Warroora Station

We left our campsite in Cape Range National Park at 7:15 for the drive into Exmouth. Half an hour after arriving and having filled our water tanks and emptied our toilet cassette we were on our way south. The information centre in Exmouth has two freshwater taps located in their car park with easy access for vans and the dump point is located not far away near the oval again with easy access for the van.

First port of call was Coral Bay where we thought we may stay if we could find a site at one of the two caravan parks but once we saw how jammed in the vans where we soon changed our minds. It was just way too busy for us.

We drove 15 km south of Coral Bay before leaving the highway and turning towards the coast. We had heard that the corrugations and rocky outcrops on the 13 km access road were bad so we stopped briefly to reduce our tyre pressures to cope with what lay ahead.

We were off to camp at Warroora Station which is pronounced Warra. The station lies along a 50 km frontage of the Ningaloo Reef.
Our campsite at the 14 mile was located right on the beach with a large sand dune behind us and the most fantastic view of the waves breaking on the reef in front of us.

Talk about a slice of heaven. 

Camping fees are $10 per adult per day or $50 per week and no charge for children. Bookings are not accepted but the station is on Wiki Camps and you can ring the caretakers for information. Chemical toilets are a must and if you don't have one you can hire them from the caretaker.

Just before arriving at the caretaker's van there was a sign requesting tyre pressures be dropped between 20 and 25 psi to handle the beach access, so I dropped ours to 24 psi. Just as well because each site consisted of very soft sand. There are a dump point and a rubbish tip and phone and internet coverage on a hill above the rubbish tip. During our stay, I found out that there is a water pump behind the dunes.

Our lagoon behind the reef was a great spot to swim and we saw turtles and on our last day a reef shark cruised by in just a metre of water. 
We regularly watched whales breaching on the outside of the reef and Craig our next-door neighbour caught squid from his boat and they were absolutely fabulously cooked with panko breadcrumbs.

Its a very popular spot with 26 vans camped along our section of the beach north of the caretaker's caravan with even more camped to the south and on a headland. The sites are huge and you don't feel hemmed in like you would in a caravan park.

If you haven't experienced camping on the beach in this part of the world then make sure you are prepared for the wind. The wind is always the constant factor, only the strength varies and where you would normally expect the wind to disappear at night it just keeps on blowing.

On one of our Saturday mornings, we ventured into Coral Bay to shop and have lunch at Bills Tavern.

We enjoyed the laid back lifestyle at the station so whenever we return to WA we plan to make staying here a priority.

Millstream Chichester National Park

We left Wittenoom just on 8am after a very sleepless night and were now on our way to Millstream Chichester National Park. 

The van was continually buffeted by quite strong winds funnelling down through the gorge. We could have driven over part of the road we came in on yesterday but decided to choose a different route past Mulga Park and Mt Florence stations. We drove beside the Tom Price railway for 28 km before turning onto the Pannawonica road for 18 km to the access road into the national park. This section of road and the 5 km into our campsite at the Stargazers campground were very ordinary with corrugations and rocky sections.

We chose this campground because it was generator free but later during the day we drove into the Miliyanha campground which we found to have a much nicer lookout and with newer facilities.

For the life us we cannot understand why national parks would provide better facilities so that people could run their generators. As a result, our planned four days stay turned into just two days.

It was also interesting to find out that the towns of Karratha, Roebourne and Dampier receive their water supply from this national park. 

Deep Reach Pool is part of the Fortescue river that runs through the park. It's very wide and also very deep and ideal for swimming providing you have some form of flotation device like a noodle. I was surprised to find that fishing was permitted and the area adjacent to the waterhole was surrounded with gas BBQ's, shade and toilets.

We visited the Millstream Homestead built-in 1920. 

The lease on the pastoral property was taken out in the 1800s at one stage there were over 20,000 sheep grazed here. 
A walking trail leaves the homestead and meanders through groves of date palms and huge paperbark trees. This whole area is covered by lovely fresh running streams and wetlands covered with water lilies. 

Our camp host Burnie suggested we take a trip out to Python Pool. Our original plan was to call in there on our way out of the park tomorrow. However, it was 19 km off the main road and absolutely nowhere to park the van so his advice was spot on.

All up it was a round trip of 116 km. The drive-in was spectacular with the sun in the right location and the hills covered in spinifex, with the added bonus of some speckled cloud adding to our photos.

