the grounds at Sandfire Roadhouse and we were camped near this tree with pretty flowers:
While we pretty much had this place to ourselves, the one downside was the rooster who couldn’t tell time and the roaming male peacocks making a racket in the early morning. Doug went for his run earlier than usual and despite the heat and humidity, he’s doing an impressive job getting it done.
Should you wish, click here for more photos of our drive towards Broome.
We left the campground around 7:30 with no stops to make today as we head to the city of Broome.
We wanted to check in with the Broome’s visitor’s centre but it was closed and it turns out most of the attractions around here are closed in the “wet” and are only open in the “dry” which is April to October. Oh well, it is what it is. The sad thing is the next four national parks we wanted to visit are also closed. We expected most of this but we also wanted the full Australian experience: wet and dry, hot and humid as well as nice weather.
We parked in town and went over to check out Sun Picture Gardens but it too was closed – there are supposed to be showings of a history of Broome film but that seems not to be happening these days but there are movies shown at night but nothing we wanted to see.
The Sun Picture Gardens opened on 9 December 1916, with a full house. The first film to be played was a racing drama called “Kissing Cup”. In 1933, the cinema was adapted for sound. The first sound film was “Monte Carlo.
Broome was evacuated in 1942, just two days before a Japanese air raid. During or after the evacuation (no one is certain) projection equipment was vandalized. Army officers repaired it and used the cinema for themselves, but had difficulty changing reels, sometimes taking up to forty minutes to do so. During the change over, a record called You Look Like a Monkey When you Grow Old was played over and over until the projector was reloaded.
In 2004, the cinema entered Guinness World Records for being the “Oldest Open Air Cinema in Operation”.
Fran found this photo online of what the theatre seating looks like:
Fran booked us another RAC campground at a good rate and it’s across the dunes from the famous Cable Beach. The drive was pretty uneventful although today after a really long time, we saw a roo run across the road, one bustard and a couple of perenties. No photos as there’s barely time to see them, let alone take photos!
Before going to the campground, we stopped to see the Heritage Chinese & Japanese cemeteries (couldn’t find the Muslim one).
Both the Chinese and Japanese played a big part in the pearling industry in 1883 and there is actually a Chinatown here. The divers from these countries and other Asian countries were an essential part in the growth of the industry.
We arrived at the RAC Cable Beach Holiday park and pretty much had our pick of sites as this is really low season – hence the good price ($88 for 3 nights). We had some brunch, did a few chores and headed to the pool for the afternoon. This is probably the nicest pool we’ve had in Australia (Monkey Mia comes second) as there’s plenty of shady spots to sit, lots of loungers and the pool is very clean and these days: no kids! There was one other couple sitting poolside, one lady alone and one other couple dropped in just to take a dip so it was pretty chill – and bonus, there was an 80’s rock station playing to boot and it cannot be said enough: NO kids!
That night we walked over to a bar on the beach to catch the sunset. Here on Cable Beach, the sunsets are supposed to be amazing and in season, you can take a camel ride on the beach as the sun sinks. Now we’ve both ridden camels before but to see them go down the beach at sunset would have been nice. We found this online:
The bar was only a bar with chips for snacks so we couldn’t have dinner here but we did enjoy the best sunset we’ve had in the country and it was worth the hot walk to see it.
On Sunday Fran went her first long beach walk in a long time.
Doug walked over to find the dino prints on the other side of town which were sadly disappointing but he saw some cool stuff:
By that afternoon, we had decided to stay another 3 days on top of this three days and our days were pretty much, exercising early morning, chores, brunch, lounge at the pool where the water is wet but not very cold (34C / 93F!) and read in the afternoon, shower and dinner; rinse and repeat.
While here in Broome, since we’re here a few more days, we decided to work on our table top. It’s got peel and stick fake tiles on it that are fading and coming off. We have a map of Australia that we thought would make a better table top so we cut it to fit, glued it on and then at the suggestion of a lady in a craft shop in Karratha, used spray varnish on it. We felt it did not work nicely and the glue appears not to have adhered in all places and the varnish does not feel very protective.
