Near Broome - Willare, Derby and Quondong Beach

After three days at Robuck Roadhouse, Saturday morning we back-tracked 170km east to a roadhouse campground at Willare.

Not much here, but nice grass, well priced, a good pool and a shared TV to watch the footy finals and talk with other travellers (including a 70 year old Canadian guy cycling from Darwin to Perth).

Enjoyed talking with this guy. Because of the heat, he typically rides from about 4am till 8am, then from 4pm till 8pm. He likes to ride with no lights on so he can enjoy the stars. He can tell when cars or trucks are approaching and turns them on briefly at that time. 

Its also conveniently close to the turn-off to visit Derby, which is another reason for coming here. 

After a very lazy start Sunday, we headed the short distance north to Derby for a looksee. 

Just South of Derby is (another) prison boab - the other one we saw was near Wyndham.

So interesting to reflect that indigenous (mostly) men were enslaved and held at places like this as part of the blackbirding that occurred in the day.

Near this was a historic water trough, built for when cattle were driven across the land for weeks to reach the port to go to market.

Best known for the biggest tides in Australia (a tidal range of nearly 12m!!), there's not a lot else at Derby.

We looked at the sculptures along the mudflats, looked at a local gallery, checked out the pier, quick stop at the supermarket and a short drive around town.

It's blowy here, and rain is forecast. We haven't actually seen any rain since May so will be nice when it comes!

We spent the WA public holiday Monday by the pool reading and chatting.

Tuesday morning we headed in to Broome for a quick supermarket stop before heading north to a free camp at Quondong Beach. 

Sandy, dirt road but a little air let out of all the tyres and the hour long drive was fine.

 

We camped just at the top of the dune overlooking the Indian Ocean. Just beautiful,  the cool sea breeze keeping the temperature just lovely!

Little or no service but Starlink is doing its thing. 

Some nice walks on the beach, some VERY quick squat/immersions in the water (#crocs) and enjoying reading with a view. 3 days here... very nice. 

The first night there, we were excited to see a few hermit crabs scuttling around our van.

The next night, though... wow! 

THOUSANDS of them, all shapes and sizes. Amazing!

After three days here we headed into Broome to a caravan park where we'll meet our daughter. Looking forward to seeing Emily.

Days 151 - 155: Mary Pool, Ellendale and Robuck Plains Roadhouse

On Sunday morning we drove for an hour or two to another free camp, Mary Pool, the 3rd last point on the map above. It's a rest area on the highway where it crosses the Mary River.

Lovely spot.  Friendly cows, unperturbed by to 30 odd campers in their paddock by the (pretty dry and unappealing) river. 

We had initially planned to spend two nights here, but Monday morning we awoke to strong winds blowing awful dust around, so after bacon and eggs we packed up and headed east.

We topped up with a hundred Litres of water at Fitzroy Crossing (200L in total). Not sure about the quality so will use it for bathroom and kitchen and use the 50L we know is good for drinking for the next few days. 

Milk and bread from the IGA (bread has a use by date of 31 July!!!  Frozen) before heading an hour down the road to another cattle farm "Ellendale".

We spent a day relaxing, reading, baking (biscuits and heat!!) and saying hello to the locals. 

Was nice when the sun set! Cooler.

Unfortunately, we (John) left the car fridge plugged in to the van inverter so during the night we were woken by the sound of an alarm advising that our batteries were critically low. 

Long story short, no power and the (LiPo4) van batteries were completely flat. Bugger!

We packed up the next morning and drove west as originally planned to Roebuck Plains Roadhouse and connected to 240v, hoping this would charge the batteries. No such luck. 

Because we have a Battery Management System, it was a bit more involved than just charging up.

We rang a Broome auto electrician who would be able to help us... on 7 October!! Thankfully they put us on to the Redarc (battery and Manager brand) hotline. 

We were talked through the manual reset procedure and all appears to be up and running again thank goodness 🤞 

We spent the afternoon at the roadhouse.  We needed to keep the van plugged in for 12 hours and wanted to be on hand to monitor levels, so we had a swim in the pool and washed the car. 

Clean!!

Thursday we drove into Broome for the day.

We did a shop, had a walk around town, drove to Cable Beach for a walk along the sand and went to the markets.

We didn't do a lot because we'll be back here in 10 days with Emily so will see the sights then with her.

The tides and full moon are perfect for Broome's famous "Stairway to the Moon", but someone forgot to tell the clouds about it so we joined at least a thousand others on the foreshore watching... absolutely nothing!

