THE OZ REWIND
DIPSTICKS JOHN AND MARIE
The planning for this trip started back in the antipodean Spring of 2019 but we all know what happened to 2020 and in consequence the start of the journey was much delayed. Even when we were ready to go this year, the WA Government imposed a 3-day snap lockdown in the Perth area after a new community Covid case was reported. There was concern that the lockdown might be extended but luckily that didn’t come to pass and, on the 29th of April, 2 days after the lifting of restrictions Mathilde left Darlington on the first leg of the journey.
CHAPTER 1 - SHE'S LEAVING HOME
This was to be a clockwise circumnavigation of the Great Southern Land (Terra Australis) following the Great Northern Highway to our first scheduled destination, Karijini National Park in the Hamersley Ranges. However, the journey started on the Great Eastern Highway heading towards the town of Northam before we branched off on State Route 115 to Goomalling. The day was warm (into the 30s C and with high humidity) and when we stopped for lunch Mathilde was showing severe signs of overheating despite the fitting of a new, and much higher efficiency, radiator cooling fan. Over a leisurely lunch we let her cool down and then resumed the trip to our first overnight stop at Gabby Quoi Quoi Lookout, Konnogorring. On arrival Mathilde again spat the dummy, and the coolant, even though we had left her idling for a while to prevent ‘after boil’. She wasn’t happy and neither were we.
That evening we made the decision to journey on a further 50 miles the following morning to the point where we were to join the Great Northern Highway and there, subject to Mathilde’s temperature, we would either carry on or limp home to fix the cooling problem.
On a cooler morning we tentatively set out on our planned route. The cooling fan was working and Mathilde was coaxed to her normal cruising speed to see if all was well. The engine temperature gauge showed a normal reading and there was no sign of the violent boiling that had been experienced the previous day. Confident (?) that all was well, we voted to push on and after travelling 177 miles (283 kms) we pulled into a rest area just north of Payne’s Find.
Mathilde still had a trick or two up her sleeve. One of the two canvas spare wheel covers had decided it was time to come apart (sun exposure had rotted the material) and was flapping wildly in the breeze. John had to climb up onto the roof to remove the remnants and fit a spare cover while a multitude of friendly bush flies gathered round to give him a hand!
Saturday 1st May, Mathilde’s 65th birthday (she was first registered in Wales on 01/05/1956), started bright but cool. In the semi desert near Payne’s Find the overnight temperature had plummeted to 6 degrees C (42 F) but the sun soon began to warm things up.
We took our lunch break at the old Wynyangoo Camp about 12.5 miles (20kms) north of Mt Magnet and made our final stop of the day at Lake Nallan just north of Cue. ‘Puddle Nallan’ would have been a more appropriate name as it was mostly dry save for one smallish body of water. We took an hour’s exercise walking around the perimeter of the lakebed. To walk around the puddle would have taken all of 10 minutes.
Leaden skies greeted us the next morning and rain was threatening when we left Nallan. Not much rain fell, just enough to streak Mathilde’s dust covered paintwork. The windscreen wiper was used occasionally to clear the driver’s view but then it decided to stop working altogether. We stopped for a lunch break near the South Branch of the Gascoyne River. While Marie prepared lunch, John checked for faults in the wiper electrics, but nothing was found. John assumed that the wiper motor had given up the ghost then, during lunch, the wiper started working again of its own volition. Maybe the ghost wasn’t in the wiper motor? Marie has the notion that an old steering wheel attendant is accompanying us on the journey. She recalls that similar unexplained events occurred on the journey overland from U.K.
Back on the road and cruising along at 45mph (70kmh) we spotted two Wedge Tail eagles in the middle of the highway. They appeared to be fighting over a tasty morsel of freshly squashed kangaroo and nearly became roadkill themselves, taking off just before they were flattened on the front of Mathilde. Sadly, as we travelled, we saw the bodies of eagles that had not been quick enough to avoid the metal monsters that travel this road.
After fueling up in Meekatharra, we drove on to a decommissioned camping area on the Middle Branch of the Gascoyne River and camped in the bush by the river. As with Nallan Lake there was very little water around – not so much a river, more a collection of unconnected ponds of water.
During the night we woke to the sound of heavy rainfall and wondered whether it might be wise to leave at first light before we became part of the river. Our fears were unfounded, though we did have to splash through a few muddy puddles on the way back to the road. The drizzle continued on and off through the morning as we drove towards the mining town of Newman.
While enjoying breakfast before we set off, we saw two lots of heavy, oversized loads trundling over the river bridge in our direction of travel. We thought we had given them sufficient time to get far ahead of us but after about an hour on the road we caught up with them. Each truck was carrying a disassembled but still huge mining haul truck that spanned both carriageways of the road. We travelled slowly behind them until a wider section of road (a floodway) appeared and we were waved on by the escort vehicle driver. Pedal to the metal, Mathilde slowly gained and passed the two trucks just before the floodway disappeared and the road narrowed again – it was pretty close!