On Tuesday, we took Matilda into town to go grocery shopping and run a few errands and picked up a large piece of acrylic which Doug will cut to fit on top (fingers crossed).
The weather is still mostly sun, hot and humid and there are mozzies here – Fran’s been bit about nine times times and today we also picked up some anti itch roll on. So the daily highs have been around 34C / 93F BUT the “feels like” temperature with the humidex has been 45C / 113F! The humidity is a real killer so we’ve been going out early; Fran to walk the beach, Doug to run or walk to avoid it mid-day.
On her many walks on the beach during our time here, Fran saw many interesting things, like shells, crabs, mollusks, starfish and an octopus!
So on Thursday we did chores around Matilda including laundry and decided to move on tomorrow. We are looking into flights out of Darwin for a visa run even though it’s a month early just because we’re not sure where we’ll be mid-March and at least there’s an international airport in Darwin. So we hope to be in Darwin by mid February and we’ll take about two weeks to “get out” and then get a new 90 day term on our visa when we return.
Today we met our very first overlanders in Australia today; we’d seen them at the pool to say hello but only began conversing today. Sandra & Thomas are from Switzerland and have also purchased a motorhome here and have been traveling in Oz for six months at a time – this is their last stint. We joined them for sunset at the park above the beach and got to share stories. Turns out they will be in Kununurra at the same campground as us in a few days so we’ll meet up there again.
Click here to see all the pics from our time in Broome enjoying Cable Beach.
As we had over 400km / 250 mi to drive today, we were up early and at the Woollie’s in town to stock up by 7am; we wanted something at the hardware store too but it wasn’t open as yet. We got fuel again in Roebuck just outside of the city, as we headed east and then took a detour to see the town of Derby and its boab trees. We do find it’s still quite warm here but it seemed way less humid (but that didn’t last the rest of the day!). Derby has a much larger Aboriginal population than we’ve seen since Alice Springs.
We drove down the main drag which is a boulevard and it’s has baobabs lining the green space in the middle.
We saw lots of boabab trees in southern Africa back in the day and of course, just recently saw one in the park in Perth that had been moved there from this area when a new highway was built. Here they call them them boabs.
There are only eight species of Adansonia known throughout the world. Six are indigenous to Madagascar, with one species native to mainland Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, where they are known as the Baobab, and one in Australia – known as the Boab and is found only in the Kimberley and western Victoria Region of the Northern Territory. The common name ‘boab’ might reasonably be assumed to be of Aboriginal origin, but it’s actually a corruption of ‘baobab’, an Arabic word of African origin that means ‘father of many seeds’. All of these trees whether in Africa or Australia, originated in Madagascar. There is no difinitive theory on how these trees came to Australia.
Baobabs are long-lived deciduous, small to large trees from 5-30 m / 20-100’ tall with broad trunks and compact crowns. Young trees usually have slender, tapering trunks, often with a swollen base. Mature trees have massive trunks that are bottle-shaped or cylindrical and tapered from bottom to top. The trunk is made of fibrous wood arranged in concentric rings, although rings are not always formed annually and so cannot be used to determine the age of individual trees. Tree diameter fluctuates with rainfall so it is thought that water may be stored in the trunk. Baobab trees have two types of shoots—long, green vegetative ones, and stout, woody reproductive ones. Branches can be massive and spread out horizontally from the trunk or are ascending.
Adansonia gregorii (the one found in Oz) is generally the smallest of the baobabs, rarely getting to over 10 m / 33’ tall and often with multiple trunks.
After fueling up again even though we’d only gone 130km (it’s a long way to the next petrol station), left town and stopped just outside Derby to see the Boab Prison Tree.
The Baobab Prison Tree, Derby is a 1,500-year-old, large hollow Boab tree with a girth of 14.7m / xx’. It is reputed to have been used in the 1890s as a lockup for indigenous Australians prisoners on their way to Derby for sentencing, but there is no evidence that it was ever used to house prisoners.
