We are late with the post this week - now Wednesday of the following week! We have been in Nat Parks and signal has been non existant for parts of last week. Anyway, here is the weekly roundup for last week.
We left you in Cape Leveque last time so we will take up from there. It has been an interesting week with some real highlights and some very real lows - we are hoping that the low from this week might be the worst for the whole trip.
Monday - we reluctanctly packed up and left Cape Leveque. The only upside of this was that we were returning to Broome. We spent a little time on the retail strip and did a bit of retail therapy - no trip to Broome is complete without a Broome pearl or pearl product. We all have a little bit of Broome tucked away in secret places in the car. As tempting as it is to wear these lovely things, we will not be doing so out here in the dust and the sand.
Tuesday - today was housework day. Mal and I rewired the trailer (again) but this time we had more access to tools that help do the job properly. We are still electrical rookies so we have to cross our fingers that it is working. It is hard to really know till we are out in a Nat Park for more than 2 -3 days (battery drain) and then back in the car for a day (hoepfully charging as we drive due to our wiring job) and then into a new place - then we will know if it is working. Watch this space or listen for the scream if it doesn't work! The car went into ARB in the afternoon for a Day Spa appointment and came back with a clean bill of health. Good to know that even after all the rough and dusty roads that our shocks and everything else on the undercarriage is good to go.
Wednesday - our last day in Broome was spent mooching at the beach, swimming at Cable Beach and starting the pack down for a get away the next morning. One last sunset and some great photos.
Thursday - today we drove to Eighty Mile Beach. Another great place on the WA coastline. We walked the very long beach in the afternoon after setting up and in the late afternoon, a jazz band that was travelling and had stopped at the same place gave an impromptu concert. It was terrific. The sun was setting over the dunes and over the water and the band was playing and the singer was fantastic too. We all sat and enjoyed this experience along with the rest of the campsite. A special night. It was a good finish to what had been a hot long drive through expanses of nothing. We stopped for lunch today in a roadside parking area - it was so hot, no shade and after a quick comfort stop in the bush and a hasty sandwich lunch, we were all happy to be moving again.
Friday - our worst day so far. The opening line in my diary says "A very bad day today." We had travelled about 150kms down the road and Rachel noticed that the computer bag only had 1 USB stick in it instead of 2. The girls have a USB stick here with them to put photos on to when their camera sticks are full, and I have one for the same purpose. Normally, when the camera stick is full, we head to the nearest photo processing place and print them off and then store them on the USB stick before erasing the camera stick ready to go again. Mal pulled over immediately as a lost photo USB stick is a big deal for us. It had all our photos from Week 1 through to Week 6 stored on it in lovely organised folders and since we haven't been near a civilised town for weeks really, there hasn't been a lot of processing going on. And those of you who know me will know that I love to scrapbook our photos and make a story and memory from them and it is my main hobby really. So, there we are on the edge of this desolate highway in the searing heat emptying out the back seat of the car. Then we emptied out the front seats and the entire cabin of the car. No joy. Couldn't find it anywhere. I cried. I don't think the girls have ever really seen me cry like that before - I was very upset. The thought of losing all my photos with no back up was really upsetting. We repacked the car and continued on - nothing else to do really - and it was a sombre car trip. No one spoke at all. Mal stopped to pick some Sturt Desert Peas off the verge of the road to try and cheer me up which was a loevely gesture but there was an ants nest inside them and after handing them to me, I was covered in ants in about 30 seconds. Much leg slapping and chair hitting later and we managed to exterminate them all and the flowers were chucked out the window at speed. The site marked on the map that we could stop for lunch had a locked gate when we arrived so we had lunch in the searing heat again and when Mal opened the barn door at the back of the car to get the lunch bag out, the medicine box fell out and the contents spewed everywhere. When we arrived in Point Samson the tide was out and Rachel was unable to snorkel - which was the reason for the visit and then we couldn't get a site anywhere there for the night so had to move on to Karratha which is not such a nice place to be. We found a place to stay in a van park owned by BHP Biliton and used to house the workers in the mines there that can't be accomodated anywhere else. They don't like tourists. We should have guessed that we were going to have a rotten rest of the day - sure enough, lots of things went wrong from here like a set of dominoes. They gave us a concrete slab so we couldn't put in any tent pegs - it was blowing a gale and I was hit in the head by the tent as we tried to hold it up against the wind as Mal valiantly tried (and succeeded) to guy rope it to the bull bar of the car. There were no bins, no camp kitchen, $66 a night (!), no bread and milk in the van park shop ( no shop, just a well oiled cash register as the charge for using a credit card for a camp site was a hefty 6% - we paid cash) and our site was right next to the chemical toilet dump site. We forgot to get the air bed pump out of the tub of the trailer and had to send Eloise into the closed space to retrieve it -(we have done this before without incident - but today, she got caught coming out on the catch and scraped all up her belly and wasn't very happy. The head winds today were awful in the car and the diesel consumption was sky high so Mal was not overly happy either. We decided that we should eat dinner and go straight to bed. So we did. I lay awake for a long time pondering the loss of 6 weeks of photos. I have sent some printed photos home to Dad but we aren't sure how many weeks are missing from the equation. And all of Mal's are missing as he had moved all of his to the stick. His camera takes better night and dark shots than mine so between the two of us,we are covered. I decided that it could be a lot worse (the car could be damaged, the tent ruined, the kids sick, Mal injured etc) and eventually I fell asleep.
Saturday - In the car today we had a family conference. Without giving too much family business away, we were able to track back through the how, when, where and why of the lost USB. It is more than likely lying in the dust at the lunch stop out of Broome. Or there is a very very slim chance it is in the car somewhere. Not likely. This day was a defining moment for our family as we dealt with topics of blame, guilt, accident, laziness, unconditional love and the ability to move on from things that are upsetting. We won't be divulging who was responsible but if you could sell children on Ebay................ We drove to Dampier to see the Aboriginal Pteroglyphs - the biggest number in one place in the world before we hit the road in earnest. After driving all day through nothing, we decided to stop at 5pm at a free camp on the side of the road at Yanardie Creek - just us and about 40 caravans. We decided to just run with the roof top tent that night so it was an interesting night with 4 of us up there. Mal only lasted a short while before he bailed out to the comfort of the passenger seat in the car. He seems to be able to sleep anywhere and when I checked up on him during the night, he was fast asleep! It was cold overnight which was a bit of a shock to the system and we were all scrabbling at the bottom of the clothes bags for long jumpers.
Sunday - Today we arrrived in Exmouth at the edge of Cape Range National Park. It is also the home of Nigaloo Reef. We set up the camper in a very nice van park and then headed out to explore. We saw so many whales just playing close to the shore. It was spectacular. Mal checked out the fishing spots ready to do some serious fishing in the next couple of days. At the top of the peninsula you can see the sea out of both windows of the car - it's really weird. We will be here a few days now so we are looking forward to the wonders of the reef this week coming.
The good, the bad and the ugly - the good would be body surfing at Cable Beach, the bad - losing the USB stick and the ugly - the camp site at Karratha that cost $66 for the privilege of setting up next to the campsite toilet dump site.
Dream stealers - none to report this week. They are busy thinking up new things to tell us for next week. We are back on track and ready to fend them off when they come at us.
There are no photos this week - we will have some again next week.
Cheers
The Crawford Crew
hugs on lost stick Crawfords
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