Port Hedland to Ningaloo Reef

We've finally arrived at our first major destination, Ningaloo Reef on Ningaloo Station. It's Australia's largest fringing coral reef, and it's also one of the world's longest fringing reefs! So quite an amazing place.

As you know getting here involved the terrible Gary Junction Road. One thing that I forgot to mention was the exploding Kilkenny beer can. At Carawine Gorge I was in search of a small bottle of Tonic Water for our gins and discovered a six pack of Kilkenny's hidden in our bottom cupboard. One can was already leaking as it was pressed against the sharp door hinge and this had pierced the can. With much glee I retrieved the others one by one. I sat the first one on the bench and turned around to tend to the others.

Then there was an almighty bang which brought Jayne running inside.

The can on the bench exploded through the ring-pull opening about a minute after I placed it down. There was beer everywhere inside the van including on me! We're still finding beer splatter over the roof and cupboards.

I'm really glad I stood the beer upright, as if it was on it's side it would have been a bullet or spinning top rather than just a beer fountain.

Port Hedland

We opted to camp at the Big 4 Caravan Park rather than the free camp just down the road. We enjoyed a concrete slab, power and endless water.

When we pulled into Port Hedland, the first job that needed to be done was to have our leaking gas oven repaired.  A quick fix by a local gas fitter outside his house, and we were on our way to settle into the Big 4. 

Port Hedland is a mining town, and one thing we noticed this time was the number of Asian workers - a scheme introduced by Gina Reinhart.  While doing our shopping in Woolies, we noticed tins and tins of baby food powder and bags of milk powder in their shopping trolleys. No doubt these were being sent home to the wife and their babies in China.

The sunset lights of Port Hedland

Jayne had a broken tooth filling fixed here, which actually was the most expensive repair we needed in Port Hedland!

While Jayne was walking Bailey in the morning she found a wallet on the path.  No money, but a drivers licence and credit cards inside.  After some searching on Facebook she found the owner - a young guy working in Port Hedland doing the NBN installation.  He was so relieved to have it back and desperate to buy something as a gift, but she refused and we had a great chat with him when he returned to pick it up that afternoon.  He was a fly in fly out worker from Perth.

Point Samson was OK but our previous experience was that the sandflies were a bit viscious, so we only tried our luck for one night!

Exmouth

We had the mandatory 3 nights camping in Exmouth, and enjoyed the best fish and chips at Blue Lips Fish and Chips Shop. Their gold-banded snapper was as good as always.

We replaced the fan in the fridge with the one BushTracker sent to Exmouth, now we have a fan which has all its vanes on it!

Ningaloo Station - Ningaloo Reef

It took us 2.5 hours to drive the 73kms from the tar road into our camping spot on the beach. The road was as bad as we've seen it, but you have to expect that. Sometimes we were down to walking pace (5kms/hr) across the corrugation fields.

The tyres were down to 20psi (hot) = 16.5psi (cold). This was a touch low but after last year when we got bogged in the soft sand that wasn't going to happen again! We're on a fantastic site, but have to change once school holidays start on 25th September as the site we're on is booked. At least we get to enjoy this beachfront site for 12 nights. 

No damage to the car or van on these 73 kms - it's kind of hard to damage anything as speeds below 20 kms.   The brand new microwave was nursed from Exmouth to Ningaloo on top of the bed, surrounded by pillows, cushions and the quilt, with a fitted sheet over the whole lot.  We've decided from now on that the microwave will travel independently of the cupboard it normally lives in when we're on rough dirt roads. 

We launched the boat the first day we were here just to make sure everything works ok, which it did. The sand at the waters edge was a bit softer than we were expecting and it took quite a bit to get the heavy LandCruiser (3.5T) out of the waters edge on a rising tide! It still had 210L of water in the back, plus beer etc, so it was a bit heavy to be on soft sand.

These are the battle scars. You can just make out Bailey inside the tracks. The tracks are gone now, thanks to the tide last night

Jayne was a bit spooked when I headed down towards the water in search of harder sand, but I needed speed so I could get up and over the soft stuff to escape the beach area.

My U-turn bay

But I did at last drive it off the beach. We still had the Recovery Tracks to use if I couldn't get the car out.

Car safely back on dry sand

The swimming is excellent

Sunset at Ningaloo

The first night just outside the reef, we saw about 6 whales spouting water, and inside the reef dolphins jumping out of the water (catching our fish).  We've previously seen turtles and dugongs.

Yesterday while we were setting up the shade cloth against the bright afternoon sun, we could hear a thumping, slapping noise. It sounded really out of place and when we looked towards the ocean saw many breaching whales, right in front of our van site, slapping their tails against the water!

This was taken from under our awning!

We could hear the slapping even after the sunset, although we couldn't see them.

The sunsets are astounding here

Very tranquil

Bailey loved his new doggy tent, for the first night at least!

Last night about 3 am he joined us in the van. We're not sure where he'll end up tonight, but will leave that decision to him as we know he'll let us know.

All the cupboard hinges got an adjustment today, so now they once again close correctly. Ahh, corrugations, you've got to love them. We got 3 new ones from BushTracker sent to Exmouth, with the fridge fan, but they were the wrong ones. Took a 45 minutes just to work that out! They look nearly the same, but aren't.