In the languages of the Western Kimberley, boab trees are called ‘larrgadiy’ (alt. spelling larrgadi) and have considerable mythological significance. The ancient trees are often regarded as cherished individuals with unique personalities.
This was a short stop and it was quite something to see how wide this tree is!
There were lots and lots of boab trees in various sizes and today we saw two perenties on the road and lots and lots of termite mounds once again. Around here they were more vertical but still a lot of the large “blob” shaped ones. A bird hit the front of the vehicle today and there are lots of feathers under the hood.
We had hoped to drive the Gibb River Road (see dashed line on the map below) to get to Kununurra near the state line as it’s supposed to be quite scenic and there are two national parks along it but during the “Wet” it’s closed and will not fully open until April 1st. We will have to stick to the Big Lap Road (the black line that dips south and goes back north on the map). There was a 250 km section open from the Derby end by the national parks are closed as well and most of the good scenery is beyond that point – oh well, we can’t be everywhere in the right season without really stretching out our trip.
Then it was pretty much a straight shot to Fitzroy Crossing for the night. We hoped to go further but the campgrounds beyond here are closed this time of year, and there’s no way we want to camp without power! A few people “warned us” about camping here but choices are slim. We arrived around 2 after stopping once to have brunch at a rest area. We checked in – there were very few others parked here. Doug went for a walk, Fran went to the pool.
About an hour later, Doug messaged her to say he was returning because it looked like rain. She looked in the other direction from the pool and the sky turned black! She packed up and made it back just as it began to spit down. Doug was not back as yet but a kind soul in a pick up gave him a ride right to our site. It thundered loud and the lightning was visible at times; the rain came down quite hard and the concrete slab we’re parked on became a big puddle!
The hard rain last about 45 minutes and then slowed down but didn’t stop completely until 7:30pm. The temperature dropped to about 24C but it was still a bit muggy. Luckily the power never went out but the ducks came out! We heard a couple “quacking” well into the night.
By morning it was 70% dried up but Doug had to reverse us back in order to get us out of the remaining puddle. Fran takes a photo of every campsite we spend the night in and last night when her reminder came up it was already poring and then it was too dark.
Here’s the pic the next morning:
So it’s appears we’ve now hit “The Big Wet” – wet season which will last several weeks we understand.
We left on the early side again today because the next camping with power option was not for 540 km / 336 mi and we were unsure if any of the highway would have issues today after last night’s downpour – the WA road website showed no issues so we hoped that was true. We had no stops to make other than diesel. Actually after we got on the road, we both felt Matilda chugging a bit and Doug felt she didn’t have her usual power; we couldn’t see anything under the hood that looked different so we thought maybe the fuel we got yesterday was bad. The chugging stopped soon after but the lack of power was still a bit of an issue for a while. After filling up in Halls Creek, things improved so that was a relief.
Pretty much the only life we saw on the road today was cows who are pretty dumb and despite honking from 200m way, they don’t move till you are almost on them! Again today a bird flew into Matilda, this time smack into the windshield and bounced off. Ouch! We are still seeing a lot of termite mounds as well.
The road today took us south inland then east and then veered north again and we passed by Purnululu National Park (where you find the “Bungles” – more on that later) which of course was also closed but we noticed how different the terrain was once again in Western Australia. While it was still very green there were more and more trees, more creeks had water in them, there were single lane bridges and hills became more prominent as well as lots of rocky outcroppings.
Once again baobabs appeared too as we hadn’t seen any since the campground at Fitzroy Crossing last night.
By 12:30 we were at the Doon Doon Roadhouse Caravan Park and had had enough driving for sure. No one else was parked there, the road is not busy but the lady in the roadhouse, signed us in, we paid our $35 for a powered sight and she gave us a key to the handicapped bathroom so it was like we had our own private bathroom with shower. There is no pool unfortunately, but there is a large covered outdoor kitchen which we made use of to put a varnish coating on the new acrylic table top and we had a strong cell signal. We got plugged in, worked on applying varnish to the tabletop, got out steps and then went into the cool rig to work on flights for Darwin.
