Karratha to Exmouth

The journey from Perth to Darwin is a popular tourist route this time of year with people who live in the cold, wet south coming to holiday in the hotter and dryer north (both still technically in winter).  The campsites have been heaving with 4x4, caravans and campervans, with mostly retired Australians (The grey nomads) and a few adventurous Europeans, but interestingly no Americans?  The touring crowd are a extremely friendly bunch and whenever we pull in to a camp, someone always says hi and asks how we are going.  So when they then realise we are Pommes, well that’s it for half an hour while they ask all about you, where you are going and often give good advice on paces to see.

I have to say that so far the Australians are some of the friendliest people we have ever met and if asked would do anything for you.  Whether its being served in a shop or walking around the place they will always say hello and have a chat and a joke.  As you drive the roads the touring crowd will wave acknowledging fellow travellers.  The people here are such a change from not only Asia but the UK as well.

Avid readers of our blog will know that I have been looking for new career opportunities and the whole nomadic lifestyle has give us a spark.  Instead of working full time trying to pay a mortgage and council tax, the idea is that we sell up and buy a caravan and tour the UK staying wherever we chose.  To bring in money to feed ourselves and to put fuel in our very large 4x4 we would set up a business tarmacing peoples drives or selling lucky charms.  Not sure its been done before in the UK, but if it works it could catch on!

We left Karratha and headed for Exmouth only 570 km down the coast, but a whopping 370 km detour off the main road and our biggest driving day so far.  Exmouth is a mid sized town that sits on a peninsula with the local area being home to a number of military installations and listening posts and its main draw, the Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo Marine Park.

We pulled into Exmouth late in the day after several fuel stops and headed for the first campsite close to the centre of town.  I jumped out to see if they had a space and to book us in.  The site was large with a lot of very good facilities and with no free camping allowed in the national park it soon became clear that this private site had capitalised on this by hiking up the prices.  During the overly complicated booking in process, the lady serving me asked me what type of vehicle I had.  I responded by saying we were in a small campervan.  “Its not a Wicked Van is it?” she queried.  “No, why?”.  “We don’t let them into the park as we have a lot of families staying here, we don’t want those type of people” she sneered.  Just to explain, the Wicked rental vans are catering for the budget end of the market and are often popular with younger European backpackers who are on very limited budgets, but from what we’ve seen from the Wicked crowd, they are no less respectful of others, but clearly not in this campsites eyes.  Thinking nothing more of it we went to find our spot which turned out to be between a young couple sleeping on the ground in sleeping bags with no tent and with their stuff everywhere (a complete eyesore) and a guy sleeping in his pickup truck with his music playing so loud that myself and Emma could not speak to each other.  This obviously was acceptable to the campsite and I’m sure it is just a coincidence but both parties were Australian!

We quickly decided to go for a walk to check out the facilities and to get away from the music.  Everywhere we looked there seemed to be signs telling you what you could and could not do “Do not shower for longer than 3 minutes”, “Do not make any noise after 22:00”, “Do not have any fun or enjoy our site in anyway”.  I would understand if this was an expensive hotel, but it was a plot of grass with a toilet in the middle.  If there had been a sign above the entrance saying Welcome to Colditz I would not have been surprised.  To top it off they had a complicated security system which we had to pay a $20 deposit for.  The only access to the site was via a key card barrier, ironic when the site was surrounded by a 30cm high rope which could be easily stepped over or cut to drive your van out!

After another hour of the music (the selection wasn’t bad actually, it was just the volume) I had enough and went to complain to the camp commandant.  A few moments later the problem was fixed and the music was turned down for him!  With hindsight, we should have actually cracked open a few tinnies and gone and started a party…..that would have been one up the establishment.  The final indignation was next morning when Colditz closed all the toilets so that they could be cleaned.  It was 9:00am just when people were getting up and ready to leave for bang on 10am (else you wouldn’t get your deposit back!!!).

We always try to visit the local tourist information centres as they are always useful places to gather leaflets and find out what’s going on in the area.  Exmouth’s info centre also had a list of all the local tours in the area and the ability to book them there and then.  Ningaloo Marine Park is famous for its coral reef and its abundant sea life due to its geology.  The continental shelf is only a few hundred meters off the shore which allows a lot of the deep water sea life to come very close to shore.  So wanting to get the most out of this unique environment we booked a full day boat trip to go snorkelling, humpback whale watching and if we were lucky to actually swim with some whale sharks, the largest fish in the oceans.

Our trip was booked for the next day so we spent the rest of the day driving up the Cape Range National Park visiting amazing beaches, creeks, lagoons and mangrove swamps. 

The final stop of the day was to be the most the memorable. We pulled into a carpark around 2 km of the main road which was deserted.  As I manoeuvred the van into a parking bay, there in front of us no more than 5 feet away was a kangaroo. 

We quickly turned off the engine for fear of scaring him off and to hopefully watch him for a while.  He (could have been a she but although we were close, we weren’t that close) obviously knew we were there and he kept looking up to see what was going on, but other than that he was completely not bothered about us being there and just kept eating.  Only when we finally stepped out of the van did he move away to keep a safe distance from us. We went and explored the beach and then as we drove out of the carpark and back to the main road we counted over 25 kangaroos from fully grown adults to babies either in the road or close by.  I had always thought that kangaroos were difficult to see and that we would be very lucky to spot one, but so far on this trip they have been like rabbits and absolutely everywhere with unfortunately lots killed on the roads as well.  Fascinating creatures and very unique.

The next day as planned we were collected from our campsite (not Colditz…we found another one that was much better) and driven to the boat.  The boat carried 14 other paying customers including a single family of 8 and 6 staff to help you with your days adventure.  Realising that the family of 8 was from England we introduced ourselves and soon found out that they were from a small village 10 minutes drive from our place in MK, small world isn’t it!

Our first stop was a good spot to do some snorkelling and see the coral.  Being my first time snorkelling and in such deep water, I was a little apprehensive but everything went without a hitch, although I may not have got a 10 out 10 for style.  The boat we were on was supported by a sea plane flying the edge of the reef to try and find Humpbacks and Whale Sharks and after 30 minutes the plane radioed in that they had spotted some Humpbacks.  The boat raced along the shore to the spot and began tracking them around 50 m away, which was an amazing sight to see these massive creatures swimming along the coast.  In the end we saw around 5 Humpbacks, some very large turtles and some dolphins but no Whale Sharks.  It was right at the end of their season by about a week and none had been seen for a few days.  Needless to say, Miss Coates was very disappointed as she had been going on about swimming with the whale sharks for most of the journey down.  Alas it was not to be, but we still had a fabulous day. 

We left Exmouth to head for another marine based adventure this time at Monkey Mia some 700km down the coast and another 160 km detour of the main highway.