Exmouth

Monday 8th June

From Carnarvon we travelled thru Gascoyne Junction to Mt Augustus. Roads there varied in quality, but were all dirt with lots of floodways and dips. Signs of obvious flooding everywhere. When we checked in at the Shire office at Gascoyne Junction they said the roads had only just re-opened after floods. Lots of roadkill - mainly kangaroos. There were also lots and lots of huge eagles feasting on the roadkills - they are the biggest blackest mothers we've ever seen! Also lots of other animals wandering around - goats, emus, cattle,sheep and roos.\
Camping at Mt Augustus was ok but not my cup of tea - too much like hard work! But the tent was good, so were the mattresses and sleeping bags - you could'nt tell you were sleeping onthe ground. The ablution block was very old,dirty and rundown - would not recommend it but the camping area was ok and of course a wonderful view of Mt Augustus. We climbed the mountain on Saturday - it was about a 5 - 6 hours and the view from the top was spectacular but it was bloody hard work for an old goat like me!
No radio reception or mobile reception in Mt Augustus - very isolated.
Packed up on Sunday morning ( what a lot of trouble it is packing up camping gear!) and headed off for the long trip to Exmouth.
Unfortunately we took a wrong turn and ended up back at Gascoyne Junction - oops! This meant another 300 kms to our trip. But wait, it got worse! On one of the little dirt tracks we were on we blew a tyre and cracked a wheel on one of the dips in the road.I got stressed about this 'cause we were in the middle of nowhere, the nearest civilization was a station 50 kms away! However, Peter very expertly changed the tyre and we were on our way again, albeit much more slowly until we got to the bitumen which we were very happy to see. Reached Exmouth about 5.30pm Sunday night.
Nice chalet here at ExmouthCape caravan park with a comfy bed and quite roomy.
Temperature is about 25C but windy, although it was cold overnight. We did some housekeeping/maintenance today - organising another tyre, food shopping, getting more money and the neverending washing! Tomorrow we are going snorkelling at Turquoise Bay near Exmouth. Unfortunately it has come up cloudy which is not ideal for snorkelling but never mind, we have to leave on Wednesday morning - off to Tom Price for a couple of days to check out Karijini. Cheers!!!