Dashing Through The Bush in a Rusty Holden Ute

Hey Blog Fans,

So Christmas time is upon us yet Again. We're sat in the lounge of Regans Ridge Farm, Back home. Does feel very strange though, no other people here, just us.

We left Exmouth on thursday mid morning and started the long 1200km drive here, man was that a long day. We got to Carnarvon where I forgot what it was like to be dry. We stopped at the shops and as I got back into the car my left thong entered a realm of intense water related vacuum and it started to float away. Luckily, we weren't there a few hours later when things started going underwater. The whole town is currently flooded badly.

The Band & Choir On Stage

So we had the carols in the park a few weeks back. Weeks of voice training and learning of songs, heaps of hard work put into productions scripts and countless hours spent worrying over small details, lead to  a seemingly seamless night. I think the night is indebted to a few people.
Holly and I were part of the choir on stage and Holly was the old lady opposite our good friend Wayne in a production called 'A Special Visit'. It was a great night, very festive and great to be with such beautiful people.

We tried to pack in as much to our last few days in Exmouth as possible, we took Sam on a snorkelling trip down to Oyster Stacks where we saw two Reef Sharks and heaps of interesting things including a turtle. We then headed up to Lakeside which wasn't as fruitful. I also did a fishing trip to Ned's Camp where Sam, Myself and our friend Louis dove and fished among the Bombies. I was keeping the small fish away from the other guys' hooks while they caught the biggies.

We also had a thanksgiving/leaving party meal at the Mercers. We were there with The Mercers and the Blennys and had a real American thanksgiving meal. We had sweet potato with marshmallow on top, amazing mashed potato, stuffing and a huuge turkey, among many other things.

David Being Baptized By Josh & Wayne

On the 12th of December we went down to the beach with our church family and David got baptized in the sea, we shared the morning with everybody and we all swam in the unnervingly warm ocean for hours.

We arrived at the farm at around midnight on Thursday and went straight to bed. We woke the next morning and saw Darryl which was really great, we ate that night at Darryl and Donna's house and were surprised to see our good friends Len & Judy who they'd invited over. It was a great night, we also got to spend some time with their new dog. a Japanese Spitz called Poh. Last night we went to Moora to see the Vanzetti clan to celebrate Donna's Dad's 70th, they didn't know we were coming. It was great to see all the family again, it was a fun night. We drove back this afternoon and have spent most of it on the couch, a well deserved break.

We don't have much planned for the next few days, we'll do some bottling of oil and spend some quality time with Darryl and Donna before we all head down to Margaret River for Chrissie. Good times guys, our last few weeks of our Australia adventure are being spent wisely.

Thanks for reading,

David & Holly

Karijini National Park Pt. 2



Sunset at Millstream-Chichester



Millstream National Park



If you Google Millstream Chichester National park, you will see where we headed to next. At the end of a very arid stretch of road we hit the Fortesque River which runs from the northern parts of WA down through Karijini National park, To give you an Idea of the scale of the river, WA’s water authority have substantial operations on this stretch and the whole area is lush green.



Kicking up dust





Red headed and fake tanned

We pulled in here not long before dark and wandered around the homestead and had a look at the parks highlights, but there were people here. We hadn’t seen people for a while, so we headed to the Chichester part of the park 30klm’s up the road. We camped the night here and drove on the next morning. We were finally back on real roads and racing enormous trains that do the Iron Ore runs to the Pilbara Mines, the are Huge. Everything in this area of the world just seems to be colossal. We drove all the way to Karratha. The first big town we’ve been in since Geraldton, back in July. We walked into the main shopping centre Holly was now a redhead from the dust and we both looked like we’d been fake tanning for decades and our clothes were a rusty colour. We felt gross compared to all these big town people, we bought some cheap, CLEAN t-shirts, changed into them and enjoyed the air conditioning for a while. I’m ashamed to say we did go to McDonalds. And headed to Dampier. Dampier is a big area for Gas, there’s a platform of the coast there, a refinery and a big port. The town feels a bit like Fremantle and any British seaside port town. Karratha is a huge place for industry, a big Iron Ore Mining hub, gas, oil and everything in between, even salt farming.  Dampier is just 20 minutes from Karratha and is where the Gas and salt are all farmed. Our to sea it looks like Paddocks, just white paddocks of salt, 60% of which is used by commercial industry. And only 2% is used for human consumption. Dampier is also home to the famous Red Dog, the Pilbara Wanderer, famous in these parts. The story is known by everybody.  It is currently being made into a movie, actually.



Dampier







After our Karratha /Dampier trip we headed back home to Exmouth, and long trip along probably the windiest road I think we’ve ever driven. It took around 7 hours to get back, $15 for 8 litres of fuel at Nanutarra Roadhouse and a dramatic sunset over Exmouth Cape. It was good to be home.



