IdefixOnTour

Is it possible to have a holiday during your travels? Yes,yes,yes! Traveling is hard work (later I will write about this), and we thought that Coral Bay was just the place one should take a holiday.

The Ningaloo Reef is with 600km smaller than the Great Barreer Reef (2000) but offers for the weary and yet curious traveler ample opportunities. The reef starts at Coral Bay about 20 meters from the beach. A five minute walk from the camping and you put on your snorkel and fins and there you go. Corals in all shapes and forms as well as
colourful fish within reach. Although the coral is not very colorful it is an amazing world you can explore looking under water. The snorkel has to fit of course or else you have a regular flush of salt water through your nose as I experienced.

Because going out for a snorkel twice a day is a drag we decided to book a tour and swim with sharks. Although we also saw Tigershark the skipper guided us to a spot where a Whaleshark was swimming. After some nervous minutes and hectic dressing we jumped with a group of ten in the water to follow a guide to swim with the shark. And suddenly it was there, a friendly creature of 5 meters long, within a few meters from us. After no more than a glimpse we were picked up by the boat again. Each time after, when we went in the water again, we were able to see more of him/her and less of our fellow swimmers..

One of the crew went with us in the water to take pictures, see them in our Photo Album. After some stops two snorkels (?) at the outerreef and an excellent buffetlunch on the boat we arrived back on the shore with a ‘We did it’-'Once in a lifetime’ experience. Next goal is swimming with Manta Rays.

After the sun and the beach we decided to cool down more inland. After over 600km we arrived at the very pleasant mining town of Tom Price. Alas, for me the cooling down was too abrupt. In Coral Bay the temperature during the evening was still pleasantly in the mid-twenties whilst in Tom Price it quickly went down to below ten after sunset. Another cold and not a pleasant one either.

Not interested in mining we went into the Karijini National Park which is 50kms from Tom Price. A beatiful rugged area full of green and red (plenty of iron around there) and mountains and hills
with the odd cangaroo checking out Idefix passing by, we arrived at the Savannah eco-retreat.

A beautiful camp with longdrop toilets and solar hot showers in a setting which could have come straight out of Africa. A nice and even colder night was spend with Rony and Christina from Bubikon, of all places. Rony recognised Idefix as we had it parked there, in Bubikon that is, before it was shipped to Fremantle. It is a small world indeed. Definitely for Ronny and Christina as they are doing a round the world trip.

The gorgeous gorges are in this park. We checked out a bit of Weano Gorge on the day we arrived and went the next morning down to the Joffre Falls and Gorge. In a flat landscape suddenly a chasm lies in front of you with water flowing from  a waterfall ino the gorge. In the gorge you see layer upon layer of rock, water takes up to a 100 years to
flow from the land above through the layers into the river. Also here a magnet clings to most of the rocks a
it contains a lot of iron. By the way, the ore mined in this area is so pure it has to be diluted (I have no clue) before it can be processed to make steel.

After moving to the more basic campsite at Dales Gorge (only longdrops) we checked out the Gorge and Pools there as well. Although it was getting colder by the night the water was still warm enough to swim in.

On our way to the coast we had a stop at the Hamersley Gorge. This Gorge is different as the layers are wrung (?) into waves of rock. Incredible powers much have been at work here. The lanscape here is also the oldest in Australia, it is more then 2500 million years old!

Because of an old asbestos mine we decided to leave Wittenoom Gorge as it is and headed to the Millstream-Chicester NP. On the way we camped at a station of only 300.000 ha with 4000 cattle. We were only the 4th guests of the season but Dirk and Gitta probably stayed here as well as the 2nd or 3rd.. It was a booming day for the farmer as Dirk (not the same) joined us early in the evening. It was very pleasant to share a meal with him. He must have expected more people as he had, at least for a dozen grownups with appetite, desserts with him! More about Dirk and some of his activities can be found at:
www.weltgeschichten.com

After the Karijini we needed to wash urgently. Not only ourselves and our clothes but Idefix as well. He is white and not pink. The dust is so fine and in abundance that everything which is not sealed gets a good coating. One shoe of mine was in one of the two plasic boxes underneath the car and will from now on continue to have a different colour.

I am learning, as I make my way through my first continent, that it is remarkably easy to do things, and much more frightening to contemplate them.
-Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels