Tuesday 21st August 2007
We left Gary and Anne in Weipa on Sunday and high tailed it back to Sydney. We have been away for nearly a year and we were pretty keen to get back to a real bed. The last leg of our trip was a huge drive from Emerald in the middle of Queensland to Sydney in one day!
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Friday 17th August 2007
We finally made it to the Tip of Australia! It was a truly magical spot, alot more interesting and beautiful than I thought it would be. We had the place all to ourselves for about an hour, it wasn't until we left that a huge mob of people rocked up. We had a great time at the Cape, seeing the historical settlement of Somerset, the WWII plane wrecks. We were even lucky enough to spend a day on Thursday Island which was great. It is a pretty island, a pity the weather wasn't any good. On our last night we went to the Bamaga Show. There were kids running around everywhere. We were privileged to see a traditional dance competition aswell.
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Sunday 12th August 2007
Today was the most exciting four wheel driving we have done all trip. We tackled the notorious Telegraph track and conquered the steep and treacherous Gunshot! It was great having Gary and Anne tag along so that we could help and encourage each other.
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Saturday 11th August 2007
We didn't have great weather at Chilli Beach, It was very windy and spat with rain for most of the time. Chilli Brach is part of the Iron Range National Park, right where the small plane went down in 2005 killing everyone on board. The area is quite rugged and mountainous, and frequently covered in low cloud. We could see how the crash could have been a certain possibility. On our way out of the park we attempted the shortcut of Frenchmans Road. The track is pretty rough and there is a deep and rocky crossing of the Pascoe River. We were talked into crossing the river by people who had just crossed. In the end we met a couple from Kimba, Gary and Anne, who ended up being our tour partners for the rest of the Cape Trip. You can have a look at the Pascoe River crossing done by two people we met along the way here.VIEW VIDEO
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Thursday 9th August 2007
Lakefield National Park is a great place to spot all sorts of wildlife and plants. We lost count of the different species we saw. A highlight was seeing a large Jabiru catch a snake by a water-hole right in front of us.
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Tuesday 7th August 2007
Yesterday we made it to Cape Tribulation only to find our
pre-booked campsite taken. A family was not aware of the new Queensland Park
rules where you have to pre-book and pay for a site prior to setting up. They
had to pack up their entire setup, which was quite huge. We met a nice couple
from Germany, Sven and Stef who shared our campsite for the night. We also met
an interesting couple from Alaska, Ralph and Suzanne. Today we drove the Bloomfield
4WD track to Cooktown.
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Saturday the 4th August 2007
Three nights in the swag and we are finally getting used to it again. We stayed at the busy and bustling backpacker hub of Airlie Beach for a night and then headed up to Townsville via Bowen. We journeyed high up into the rainforest to the town of Paluma and stayed at the Wallaman Falls. We were lucky enough to spot a platypus and some turtles in the nearby creek, but unfortunately the platypus was too quick in evading us to get a good photo. The 3.2km trek down and back up at the Wallaman Falls was a real test on the body, but it was more than worth the effort. The Wallaman Falls are Australia's longest falls with a sheer drop of over 268m! Tonight we are staying in the picturesque town of Mission Beach, tomorrow we will check out the markets and head for the tablelands.
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Wednesday the 1st August 2007
The wedding and week away were just what the doctor ordered. It was great to catch up with everyone and relax in comfort. The wedding was great and I managed to get some pretty cool shots too. It was sad to leave the island and family behind, but my liver was cheering for joy.
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Monday the 30th July 2007
We are leaving Darwin sadly and are on our way to Brampton Island for a wedding. We stopped in at Kakadu for a brief stay, just to check things out, we will hopefully be back later to explore it properly. We stopped in at Edith Falls and had a swim at the Mataranka hot springs. We also stayed the night at the famous Daly Waters pub and had a few drinks. Well it is a hard slog towards Mackay where we leave our swag behind for the comfort of a bed for a whole week!!!
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Friday 6th July 2007
Well we are still in Darwin and loving it. The weather has been a bit odd of late with a bit of rain and some unseasonably cold weather. It only reached 22ºC last week.... freezing, well for up here anyway. Since I last touched base I have been busy working on some TV commercials (check out one of the commercials here), which has been great. I have also been selling my prints at the Mindil Beach markets of a Thursday which has been a great experience. The photo below of me with the black headed python was taken a few weeks ago on a snake hunting expedition with a kiwi and a french 'Steve Irwin', who funnily enough was named Steve. Just a few more weeks in Darwin and we are off again!
