We were packed up and ready to
leave at a reasonable time this morning, ready for us to all visit Python Pool
on the way out of the National Park, and afterwards for us to all make our way
onto Karratha. As we pulled out onto the
main highway, we noticed there’d been a car accident only a short time before
we got there. An old model short wheel
base Toyota Landcruiser had taken the corner too fast and spun and rolled the
car. The car was pretty badly caved in,
but thankfully the driver was extremely lucky and escaped with only a scrape
down his arm and his body covered in red dust, looking like he’d just had a
spray tan gone wrong. All three of us
pulled up to ensure that everyone was ok, and helped to clean up the debris and
smashed windows from the road. There was
already a truck pulled up who offered to take the guy to Karratha so we grabbed
some photos and an email address for this guy and then continued on our
way. We eventually made it to Mt Herbert
Lookout and then further onto the Python Pool.
It was only a short stroll from the carpark to a very pretty freshwater
plunge pool at the base of a cliff. We
saw some more interesting wild life while the majority of us cooled down. Back at the carpark, we said our farewells
(for now at least). The Harveys were not
staying in Karratha and the Woods were staying with friends in Karratha, as
were we. We all went our own way, but it
was funny when we drove into Karratha and caved into the girls who wanted some
McDonalds for their late lunch, as the Woods’ boys jumped out of the woodwork
and they too were all having something to eat here. Even more funny was that the friends who they
were staying with were based within viewing distance from the home of the
friends we were staying with – small place?
We reached Daniel, Bianca, Hayden and Brock’s home in Karratha around mid-afternoon
and they were extremely welcoming to allow us to stay with them and they had
plenty of room for the caravan – it was perfect. The kids were in fine form getting along and
it meant catching up with Bianca and Daniel, who we’d only met at Lake Argyle
was like being around old friends.
While Daniel and Bianca worked
over the next few days, the girls and I hung out in the caravan catching up on
a bit of schoolwork while Josh went to buy some parts for the car and changed
the wheel bearing. The kids had to do a
guided tour of a heritage place for school and we found the perfect place to
visit for them to gather information to enable them to do this. Not too far from Karratha is the small
deserted town of Cossack. In the late
1800’s, this town was prime position for pearl farming and the production of
turtle soup. However, a cyclone in 1898
destroyed most of the town and its business.
The town never really recovered and further industry declined due to the
use of larger vessels, silting of the inlet and the construction of a loading
jetty at Point Samson. Furthermore, the
consistent overfishing caused the depletion of the pearling grounds. Many of the buildings in Cossack also fell
into further disrepair after WWII and the last full time resident left this
town in the 1950’s. It’s a bit sad that
no one lives in Cossack anymore as it has a lovely outlook over the water and
is really quite pretty. We also had a quick
look at a few other nearby towns such as Point Samson, Cape Lambert and Wickham
– where we compared the size of our vehicle to that of a haul truck. Onward we went, this time to the North West
Shelf Visitor Centre to learn about the off shore gas processing plant. It was absolutely mind boggling. The minute bit of information that I learnt
from visiting here was that gas was first discovered off the north-west coast
of Australia in the 1970’s; the off shore plant is approx. 135kms from the
mainland and they extract the gas from beneath the ocean floor and then send it
via two pipelines back to Karratha; and the Karratha Gas Plant has the capacity
to produce exorbitant amounts of domestic gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG),
liquefied natural gas (LNG) and condensate (whatever that is?) every day! Truly amazing how clever people are… After leaving here, we drove into Dampier and
met up with Bianca, her two boys and another mate of theirs. We finally got to see the Red Dog statue and
grab a few photos. From here we went to
the beach at Dampier for a wander around and a play with all the kids and then
returned home for a relatively quiet night.
Today we were to say farewell to
friends and head for more adventure. We
first said our good byes to Hayden and Brock who were leaving for school in
their book week dress ups. Bianca had
the day off and the girls took advantage of this whilst we packed up the
van. They sat inside enjoying the
pleasure of playing a Wii for a few games while we sorted, cleaned and packed
up the van. After farewelling Bianca we
headed first to the shopping centre in Karratha. Josh dropped Zoe, Sami and myself here to
grab a coffee and do the groceries while he went to Daniel’s work and gave the
car, boat and caravan a good gurney to rid everything of red dust (well most of
it disappeared anyway). We were all back
in the car around 1pm and ready to hit the road bound in the direction of the
Ningaloo Reef. We stopped briefly at the
Fortescue River to make some lunch and another short stop to learn a little
more about the Mesa A Rio Tinto working mine to watch a few trucks drive past
and over the bridge. We knew it was a
long drive and we wouldn’t get there in a day so we found a free camp (just
before the turnoff from the main highway onto Burkett Road) on the side of the
road to stay the night. It was neat
enough, had the typical long drop toilets and even had a dump point (I can’t
recall seeing many, if any at all, along the east coast that were set up this
well). It was quite busy but we pulled
up not far from the roads edge – which proved not be the best idea. We heard plenty of road trains as they flew
past us and even had 3 of them pull up alongside us late into the night. They are not hard to hear when the hydraulic
brakes get slammed on so, ok, it wasn’t our best night’s sleep.
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