Brian and Jill’s Motorhome Safari

The black object below is my key ring put there  for a size comparison The shells are tiny

William Dampier sailed into Shark Bay in 1616, naming the area after the abundance of sharks he saw. On a three hour cruise from Monkey Mia we saw none. But we did see a few dolphins and a handful of Dugong.  Unfortunately it’s a bit early for the 10,000 Dugong who call Shark Bay home, to be active. That’s about 12% of the world population of these interesting animals. They live here because of the huge areas of sea grass in the bay. While the cruise on the 18 m sailing cataraman was disappointing the area made up for it with two other attractions. Shell beach is a 60 km long beach like no other. It is made up of billions, and billions of tiny shells of a unique cockle which thrives here in the ultra-high salinity of the water in this bay. It is one of only two beaches in the world which are made up entirely of shells - absolutely no sand at all.  There are so many shells that the have banked up to 7-10 metres deep. An amazing sight.  The older layers of the shel...

William Dampier sailed into Shark Bay in 1616, naming the area after the abundance of sharks he saw. On a three hour cruise from Monkey Mia we saw none. But we did see a few dolphins and a handful of Dugong.  Unfortunately it’s a bit early for the 10,000 Dugong who call Shark Bay home, to be active. That’s about 12% of the world population of these interesting animals. They live here because of the huge areas of sea grass in the bay. While the cruise on the 18 m sailing cataraman was disappointing the area made up for it with two other attractions. Shell beach is a 60 km long beach like no other. It is made up of billions, and billions of tiny shells of a unique cockle which thrives here in the ultra-high salinity of the water in this bay. It is one of only two beaches in the world which are made up entirely of shells - absolutely no sand at all.  There are so many shells that they have banked up to 7-10 metres deep. An amazing sight.  The older layers of the she...

Coral Bay was a bit of a disappointment for us. The Ningaloo Reef is touted as an amazing World Heritage site, but we were a little underwhelmed. Unfortunately the wind from previous days had not abated and the glass bottom boat trip was unpleasant. Some of the group snorkeled but not for long as the water was quite cold. Saw some good schools of north west snapper and a few small black fish and that was all really.  The coral was quite colourless,  largely a dull brownish hue with the occasional blue tips.  We have seen much much better. Maybe we have been spoiled. Carnarvon promised a lot but also came up short. Touted has the food bowl of Western Australia and particularly Perth’s fresh food source. In reality the area was dry, very few plantations were producing, and road side stalls were almost non existent and the area had a really sad down trodden feel to it.  Banana plantations of Lady Fingers seemed to be the only produce available.   The area ...

Biggest day yet - 540 km. But it was easy driving. The travel directory cautioned us to “be prepared to be blown away by the vastness and uniformity  of the ancient landscape”!  Yes we were !!   But there was a  diversity of scenery which made the long day bearable. Dramatic changes as we moved from the high country Pilbara  dominated by majestic white gums and rugged “mountain” ranges, down through blazing red soils dotted with yellow spinifex grass, and then across rolling sand dunes to Bullara Station.  A warm welcome there with camp host producing a huge damper bread cooked in his camp oven, followed by gourmet bush burgers accompanied by a country singer. A bush burger is very similar to a regular burger, but served in the bush!  Their station of 110,000 hectares now relies on tourism for their main income. Vlamingh Head Lighthouse VLF towers at Harold Holt Naval Communications Station Ningaloo Reef From Bullara Station we t...

Finally found some decent internet in Exmouth today.  Six days missed since I posted from Broome so I’ll just identify the real highlights since then. Broome to Pardoo Roadhouse.    I consulted our travel directory to remind me of that trip to find that Jill had annotated the page “Boring” !  We skirted the edge of the Great Sandy Desert, the second largest of Australia’s deserts at more than 260,000 sq. km.  It is the desert that the great Canning Stock Route crosses. Pioneered by Canning in 1906, it remains to this day the longest and most remote stock route on the planet. It is now a popular but challenging 4WD trail for hard core enthusiasts.  It is also home to lots and lots of camels!  First brought to Australia in the 1840s for desert exploration and later for use in the goldfields, the population of feral camels exploded in the 1920s and 1930s as domestic animals were released into the wild.  Despite a cull in 2014 when 160,000 were ...

