Internet access at long last

Posted 27thJune

23^rd June 2013

One draw back of a blog entry or posting is that each current post is at the start of the blog which means if I continue with a particular narrative you get the second part first which may become a little confusing at times if you haven’t read the previous post.

In my previous post I talked about the horizontal waterfalls, so named by Sir David Attenborough, I’m still not sure why they are called horizontal. For many years I had a perception the falls were formed by water rushing off coral reefs, but this is not the case. Visualise a tidal body of water several kilometres long almost like a large fiord and surrounded by high rocky cliffs and promontories, open to the sea at one end. Off to one side are two similar fiords only narrower and separated from the large fiord and each other by a very narrow peninsular of rock approximately 50-60 metres high. These two fiords are like two lakes with one single opening from one lake to the other and similarly into the large body of water. One opening is about 15 metres wide the other about 8-10 metres wide, it is here the horizontal falls are formed. Tides in this area are between 11 and 13 metres high, as the tide comes in it has to squeeze through these narrow gaps and similarly on the ebb tide it falls faster on one side of the gap than the water on the other consequently forming a waterfall of churning and violent water with huge boiling whirl pools. The thrill of course is to sit in or on in our case, a powerful boat and do all sorts of things like charge through the narrow gap at break neck speed while you hang on for dear life and yahoo like a mob of school kids (and the women scream), or slow down so the boat is held in the grip of the surging torrent bobbing around like a cork in a washing machine with sheer cliffs rising 50metres above and 50 metres of water below you forcing its way through the narrow gap. It’s not all harem scarem though, the area is of great natural beauty and while you are there you get the opportunity to have a good look around and enjoy the vista. Would you believe a mining company has applied to mine the area and the Western government is considering it.

The Kimberley Region and coast line is of such great natural beauty, in my opinion the whole region should be totally protected against mining or heavy industry of any sort. In the scheme of things it isn’t such a vast area relevant to the rest of Australia, should we really desecrate such natural beauty to satisfy the greed of a few?  

Moving on down to Broome we checked into Cable Beach Caravan Park for two nights. Classified as four star, it was very expensive, very crowded and difficult to manoeuvre the van into place, plus the amenities in our area were disgraceful. Having heard so much about Cable Beach we were looking forward to seeing it especially at sunset. What a disappointment, after a 2kilometre walk we eventually got to the beach where we had to walk across shelly coarse sand to reach any resemblance of a decent beach amongst a line of rocks. Muttering our disappointment and voicing our opinion on the virtues of Fraser, Moreton and Stradbroke Islands apart from the coastal beaches of both the Sunshine and Gold Coasts, we strolled northward and eventually cleared the rocky formations to where every man and his dog were driving their 4wd to get a photo of the sunset without rocks impeding their view. In amongst all this three separate columns of camels were being led along the beach just to add to the mayhem.

A day spent looking around Broome and then we moved out travelling south in the direction of Port Headland. Just over 100 hundred kls down the road we turned off onto a sand track into Barn Hill Station a working cattle station of some 450,000 acres that takes up 80 kilometres of beautiful coastline. Ten kilometres in from the highway on a sand track, we arrived at a very basic caravan park run by the property owners and here we set up camp on unpowered sites to spend best part of a week in idyllic conditions. Access to beautiful beaches and long walks, unusual colourful rock formations, cool nights and 30+C days, deep blue skies and cooling breezes, almost paradise. Our toilets and showers are a hoot, open air corrugated iron, hot water supplied courtesy of a large pile of coiled up black poly pipe and it all works wonderfully well including flushing toilets. You get used to walking up to the ablutions and seeing both male and female legs protruding below either the showers or toilets, it’s all very natural. Our days have been filled in a totally relaxed manner, long walks along beaches both north and south, picking up beautiful little shells (for the ladies of course) washed up with the large tides each day, exploring rocky headlands where eroding sandstone slabs create attractive patterns of multiple colours. Then usually we get back to our vans by early afternoon have a late lunch followed by our daily shower in the open air showers, catch up on a bit of reading and then wander down to the little kiosk to buy an ice cream. We even had a game of barefoot bowls on the crude little green adjacent to the kiosk seeing no-one was there to watch, we won’t talk about that effort either, needless to say none of us expect to be invited into a comp any time soon. Then back to the vans for happy hour, a few nibblies and a couple of coldies, it’s a tough life. To-night, Sunday night special, for $15 per head a three course meal, soup, roast of the day and desserts, we’ll be in that.

26^th June 2013

On Monday we departed Barn Hill heading for 80 Mile Beach 247 kls south of Barn Hill. The turn off to 80 Mile Beach is about 45kls south of the Sandfire Roadhouse that is marked on most maps. 9-10kls of corrugated red dirt road brings you to the beach caravan park where for $41 per night we were on a powered and grassy site. This park is well organised and obviously has been here a long time, amenities are clean and plenty of hot water and pressure. The place is set out on a level site protected by surrounding grassed dunes.

A short walk (100m) over a dune brings you to the widest beach I have ever seen, at low tide is must be ¾ of a kilometre out to the water and the silvery grey sand stretches as far as the eye can see in either direction. In the upper parts of the beach the sand is gritty crushed shell with deep shell beds that have been washed up, the sand gets finer as you proceed down the beach until it is almost a grey silt at the waters edge, I likened it to Kaolin Clay for those that can remember the poultice material used for drawing boils many years ago. Shells of all descriptions litter the beach and not too many beach strollers resist the temptation to gather a collection of the many varied shapes and colours comparing colour and quality with others doing the same.

For the first time since leaving home in March a weather front came in and we have had considerable rain over the past two days and nights. Not having access to the internet makes it difficult to know what is happening in the region, however a road report posted at the reception office indicated numerous roads in the region are closed particularly around Port Headland. The weather is supposed top clear tomorrow (Thursday) and rumour has it there was sunshine in Port Headland this morning. We booked in for another night and will assess the situation in the morning, if we depart we will probably only travel as far as Pardoo Roadhouse about 100kls south of 80 Mile Beach turn off. From here should be able to get more information and re-assess our travel plans.

27^th June

We left 80 Mile Beach this morning in cold wind and overcast conditions, it hadn’t rained all night so we considered the front had passed over and was breaking up. We travelled through to Port Headland driving out of the foul weather into a perfect day. Boring is probably the best way to describe the countryside enroute but we were entertained by listening to all the carry on regarding the change of leadership. Judging by the amount of water running in creeks and rivers and lapping the highway in places it is apparent they had a lot of heavy rain in the region near Port Headland.