Broome to Coral Bay

Broome

While in Broome we went to the Sun Pictures, another outdoor cinema but with a difference. An occasional plane flying over at close range. (Kate: I love these outdoor cinemas, watching a movie under the stars. We watched Hairspray, which is a fab feel good film and even Jamie liked it!). Anyway we did the manly thing and went to the pub and got talking to few people we met at the camp site. They were all watching the rugby against Australia. When we got in the pub, the game had just finished and there were a few miserable looking Aussies there crying into their beers.

On our last day, Kate had some quality beach time. I spent most of the time untangling the kite strings. then we went to watch the sunset at Gantheaume Point just north of town. (Kate: We sipped our red wine and clinked our glasses - cheap pink plastic ones - as the waves crashed onto the rocks below us and the red sun set over the Indian Ocean. V romantic). I think Kate wants to be a romantic novelist.

The next morning we headed west 600km to Port Hedland

Port Hedland

We stopped for a night at this industrial town. Theres nothing much to see except the 2km long trains. We had to wait for 2 of these to pass before we could get to our camp site. The price we paid for the camping was crap considering we had to camp on a tatty patch of ground next to the stinky bins. So all in all, Port Hedland, we loved it!!! From Port Crapland we headed south inland to another mining town called Tom Price.

Tom Price

On the way down to Tom, we drove through Karijini National Park and I went for a swim in Fortescue Falls.


A view near the falls.



Fortescue Falls.



Kate wondering what i'm doing at the top of the falls.

The next day we went for a tour to the local iron ore mine, complete with hard hats and really big tonka trucks, good stuff!


Kate dons the hard hat.


A big hole in the ground!


A big 'Tonka' truck.

Later on, we returned to Karijini NP and we went to the gorges area of the park. Firstly we went to Oxers Lookout which looks over where 4 gorges meet. These are Weano, Red, Joffre and Hancock gorges. We decided to go down Weano gorge as this was the easier of the gorges to get into. Kate waited for me as I went further in to the gorge, wading through pools and jumping between big boulders as the gorge got really narrow. I got as far as the Handrail Pool. To get any further, I would have had to swim across the pool and use ropes to abseil down the next section - proper canyonning stuff! We were advised not to go on the dirt road to the gorges and it was supposed to be quite bad, so I ignored that and drove down it and it was not worse that what we have driven on before.


A look into one of the gorges.


Inside Weano Gorge.


Further down Weano Gorge


As far as I could get at Handrail Pool.


One of the endless trains.


The dirt roads of Karijini.

Once we left Tom, we travelled another long tiring 600km west to Coral Bay on the west coast.

Coral Bay

As it was our 'unoffical' anniversary, we decided to splash out on a room at the Ningaloo Club, one of the hostels in town. It was very nice to have a break from camping and sleep in a bed with some give in it for the first time in 2 months!

On the first evening, we had a few drinks at the hostel bar and ended up joining in a game of giant jenga. Later we went on to another bar, then after it closed, one of the local Aussie guys invited a group of us down to the beach to drink more beer. We walked to a small cave and joined some people sat around a small campfire. There were 2 young guys playing guitars (one was only 14) and they sang loads of song we knew. We also ended up singing some oasis songs, maybe we had a little too much drink! No one joined in so it ended up being a duet. It was a great night. Its often the things that are not planned that end up being the best experiences.


The group in the second pub.

The next morning we went out on aglass bottom boat to see Ningaloo Reef. We also did some more snorkelling although the water seemed quite cold. Seeing all the fish was great but Kate was very wary of the rather large group af big fish swimming around the boat. She didn't want them to touch her. (Kate: Actually I thought I might get nibbled by the fish!!!)


Me snorkelling.


Kate snorkelling without the fish.



Here's the fish Kate didn't want to go near.

In the evening, we played some pool and chilled out in the bar. We met Australias sweetest boy. He was dancing to the music vidoes on the TV. When he had to go to bed, he hugged everyone in the bar and said goodnight. (Kate: V cute!)

In the morning we moved up the coast to explore more of Ningaloo Reef so we stayed at the larger town of Exmouth.