Arrive in Broome on Friday16 for a three day mid trip layover. We’ve been busy (museums, things to see) but in our own time. The only firm booking we had here was to the Horizontal Falls, a one hour flight from Broome.  We were picked up at our camp at 5.40 am for the floatplane flight.  (For Ron:  Cessna Caravan amphibian 14 seats). The flight was amazing - we had great views of the barren, red countryside and then the huge  King Sound.  The latter part of the flight was quite bumpy as the land was a series of steep ridges interspersed with sea inlets.  Landed close to the floating Horizontal Hotel, a series of large pontoons with two storey accommodation, restaurants, briefing areas, toilets, showers and boat moorings. We were one of four float planes there at the time. Boarded the so-called fast boats 30 passengers, 4x 300 hp outboards on the back of each, and headed for the wider of the two waterfalls.  What a hoot!  The water was literally g...

Derby is a town of about 10,000 on the coast 2-3 hours north of Broome, famous for its huge tides of up to 11m. And for its Boab trees. These trees are endemic to the western Kimberley, and many we have seen have been growing here for up to 3000 years. From here we went on a 10 hour 4 wheel drive trip to Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek.  The route was via the Gibb River Road, well known to 4 wheel drive enthusiasts. It had been on my bucket list for years when I was younger.  Hooray, I thought, I’ll get to see some of this famous road. Well ...... imagine my disappointment to find out that the first seventy km of this famous road is now sealed two lane highway !  We did get to experience the dirt and the corrugations of the next 40 or so km before we turned off to Windjana Gorge though. Windjana Gorge is cut through a range formed in the Devonian age (which occurred before the Carboniferous age) 350 million years ago.  It was a reef in the ocean built by coral ov...

This post is way out of sequence because I had no wi-fi for several days. So this is Day 9 Lake Argyle is the magnificent result of the damming of the mighty Ord River as part of the Ord River Irrigation scheme. It is Australia’s largest inland lake and also provides electricity for the local region, including Rio Tinto’s Massive Argyle Diamond mine. The mine is due to close next year but has been producing 95% of the worlds pink diamonds. I did offer to buy a ring for Jill at the nearby town of Kununurra. Prices ranged from $15,000 - $950,000. She declined because she didn’t think the pink colour matched her complexion.  Phew !! Despite this area now being home to the largest fresh tropical fruit growing area in Australia thanks to the dam and the huge irrigation area, we didn’t get to see any of the horticulture unfortunately. The lake is home to a estimated 30,000 fresh water crocodiles, 26 species of fish, and a third of Australia’s bird species. We watched a very inte...

Purnululu National Park in the eastern Kimberley is a wild, beautiful and largely inaccessible area. Known only to Aboriginals and a few pastoralists until the 1980s it has been World Heritage Listed since 2003.  The Bungle Bungle Range is the cente-piece of the park.  Formed 350 million years ago and now rising up to 200 m above the savannah grasslands is a spectacular display of vividly striped orange and black domes. We left camp  at 6.30 am  in a large 26 seater four wheel drive bus for the 1.5 hour trip on the access road to the park.  53 km of very rough, corrugated station road (track) took us to the park headquarters.  Then another 40 mins to travel 26 km to the southern walks in the park. The Domes walk and the Cathedral Gorge walk were spectacular and well worth the nearly three hours of bone-shattering travel to get there.   The huge rocky domed-topped, banded structures are grey and orange sandstone structures where the natural iron co...

A selection of photos of the all day trip into the fantastic BungleBungles View in conjunction with the earlier post on the Bungle Bungles.