It began to rain around dinner time for a few hours but never heavy like the night before nor was the sky as dark. We awoke to mostly cloudy skies, a bit lower temp but still with humidity. Doug went for his long run in the morning, Fran did yoga, and chores and we hung around a bit getting online as we did not have far to go today and we already had a campground reserved.
Click here for more pics of Derby and Fitzroy Crossing.
The drive north was pretty uneventful although we did see a wedge tailed eagle with a roadside kill, the area had lots and lots of trees and we some rainy sections and it absolutely poured as we approached Kununurra – had to slow right down and then after getting fuel (finally a reasonable price of $1.89 a litre) we went over to the “mall” to get some bread and it was raining hard again. We went to have a bite at Subway afterwards and then went over to the campground.
It rained on and off all afternoon. Thomas and Sandra arrived around 3:30 and we got together under a BBQ shelter at 5 for happy hour but after 20 minutes it was coming down hard and we had to stand in the centre so as not to get soaked! The rain continued most of the night and we are parked under a tree so it “dripped” most of the night which was really annoying so we are going to ask to move to a different site for tonight.
We had booked a flight to fly over the Bungles in Purnululu National Park (it’s also closed and of the four parks in this area, this is the one we really wanted to see and this was the only way) for 6:30 am on this not so fine Monday, but the rain was still happening although lessening. The pilot called and said we should wait a couple of hours (we are their only booking today) as it will improve so as we have no other plans, that’s no problem. Unfortunately, by noon the flight was canceled; although the weather had cleared somewhat here in Kununurra, the cloud level was quite low in the direction of the flight. Too bad; we did receive a full refund as they are booked up tomorrow and have no available pilots on Wednesday. We did move to a different site with no trees above us.
Brief description of Purnululu National Park as inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List:
…[is a] remote area managed as wilderness. It includes the Bungle Bungle Range, a spectacularly incised landscape of sculptured rocks which contains superlative examples of beehive-shaped karst sandstone rising 250 metres above the surrounding semi-arid Savannah grasslands. Unique depositional processes and weathering have given these towers their spectacular black and orange banded appearance, formed by biological processes of cyanobacteria (single cell photosynthetic organisms) which serve to stabilize and protect the ancient sandstone formations. These outstanding examples of cone karst that have eroded over a period of 20 million years are of great beauty and exceptional geological interest.
We both went for walks in the “Celebrity Tree Park” next to the campground and Doug walked along the highway later and Fran walked the cycle path where she spotted two snakes:
which turned out to the common tree snakes so nothing to worry about. There were plenty of butterflies and lots of greenery along the path.
So we spent the afternoon in and out of the rig depending on the rain; when we decided to go for a dip in the pool, the skies open and that plan died. We had happy hour with Thomas and Sandra again for a longer time and managed to stay dry this time. We are all going the same direction with the same sights in mind so we’ll meet up again.
Tuesday morning, it was low hanging clouds but began to clear up as we finished our morning routines. We drove over to nearly Mirima National Park (aka Hidden Valley by the locals) and experienced the “mini” bungles. The sun came out fully while there and this made up (mostly!) for the missed flight.
We also saw kookaburras:
Views in the “mini bungles” park:
and at the end of the trail, Doug spotted two roos (or they could have been wallabies as they were on the small side and we could see them with the sun behind them so hard to make out).
This was our 7th national park with fees so the pass almost paid for itself. If the three parks from Broome to Fitzroy had been open, we would have fared better but whoever buys the vehicle from us, will have a few months left on it as it goes with the vehicle.
Here is the link to photos of our time in Kununurra & Mirima NP.
Within about 20km /13 mi, we drove out of Western Australia.
