Our Aussie Adventures

Isn’t it strange how one night, you can have a fantastic sleep, wakening ready and roaring to face the day, while others, such as last night can be the exact opposite. I woke this morning feeling like I’d barely had any rest at all. If it wasn’t the dogs tip, tap, toeing restlessly about the van, their recently pedicured nails still long enough to create an incessant pitter, patter on the linoleum floor, it was the nocturnal murmurings and tossing and turning of Bec in bed next to me preventing me from getting any decent shut eye. I must have been just as restless, as Bec woke feeling unrested as well.

There was nothing for it, but to prepare for our day, for which we had decided that we would move on. When getting out of the van takes on the appearance of undergoing commando training, it didn’t matter how nice the beach appeared, it wasn’t enough to ingratiate this particular campground on us. An ulterior motive was that should we move on today, we could still do the sightseeing we had planned, before moving on further down the coast and ever nearer our next destination. Furthermore, as happy as we were to pay for our lavish overnight accommodation, we were yet to spot the caretaker to provide him with our money.

And the other side was even tighter.

So yes, we decided to move on, and on we moved, leaving at 9:05AM, only five minutes past our planned departure time. As we gently maneuvered our rig from within the enveloping foliage, then bounced our way down the dirt road towards the highway, I vigilantly kept an eye on my rearview mirror. I had a vision of a cheap, ‘B’ grade American movie, an overweight rent-a-cop bearing a tidily trimmed moustache, uniformed in grey, with a perky little peaked security guards cap, speeding down the road after us in a golf cart topped with an orange flashing light, alternately screaming for us to pull over and pay our $7.00 or angrily waving a thick, stout wooden truncheon at us. Alas, there was no pursuit, and we made a clean getaway. Of course, our registration may have been recorded and the bill is to be forwarded to us in the mail. Only, I guess, will time tell.

It was only a short way down the highway that we stopped at the Karratha information centre, where I was left aggravated by the arrogance of some people. There were three caravan parking bays at the information centre, one of which actually hosted a caravan. The other two bays were occupied by cars, leaving about a dozen other car spaces in which it wasn’t even worth trying to fit ‘The Beast’ and van. A helpful ranger who spotted our consternation indicated that it was okay to park on the side of the road, a far from perfect solution, but in our case all that was available.

We gathered up some useful information at the centre, before heading for the center of town. Like Port Hedland, Karratha is essentially a mining town, but there wasn’t such an industrial feel here. This might be because the mining isn’t so centralised in town here. In fact, driving around town, and the nearby coastal town of Dampier, we got a very good feeling about the place. It was a clean, perfectly facilitated little country town.

In Karratha itself, we stopped only to perform the necessary duties of shopping. Bec was in need of some retail therapy, the likes of which only a larger town can provide, while we also needed to restock the larder and cellar. Our favoured tipple of Bundaberg Rum came to a carefully measured and rationed out end last night.

As a result, I was enmeshed within the five deep throng of punters mashed against the doors of the liquor store at 10:55AM, waiting for the 11:00AM opening. As the doors slid open, it was like a Boxing Day shopping rush, a convolution of thirsty souls, all rushing about like last drinks, rather than first drinks had been called.

I don’t think I had even made it to the spirits cabinet, when the first customers were already making their way back out, their hard fought for booze wrapped in brown paper bags and trolleyed out. And here we thought that the indigenous people in some of the northern towns were raving booze hounds. There was not an Aboriginal in sight today.

For our part, I grabbed a couple of big bottles of sweet Bundy nectar, passing them off to Bec, while I waded further into the swarm, hoping to pick up a bottle of red with which to slacken my Shiraz thirsty craving that I’ve been nursing for the last couple of days. It didn’t need to be good wine, so long as it was drinkable, so I picked up a bottle that I thought was on special for $9.00.

By the time I’d clambered back to the counter, Bec had already paid for the rum, so I handed my bottle to the cashier, indignantly complaining that it was meant to be only $9.00 when it rung up for nearly $13.00. Unfortunately, to take advantage of the cheaper pricing, I would have to buy another 5 bottles. I might have a craving, but not one that is going to need ½ a dozen bottles to settle, so I told the polite cashier that she could keep her $13.00 bottle of plonk. I would instead go back and select something more in fitting with what I had in mind. I returned a short time later with a bottle I had triple checked was only going to hurt my hip pocket to the tune of $6.00. I am sure the girl behind the counter must have thought I was hard done by, having watched Bec happily drop nearly $100.00 on a couple of bottles of rum, while I was left to squabble over a measly few dollars for the bottle of wine.

Leaving the shops and Karratha, we travelled a few more kilometres down the peninsula, to Dampier. I had very little information about Dampier before we left home, and hadn’t been able to glean a whole lot more since, but I knew one thing. Dampier was home to the Red Dog memorial statue. Now, for anyone who hasn’t seen ‘Red Dog’ the movie, or read the book upon which it was based, I won’t go into great detail. What I will say though is, Red Dog was a celebrity in these parts in life, and his spirit lives on in the cast statue of him, mounted proudly atop a boulder, keeping an eye on the road into Dampier. To be honest, if not for Red Dog, I most likely would have stayed on the highway, and not even made the detour into Karratha and Dampier.

Alvin and Bethany, meet Red.

Two outback wanderers. Red Dog and The Beast.

Of course, we just had to get our two mutts out to meet Red and while both were somewhat wary of him, Bethany was downright scared. I don’t think they could quite comprehend why he was being so still, silent and well behaved. They could both learn a lesson from that. With our memories cemented with photographic clarity, we took the compulsory drive around town, taking in the foreshore upon which lapped water that had a mystical turquoise clarity, before continuing our journey.

Our planned overnight stop was still a couple of hours drive away, thankfully just outside of the Shire of Roebourne, and therefore in a free camping area adjacent to the highway. No more of this bumbling down overgrown goat tracks to find nearly non-existent little plots. No, tonight we got to live it up, parked on a wide expanse of solid red dirt, almost perfectly level and with enough room to swing a road train, let alone our comparatively demure little rig.

Of course, as with everything in life, there were still some downfalls. The sound of our own generator, creating sweet mains power for us, is like music to our ears. When we switched it off and there was still the steady revving thrum from somebody else’s gen-set, then that’s not so harmonious. Then, there is the late night trucking traffic, obviously the life of bored little men, their main aim it seems in life is to upset campgrounds full of happy campers by blasting us with the ear splitting klaxon of their air horns, as they rumble through the night. Oh for the sweet sound of waves crashing on the beach, and tree limbs scrapping the side of the van, we’re just not meant to find perfection.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.