The Outback
Western Australia, 2012-01-20 12:00 by Martin and Laerke
Day 1:
We landed in Perth at four o’clock in the morning. We managed to get a few hours of sleep on a bench in the airport. At nine o’clock we went to pick up our rental car; a normal 2 wheel drive stationcar. After stocking up on groceries we started driving north along the Great Northern Highway; for the first many miles, the horizon was dominated by huge wheat fields and cows grazing on rolling hills, but soon civilization began to thin out. Our first stop was the town of New Norcia, Australias only functioning monastic town. It was a beautiful little place and a very worthwhile stop, but it was so unbelievably hot! We drove on, and witnessed the landscape becoming more and more dry and inhospitable, encountering less and less cars on the roads. We set up camp near Payne’s Find, in the middle of nowhere and had a nice dinner in the quietness of the outback! Later at night, when the sun had really set, the stars came out in full on the black clear sky, with no moon, it was an incredible sight…


Day 2:
We continued driving north along the empty stretches of semi-desert and scrubland. We stopped at Cue, an old gold mining town, with some cute architecture and a feel of the Wild West. Not long after passing Meerkathara, we started seeing pools of water by the side of the road…looked like recent rains, that the hard, dry soil couldn’t absorb. Soon the small pools became larger, until they spilled over on the road, and it became one giant waterway, that we could see the end of. Luckily the road authorities were there and they seemed confident our car could make it through…I was a lot less confident behind the wheel! A big truck driving just in front of us, helped pushing away some of the water, creating a pocket of shallower water in its wake, though still at least half a meter deep at the deepest; when we made it through I was so relieved, especially because the rental company had explicitly forbidden us to drive through ANY body of water larger than a puddle! That we were to encounter quite a few more of these giant pools further north, I hadn’t expected…but we managed to get through them all. Turning around and driving the more than 2000 km back was NOT an option.


Much later on we discovered that Newman is NOT open on a Sunday… after a quick peek at the closed tourist office and a compulsory photo op in front of a HUGE yellow lorry, we continued a little bit and freecamped at Mount Robinsons rest-stop together with two roadtrains and a shitload of mozzies. It was beautiful and serene place though, but those pesky mozzies ruined it! Martin spotted his very first living, wild kangaroo; it was great to see that not all of them had been squished by Road Trains.


Day 3:
We drove on to Karijini National Park, only to discover that the park had just been reopened after some serious flooding. Some of the park was still closed, but we were able to enjoy the Dale’s Gorge area, including Fern’s Pool and circular pool, as well as Fortescue Falls.
When the sun went down, we expected it to cool of a bit, but the wind just died and the stony ground radiated all the solar heat that had accumulated, so it felt like our tent had underfloor heating, not really needed when it was still almost 40 degrees Celsius! At 2 AM lots of lightning and rain appeared in the distance and we decided to sleep in the car, we definitely won’t be doing that again, as it was very uncomfortable – next time we will rather brave the elements.