From Ningaloo to Carnarvon

The complete absence of toileting was one reason to leave Winderabandi Point, at the north end of Ningaloo Station. Everything else about the place is magnificent. But time passes and as I keep reminding Helen, this is a reconnoitre and next time, like everyone else there, we’ll stay for weeks and weeks if the government will let us. Tyres down to 15 psi and gently does it on the throttle, and we crawled nicely out of the dunes and set off southwards.

This moving on is a wonderful part of what we are doing. Each time we leave somewhere it is with regret but as soon as you are on the road the excitement of the new takes over. Driving with a sense that you have done all you can to make sure you have reliability is part of it. I shouldn’t tempt fate but I do think the Toyota is magnificent. Would the Land Rover have done it all so well? I have my doubts. The knowledge there is a Toyo dealer around almost every corner is part of it of course. We haven’t seen an LR dealer at all! Anyway, we headed south through the once beautiful Coral Bay (it now resembles a Butlin’s Holiday Camp I’m afraid – the poms will understand), and joined Route 1 at Minilya Roadhouse, aiming for Carnarvon.

Clouds had been sitting on the southern horizon for days, and as the day drew to a close we were overcast and feeling wintery again. We fell short of Carnarvon and turned back NW up the coast to Quobba Point Blowholes and Quobba Homestead. Dusk was approaching. The lighthouse stood across to our left as we crested a saddle. With a great burst and like a whale breaching, a whoosh and roar of water burst vertically upwards in front of us, and there was the ocean below the cliff tops. The T junction in front of us was signed in very large letters, “King Waves Kill”, and we knew we were at a special place. We scrambled out of the car having parked as near the edge as we could, and cautiously moved towards the source of all the commotion, below which the ocean swells surged and crashed over shelving rock ledges. This was a magic moment. With dusk falling we turned up the coast a few more kilometres and set up camp at Quobba Homestead. This is a place straight out of a Tim Winton novel, and is close to where some of the German survivors from the Kormoran came ashore, after the battle with HMAS Sydney in 1941. At Quobba we met up with another couple of T Vanners, whose paths we kept crossing for days afterwards. We had a lot of fun with Bill & Jill from Fremantle.

With the destination of Shark Bay in our sights, and the weather again indifferent, we kept moving down to Carnarvon to replenish supplies. Carnarvon grows fruit with water from the Gascoyne River. A strong banana industry and also prawns that are sent all over the country keep the town economically sound. Development is there too, and you get the sense that this place will be a retirement destination, even as far from Perth as it is. It took three hours huddled in the car in the foreshore car park to get our last blog up, making us a bit late leaving, so we camped about 70 kms out along the highway, at a free camp spot. As we travelled there the first fields of white everlastings appeared, enough to gladden any heart. Helen is now very much involved learning as much as she can about the wildflowers, especially because the whole of the coastal region we were about to enter is renowned for them.