testing, i think my blog has been removed because i havent done anything with it for a year

We arrive at Tom Price, our camp at the Tourist Park has a beautiful view framed by Mt Nameless, Aboriginal name Jarndrunmunhna, meaning ‘place of Rock Wallabies’. It is a majestic mountain, like all the mountains around here it is mostly bare red rock with a spattering of green, hardly any trees and distinct ridges running through it. It was a second in size to Mount Tom Price which is the towns reason for existence.

On the way to Tom Price we had a look around Paraburdoo. It was strange to see a golf course with all red dirt, not a blade of green grass to be seen.

We have been to many places since Narrogin
We have been in Tom Price since August 2008.

Impressions of Tom Price...
As we leave Carnarvon and head inland, we notice Red rocky mountains come straight up from the flat earth, harder rocky ridges running through them.
Red rocks, Red rocks and more red rocks, not much soil, all rocks.
Spiky tufts of Spinifex grow from bare rocky earth- tough, spiky; scratch your legs as you walk through.

In August it was so dry that it felt like the air and the rocky earth were sucking the moisture out of everything, even your skin.
We thought it must never rain here.

Seamus jarrs his hands and break tent pegs trying to pierce the ground to secure guy ropes for the tarp. He ends up borrowing a sledge hammer and getting star pickets, still it is a tough job to break up the iron rock to secure the pickets. The sledge hammer is old so it has to be soaked in water to get the handle to swell to keep it together before use, so that it doesn't fly off.

For Zoe's 4th birthday we set for a 30 min trip to look for bugs and got bogged in a dry river bed; no traction on the smooth hard iron rocks; so tough they broke the max tracks and the axle of the Oka. We left home at 6pm and arrived back at 2.30am, walking 14km, but that is another story.

Then in Dec/Jan/Feb monsoonal rains fall, flooding masses of water running like rivers, washing away any topsoil, creating deep ruts in the dirt paths of the Caravan Park.

We had made an outdoor area with a tarp for a roof and wall units and wardrobes for walls, though by the time we have done this it was too hot to sit outside even at night since it is still 35 degrees at 10pm.
Cyclones threaten, destructive winds whip through, ripping up our new tarp and knocking over wall units.

For about a month there were thunderstorms every few days and you could be sure the electricity would go off for hours, sometimes for the whole town or region. Unlike Melbourne this is something the locals are used as an annual occurrence. The first time that happened it was off for 12 hours, 3.30pm to 3.30 am. I don't know how anybody lived here without air conditioning. We had no refrigeration or air conditioning and it was 44 in the day, 35 degrees at midnight. We lost a freezer full of seafood we had just bought from the semi that comes through town now and then. Nobody slept.

We learnt not to keep more than a couple of days worth of food in the fridge/freezer, and found a friend with a generator. At least we were used to living without electricity when camping so we stocked up on candles, spray bottles for handheld evaporative cooling and kept our car batteries charged with the solar panel ready to use fans and the car fridge.

During Feb 2008 we went to Narrogin to farm-sit 1000 sheep, 18 cattle, 3 llamas and a dog for Barbara and Jefferson. Lovely people.
In March we travelled with OKA and Jaz (leaving the Landrover at Narrogin) to Margaret River.



During March I went to Tassie to see family while Cate and Zoe headed off in the Jaz to Geraldton.
I flew back from Tassie on 7/4/08, arrived at midnight. Next morning caught a bus out of town then hitched to Narrogin to pick up the OKA.
Then drove that back to Perth, picked up a few bits and pieces and headed off to Kalgoorlie via a shortcut called the Holland Track Great drive.
Then up inland to Geraldton to meet Cate and Zoe again.
We stayed there for a few weeks then headed off to Tamala Station in Shark Bay.

We bought an OKA (2nd hand not new) in Jan 08. Drove it to Oka Kalgoorlie so Robin Wade could check it out and get it ready for rego. He did a great job and was (and still is) extremely helpful.

That was in Jan - it's now July 08 and we've done about 10,000 kms and had some great adventures.
Some pics of our OKA.

Pocket money for Scruffy! 

He soon became one of the family.

The fascine at Carnarvon, just down the road from our flat. This is where we walked Scruffy, and spotted the occasional dolphin, not a bad life.

September 07.

Zoe with Scruffy McFluffy. We saved Scruffy from the pound at Carnarvon. 

He was gorgeous we had him for 3 months before finding a loving family for him in Perth through SAFE - Saving Animals From Euthenasia.

He is named in the mode of Hairy McLairy which is one of Zoe's favourite books. He is very like Hairy McLairy, with his previous family he used to escape all the time to run with the strays and made lots of friends around town that he visited on his outings, they would often would take him home, when he didn't get picked up by the pound.