We ran into a couple whose company we enjoyed as neighbours in Kununurra so at least the waiting around for this nothing event was pleasant, chatting with Terry and Shane.  We finished the day with dinner at a pub with them before coming back in the dark to where we are here at Robuck Plains,  30km east of Broome.

* note to self... adjust the angle of the light bar! 

We were going to leave Friday morning but decided to stay another day. We really are in no rush so we washed the van (it hasn't been this clean in months!) and spent the day by the pool.

We went in to Broome again because the night was clear hoping for a second chance to see the Staircase to the Moon.

Didn't really see the staircase as such but it was pretty watching the moon rising over the water anyway. 

Will move on this morning, back tracking a little to Willare Roadhouse and we'll scoot up to Derby from there. 

The Bungle Bungles

We stayed on a creek beside a roadside rest area called Spring Creek to head out to the Bungle Bungles.

It's a popular free camp. We've been pretty cautious where we free camp, concerned with safety both while we're in the van overnight as well as for when we leave it. 

This place has a good reputation and when we got here it felt right, so that was a good start. 

We left the van behind because all the forums say the road is terrible and we'd only haul the van out there to bring it back to sleep for the night. 

The road out is only about 100 kms but it took us a couple of hours to get to the first carpark and begin walking.

Unfortunately, the road in comes to a T, and the two walking points are at each end of that T.

On the way to Cathedral Gorge we passed Elephant Rock. Well named. 

Cathedral Gorge and The Domes walks went through that Bungle Bungle rock formation you may be familiar with from tourism images. 

Glad we were up at 5am today to begin walking before the heat of the day really kicked in, especially as there's no waterholes to swim in anywhere in this range. 

To be honest, we were probably a little spoilt by the gorges we enjoyed at El Questro so Cathedral was a little underwhelming. 

After this we were back in the car driving to the other end of the road to Echidna Chasm.

This was a really cool (literally and figuratively) narrow gorge. Liked this way more!

On the way out we stopped at the Ranger station to make a sandwich and have a looksee. The ranger advised us of fires right up to the road on our way home... we saw these in a number of places. 

Moving on tomorrow morning after a relaxing afternoon back at the van. 

Doon Doon Roadhouse

Not a lot at Doon Doon!

There's a roadhouse with a van park out the back. A small community. That's it. There's not much else.

Nice grass, though!

The roadhouse sells fuel and fast food.

We camped here; paid for a powered site so we could run the air con. A good camp kitchen where we cooked, ate and chatted to another traveller heading the same way as us. 

The next morning we had a VERY lazy start to the day. It'll be hot where we are heading so we realaxed and read in the air con before heading on to a free camp today near The Bungle Bungles for (at this stage, the thinking is) a couple of nights. 

Next stop Spring Creek rest area.

Kununurra - return

Back in Kununurra.

Nice lake... shame about the crocs!

The resident croc that hangs out at the carava park is a toothless old (big) thing called Gummy

We had a problem with the van door. We couldn't lock the door, so given that we plan to leave the van roadside a few times in the coming weeks while we explore the Bungle Bungles, we came back to Kununurra to do a shop and get it repaired. 

Sadly, failed. The door is stuffed. 

McGuyver and the toolbox to the rescue!

Made it so we can safely lock ourselves in at night and lock the van from the outside when we go out in the day.

Insurance... will see how we go. 

Relaxing days in town, at the hardware stores, by the pool, a few walks... all good. 

Hopefully we won't be like this poor bugger on the highway. 

On (east) to Doon Doon today. 

Wyndham

We left El Questro and headed north. 

WA's most northerly town, Wyndham was more of a thriving community before the meatworks closed down in the mid 80's

Now its home to about 900 people who, according to the volunteer running the museum,  love it here.

It's a dead-end in that no one passes through Wyndham... you're here because you want to be here and for that reason the town is pretty settled.

It's not a dry town as such,  but there's no alcohol for sale anywhere.

In and on the outskirts of town we saw a couple of sobering up places advertising their services.

7m tides here means the water is very muddy. The meatworks used to pipe all the blood off the floor straight into the harbour so of course there's a pretty healthy croc population!

This boab. .. wow!

30km out of town is a hallow boab that was used as a holding cell for (typically) indigenous people. 😞

At sunset, we headed up to the Five Rivers lookout. Beautiful. 

And lovely and cooler up there with a good breeze blowing. 

Cool sculpture park here, too. (Well, John thought so! Robyn yet to be convinced of its level of cool!)

Back to Kununurra to get the van door looked at. Not locking 😞