We pulled up outside the house cleared the car, had showers and collapsed on the couch.



Next big trip is Back to Perth for Christmas with Darryl Donna and the Vanzetti crew. Very Bittersweet.  Did we mention that we are majorly involved in the Christmas Carols in Exmouth.  Holly is playing the role of the mum in the play (which consists of Holly, Santa and a boy named Jesse, who is the narrator, and all the children silently going through the nativity scene. ).  We are both also singing in the choir, 5 men and 5 women.  How we get ourselves sucked into these things I don’t know.  Guess I  (Holly)  haven’t learned the art of saying no…even after being in Australia for two years. J  It will be good times.

Thanks For Reading,

Holly & David



The Patrol...in the middle of nowhere



Karijini National Park Pt. 1

Fortescue Falls



Ok Blog Fans, Google Karijini National Park. If you look at Dales Gorge that is where we spent two nights recently, we trekked down into Dales Gorge and swam in Fortesque Falls, then walked up to Circular pool. Now circular pool didn’t have a little guy swimming on it’s welcome sign, but we jumped in regardless. I’m glad we did.

Circular pool is in a corner of the gorge, surrounded by lush scrub and small canopy trees, essentially making it look like a small oasis, circled by big rocks and in one corner engulfed by water lillies that reach all the way to the bottom of the pool. On the back wall there are countless small waterfalls dribbling down and making a soothing sound as you cruise around the pool. The water is crystal clear with a green tinge. I think the word immaculate would describe it well.



This was just the first day. Tom Price, the nearest town to Karijini is a large mining town servicing the big BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto mines of the Pilbara region, mining Iron ore from the National Park. It is very strange to walking through an area of extreme beauty and it’s basically metal. The red rocks are scorching to the touch and when one rock hits another, it clangs, like metal hitting metal. Very odd.



We arrived in Tom Price at around 6 after travelling 7 Hours from Exmouth, passing WA’s very own Uluru. We filled up with Diesel (We had borrowed a Nissan Patrol 4x4 from Sam) shopped in Coles, our first big supermarket (country town big)  for about 5 months and headed into the wilderness with a dimming sun. We drove up tens of kilometers of dead straight roads heading across the plains of the national Park. Big mining industry to our right and stark Arid Beauty to our left.

Our second day we decided to head to Weano Gorge on the West side of the Park, Dale’s Gorge is on the East side of the park. We landed on Gravel Roads, which are very popular in this area of the country as it costs around $1million per Kilometer to make a real road. You can barely feel the corrugation in the road after 80km per hour, so we stayed at that. Thankfully past experience on similar terrain proved useful.

Handrail Pool



Weano Gorges



We stopped at a few gorges on the way over and viewed from the viewing platforms the enormity of natures effect on the landscape. If you Google Weano Gorge, you should find Kermits Pool, Handrail Pool and Junction Pool among the most popular. We went to handrail pool, but decided against the others as our legs were still recovering from Dales and some of them you needed abseiling equipment and special permission. We camped that night at the Karijini Eco Retreat, a small tent based resort in the middle of nowhere! How on earth does that place exist, unreal. It even had a restaurant. We paid our fee and camped in an area which definitely catered for a heap of tourists. But we only shared it with 4 or 5 vehicles. And get this, they had showers there! In the middle of the Pilbara you can have a warm shower.





This was probably our most interesting night, we think we shared our space with some big lizard and some dingoes. We woke up during the night to what sounded like an angry snake, I did the whole “Don‘t Move Holly… It sounds like it‘s In here” But thank God we couldn’t see anything, that was unbelievably scary though. (I might add (Holly) that I did not sleep well at all this night.  I kept waking up hearing dingos, lizards and snakes, asking David what each noise was.  The snake sound is what finally made him get up and look around a bit.  Blah!)



Hammersley Gorge



So the next day we headed back to Dale’s Gorge, camped another night then headed off to Hammersley Gorge. Google this place next. I know right…WoW!



Now between Hammersley Gorge and our next real destination was about 500 to 600 km’s. And it was all Dirt road. Picture Australia, Long straight red dirt roads, either side you have flat, Flat arid land with scrub, the odd Station Homestead and Nothing else. It was incredible. We drove for Hours and Hours along these roads kilometer long dustplooms behind us. We stopped a few times for a drink, pulled a cold bottle of water from our Waeco Fridge. My new Love in Life. And admired what we were doing.



Blogger upsets me sometimes as I still dont understand it.. I had it set up all nice and I decided to add one more photo and now it will not play nice...soo...there are two photos at the end here.  They are not together at all.. but they won't seperate or move.  The top one is from Weano Gorge and the bottom one is Circular pool.













Circular Pool