When we arrived in Newman, we drove straight to the Visitors’ Centre to secure an overnight spot in their car park. Marie had been told, prior to our departure from home, that the campgrounds in Newman had been taken over by workers of the mining company and it was a case of the visitors’ centre or nothing.
Luckily, there was still enough space to accommodate Mathilde and we parked next to an old mining truck (now looking quite small when compared to its modern successors). Within an hour of our arrival the car park was full.
Grocery shopping was the next order of the day and with that task out of the way we hiked to the top of Radio Hill to look out over the town of Newman as the sun was setting over the surrounding hills. As the sun descended the lights of the BHP Mount Whaleback mine site appeared bright in the darkening sky like a cluster of glow worms. According to the visitor centre pamphlet, Mount Whaleback is the world’s largest open cut iron ore mine.
Another day and another fill up with diesel before setting off on the highway following signs for Port Hedland. The journey took us through Cathedral Gorge at the entrance to the Hamersley Ranges. The road twisted and turned to avoid steep climbs but slowly and surely, we gained altitude as we crossed the Ranges.
We stopped for coffee at Mount Robinson and as we did so we could hear the radiator coolant boiling but there was no sound from the cooling fan – it had stopped working. The fault was easily traced, a blown fuse and with the remedy to hand, the fan was back in action. The rest of the day’s journey to Karijini was uneventful and we found our pre-booked campsite in the ‘Dingo’ circle.
CHAPTER 2 - SEVERAL WALKS IN THE PARK
After a six-day journey from home we gave Mathilde a well-earned 3 day rest while we explored the park on foot, or at least a little bit of it as Karijini is the second largest National Park in Western Australia covering an area of 627,441 hectares (1,568,602 acres). We were camped in the Dales Gorge area of the park and our first walk took us to the Gorge rim. Quite a dramatic sight, the deep gorge cutting through the orange brown 2,000 million year old rock with a water course at its base.
We walked the Gorge Rim Trail stopping at viewpoints along the way to see Fortescue Falls, Three Ways and Circular Pool. Access to Circular Pool was closed due to a recent rock fall but we could look down on it from the rim.
The next day we decided to take a closer look at Fortescue Falls and took the long staircase down to the plunge pool at the bottom of the Falls. From the plunge pool we followed a track to Fern Pool a short distance upriver from the Falls.
At breakfast on our last day Mathilde had yet another surprise in store for us. The gas cooktop that had worked so well while preparing dinner the night before decided it was on a go slow – at least the gas was, and we could only muster a feeble flame. John checked to see if the cylinder was empty (which would have provided another easy solution – change it) and found that gas was leaking out of the regulator. We had no option but to turn off the reticulated gas supply until a replacement regulator could be sourced (more on that later). Luckily, we had a back-up, a two-burner camping stove that we set up outside and, eventually, we were rewarded with a hot coffee and slightly burnt toast
With the morning’s excitement over we had a déjà vu experience and walked the Gorge Rim again.
This time we spotted people negotiating the tricky trail alongside the river.
One unlucky photographer missed his step on the rocks and fell into the water. Once recovered from the fall he spent considerable time de-watering his camera!
Early the next morning we woke Mathilde from her slumber and drove out of the campground to the park’s visitors’ center where we indulged in hot showers before viewing the interpretive displays in the center. We spent about an hour being enlightened about the history of the park which we found very informative and well presented by its traditional custodians.
With the aid of TomTom, we set the controls to guide us to the Two Camel Creek Rest Area for our overnight stop en route to Port Hedland. We were the only ones at the rest area and the two camels must have been shy because we never saw them. What we did see, from the comfort of our bed, was a spectacular sunrise.
Arriving in Port Hedland, we parked Mathilde at the Turf Club camping area, 1,078 miles from home.
CHAPTER 3 - ARE WE THERE YET
Once we were set up in the Turf Club campground in Port Hedland, we contacted a gas plumber to try and obtain a replacement regulator for the gas system. He made enquiries on our behalf but couldn’t locate one and all the plumbing supply outlets were closed for the weekend. We didn’t want to hang around in Port Hedland all weekend so he suggested we should try again when we reached Broome. Pre-empting possible misfortune, we searched for and made contact with an outlet in Broome – they had one in stock, and we asked if they could hang on to it until we arrived on Monday.
The next morning, Sunday, John cooked breakfast on the two-ring camping stove before we started out on the journey to Broome. We were travelling along merrily, albeit with a strong headwind, when we began to smell hot coolant. A couple travelling in a car/caravan overtook us and signalled for us to stop. When we did so we found that Mathilde had well and truly boiled once again and vomited coolant all along the side of her coachwork. Obviously, we had been pushing her too hard again. We added about 10 litres of coolant to the radiator and set off at a more sedate pace to Sandfire Roadhouse where we spent the night with geese, ducks, peacocks and chickens in the campground, together with a lone camel in an adjacent paddock.
