Coming Back to Earth

For those of you who have been being quietly sick at our seemingly steady stream of good cheer, love and happiness, fear no more – we have formally come back to earth. The last couple of weeks have been more challenging than our paradise period in the Kimberley and the rough spots are starting to show.

First, there’s the weather. There has been a cold (and wet) snap in northern WA – unseasonal and unexpected – and frankly we were mentally unprepared.

Second, there’s the downsizing. We’ve left our camper behind in Broome and have moved into a very small (and pretty cheap and nasty) tent. Homelessness seemed like a romantic concept when we first sold our house – but a few cold nights have already led to second thoughts!

Third, there’s the place. We’re in the Pilbara and frankly find it to be desolate, barren and largely uninteresting. The deep red earth means money, money, money – but the area seems to have little else to offer. Eighty Mile Beach, for example, which is touted as one of the best places in Australia for fishing, was recently hit by a cyclone which decimated ALL the trees – one can’t imagine a bleaker picture. The mining towns which are dotted throughout the Pilbara are built for making money not living life. Karratha, for example, is basically just one big Centro Shopping Centre – functional, but characterless. Marble Bar was described to us by the woman in the visitors centre as a “nasty” place driven by greed and deception - now that’s appealing.

Fourth, there’s the car and the fridge, both of which has developed electrical problems. This wouldn’t be such a disaster except that Karratha is overflowing with people, which means auto dealers and electricians are overflowing with business, which means customer service is deemed to be unnecessary and waiting is the order of the day. So we are trapped in Karratha for the foreseeable future.

Finally, there’s us. Problems one, two, three and four have slowly worn away some of the gloss of our holiday-mood relationship. Everything is irritating and we’ve been doing a fair amount of pushing each other’s buttons lately. We are currently camped behind the sand dunes about 20k out of Karratha. A month ago that would have seemed like a lovely romantic idea – but in our current frame of mind it’s just plain irritating that there’s nowhere to have a shower, nothing much to do and even the fish aren’t biting.

All this to demonstrate that life just can never be a permanent holiday!

Now that I’ve finished with the Big Whinge, let me tell you about the highlights of the last couple of weeks.

Karajini National Park was most certainly a highlight – although it didn’t seem that way at first. We had been given the word by absolutely everyone we met that Karajini was one of the wonders of Australia. But when we arrived at the park we were distinctly unimpressed. The landscape was pretty flat and uninteresting, the area around the campsites had all been back burnt and that cold weather mentioned earlier had arrived – so it seemed pretty bleak and barren. But it’s the gorges that bring people to Karajini and these gorges really are sensational. We’ve seen a lot of gorges and everywhere else the gorges seem to be carved between hills – so you can see the gap as you approach the gorge. At Karajini the gorges suddenly appear as a fissure in otherwise flat ground, like some giant ditch. The walks into and through the gorges are astounding, taking you from the rather dreary landscape above into lands of tropical palm forests, dramatic rock crevasses, stunning waterfalls and picture perfect pools. Without question the most dramatic and wonderous natural phenomena we have seen on this trip. Check out Flickr to see more pictures (www.flickr..com/photos/dennisandsteph).

The magnitude of the mining operations here has also been interesting. The name of the game here is iron ore, and it’s everywhere. We’ve “done” the Rio Tinto circuit. We stayed in Tom Price, where we toured Rio’s biggest iron ore mining operation. Not dissimilar to many of the other mines we’ve toured – but redder and dustier. We then drove from Tom Price to Karratha along Rio’s private rail line which carts tonnes of iron ore daily to their private port facilities in Dampier. As it turned out, we stayed our first night at a “temporary” caravan park directly across from the Rio loading facilities where we watched the huge boats being filled with rocks (aka money). Apparently this is one of the two largest bulk loading facilities in the world. As it turns out, the other largest facility is up the road in Port Hedland, where BHP has its private loading docks, serviced by its private train line. This is big business!

Also worthy of note was a trip to the Roebourne Races - largely because this was probably the most colourful place in the Pilbara.  The horses and the tipping were a bit disasterous, but the people watching as worth the price of entry.

Future plans are to some degree in the hands of the Karratha electricians – but we do intend to go to the Ningaloo Reef from here. Weather permitting, we expect this to be a vast improvement. Thereafter our plans have changed. Dennis’s Dad had a fall recently and we are a bit worried about him, so have decided to forego the pleasure of the Canning Stock Route – 16 days completely out of touch just seems too risky at the moment. So I have swung into Planning Director mode and am recalibrating the itinerary. Don’t be surprised if you find us heading back north toward the sun!!

And now, a word from Gramps!

Another fine contribution from Stephanie, she has captured the essence of our recent travels. In WA (Western Australia) for our overseas readers WA stands for 2 things “Windy Always” and secondly “Wait Awhile”.  In these parts it means wait a very long while and the lack of service mentality is alarming.

The good news is that the weather is improving and we should be out of town in a few days, Dad has started to improve somewhat, however nearing 90 he struggles as his body wears out. But his mind is good and he is capable of some good one liners still, if not politically correct. It seems that he told my kids that Stephanie and I were “living in a tent in the bush like black fellas”. We now look forward to the arrival of a grand child and have our thoughts with Kristie and Jamie at this time.

Until next time!

Final postscript from Stephanie. In our rush to report on the sale of our house we neglected to note that Dennis was the winner of the biggest mud crab catch while we were at Cape Leveque. He looks the part, don’t you agree?