Broome to Exmouth

Another early start and we're off again! 6.30am and heading for Port Hedland. We had a lovely day yesterday at the beach. We took our Lonely Planet and our books and chilled out. Had a dip in the Indian Ocean and tried bodysurfing ..... alas it's not for us ! We just couldn't catch the waves. We will keep trying though. We sat and waited for the sunset and then walked down to see the Sunset Camel rides. They take people down the beach and then back up for the sunset. Ben was off like a whippet, getting photo's. He was legging it up and down the beach but looking at the photos he did a great job!

We made it back tpo the campsite and had tea and some beers and talked about our next journey. Next stop Port Hedland.

You'll be pleased to know we've had a nightmare of a day. First the car wouldn't start in the middle of nowhere (luckily it did after a lot of praying!). Second I (Claire) ran over a 2ft lizard, I was swerving and ended up squishing it. Worst of all it's the biggest lizard we've seen while we've been here ........ dead now! And C we got a stone chip in our windscreen by a roadtrain! Gutted !!!!!! More expense, we're hoping it'll be ok until Perth. We're going to get her fixed and then sell her ...... sniff, sniff !!

We're going to base ourselves in Perth for a few months and try and get some work. We've got a lot more sights to see before then,. which we're very excited about. Just a pitstop here in Port Hedland, it's an iron ore town and there's nothing much here. We did see the longest train ever on the way in, there must have been over 200 carriages being pulled ....... amazing. Set off back down again, next stop Freecamp for the night then onto Exmouth. Thats if there's no more diasters going on the way ! Think Gracies heard us talking about selling her and she's not happy! What a sunset, Ben got his clouds he's been asking for and they look lovely. We sat up with a few tinnies and just chilled, the site was ok. Full of people who obviously work at the Iron Ore mine and were happy it was friday and beer o'clock. We just happened to be right near the railway track and a train had to beep his horn every time he went passed. Though all that, we still woke at 5am. Same time as every morning. We had brekkie and then set off, we're just hoping a windscreen place will be open as it's now saturday and the cracks getting bigger. 2 and a bit hours drive to Karratha and we'll see how far we can get before stopping with a kip in Gracie.

We arrived at Karratha just before 10am. Ben drove most of the way. We checked at Tourist Info and they gave us the address of the windscreen place. We got there and the guy was lovely. He said he could fill the crack as there was no need to replace the screen...... Bonus ! $80 ...... Bigger Bonus ! We left Gracie with him and went for a look around the Shopping Centre. We bought snorkling masks ready for the reef tomorrow. We checked back in to see if Gracie was ready and she was. Ben went in to pay as the guy was closing up for the weekend. He took out his wallet and asked if we could pay cash, yes we could. "In that case make it $60", he said and pocketed the money ...... Bigger than Big Bonus.

We got to our Freecamp, it's about 200 kms to Exmouth from here. Too far to go there now as it's 4.30pm, so not much daylight left. The drive was fine, we didn't have to watch the crack in the windscreen moving. We saw 4 emus at the side of the road (alive aswell!), they trotted off before Ben could get his camera. Nothing run over by myself (Claire) today .... thankfully! We got the car sorted for bed and Ben put tea on. We got the Citreonellas out and sat and watched the stars. We decide to go to bed because it suddenly gets windy. We can hear cars pulling up and it's pitch black. They advise you not to drive when it's dark , as all the wildlife come out and wanders all over the roads.

Blimey!, we had a lie in this morning 6am! Saw the sunrise through the boot, it was lovely! Ben had sorted brekkie and I sorted out the car, we've got it down to a tee now. Had brekkie and we're on the road again for 6.45am. Just an hours drive for each of us and we should arrive at Exmouth (home of the Ningaloo Marine Park!). We tried our snorklling masks out sitting in the bush last night, so we're excited to use them.

Well ..... Claire's killings spree has started again. She hit a bird on the way to Exmouth, we turned around to check ..... yep it was definitely dead ! Claire says " it looked old anyway!", Ben says, "it didn't !!!!!".

We got to our campsite at about 9am, after seeing more emus on the way. The Campsite if so nice, the camp kitchen is huge and has a fridge ...... yey cold beer tonight ! We had a shower to freshen up and went for a walk. About 1km from the campsite was the Town Beach. It wasn't quite the white sand and blue water but it was nice walking along the beach. We made our way back to the site and couldn't believe it, we were less than 5mtrs away from an emu !! And with no camera ! We walked 'quickly!' away from it as we weren't really sure what we had to do. We got away safely though.

We're now heading north of exmouth to check out the snorklling. We drive to Bundegi Beach and had a walk along the jetty. We parked our butts looking out into the ocean, nobody was in the water which was strange. All of a sudden in the distance was some whales ! Humpback whales jumping and splashing in the water. We couldn't belive it as we weren't even looking for them. We sat for a while and decided to go for a walk. We then saw the reason noone was in the Ocean. A sign said that some Tiger Sharks had been spotted in the area and it advised not to go into the water...... good enough for us! We decided against the snorklling. However on the way back to the car, people were in the water....... not for us!

The we drove to Sufers Beach on the westside of the Bay. There wasn't much beach, so we sat on some rocks looking out. The water was rough and splashing beneath us. The reef wasn't that far from the edge of the water, then Ben spooted a head popping out of the water. As quick as it came up, it went back down again. Our first turtle !! Then after ages, I (Claire) then spotted another one. Popped up to say hello then went back in again! It's the season for the Marine and Loggerhead turtles to come onto shore and lay there eggs. Just up the beach about 4kms from us they have the Juarbai Turtle Centre, where you can learn about them. But we did a simialr thing at Bundaberg last time, so we gave it a miss. Instead we drove to the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse, to see if we could spot any sealife ....... we're usless we didn't see anything in the water. Only spotting 2 peregrin falcons on the side of the head.

What a night!!!! We thought we were going to get blew away! The tent was going like the clappers. Ben was awake before me (saying his prayers I thinK!). Unfortunately, I needed the loo so had to get up. I brought the chairs and table into the tent and walked to the toilets. Trying not to open my eyes fully so I would wake up and wondering if I would bump into an emu. We didn't really sleep much after that, worrying about if the tent was going to blow down. Not sure why it was so windy?

We made it through the night and decided to walk to the camping shop and buy some better tent pegs. Now the tent looks like nothing could move it, it's all pegged and ready for anything ! It's still windy this morning so we've done our washing ....... it's a good drying day!