I'm driving north along the North West Coastal Highway. Travelling in slip on unit on a 4X4 Hilux extra cab tray back. Stopping overnight at places I've stayed at before..., often well off the highway..., away from the noise of rumbling road trains, gensets, large 'gin palace' caravans replete with yappy little dogs.., all jammed into overnight rest stops..., some people must stop and set up around mid arvo to get their fav spot near the dunny(mum not keen on walking too far !) .., best I not get started up about skidded up 'long drops' ! Anyway..., as usual I have a few favourite overnight camp sites(all GPS logged)..., often they station tracks, or old Main Roads road base dump points(as long as they are out of sight of the highway.., so I can have a mindful and sensible little camp fire to boil the billy on and enjoy a single malt 'sit and be' session etc. etc. I'm a bit late this year..., I usually beat the first winter fronts(mid May every year)..., this has been an annual cultural trip since way back(mid 1970's). But now things have changed a bit(a lot really)..., now it seems almost every retired man and woman and their yappy little silky terriers are travelling along the NWCH..., some know how to drive and park up correctly..., and some not so much. Anyway, it'll be much better once I'm north of Minilya. Wishing y'all a safe day..., keep an eye on your mirrors and teach mum how to use the UHF correctly ?
-- Edited by Sandyfreckle on Thursday 19th of May 2022 08:43:39 AM
Generally speaking, we don't make set plans...., we embrace the random..., and respond to impending inclement weather, roads chocked up with modern day Ma n Pa Kettle's, towing scaled down versions of McMansions. NW corner WA has recently(same happened last year) had a series of minor tropical lows spinning in of the Indian Ocean, from just below Sumatra and Java...., mostly just a bit of rain for a day or 3. This happened while we were set up up at Winderabandi Point..., and as there were just too many larger vans getting dragged along the Yardi/Coral Bay track...., with many spots filling up.., we responded.
Soooo....., exposed as we were, we packed up and retreated south to Lyndon River track....., basically used station tracks to head inland and S/E...., down past Kennedy Ranges, through Gascoyne Junction. We camped at Bilung Pool for a few Days..., then on down through Murchison Settlement.., to Mount Magnet. Great 'backtracks' just slow down on the cattle grids and floodways. Very dusty and corrugated in some places but very, very little other traffic. In Magnet we tried unsuccessfully to get a text message to some prospecting friends out at east B#####K ...., ended driving out there anyway, long story truncated, we managed to actually find them when luckily, we caught a glimpse of movement way off to the side of the road. Very lucky to spot them..., but as they were onto a good permitted patch, we joined them. A truly beautiful spot in a shallow valley under some breakaways with lots of old shafts and too much rubbish getting picked up...., but we managed to make a bit of petrol money! Flies were overly friendly but around sunset, that oft spoken cliche was yarped "How's the serenity FFS" Purely rhetorical.
Generally speaking, we don't make set plans...., we embrace the random..., and respond to impending inclement weather, roads chocked up with modern day Ma n Pa Kettle's, towing scaled down versions of McMansions.
it amuses me that some people think that their way of travelling through this great country is somehow more righteous and make snide comments about those who do it differently. When we were young way back in the 70s we lived in the Pilbara for around 3 years in those days very few people travelled in the north west. We explored, fossiked through the bush for gold with metal detectors, we fished in what were once remote locations both on the coast and inland, on one trip we spent days camping beside dry creek beds while following a dirt track from the Witenoom Road to the North West coastal Hwy at Whim Creek. In those days the sealing of the highway between Broome and Darwin wasnt completed so the volume of traffic through the area was a lot less. My wife and I are leaving in a few weeks on a lap and the part of the trip that we are looking forward to the most is the Pilbara where our daughter was born. We are curious just how much the area has changed and hopefully we will get to revisit the house that we once lived in as well as a few of our old haunts. We are now retired what you call Ma and Pa Kettles and we will be pulling our 20' van which you will probably refer to as a MacMansion but hey who cares in our golden years we reckon that we have earned the right to travel in this land however we like.
BB
-- Edited by The Belmont Bear on Monday 24th of April 2023 08:28:52 AM
