From the Pilbara to the Gascoyne

You know you’re in remote Western Australia when you come across a sign that reads: RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) emergency landing strip.

The highway widens and after a kilometre or so narrows again.

You realise you’ve just driven on the emergency landing strip.

Above right: At Ned's Camp, Cape Range National Park. Below right, emu and chick on the road to Exmouth.

I refer to a section of the North West Coastal Highway just beyond the Nanutarra Roadhouse, about 100km from the coast, 230km south west of Karratha and 100km before the turnoff to Exmouth.

Apart from the roadhouses, which can be more than 200km apart, it’s a wilderness. The landscape is semi arid, the soil red, we haven’t seen rain for more than three months and it’s hot.

The reassuring link with humanity is the highway, which is in remarkably good shape, in spite of the road
trains that thunder up and down carrying provisions and fuel to distant towns.

Onslow on slow

After leaving Point Samson near Karratha we decided to stay three nights at Onslow (pop 850), a sleepy coastal town with big tides that has a salt mine as its significant industry.

Right above and below: Onslow salt mine and conveyor to ship.

Roughly on the same latitude as Mackay in Queensland, Onslow is the southernmost Australian town bombed by Japanese aircraft during WWII. It was at the time a naval fuel depot.


Sunset at Onslow (picture by Carol).

Speaking of bombs, just 100km offshore, at Montebello Islands, the British conducted A-bomb tests in 1952. They subsequently moved the test ground to Maralinga in South Australia, but we won’t go there.

From Onslow you can view through binoculars monopod oil exploration rigs. These have grown in number since the discovery of oil on Barrow Island, south of Montebello, in 1964.

At Onslow we made new friends and reconnected with fellow vannies we met earlier at Point Samson. Dinnertime each night was a big social event, as our pictures show.

Dinner at the Diques' van.

For Carol it was an opportunity to demonstrate her culinary skills that I must say rated 10 out of 10 in the company.



One vannie we met there from Perth who recently lost his wife to cancer has decided to make his home in the park at Onslow. He likes the small community environment and participates in local activities.

Open air dinner after the word got around...



Guess who scuttled under our table?

It was then on to Exmouth (resident population 2,500) on North West Cape, 1,270 kilometres north of Perth.





Communications towers at Exmouth, with a caravan park in the foreground.

Snorkelling the reef

North West Cape was first sighted in 1618 by Dutch skipper Haevik Claeszoon van Hillegom in the vessel Zeewolf, became a pearling and pastoral settlement in 1850, a U.S. submarine base in 1942 and a massive U.S.-Australian communications base in 1962.

But for us, the big attraction was the Cape Range National Park on the western side of the peninsular, famous for the Ningaloo Reef, a fringe reef closer to beaches than any other reef in Australia.

En route to Exmouth.

After two nights at Exmouth our vannie friends Greg and Wendy from Kirrawee, and Tony and Maureen from Forster, persuaded us to join them at a Cape Range National Park beach site called Neds Camp, which has only 15 sites available for $10 a night payable to the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Carol at Turquoise Bay.

This we did, and found it exhilarating swimming and snorkelling nearby, especially at Turquoise Bay, a protected marine sanctuary where you can practically reach out and touch the tropical fish.

Even Carol spent more time splashing about in the sea than she has done in ages.

Lone windsurfer off Vlaming Point, North West Cape.

At Neds Camp the only facilities are two pit toilets. You supply your own water and power. It was there I used the caravan shower for the first time. In fact we were a bit too self indulgent with water and almost ran out after two days!

Our fellow vannies were a bit smarter and used a bore a bit further up the road for showering.

Our nightly 'happy hour’ attended by all the campers, was unforgettable.

Happy hour at Neds Camp.

We’re sure we’ve made some new lifelong friends.




Vlaming Point.

Windy way

The only negative was a gale force south easterly wind that rarely let up during our stay and in fact continued to harass us during a brief visit to Coral Bay (famous for whale sharks in the winter months), 150km south of Exmouth and again a further 240km south at Carnarvon, in the Gascoyne region.

Coral Bay.

Despite our friends’ protests, we decided to leave prematurely. The reason was that one of my molars had split down the middle after I bit on a hard toffee on the way to Exmouth. One side of the tooth remained in place but the other side was loose.

Downtown Carnarvon.

I was worried that infection might set in (where’s that flying doctor!). There was only one dentist in Exmouth who was booked out for a month, so we decided to make for Carnarvon (pop. 9,000).

As it turned out, there was no dentist there either, although we were told a dentist from Geraldton visited briefly each month.

There was nothing for it but to extract the offending shard myself, which I did by working it back and forth between finger and thumb for several minutes and giving it a yank.

Out it came and within 24 hours the gum had almost completely healed.

Sunset outside the Carnarvon Hotel.

So here we are in Carnarvon, a town famous for its fruit and vegetable farms and seafood, especially prawns and lobsters, waiting patiently for our mail, which has been despatched by daughter Julie.