As you go north the distances become longer and longer between each point of interest. It is not uncommon to drive a whole day. Our first stop on the long road to Darwin was a mining town called Tom Price. The town itself is not that interesting unless you are into mining. One of the worlds biggest mines are located here, a Rio Tintio open cut iron ore mine. From shopping at the local supermarket it became clear that mining is what everyone works with.
It was the Karijini national park that we wanted to visit and it is only a hours drive away from Tom Price. So the next morning after camping outside of town we headed towards Karijini. Karijini is one of the more remote national parks and the roads are gravel and in bad condition. It was a shaky drive between the different lookouts. One of the most impressive lookouts was called Oxer lookout. Here four gorges meet and the view is spectacular. Deep down in the gorge the water is slowly running and tall trees are growing, but up where we were standing there was just bushes.
Karijini national park is filled with gorges and they are the main attraction. We drove around to the different ones and took in the breathtaking views. Our last stop was a place called Fortescue Falls. The path took us down into the gorge where the water came down a waterfall. There was a pool at the bottom and we both went swimming. The water was nice and warm and you could swim right up to the falls and sit there. Above the falls the cliffs formed an amphitheatre and here you could sit and dry off in the sun. It was a really nice place.
It took us another whole day of driving to reach the next town, Port Hedland. Port Hedland is also an industrial town. All the iron ore from around Tom Price gets shipped here by train and then loaded into boats. There is also a big salt factory here. I didn't find Port Hedland that interesting either, we spent the day at McDonald's, surfing on their free wifi.
From Port Hedland it took another whole day of driving to reach Broome. We wanted to camp just outside Broome in the Dampier Peninsula, but it had been raining that day and the woods were full of mosquitoes. It sounded like a bee hive inside our car and it was impossible to sleep. We had to pack up and drive into Broome where we camped in the parking lot outside Woolworth (Supermarket). The next day we showered at Cable Beach, Broome's beautiful beach, before heading to Gantheaume Point just outside town. Here it is possible to see dinosaur footprints in the rocks when the tide is extremely low. The picture is from a replica located further up. The landscape here was wild with rocks next to the ocean.
We went back to Cable Beach in the afternoon. We swam in the warm ocean and I played soccer with a group of Danish and Italian backpackers. We then watched the sunset over the beach. Apparently this is a pretty popular thing to do, because close to a hundred people had shown up to see it. That night we tried to wild camp again in a different parking lot, but a person found us and asked us to leave. We moved to another location and this time we were not disturbed until the next morning when the ranger came around and asked everyone to leave. There was not much else to do in Broome, its not a big city and there are not that many attractions, so we headed east towards the WA/NT border.
The first town east after Broome is half a days drive away and called Fitzroy Crossing. Not far from Fitzroy Crossing is the Geikie Gorge national park. This is a beautiful place where the Fitzroy river runs through the gorge. The stone which was once a coral reef many millions of years ago is colored half white and half dark. The lower half is the white part. It looked really nice with the steep stone walls next to the water and the dried river bank. We went for a nice walk up along the river.
Heading east again the next town is called Halls Creek. It had kept on raining and the two main attractions around Halls Creek were closed because of the gravel roads. One was the Purnululu national park (Bungle Bungles) and the other the Wolfe Creek meteorite crater. However the weather ahead looked promising so we decided to wait. That night we camped at a place just outside Halls Creek called Caroline Pool, a natural waterhole. The next morning we checked out the old Halls Creek town site. The only thing that was left was the stone foundations. Halls Creek was the first place were gold was found in Western Australia and was a thriving town during the gold rush days in the late 1800. However when the majority of the gold ran dry, so did the people, and the town moved next to the highway. We also went to a place called China Wall where a sub vertical quartz vein comes up from the ground forming what look's like a wall.