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Thursday 3rd May 2007
Darwin is a nice place, not too big and not too small. The weather is great at the moment aswell. We have visited the many markets in town and taken in a few sunsets whilst having a few beers over dinner. We ventured down to the Darwin Crocodile Farm. It was amazing to see so many huge crocs. We went in close to closing time and the lady nearly forgot about us and locked us in! Now that would have been very interesting.
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Wednesday 18th April 2007
From Kununurra we travelled to Gregory National Park, but the rain had once again closed off alot of the park. Next stop Katherine Gorge. We took a 8km walk in the heat of the day to get to one of the best waterholes we have been to all trip. It was a great relief to jump in and have a swim, because most of the waterholes were closed due to the prescience of crocs. I suppose we better get used to the thought of crocs now that we are going to be staying in Darwin for awhile!
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Monday 16th April 2007
We are in Kununurra and our mate 'Rosman' took us out on our first Barra fishing trip. It was great to get out on the water. It was amazing to see how fast the Ord River flows. We managed to catch just the one barra, and it just made size at 55cm! As we were brining the boat in I decided to put a line out and caught a bloody catfish of all things. Oh well, the barra was top eating.
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Friday 13th April 2007
We have been quite busy the past week, travelling from Broome
to Kununarra, via Fitzroy Crossing, Wolfe Creek Crater, Halls Creek, Sawpit Gorge
and the Bungle Bungles (Purnululu National Park). It wasn't as eerie as we thought
to camp at Wolfe Creek all by ourselves! It was so quite and pleasant, we managed
to have one of the best sleeps of the trip yet. Just outside of Halls Creek we
visited China Wall. It is a very close resemblance to the Great Wall of China
with white quartzite rock towering out of the ground and flowing up and down
the mountain ranges. We also camped at Sawpit Gorge, about 30km out from Halls
Creek with the Price family from Brisbane. It was an idyllic campsite right beneath
a towering gorge and we even had our own private waterhole. We later camped for
two nights at
the Bungle Bungles. The park was surrounded in dense smoke created
by the burn-offs started by the park rangers, who stupidly forgot to tell anyone
including the visitors centre that they were going to do so!! However, we still
managed
to
see
the
amazing
and
gigantic
'beehive'
rock
formations, with many impressive and diverse gorges and chasms.
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Thursday 6th April 2007
Broome is a nice little place. We spent over a week lazing about in the caravan park's swimming pool, it was like a resort if not better. We went out to the Willie Creek Pearl Farm, and along the way we had to pull a nice family from Melbourne out of a deep mud bog hole. I even managed to get a Mr Whippy cone in the caravan park, very nice! The camels along Cable Beach, although very touristy, are a great sight to take in at sunset. We met a lot of great people in Broome, and we also managed to run into a some friends we had met from down south as well. We also were lucky enough to watch the natural phenomenon of the stairway to the moon. The rising moon reflects upon the mud-flats of Roebuck Bay creating the appearance of a stairway to the moon.
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Tuesday 27th March 2007
We have spent the last four days in Karijini National Park and it has been fantastic. The gorges and waterfalls are so unique and spectacular. We had a great time exploring deep into the gorges and swimming in the waterholes. Some of the descents were quite difficult, in some you had to spider-walk your way down the walls, in others you where up to your neck wading through the water. This is another place where we definitely intend to return!
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Friday 23rd March 2007
We travelled from Karratha to Karijini. On our way we stopped at the Millstream-Chichester National Park. It was a nice spot with plenty of water in the rivers and waterholes thanks to the recent cyclones of George and Jacob. The landscape of the Pilbara is stunning. The red rocks of the mountains are covered in lush green spinefex and white ghost gums stand out brilliantly against the deep blue sky.
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Wednesday 21st March 2007
We were really looking forward to spending some time in Ningaloo Reef, and we were not disappointed. From the touristy town of Coral Bay all the way up to Turquoise Bay we were enthralled with the diversity and abundance of corals and sealife. We saw thousands of fish, swam with turtles and most of the time we had the beaches all to ourselves. We had to leave the area early only on account of our dual battery system breaking down. We will definitely be going back some day soon, when we intend to swim with the huge whale sharks.
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Saturday 17th March 2007
We have just completed our little tours of Steep Point and Cape Peron National Park. These areas were fantastic, so untouched. The 4WD track out to Steep Point, the most westerly point of mainland Australia, although hard to find, was a great little track. I had never witnessed 'balloon fishing' before and it was amazing to learn of the huge fish they can catch just off the cliffs. The real highlight was Peron National Park, where the deep red sand dunes met the white sands and turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean. It was awesome to look down from the cliffs and see dugongs, turtles, sharks, dolphins and manta rays making their way up and down the coastline.
