Karratha and Surrounds

I am writing from Procrastinationville, which is in the heart of Procrastinationland. I should be undertaking some assignment action, but there seem to be better things to do than studying, so here I am…

We are currently camped outside Tom Price in a quiet free camp called Tiger-Eye Pool. Sometimes there is a pool of water in the creek, but not at present. The lack of water doesn’t detract from the place though, and we have now had three nights here.

We are here mostly to see the Karajini National Park, which offers spectacular Gorges and swimming holes to explore. The kids went out with Sarah on Wednesday while I looked after the dog, and then yesterday, after taking the dog to the vet, I took the kids up to Hammersley Gorge for an afternoon swim. It was a pretty long drive over a good dirt road, but minimal to see there other than the gorge itself. We were able to have a swim in the cold cold water, which was crystal clear, but cold. We’re in the middle of nowhere, but as usual there were plenty of people around.

Today finds us catching up on all things work and study, but we have an interesting weekend planned.

Last week we were moving quickly down the coast, but I have loaded some photos of the places we visited. Cape Keraudren was at the southern end of Eighty Mile Beach and offered great whale watching, as well as OK beach fishing, and a very quiet and peaceful camp site with amazing ocean views. 

We then moved on to Cleaverville, which is about half an hour from Karratha. On the way to Cleaverville we passed through Port Hedland, which was somewhere we had been considering staying. 3 hours in Port Hedland was enough for me, though, and I have no real interest in returning there. It reminded me in a most depressing way of the worst of the mining towns in which I have spent many years of my life. All the bad things (crappy run-down mining camps, industrial stuff everywhere) with none of the good (nice houses, green lawns, any sense of pride in the community). We were there just to do the chores really, so we left pretty quickly once they were done.

Karratha and Dampier turned out to be polar opposites of Port Hedland. The difference was stark, and we immediately liked the place. Green lawns, tidy and well thought out towns with suburbs of houses where people obviously took pride in where they lived. 

We had a good look around Dampier, Karratha, Point Sampson and the local ghost town of Cossack. Sarah also found the hottest chilli sauce I have owned to-date. I suspect I’ll still be using the tiny bottle of it at Xmas time.

Plenty to see there, and it would be great to stay longer, but we are on an ever-dwindling schedule and still have a lot to see, so we had to keep moving.

After a lot of short stays along the coast, we came inland and decided we needed six nights here in Tom Price, since there is quite a lot of distance to cover around the national park, and someone has to be looking after the dog.

I have added some photos here of the various places we have visited recently. It is fair to say that we have really been enjoying the camping a lot more since we have been able to get away from the formal caravan park type arrangements. We were forced into these really since there is very little choice about where you can stay in these sparsely populated areas (the dog also hinders us from enjoying the national park camping, but that is a choice we made long ago).

We have been able to have great views, a modicum of solitude as well as enjoying some basic necessities of camping life, such as fishing. We haven’t caught too many fish, but we’ll keep trying.