Our Pilbara adventure - Part 2 - Into the Gascoyne

With 3 days to go until Dave returned from work and the fridge crisis averted, the girls and I finally got to relax a bit. We spent some time hanging around the pool, meeting and sharing stories with other travelling families and the kids spent a lot of time running off to entertain other kids in the park, most of them mc younger than themselves.

On Wednesday night the caravan park put on a BBQ for all the park guests and provided a jumping castle for the kids. Elly and Charli were very popular that night, helping out all the nervous little kids they had met to feel safe and coordinating games. Some of the other parents actually came to ask if they could ask the girls to take their children on the jumping castle so they were kept very busy.

The next day we braved the public bus to make our way into town to have a break from the caravan park. The buses are limited so we had to make sure we didn't miss the times or we would have been stuck! On our way out the park manager stopped the girls and presented them with a card that allowed them a free icecream of their choice at some stage because of all their help the night before so they were feeling pretty chuffed. We stopped in at the visitor centre as well as a few shops to grab a couple of items we needed and then headed back to the park for another swim and to cash in that free icecream card.

On Friday my aim was to be getting ready to pack down on Saturday morning as Dave was due home that night. My body decided it had other plans and I woke with a nasty migraine leaving me laying in bed most of the day. Of course this was also the day the gas bottle decided to run out but thankfully I had some assistance to get it filled so we could cook dinner.

Dave arrived late on Friday night and with the delays the day before and the new fridge to allow for we had a bit of work to do before we could hit the road again on Saturday morning. As we loaded the fridge onto the fridge slide and plugged it in we were shocked to discover it didn't work! After some investigation by Dave we discovered that the fridge was not, in fact, dead at all but there was a wiring issue in the van so we spent all that money on a new fridge for no reason, oh well. We finally managed to get packed up and out of the park by 10 but then took almost another hour to get out of town after ensuring we were restocked with food, fuel and tie downs for the new fridge.

Our destination was Coral Bay, our first time taking the van to camp on the beach at 14 mile campground. The late start meant we had to push hard to arrive before dark and we would have just made the beach as sunset began except that we met a couple on the side of the road who were struggling to replace the wheel bearing on their trailer. We decided we had to stop and help but this meant that we arrived at our site just as we hit last light. Not only was it getting dark but it was also blowing a gale (wind again!!) so this made set up difficult as well as working out how we were going to cook dinner. We ended up keeping the kids and Jezy in the van while we cooked on the stove inside the ute canopy while our legs got sandblasted. While it wasn't fun, it was certainly memorable and something we will laugh about later on.

Thankfully by morning the wind had calmed and we woke to a lovely ocean view from our window. We spent the morning just sitting on the beach and watching the kids who were in one of those quirky moods. Charli was creating a band in the sand drawing drums, a piano, and several other instruments as well as a person - Barb the opera singer. Barb became a bit of a running joke as we had to be so careful not to step on her. They both then began drawing people on the section of beach that was considered the road and got excited when they were run over.

Later we went for a drive visiting Turtle Rock and into Coral Bay township. The beach here was stunning and the girls and I had a paddle while Dave and Jezy went off to find some chip for lunch. When we returned to our campsite the wind was starting to pick up again and we made the split second decision to pack up and move on to somewhere more protected. Thankfully it is easy to set up and pack down the van so we were hooked up ready to go in about 15mins and headed towards Carnarvon. This turned out to be a great decision as we found a beautiful campsite with a big waterhole, very reminiscent of our time in the Kimberley.

The sad part on our arrival was noticing there was something very wrong with Jezy. She was having a lot of trouble walking, or even just standing. So after a small swim the next morning we hit the road and took a detour through Carnarvon to visit the vet. It turns out Jezy developed a sudden onset doggy vertigo which is apparently very common for Border Collies so with medication in hand and assurances that she would be ok in a few days we continued on to Denham at Shark Bay.

Hardly surprising but once again we encountered the wind at Shark Bay. Luckily though, we were parked right next to the camp kitchen so much of our cooking was done there. It was interesting to do this as it turned out as we met many other travellers and found it fascinating that they were complaining about their basic camp meals. We still eat very well on the road and are happy to cook most things that we would normally cook at home. One example of this was on our last night when we picked up some fresh fish and I had a go at making my own beer batter, which ended up delicious, and many other campers were shocked to see me cooking like this at a caravan park!

Anyway, back to the trip. We obtained the number for a local pet sitter so we could take a day to drive out to Steep Point, the western-most point in Australia. Her availability was the next day so we hit the road early. It takes a really long time to drive out there! It's a couple of hundred kms to begin with and then a drive over sand dunes and then windy dirt road and then we finally made it. It was great to say we made it and certainly an adventure to get there but we were definitely under-prepared and did not take enough food so by the time we got back we were very hungry!!

The following day we hung around in town. The girls and I went for a wander down the main street and visited all the little shops, picking up a few little items and we spent the rest of the day just having some down time.

On our final day in Shark Bay we headed over to the famous Monkey Mia. We decided not to worry about the dolphin feeding but had booked ourselves on a boat tour for a few hours. What a great little outing. We saw plenty of Dolphins and Dugongs and even a turtle (which apparently is very rare). We relaxed in the cargo nets and the girls even sat in the drag net on the way back in for a while. We got lots of information about the habits of both dugongs and dolphin but my favourite would have to be the habit of dolphins called "snagging". This term refers to when they all line up next to each other like sausages on the bbq and protect each other while they sleep, must be an Aussie term, but I just love it! This cruise was part of the girls birthday presents as both birthdays were only a few weeks away and we find that experiences are way better than stuff!

With this over it was time to start packing up to head home. We were up bright and early on Friday morning, stopping in at a lookout on our way and making our way back to Geraldton. No rest for the wicked though, with this trip over we now have the daunting task of preparing to move out of the house in a couple of weeks. Our time in Geraldton, and in fact WA, is drawing to a close as we make our move to Queensland after Christmas.