2 sickies in a motorhome

Well, we’re off the ship and now onto our next adventure.  We picked up our little motorhome on Sunday Oct 28 right after we got off the ship, spent the rest of the day getting it stocked and ready to head north.  Bob and Heather, our ace trivia partners from the ship, live in Perth and let us wash clothes and sleep at their house before we left Monday Morning.  We can’t get over how blessed we are to become friends with such wonderful people all over the world.

Monday got off to a rather auspicious start as Gail got sick just before we left Bob and Heathers.  So after successfully navigating us through downtown Perth she crawled up into the bunk and slept for the rest of the day.  Actually neither of us is 100% as we’re both fighting colds and probably the norovirus from the ship.  We’ll get over it though then look out Australia!!.  

Our first day out we made it about 400Km to the little town of Northampton.  Nothing real eventful for the day except that I saw a lot of huge dunes of white sand.  

The next day Gail was feeling better so we both spent the day in the cab on our way to Monkey Mia and Shark Bay.  We passed through a large area of grain farming and it looks as though they’re going to be harvesting a LOT of wheat very soon.  Part of our trip took us through a World Heritage Area where we stopped at the Hamelin Pools and learned a lot about Stromatolites.  We wouldn’t be here if not for those little lumpy Stromatolites.  Photosynthesis, enough said.  We also stopped by Shell Beach which, as you may have guessed, is a beach made up of zillions of little shells.  The guidebook says up to 8 feet thick in places.

Shell beach

We made it to Denham, which is the nearest town to Monkey Mia, and strictly a tourist trap.  3 RV parks in town all charging $36.00/ night for an electrical sight.  We will probably ask for a tour of the park from here on out as we seemed to have picked the “Fish Camp” park.  Lots of old, possibly back to 1920, caravans (travel trailers for our American friends) permanently parked and added on to.  We literally only have electricity and there are signs all around the park advising us that we are not allowed to fill our water tank.  What a CROCK.  We did make it to Monkey Mia Wednesday afternoon only to find that just to get into the place there is a fee.  We thought there would be a fee to go into the water when they feed the wild dolphins, or to do some of the other activities like rent kayaks or swim.  Nope, gotta pay a fee to get in to pay more fees to do those things.  We decided to just turn around as we felt we’d been scalped enough here.  Oh well, live and learn.  On the bright side we did see some emus on the way back to Denham.  That was OK.

Ok, its now thursday and we’re in Coral Bay on a little peninsula at the start of the Ningaloo reef.  The main reason we’re here is that we wanted to go diving on the reef.  Although this is not the time of year to dive with the Whale Sharks we thought we could maybe see some big Manta Rays.  Alas, because of our colds and stuffy heads we’re not going to get to dive.  Hopefully we’ll recover sufficiently to take a dive down south.  

On our drive today we saw lots of emus.  The morning started with a mama and 7 babies crossing the road in front of us.  That was pretty cool.  We also have seen lots of feral goats on the drive.  Still the only roos we’ve seen have been on the side of the road after trying to cross in front of the wrong car.  Fuel is getting more and more expensive.  We paid $1.88 per liter the last roadhouse we stopped at.  Our little motorhome gets 7 Kilometers/litre (17 mpg)  Ok, could be worse.  We’re also starting to see more and longer “Road Trains”.  Semi tractors pulling up to 3 long trailers (120’ in length.)  As we get closer to the big mining areas we’ll see even longer ones pulling 5 or more trailers. Most of the road is through scrub brush, some short, bushy trees and pretty flat. It’s desert here, bordering on outback. The farther north we go the less vegetation we will see. And it’s getting warmer but now unbearable.

Even though we’re not going to be able to dive the Ningaloo, Coral Bay is a pretty little area.