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Wednesday 14th March 2007
The repairs to fix the car in Geraldton sure did hit us hard in the pocket, so Kalbarri was a great place to end up. We spent 5 nights there and met a great couple, Uwe (oover) and Ina (eena) from Switzerland. We also hooked up with Gus, whom we had met at Point Culver. He was kind enough to take us down to the picturesque Lucky Bay. On our last night in Kalbarri we had a great picnic dinner down by the beach and watched the sunset, ahhh!
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Monday 5th March 2007
WE ARE OFF! Carl managed to do a repair job on the car yesterday and we head off down the Great Central Road for Laverton and then onto Geraldton. We passed this interesting looking car by the side of the road advertising for the next fuel stop in Tjukayirla.
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Friday 2nd March 2007
In the morning, Mr E, a local of Warburton arranges for a
someone to come out to see us. Carl was his name and without any fuss comes out
and does a quick patch job to get us back to Warburton. Carl later locates the
problem, but the bad news is they don't have the parts and the first possible
delivery wont be till next Thursday... NOOOOOO! It is absolutely boiling out
here during the day. It will be a real test on our sanity. There were plenty
of birds around camp to keep us occupied.
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Thursday 1st March 2007
We get up just before dawn to try and make it to Hanns Tabletop which is about 15km up the road for a sunrise but just miss out by seconds. For the rest of the Connie Sue the track is not too bad, although there are some pretty bad corrugations and washouts. A herd of about 12 camels came out of nowhere, from their hiding spot behind some bushes next to the road. We arrive at Warburton Roadhouse which is part of an Aboriginal community to fill up at the bargain price of $1.80 a litre! We make for the Gunbarrell Hwy. About 65km along the track deteriorates and becomes very, very corrugated. I try varying speeds and lines to lessen the effects but all of a sudden the wheel pulls to the left and I can no longer control the car. We get out to find that the steering arm bolts have either snapped off or come loose, GREAT! I try to fix it to no avail and luckily we are able to get call for help via the UHF. We happened to stumble upon a frequency used by the local Aboriginals, and they organised someone to help us. It was a huge relief. We camp the night out beside the road awaiting some help that would hopefully arrive tomorrow.
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Wednesday 28th February 2007
We leave camp Yeo and head for some breakaways just down the road. There is an impressive little mesa which Louise and I both climb. The track along the Anne Beadell is still very good and quite wide in most places, although I was caught out twice going a bit too fast and nearly hit an old tree stump on the second time. The countryside is quite beautiful, and varies quite a bit. Fires have also been through a fair few parts along todays drive, and a lot of burnt dead branches litter the roads. After lunch we have a few photos next to Len Beadell's signpost at Neale's Junction and fill in the guest book and head off up the Connie Sue towards Warburton.
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Tuesday 27th February 2007
We come across this huge goanna crossing the road. I got out to take some shots, and he wasn't phased at all with my prescience. I didn't get too close after having a good eyeful of his huge claws. We camped the night at Yeo Homestead. It is a very small house surrounded by some old tin sheds and a well, that had a rather large dead snake in it.
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Saturday 24th February 2007
After yesterdays efforts of trying to drive the Connie Sue Highway to Warburton, we managed to loose the track again this morning. No one has traveled the track since November! We decided to head for Kalgoorlie and recoop, and plan to leave on Monday after getting the facts right on the track conditions. Along the Trans Access Road, which runs along the Trans Australia Railway, we had lunch and then came accross some pretty big mud puddles. I thought that this we be a good chance to get some shots. We tried it a couple of times but at the end of the day I had the camera set to take photos at -2 stops from yesterday making the photos a bit too dark and underexposed, ARRH!!!
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Tuesday 20th February 2007
We decide to not stay in Israelite for the night and head for Balladonia following the directions of the 4WD travel book. About 20km into the trip the road is totally covered in knee deep water for about 100m. I had the unfortunate task of walking the length of it to test the depth and track conditions underneath the water. The water would have come up to the bottom of the doors, plus the ground was extremely soft and boggy. Instead we headed along a very rough and ready telegraph track towards Toolina Cove on the Great Australian Bight. The going was very slow and the overgrown trees once again ripped off our new shovel without us even knowing. 2 Days later we reached the spectacular cliffs of Toolina Cove making the heartache well worth it.