Of course, the waterfall into the pool at the base of the cliffs was not flowing this late in the dry. However, we could only imagine how wonderful it is to see it like this.

On our return, we were lucky enough to witness one of the ore trains returning to Tom Price.

Wittenoom Gorge

Our plan for this evening after leaving Hamersley Gorge was to camp at Wittenoom Gorge. We drove past the now abandoned township and into the gorge with its asbestos warning signs. 

Asbestos lying in the creek bed not far from where we were camped.

We were looking for a site with some water views but several that we looked at would have been to difficult to manoeuvre the van into without sustaining some sort of damage. So seeing it was starting to get late in the day we drove back towards the old township where we found access down into a creek bed where I could turn around.

I was able to take some lovely photos and videos with the drone as the sunset on the cliffs that surrounded us.

Karijini National Park

Our campsite at the Mt Robinson rest area before entering Karijini National Park

We arrived just after 8am and paid our park entry fee of $6.00, that's half price because we have an NSW seniors card. 
And we were confronted with this sign wherever we went...

Then it was onto the camp host to pay our camping fees of $14.00 per day for both of us.

We were allocated site 34 on the Bungarra Loop in the non-generator area at Dales Gorge campground, and we should have put more thought into staying on this site because the van on the next site had bunk beds. It could only mean ankle biters.

All the attractions in Karijini are very accessible. It's just a matter of driving to a car park with most gorge access or lookouts 50 to 300 metres away. All the trails are colour coded from the beginner to the very adventurous. 

Circular and Fern Pool was very close to our camp so off we wandered to the car park and then down into Dales Gorge. As we were going down I overheard a woman saying that there were a total of 286 steps to climb to return to the car park. Both pools were very enjoyable with Fern Pool being the coldest.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon sitting in the shade of the van trying to hide from the near gale force winds that were whipping up red dirt in all directions. Most of the trees here have been burnt and look like they will never recover whilst only a handful surrounding us have leaves starting to form. Unfortunately, the conditions remained like this for our entire stay.

The couple from the van with the bunks returned with one small child in tow, and we were then forced to listen to cartoons played loudly for the remainder of the afternoon. Around 6 pm they started up a generator so they could use their microwave for cooking their meals. Unfortunately, the camp hosts had retired for the evening so I asked them to turn off the generator but they refused and continued on until they were finished.

As we headed out the next morning to view some of the other gorges I stopped and complained about the couple using the generator. As we continued on we could hear on the UHF radio for a ranger to visit them and advise that this area was generator free. We were generator free for the remaining evenings.

The Banjima Drive North Road begins at the Visitors Centre and continues for 43 km to the gorges in the north-west of the park. This road is very corrugated and rocky for its entire length as are all the access roads off it to the other gorges. We stopped after 100 metres where I reduced the 4wd tyres down to 30 psi before stopping shortly after and reducing them again down to 26 psi to cope with the worsening road conditions.

We passed many vehicles who were driving along at a snail's pace with what I can only assume was bitumen tyre pressures. All up for the day we covered 113 km. We decided to drive to the furthest gorge then work our way back. At Weano Gorge we walked down into the floor of the gorge and followed it for several hundred metres before coming to some quite deep seasonal pools and very large slippery boulders so we decided to go no further.

Unfortunately, we are no longer agile like rock wallabies so we are a little limited to what we can actually see.

At Oxer Lookout in the Weano area, you are provided with the most amazing views out over the junction of Weano, Red, Hancock and Joffre Gorges. 
Joffre Gorge, in particular, was very spectacular. Unfortunately, the falls were not running but they would cascade several hundred metres down into the gorge. 
We watched a couple starting to climb out and we were both thankful that it wasn't us, mind you they were both probably forty years younger than what we are.

Kalamina Falls was 6km down a very rough and rocky road. We walked down to take some photos but the actual swimming hole looked stagnant and not very welcoming.

We drove into Tom Price on the bitumen road where we refuelled and filled all our water tanks with a free water outlet opposite the swimming pool. 

We were now on our way to Hamersley Gorge on what I can only describe as a very good dirt road with just some minor corrugations and quite a lot of bulldust holes. I would rate this gorge to be one of the most spectacular in the park with its different rock formations and lovely swimming hole.