Days 207-210
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2006
1
152
169
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Exmouth,
Australia
Friday, April 13, 2007
The park is going to be good when it is finished. It's undergoing much renovation and the staff seem totally confused with their new computer system. I think you could do a much better job with a piece of paper and a pencil! As a result I had a family sized caravan home for the whole week alone while the others were mysteriously moved around from dorm to caravan and back to dorm again. Emus and cockatoos make the park their home and I particularly enjoyed feeding the cockatoos bread right from my hand. The delightful creatures never bit my fingers once!
On Tuesday a new group of Easyriders arrived. I knew most of them already from the Perth to Coral Bay legs of the journey. My mood brightened with the arrival of old friends and we spent a few days and nights in the park having little parties outside my caravan which had become like an Easyrider rendez-vous point.
Five of us had resolved to rent a car on Wednesday but inability to get organised/out of bed etc. meant that we only managed to arrange the rental for the following day. On Thursday we hit the road and did about 140Kms going around the Cape Range National park visiting the beaches that I'd seen earlier in the week with Nathan.
01 Exmouth's City Beach late afternoon
Our car was a beat up old Ford Telstra and it had no radio so we had sing-songs and managed the full Bohemian Rhapsody including Wayne's World head thrashing. We were Kirstin (Germany), Karen (Ireland), Clare (England) and Torsten (Finland) with me driving. Torsten is a good lad and has offered me a couch to sleep on when I'm in Helsinki later in the year. That night we had a bit of a leaving do, outside my caravan of course, as some of the crowd were leaving in the morning to go North.On Friday I rented the same car with Sanne the Dutch girl and we visited a few more spots in the National Park. First was the Mandu Mandu Gorge. It's a great weaving trail along a dry river bed. The river had cut the gorge but was now gone. We saw a couple of kangaroos bouncing around and had a good laugh on the walk. Our car was the only one in the car park and that meant we were the only ones on the trail. It was searingly hot and I joked that it would be good to have a pub around the next corner. We climbed up the side of the gorge and looked back at the distance we had covered. Another couple were doing the walk and we got a wave out of them from a long way away. The view was magnificent with the river bed, the gorge walls, the desert and then the Indian Ocean all in view. On the way back toward the car park we found a spot of shade and sat down. The couple we had spotted caught us up and turned out to be a couple of Dublin lads Declan and Shane. We told them of our desire for a pub around the corner and our prayers were answered when they told us we could have a cold one out of their car! Sanne claimed later that it was the best beer she'd ever had. I wouldn't go as far as that but jolly good show from the Irish guys. We were now four and we drove on (it was just a small bottle) to Yardie Creek. That is similar to Mandu Mandu Gorge but this one has water in the river. We walked for a couple of miles or so but the hot afternoon meant that the flies were relentless. They just seem to hitch a ride on your hat and t-shirt literally in their dozens.