Our boredom was interrupted when we came across another water carrier, not a camel this time but a huge water tanker spanning the full width of the road and bound for an iron ore mine site. This time we had to get off the road completely to allow it to pass.
The new cruising speed also meant that we were going to miss our target of a Monday arrival in Broome. It was late afternoon when we pulled into the Roebuck Plains Rest Area. But for the accuracy of TomTom, we would have missed it altogether and it was plain that it was not regularly used. There was only one other person in the rest area, and he was happily wandering around in the nude! We kept well clear.
We were awake before sunrise and saw another beautiful dawn. The air was dewy, slightly chill and the wind of the previous days had abated. Altogether a magnificent morning. In addition to the birdsong, we were serenaded by a herd of cattle in an adjoining paddock. Later, as we travelled along the road, we saw hundreds of them chewing contentedly on what passes for grass in this area.
Rather than setting up the camping stove we drove about 13 miles (20 kms) to the Roebuck Plains Roadhouse for coffee and a toasted bacon butty – both were good and inexpensive. Appetite satisfied we drove into Broome, completed the purchase of the new regulator and set out on the long, 745-mile, journey east through the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Nillibubbica Rest Area was our next stop where John fitted the new regulator, but a new leak appeared in the flexible pipe (the ‘pigtail’) connecting the gas cylinder to the regulator! Time to break out the camping stove again!! Our despondency was tempered by Marie’s culinary skills in preparing fresh salmon for dinner on that stove.
The journey east continued, and we were on the road by 7.30am. We stopped for a coffee at the Boab Tree Rest Area that we had visited 4 years earlier on the first Oz lap. Despite a thorough inspection of the tree, we couldn’t see the pair of boots that had been dangling from the high branches on that first visit. Presumably the laces had rotted, and the boots had fallen to the ground. Maybe they now have a new owner?
We did spot something new in the high branches, a Kite’s nest, which can be seen in the photograph.
Over the next four days we carried on with the long haul towards Kununurra stopping overnight in roadside rest areas. We tested out Mathilde’s capacity for speed without throwing up the contents of her radiator and established that a cruising speed of 40 mph (64 kmh) was O.K. for her and us.
The route took us through Fitzroy Crossing and Hall’s Creek. We stopped in both towns in our search for a pigtail and also enquired at the Doon Doon Roadhouse along the way but to no avail.
The scenery began to change as we skirted both the O’Donnell and Carr Boyd Ranges. Fortunately, there were no serious hills for Mathilde to climb but quite a few short ups and downs with twisty bits thrown in to keep the steering wheel attendant alert.
At our overnight stop at the Dunham River Rest Area, we discovered that we had a Telstra Wi-Fi signal and trawled through dozens of unsolicited emails (and one or two from friends and relatives) that had collected since we last had a viable signal. We took the opportunity to use the net to fill in our Covid permit applications for the Northern Territory online (no permit = no travel into the N.T.).
CHAPTER 4 - KUNUNURRA AND MIRIMA NATIONAL PARK
On Sunday the 16th of May we arrived in Kununurra. We had established earlier that the Coles supermarket was open that day so a visit to the shop was in order to replenish our food stocks.
On the way through the town we noticed an “unmanned” service station selling diesel at $1.31 a litre – at least 26 cents cheaper than our last fill up. We also spotted a Mitre 10 hardware store that was open and we resolved to visit both after the grocery shopping. With a full tank of fuel and the much needed gas pigtail from the hardware store we made our way to the Hidden Valley Campground for a two night stay. This would allow us to wash clothing, bedding and ourselves (under a long, hot shower), clean Mathilde, inside and out, on day one.
The second day was devoted to sightseeing in Mirima National Park. Beating the heat of the day, we walked into the park using a trail leading directly from the campground.
This part of the trail ended at the Aboriginal cemetery, and we couldn’t help but notice many graves smothered in flowers. Closer inspection revealed that the flowers were artificial rather than fresh but obviously some people had taken a lot of time to decorate and care for their beloved one’s graves.
There were four walk trails within the park ranging from relatively easy to difficult and we followed them all, two of which climbed to heights to give us views over the “Hidden Valley”. The rock formations reminded us of the Bungle Bungles that we had visited on our first Oz lap
Back at the campground Marie cooked up all the fresh vegetables and potatoes that we had in stock so that we would be able to take them through Northern Territory quarantine, before we went for a swim in the campground pool to cool off (note to ourselves, must do more swimming!!).
Leaving the comforts of the campground we continued eastward some 27 miles to the W.A./N.T. border, 2,156 miles (3,448 kms) from home.
Goodbye Western Australia. Hope you will let us re-enter in October.