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Monday 19th February 2007
Yesterday afternoon we were lucky enough to catch these two roos on the beach in Lucky Bay. It apparently happens regularly as they come down to drink fresh water that runs off the land into the sea. I get up early this morning to capture the sunrise. I also took my rods down to have a bit of a fish aswell. The clouds are once again on the horizon, delaying the appearance of the sun. When the sun does manage to poke it's head over the distant mountains I am not at all disappointed. i drop the cameras off and head out to the rocks for a fish, to once again catch nothing!
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Thursday 15th February 2007
We traveled to Bremer Bay to check out it's beautiful aqua blue waters. We decided to camp out on the headlands which were only accessible by 4WD. The tracks were ridiculously tight and overgrown. It took us well over 2hrs to travel 15km. We finally made it to Peppermint Beach, an idillic location that we had all to ourselves. The only dilemma was that we had to get out of there the next day. We took a different track back, once again very, very rough. I am surprised there is still paint left on the car. We come out at a beach, and I was buggered if we were going to go back through the bush to get out. I thought that we might be able to drive all the way into Bremer along the beach. Everything was going well, that is until we hit a soft spot in the sand. We were well and truly bogged. The sand was half way up the wheels, and the diff's were buried. The worst thing was the water was only a few metres away. I said, "OK, lets just dig ourselves out!", I went to grab the shovel, but it had been ripped off the car somewhere along the way. Arrh!!! So we managed to dig ourselves out by hand with a little help from some nice passers-by.
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Tuesday 13th February 2007
We stay at a free campsite at Norman's Beach. It is lovely, set in trees just next to mangroves. the beach is just a 5min walk away. We cook dinner and go for a walk down to the beach. It is a beautiful setting. When we get back to the camp we hear a rustling, I thought it was the next doors dog but when we shine a light towards the noise we discover that it is a bandicoot. It is scratching around for scraps. Minutes later we hear some more noises and to our surprise it is a little frog. Soon we are totally surrounded by frogs and bandicoots. The next morning I get up to capture a pretty amazing sunrise.
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Monday 12th February 2007
We get up and pack up camp asap. The march flies were up at birds fart buzzing around our tent waiting for us to get up. For some reason though they seemed more reluctant to bite you in the morning. We head for Warpole and pump up our tires from yesterdays sand driving. We head for the Giant Red Tingle tree. We get there and do the walk around. The trees are huge. When we arrive at the Giant Red Tingle, it is amazing to actually see how big it really is. I really struggled to get the tree into any of my shots.
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Sunday 11th February 2007
We take a track that is on our map. It starts of very narrow, but we persist thinking that it will get better. boy were we wrong, it just got narrower and narrower, basically we could not see the track anymore. Trees were scrapping along the sides of the truck making a horrible noise. We came to a dead end about 2km down the track and turned around to try a different route. We head for Fish Creek and Coodamurrup beach. The track is pretty good, lots of little hills and sand. we get down to Coodamurrup beach, we drive down onto the sand and set up a little picnic. I try some fishing off the beach but the wind was pretty strong making it useless.
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Wednesday 10th January 2007
Last night was a strange one indeed. We camped in a great spot halfway between Norseman and Hyden, next the large salt Lake Johnstone. We were all alone in this isolated camping spot and just as we were dozing off to sleep a car turns up and parks 100m away from our camp. We start to get a little nervous when they start flashing a spotlight in our direction. It just turned out to be a bloke turning up late to camp, that bloody Wolf Creek is starting to mess with our heads!
Today we head for Perth. We stop in at Hyden to checkout Wave Rock. Unfortunately we read the map wrong and ended up getting a little lost, and walked some 3 to 4km around the rock to try and find our way back! The Wave Rock was pretty impressive but the overall signage was a bit minimalist and vague.
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Sunday 7th January 2007
We leave Cactus Beach on a cold, windy overcast morning and head for Koonalda Station. Koonalda Station is about 88km from the WA border and 14km inland from the Eyre Highway. We arrive at Koonalda late in the afternoon and go in search for a blowhole, that apparently blows wind from its coastal source 16km away! We find the inconspicuous little hole in the ground and to our amazement a very strong salty breeze is flowing from the ground. Later that night the breeze had vanished completely... eerie indeed.
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Friday 5th January 2007
After an arduous 3 months of preparing our 4WD, securing
sponsors and sorting out some personal roadblocks we are finally packed up and
ready to leave on our around Australia journey. We camp overnight off the Eyre
Highway about 30kms east of Kimba. We did not choose the best of campsites,
we are slightly visible from the road and we can hear large semi-trailers thundering
by all night. We did catch a pretty amazing rainbow that seemed to halo our car, hopefully it was a sign of good things to come.
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