We were quickly becoming bored of Halls Creek and decided to go to the Wolfe Creek crater even if the road was closed. It turned out to be an interesting, mentally exhausting and challenging drive. This gravel road was nothing like the other ones I have driven. It was shaky, rocky, muddy and overall bad quality and at places the road was still almost flooded. The worst part was that it was 130km of this road to the crater. But we got there safely and without getting stuck or damaging the car. The Wolfe Creek meteorite crater is the second largest in the world and is truly breathtaking. Just a short walk up the outer side reveals a large circular hole in the ground now covered with grass and small trees. The crater is over 880 meters wide and when the crater was new some 300.000 years ago the hole was up to 120 meters deep. But wind has filled it with sand and it is now around 20 meters under the surrounding terrain. That night we camped next to the crater before driving the 130km of shitty dirt road back.
We had to skip the Purnululu national park because it was still closed and here there was no possibility to drive on a closed road without getting into trouble. Instead we headed north from Halls Creek towards the border town of Kununurra. In Kununurra we walked in the Celebrity Tree Park and found the tree that Baz Luhrmann, the director of the movie
Australia, had planted when filming the movie in the east Kimberley region. The east Kimberley region being the region roughly from Halls Creek to Kununurra. The landscape around us as we drove through the Kimberley was amazing. The hills and mountains look so different from back home and the highway snakes itself around them displaying one great view after another.
The only known deposits of a rare rock called Zebra rock is found in the east Kimberley region. A rock with characteristic stripes of white and brown. We visited a gallery in Kununurra that made all sorts of nice things with the Zebra rock. I took some pictures to try and show what the rock looks like and what they made from it.
The last thing we did in Kununurra and Western Australia for that matter was visiting the Mirima national park. It is also called Hidden Valley and is located right next to the city. It was a nice place with a short walk up to a great lookout spot of the town and the valley. Kununurra is the end of the north west and the end of this blog post. We are now entering Northern Territory, but I will write about that in my next update.
Our first task in Sydney was to sell the car. We had exactly two weeks and we hoped that that would be enough time. The first thing we did was put the car on different add sites and print out posters to hang in different hostels and travel agents around Sydney. We had only one response the first days and that turned into nothing, so a couple of days later we decided to try and park the car along the famous car selling strip in Kings Cross. It was there me and Kristin found the car in the first place. We sat there for about five hours without anybody even looking at the car, then suddenly an English guy showed up and wanted to have a look. After he had a mechanic look at it and we discussed the price, he ended up buying it from us. We were really happy because we heard a lot of stories about people that tried to sell their car for 3-4 weeks with no luck. Finally we could take all our stuff out of the car and movie into a hostel, a welcoming change from living in the car for so long! The pictures are of our bed in the car (that we slept in for four months) and the alley we camped in. All together we drove 32.468km in the five months I owned the car!
I never went to the Chinese garden during the time I lived in Sydney so me and Annina decided to go there and check it out. The garden is located in Darling Harbor and it was easy to find. The gardens full name is the Chinese Garden of Friendship and it was built to celebrate the Chinese community in Sydney and the close relationship with Guangzhou, a city in the Guangdong Province, China. From the outside it looks fairly small, but once inside the walls you realize that it has some size. I found the Chinese garden very beautiful with a lot of Chinese art, architecture and plants making the walk through the garden diverse and fascinating. Normally I am not the biggest garden visitor, but I enjoyed it. Be sure to check out the "Sydney 4" album when I post it to see more photos from our visit.
Another thing that we said we would do but never did during my time living in Sydney was the walk between Bondi and Coogee beach. So as soon as we had a day with some blue sky we got on the bus to Coogee. The path follows the coast running in and out of small bays and over cliffs and beaches. The best known beach along the track (not counting Coogee or Bondi) is Bronte beach. The weather was great considering the rain we had the last week but the water and air temperature was still to cold for swimming. It took us about 1.5 hours to complete the walk and we enjoyed it a lot! About half way the path ran next to a huge cemetery. It was a spectacular sight to see the graves in the hillside, from the top of the hill to the cliff edge with the ocean below. Almost at the end the path rounds a sharp corner and Bondi Beach comes into full view down below the cliffs. It was beautiful.
