Broome

We are just finishing our time here in Broome. It’s been a great 4 days with most of the days spent in the caravan park pool and the evening spent down on Cable Beach watching the camels and the beautiful sunsets. Which by the way, is a very popular pastime around here…..everyone in town seem to walk from all directions straight to Cable Beach as the sun is getting lower, watches the sunset, then they all disappear into the restaurants or the darkness to return home. This place has a real relaxed feel about…..it’s like time doesn’t exist…

 

Cable Beach – Broome

Sunset at Cable Beach

Swimming at the caravan park.

 

 We had great neighbours at the caravan park so the kids were pretty happy.

 

It’s a very friendly place as well with all of the locals growing up in Adelaide it seems….well it felt like that …everyone we spoke to said they grew up in Adelaide anyway.

We visited Broome Baptist Church on Easter Sunday which was good, the boys couldn’t believe how small the congregation was but they enjoyed it. We even bumped into some people from Craig and Leonie’s church in Perth. It was really good to be so far from home and still celebrate resurrection Sunday in such a special way. Isaac said he wants to stay here and go to that church every week.

Simon got up early on the Monday and went to the Dawn Service which had about 3000 people there. We went and checked out the memorial the next day.

 

After watching the camels for that last three nights we got our chance to have a ride on them….and I must admit it was pretty fun thing to do. Isaac and Ethan where a little worried and it didn’t help that Ethan and Simon got put on the biggest camel there.. Malachi was his name and he was massive.. In the end Ethan nearly fell asleep so he couldn’t have been to scared.

Our ride for the arvo.

We are camel no.2,3 and4..you might have to take our word for it.

 

 We are leaving this little oasis in the morning and heading east to see what we can see of the Kimberly’s.

Hope you are all well xxx

 

Karijini National Park / Port Hedland.

We got our car fixed and we were back on the road again after three nights. It was really nice to have some down time with nothing to do except swim and read in the caravan park.
Thanks so much for all the comments and messages left on the blog, we love hearing from you…

Andy trying to solve our car problem!!

 Isaac with one of the million grasshoppers

We left the coast after Carnarvon and headed inland a few hours to Karijini National Park. A few people have mentioned Karijini to us over the last week saying it’s similar to the Kimberly's only without the crocodiles and that it’s a must do. So we arrived in Karijini with one day to explore.
It’s a beautiful place with plenty of gorges, waterfalls and swimming holes. It was a really hot day so it was hot work getting to the gorges but awesome having a refreshing swim once we were there. We would have loved to see more of the park but we had to move on.

Main Road to Karijini.

Lots of cows on the way.

Circular Pool

Long way down.

Refreshing swim.

Fortescue Falls

Our camping spot for the night.

The wildflowers are beautiful at this time of year.

We then made our way to Port Hedland. A big change from what we have been seeing. Port Hedland is all about Iron Ore…as well as salt piles, long trains, big ships and it’s where 4 carriage road trains are the norm.

We had lunch in a park along the port and watched an Iron Ore Carrier getting filled. I must admit I wasn’t thinking great things about Port Hedland when we arrived- not exactly a pretty place. But… as we watched the little tug boats bring in another huge carrier a lovely mum came over and started chatting. It turns out, her and her kids were there to wave at her husband as he flew over in the helicopter that dropped him on board these huge carriers…. he then piloted the ships into Port. She was a wealth of info about everything…… It turns out it was a perfect day to come into Port Hedland as it was a king tide that day so it was extremely busy with plenty of ships coming in. I found it quite an interesting place in the end…

One of the tug boats – amazing little boats- actually not so little.

 

Getting filled with Iron Ore – takes 48 hours to fill a ship.

Bringing in another ship – very cool when the Dad blew the ships horn at his kids.

Salt Piles

Can you tell they are all missing T.V

 

A little guy we nearly ran over.

Thought I’d better include this final photo as some people are asking if I’m really on this holiday . Hopefully i will update again soon…we are heading to Broome and then the Kimberly’s but we have been told they are still closed. We will see what happens.

Thanks for checking what we are up to..missing you all.

Geraldton/Kalbarri/Shark Bay

Thought we had better update the blog as we have seen so much since leaving Perth. Our first stop was Geraldton…didn’t do much in there only visited the HMAS Sydney II Memorial which was a really cool thing to do. The kids got to learn a bit of history too.

                   

                     HMAS Sydney II Memorial- each seagull represents a sailor lost…645 of them.

Our next stop was Kalbarri National Park. That's where the heat and the flies hit us…35+ and the flies are unbelievable.. I’m thinking that's what the next couple months are going to be like so I’m getting use to it.  The trip to Kalbarri National Park made it all worth while…beautiful gorges and then a refreshing swim to cool down.

Kalbarri National Park.

Very hot after the walk to the gorge.

Shark Bay is a wonderful place. We scored a great campsite right on the dunes which meant the kids could swim for the whole afternoon to keep cool. We got up early to make it to Monkey Mia for their first dolphin feeding for the day, only to get in the car and have the immobilizer play up so we couldn’t start it. Simon basically ripped out the whole unit…..still took an hour…..and then we raced over and still caught the 1st dolphin feeding…lucky they came in late that day. We invested in a few more fly head nets while we were there…..good investment i think.

View from camper.

 

 

Monkey Mia dolphins checking out the boys.

 

Shell Beach is my kind of beach. No sand, just pure white shells….it’s amazing to see. The water was so clear and warm that I even had a swim to cool down. 

                        

 

                           

 

Fly nets..good investment to keep kids happy.

 

We arrived in Carnarvon yesterday with a battery that was losing power and are waiting now for our alternator to get replaced – good timing for that to happen really..last town for a while that would be able to fix it easily.  

The caravan park we are staying at was hit by those floods up here in Dec. It’s amazing to see the photos of what it was like only 4 months ago- mud everywhere. Carnarvon is also the land of huge grasshoppers and tiny frogs- i unfortunately washed a couple frogs in my load of washing this morning..they still managed to jump away so hopefully they will live to fight another day.