South to Perth.

We have had an address for 10 days now as we move in with Neil, Shel, Shakira & Callum, brick walls, a tiled roof & a heater! We have been doing junior footy on weekends, pick ups & drop offs just like the olden days. All a distant memory now that I have retired (Annie says "no your not"!).

So now that we have the Crawfish full of paying customers on the Swan river I can kick back. On the way down from Red Bluff, we did Monkey Mia, Kalbari, Dongara & Jurian Bay all lovely locations.

We have spent our time in perth Eating/ drinking with friends new & old. With only 1 month of the trip remaining we had best get back on the road. We will head south now to Margret river, Albany, Esperance region. I have purchased a new wetsuit for cooler southern ocean, it is in fur seal grey, in an effort not to attract unwanted attention from large toothy fish.

Here we all are at Kings park last night, we have had a marvelous time in the remote community of Perth. We are looking forward to hearing how wonderful every ones winter was on our return.

Southward Bound.

We leave Ningaloo & all it's aquatic wonders behind us now, as well as a large brown snake that wanted to call the caboose home (another story for another day). Now it is off to Red Bluff so I can have a surf, at a break that I have wanted to surf for 30 years. It didn't happen, too big & scary for me!

That's the veiw from our camp, nice shallow coral reef just below the wave. We did see in our little bay, whales, sharks, turtles, dolphins & some very good surfers (myself excluded). On the fourth night it rained. We left the next day - the caboose looked like a lamington on wheels.

First rain in 4 months, we will get over it I guess. Here is some of the characters that apepared in our bay.

Then we had hump back mum & young one cruise past each morning.

It's getting cooler.

points update.

Now with Annie dominating the Coight points to date I felt that I should challenge, with a late charge. Annie made the suggestion that we should have lunch at a roadside stop, to which I reply, "we will find a nice place for lunch down the road", which I did, we had a lovely lunch on the bank of a dry river. With another 300km to complete our journey for the day I suggest we get a move on?

The fluffy red sand had other ideas, so a small stick is prepared, stuck into the valves & before you know it we are off down the highway at 22 psi.

So we are now at 4/2 I feel I have the momentum with me, then as some pino grigio is spilt onto the keyboard, we now have to copy & paste the letter "P". 
Now as I Prefer a lager, I am sure we can work out who takes the Points. 6/2 Annie leads.

I am sure I will manufacture some more Coight magic prior to tours end.

Ningaloo, Dugongs safe.

We hit the coast, with a sigh of relief having seen that the country is "moving forward", as long as we are digging holes. All Dugongs were left to go about their business, not even a tag & release by us.

We did launch the Crawfish into Yardie Creek, for some quiet recon work, the wildlife was uninterested.

A stunning cruise, the crew were rewarded with some sights that I should have charged a fee for.

So with that mission complete, we helped a Canadian couple out of a spot & we headed south.

It's getting cooler, a top of only 23 today.

Tom Price. How mining works.

The pilbara region is full of good stuff, it is a very stunning region but it has the stuff that we all love. So what we do is take a mountain, kick it, if it has a metallic ring to it, then we send it to China. It may look like they have tried to dig there way there.

Now as we load the red dusty slow boats to China on the West coast with Iron ore, on the east coast of oz their loading dusty black slow boats to China full of coal to heat the iron ore to make quality products to send back to us. This is so clever, we have gotten very good at it, all you need is loads of highly paid blokes in fluro, some very, very big trucks & diggers, then put lots of $000,000 behind any number that you think of. Now you are mining,

Now after this process has finished, faster, shinier ships return to our shores with loads of quality product for us to enjoy. So in a symbolic gesture we decide to return some of these quality products to their traditional home-Mount Tom Price.

Anyone else with quality product they have no further use for, send it back home. 

Karijini Np

We leave spot “x” & head south, dangerously close to the tropic of capricorn (the hot/ cold line), if you try to remember the best Melbourne day in Spring, 31-33 degrees, we have had that for 4 months now. Sorry.

Karijini Np is the one that those in the know say you must not miss, it is impresive, with gorges that seem to be deeper than you think possible.

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We did manage to get near the bottom of Hancock Gorge (not sure if it was named after the late great inheritance receiver Lang) but Annie did a magnificent job in getting into some tight locations.

We head now to Tom price mine for a tour, then onto Ningaloo to unleash the HMAS Crawfish on the ocean. (does anyone know what the legal size is for a dugong? & what is the bag limit?)  There will be an up date on Coight points shortly, there has been some jostling as we enter the final 2 months of the tour.

Although these rocks appear metallic & feel metallic they are safe for the moment, in these parts that could have you sent to China. Report to follow.

Spot X

Prior to leaving Melbourne we were given the "heads up" on a beautiful, special camp, a must do. So as we entered the Pilbara region we headed for 'Spot X", not the easiest of places to find, but well worth a few belly outs in the truck to get there.

Subterranean water percolates through the root structures at about 28-30 deg, then flows down amongst the paper barks as a pristine stream for a kilometer or so before it heads off into a series of small rapids. For 2 nights we hunted, gathered, swam & walked. A good call from our informer.

That's me with the wood. Once I had the oven on, then I hunted out a couple of big old crawfish for dinner. In a Steve Irwin type incident one of those big old crawfish did stick his barb into my calf a good inch, unlike Steve I pulled through with quality nursing. So crawfish was stuffed in the camp oven for dinner.

So should you be heading up this way & would like to visit this location, I will happily divulge the coordinates to you, a bottle of 15 year old single malt should do the trick I think, maybe a bottle of Moet for Annie too.

A snapshot from the poop deck of the HMAS Crawfish on patrol.

Children gone, we move on.

It has been a while since the children left us, they were last seen by us at Nackamuras bar, Broome International Airport, we presume they are elsewhere now. Having left them waiting for a delayed plane, we jumped back in the truck, less caboose & headed north toward Cape Laveque. At Middle lagoon we stopped to soak up some of the ambiance of the Kimberly pre the intrusion by mining companies.

We got to the Cape but without a reservation for "a swag", we did not get in (the biggest state in Oz is short on space some times) so we head South again. Like a couple of backpackers we spend the night on Cable beach as we have no prior bookings. Could have been worse I suppose.

We leave Broome with some fond memories of our family unit as one for a short time. So it is back to our other family now, the ones that adopt you along the way, not until one loses oneself on the road do you realise that there are many many folk to share a story with arround a bottle of red (and a camp fire & a camp oven). This is one such group, Phil & Di, Ken & Jan. We settled for beef in the pot this night, but it was nearly suckling pork, I have slowed up in my old age.

This is on the junction of the De Grey River & Bore Line Rd, WA, about 3km upstream, this is where we were 4 nights ago. So many stories, so little inclination to type. For now.
A&A