He loved to sit next to me while I was on the computer with his head resting on my lap.

We stopped at Carnarvon from August to January 08, we didnt update the blog for ages so there is a big backlog, we may just do things out of order

We travelled from Rockingham to Exmouth with my daughter Beck and her husband Jon, that is another story...

EXMOUTH
When they left to catch their flight back to Canberra, we stayed at the Ningaloo Lodge, while it rained and we tried to sort out what to do next. I had no idea the place was so packed, no wonder there were no housesits in the area, this is where everyone is going.
We couldn't get into a caravan park, then got into a temporary overflow site at the oval behind the visitors centre. We did have power and used the amenities at the visitor centre so it was ok, we set up a the little tent, swag, tarp and desks so sat there in the open with our computers, it was quite nice actually. An emu came to visit each day, just wandered through the campsites. We were there for 3 nights. We left Exmouth as we couldn't get accommodation, and it didn't look like there would be anything available after the school holidays either, as august is still peak season. They could fit us in if they moved us around a lot.

Then we went down to see about wwoofing at a cattle station about 85 km from exmouth and 65 from coral bay, just off the highway.

On the way we finally got to snorkel Turquoise Bay, - the Ningaloo Reef near Exmouth, it was gorgeous. The snorkelling was pretty much like Coral Bay, just that you could walk out to the coral. Lots of gorgeous fish, those beautiful colourful aqua ones- wrass, sea cucumbers, some schools of little iridescent blue fish.

There was supposed to be a warm current that you floated down for 50m We didn't find it, as we just took ourselves, but it didn't seem to matter. You could just stay still and see so much, it wasn't too cold, Zoe went in, she was reluctant but not too bad, so Seamus and I took turns of holding her while the other went for a snorkel, that is great progress.

We thought we might work on the cattle station we found through wwoofing, for a couple of hours per day for our board, they had two little kids, 2 and 4, and needed a website and brochures etc, help with building and farm work, childcare. We didn't end up doing it as we wouldn't be able to do our websites as we wouldn't have had phone coverage. They had satellite internet but couldn't share it as much as we would need, Seamus has heaps of work on so couldn't really do other work anyway, though I could have minded her two year old for 2hrs a day while she home schooled the 4yr old, (school of the air kindy!)

They were mustering with helicopters and motorbikes the day before we arrived, Seamus would have found time to help with that! He loves dirt bike riding, and any excuse to spin the wheels.

We stayed one night, Zoe got to pat calves and watch them being fed with a bottle, and pat a new born lamb, it was a special sheep that looked like a goat as it had hair not wool, better for this hot, sparse country - they export them for meat. The little 4 year old was carrying it around everywhere. Zoe enjoyed playing with the kids.

...and we may still do the website in a couple of months when they have the buildings closer to being ready, and we have more time, they will have 6 rooms, a mix of single and doubles and a big common room with a big kitchen, it will be an outback experience, there are a few stations are doing it but there are plenty people wanting to come here.

CARNARVON
So we kept going down to Carnarvon, we didn't really want to back track 400km. We hadn't counted on the lack of accommodation or even campsites.
All the caravan parks here were full as well, so we stayed in a hotel for a couple of days to get organised, we applied to rent a flat for 3 months, it is cheap and a 5 minute walk from the shopping centre, we won't know if we have been accepted until Monday or Tuesday, we didn't really want to sit still for 3 months, but we need to for Seamus to get his work done.

I am going to learn style sheets (CSS) so that I can help, I hope I don't rue the day I offered that, (too much like real computing, I like drop and drag).

Then we happened across a backpackers advertising free rent for 2 hours a day work (this trip is getting more and more serendipitous - it was on the way from our hotel to the shops).

So now, as of today, we are staying at the backpackers, we still have to work out if we want to take the deal or not, there are no vacant rooms at the moment so we are camped in the yard. we will stay here a few days and see.

She also needs a brochure and website so I think if we like it, and we don't get the flat then I will do the two hours just cleaning up the yard and do her brochure for her.
Zoe enjoyed playing with her 3 year old today.

Apparantly it is quiet during the day, they get a lot of asian backpackers who go and work on the plantations during the day.

Could be interesting, I used to like meeting tourists when I used to do the hostel thing when Beck was little, I thought I was too old for them then!

I didn't realise I was having such an interesting time until I wrote this out! Hmmm! It IS an adventure, though frustrating, feeling homeless. It is alright being transient when you want to be on the move, but at some stage you just want to put your feet up, spread your gear out and have a good long hot shower- in your own shower.