Bush to Beach

Before we left Tom Price we stocked up with a good grocery shop at Coles, and a 120 litres of additional water (total now 350 litres on board) in a footwell bladder in the car to see us through the next 12 days of being fully self contained and off grid. Easily nailed it!

But first we did a 1 1/2 mining tour of Mt Tom Price Iron Ore mine. The opencut mine began in 1965, and now there is little left to see of the mighty mount as they have lowered the water table and are now digging further down, but they say there is still plenty of ore to last for a long time to come, with further expansions. The site was huge and they have the worlds best safety record. They are the worlds leading exporter of iron ore - Pilbara Blend.  The town itself, once a purposefully built private town for workers and their family’s is now largely fly in fly out and alive with tourists.  

95% of the loading and operation of the trains is automated from Perth, these trains are 3 km long and run 24/7

Before we could take up our booking at Osprey Bay campground on Ningaloo Reef (a protected Marine Park in the Cape Range NP), we did 3 nights bush camping on the way. Distances between towns and fuel are huge over here, and Osprey campground was a further 79km from Exmouth, not just a quick nip into town if you run out of something.

Interesting use of rubbish found in our overnight free camp, it was beside a dry river bed and quiet so we stayed 2 nights, plenty of budgies, parrots, lovely sunsets

A quick drive through Exmouth..not so friendly town to people who don’t have their camp spot prebooked...lots of warning signs and no overnight camps provided. It is a long way to see the National Park and get out of the Shire before dark, hundreds of kilometres to the nearest pullover. It’s hard when there is nothing available to book.  We booked Osprey 6 months in advance, the earliest you can book.

We stayed in Osprey Bay for 8 nights for snorkelling, only the wind prevented us from snorkelling everyday. Everyone staying here was very friendly, our (volunteer) camp hosts were great and we met up for sunset drinks most nights at the lookout to meet each other and swap travel tips. 

Osprey Bay - our camp site

Some days this calm, others really choppy with low visibility




Most places we did drift snorkelling as the currents were strong, it was hard to stay in one place, so generally drifted for about 100 metres before getting out and walking back along the shore, and then doing it all over again, it felt very safe. The great thing was that the coral reef was all accessible straight off the beach.

The amount of tropical fish and colours blew us away, just spectacular.

We swam watching a turtle for over 20 minutes in the bay, just like this

Turquoise Bay was gorgeous, and a drift snorkel over the darker reef areas

The Oyster Stacks, also turned into a drift swim awesomeness

In between swims we explored the National Park and checked out the other camping grounds

Yardie Creek Gorge hike..it was a spectacular walk close on sunset...1st pic is an aerial view of the gorge and Yardie Ck

Saw the rock wallaby overlooking the gorge

And these 2 fighting for ages whilst the other one (our guess the lady roo) just stood by and watched...we wonder who she was cheering for

The lighthouse, we watched sunset from here, then a 45 minute drive back to camp dodging bunny rabbits on dark

An old grave hidden near the lighthouse 1912,.....see what you find when geocaching

SS Mildura Wreck at low tide off the tip of the Cape. A cattle ship went down in a cyclone in 1907 

An overnighter at 9 Mile Burboodjoo Camp ..180 acres provided for camping on a cattle property

We are camped in the background here.......lots of dunes and views to explore


Fields of flowers on the picturesque 9 km drive in

Then on to Coral Bay a little village with 2 caravan parks, a resort, a pub, one shop, and a bakery, 2 restaurant/takeaway food outlets...(yumm snapper and chips for dinner last night), but so popular it was packed out. 

We managed to get 4 nights in one of the caravan parks following a cancellation. Just as well we are small, it is a tight squeeze between the camper trailers. 

The bay is gorgeous and on the first day we saw a stingray, 2 dolphins came with 10 metres of us, coloured coral and huge coloured fish, (maybe not as bright as the National Park) but again it was like swimming in an aquarium tank.

Literally coral and fish straight off the beach

Awesome snorkelling 

We decided to give a quad bike tour over the dunes a try.... a 2 hour tour of narrow rough corrugated sandy tracks, over sandy dunes and onto beaches to Turtle Cliffs (yep saw some turtles). Nerve racking for me on the back, but became more relaxed the longer we were out there. Derek was in his element.

Me just pretending

Still more variety of wild flowers as we travel south

Next stop Quobba Blowholes to try and dodge School Holidays

Colours of Karijini

The colours are rich and contrasts are found in the sky, ranges, soil, rocks, gorge walls, pools, plants, birds, wildlife and time of day.

The Pilbara Region comprises largely of the Hamersley Ranges mined for their rich iron ore deposits, and the road to Karajini is a road train highway, along which we found 2 free camps on the way to Karajini NP. 324 km spread over 3 days is the speed we like to travel.

Time to move over....the tyres alone dwarf us

In The Rocks roadside camp..only 4 of us

Albert Tognolini roadside camp...great views

We woke up to this view

The car and van are lovely and clean...... before the corrugated dirt roads


The weather is brilliant, no flies, comfortable 28° for hiking, cool nights but not too cold, the pools in the gorges are cool but bearable, and clear sunny days.

KARAJINI NATIONAL PARK 

In Karajini east side we stayed at Dales Camp Ground (basic no power no water and plenty of red dirt, bush camping just how we like it!) to explore Dales Gorge, Fortesque Falls and Fern Pool....

the majority of hikes were down into the gorges and were either class 4 or 5 hikes, very steep, mostly natural rocky steps, some steep steel stairs, some thin ledges above water level, some we just had to wade through, but we were rewarded with great scenery and awesome pools and waterfalls to cool off in. Many have lost their lives or received bad injuries in the NP. Several gorges and pools were closed.

Dales Gorge.

We took a day trip to the far western side to Hamersley Gorge, it had by far the most scenic of rock formations and colours...however the whole NP was spectacular and amazing, it was our favourite

The undefined path down to the pools




Lower pool


Upper pool on way to spa pool


Spa pool, was difficult to negotiate, had to drag ourselves up over the water flowing out..enough room for about 5 in there at a time, hot water flowing in, this was well worth the swim to it

Then upped camp and moved to the western entrance of the NP staying at the Eco Retreat next to Joffre Gorge (exactly the same as Dales camp, but has hot showers, Eco tents, a restaurant and snacks, but our camp site still had no power, no water and plenty of red dirt) to visit famous Hancock Gorge with the ”spider” walk and Kermits pool and Weano Gorge

Joffre Gorge

From opposite side...these ladders were scary

Hancock Gorge walk/wade was slippery and challenging, it took all our concentration, plus the option of a swim or spider walk along the walls just to get to kermits pool, thank goodness we wore our reef shoes

After the steep decent, start of the scary walk

Yay, made it

Any further was a no go zone, sheer drop off over the edge 


Then we had to turn around and do it back again....looking back to the spider walk section, that was really hard to get back up where that chap is coming down (sorry, water on the phone protection case)

Wild flowers of winter are in bloom

We took a short hike up Mt Bruce (WA 2nd highest mountain) but stopped before it got to a class 5. With views over a mine.

Typical Hamerley Ranges scenery


Snappy Gum trees.....they are like a tree inside a tree

Little lizards dart across our path, and love to pose for photos

Birds of the week in the NP

Spinifex Dove and Varigated Fairy Wren

YAY, WE SURVIVED KARAJINI

Off to Tom Price (mining town) next to do washing, fill up with water (we can carry 230 litres on the van)....love our daily hot shower even though we are bush, restock fruit ‘n veg and fuel, then start heading towards the coast and Exmouth, for some snorkelling