Day 110 - 117

Joel arrived back in Broome on Friday looking very worse for wear! I would like to say it was because he worked so hard for 2 weeks (and really this may have had something to do with it) but the main reason was because Thursday night they spent at the pub and none of them remember how they got home! So he was messy!

He spent the whole day in bed which was probably good cuz he needed the rest but I was hoping to be awoken from my tv coma; however had to stretch it another day!

Saturday we headed out for a bit of a tourist adventure. We first drove out to Willie Creek Pearl Farm which is about 30km out of Broome. Driving out you can see why roads get closed pretty easily around here in the rain...the road is just like a big skate bowl type thing (high sides and dips in the middle) and the killer is that it is all beautiful red dust! Which of course turns to dirty red mud as soon as water hits it. Even though it hasn't rained here for maybe 4 days there was still huge puddles of mud on the road that needed to be avoided. So you can only imagine if it rained for a solid period, it would be chaos!

Anyway back to the pearl farm...we were originally going to just have a look around but ended up being convinced to do the tour which is $55 each for 2.5 hours. The tour includes a talk about how they create the pearls which was quite interesting. For all of you that don't know they collect oysters, bring them back to their farm, acclimatise them to their waters and then seed them. Seeding involves pulling the oysters out of the water, putting them in a big tank, filling it up with water and then draining the water (which makes the oyster think the tide is going out so they all open up) they then put a wedge in the shell to keep it open and use tiny tools to insert a small bit of shell (that they create into a small round ball) and insert it into the shell of the oyster. Then back in the water for 2 years! They check them, clean them all the time and X-ray them to make sure they are producing round pearls. Now what actually makes the pearl is that the oyster doesn't like any foreign objects in its shell and when it has something in its shell (they described it as when we have something stuck in our teeth, we keep licking it etc to try and get it out) it excretes this stuff and coats and coats the little ball they insert and eventually whola a pearl. They reseed 4 times in the same oyster and each time it will produce a bigger and bigger pearl. So 1st seeded pearls are slightly cheaper but smaller and 4th seeded are loads bigger and very expensive! They showed us a 4th seeded 27 pearl necklace....it was gorgeous! $45,000!!

Anyways that was long winded but I found it interesting so hopefully you might too. The tour also includes morning tea with homemade damper and they show you how they price pearls, how to keep pearls clean and take you on a boat ride around their farm including how they clean and check the oysters.

The colour of the water is insane! Murky which is why crocs hang out here! But the colour was incredible!

It was an interesting tour but we probably wouldn't recommend it unless you are super interested in pearls and buying them. It wasn't really worth the money but its a tourist thing so they charge you the earth. You can just go and have a look around and their is a cafe there you can buy food so you don't have to do the tour.

Pearl tour done we decided to head back to town and have a look at Gantheaume Point which is where the lighthouse is and also dinosaur prints can be seen on low tide and a pool that was handmade by the lighthouse keeper years ago for his arthritic wife. Well of course it wasn't low tide when we arrived but we had a walk down as far as we could go...it was really nice coastline and rock formations very similar to Kalbarri. Couldn't see dinosaur prints, may have seen the pool but it wasn't obviously signed so it may have just been a hole in a rock! Haha and the lighthouse was not the prettiest I have seen but hey it beats the tv coma. Will have to go back on low tide another time.

Finished the day off with staircase to the moon which is a natural phenomenon and is created by the rising of the full moon reflecting off the exposed mudflats at extremely low tide - creating a beautiful optical illusion of stairs reaching to the moon. It only happens a few times each year and today was meant to be the best one this year because of the size of the tide variance 9.9m! We waited in our car with about 200 other cars and I was convinced we wouldn't be able to see it at all unless we got out of the car but all of a sudden Joel says "I think it's going to be right in front of us...look there is like an orange glow there" so we kept watching and the glow got brighter and brighter and eventually we could see the moon and what looks like steps to it. The colour is spectacular and the whole thing was just incredible. Don't miss this if you are in town when it's on! They also have markets on which were very Byron bay feeling but great food and some stalls to look at, live music etc..was a nice night out.

I would like to say I took this picture but I didn't, the lens I had on was nowhere near big enough but still photos don't do it justice. Courtesy of google....

Monday we did some shopping and went to see some recruitment agencies. We will stay here if we can continue to get work so tried to get a feel for what was around. We booked in to see someone tomorrow so see how that goes. Joel also got a call today from the place he was working at Derby and they want him for another week of work so he is heading off again tomorrow to do another week. So hopefully this may continue to happen over the weeks and he can keep working out there because he really likes it.

Until next week.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 102 - 109

This week has been jam packed with action, discovery, solving mysteries, cooking, laughter, drama and even some grocery shopping.

This week I watched women kick bad mens asses, discovered the world of professional mediation, solved great mysteries as a spy, cooked dishes and learnt about a new food - millet, laughed my ass off, found out someone I know is pregnant and others are being conned by a friend and I stocked the fridge with food to replenish my energy after all this work!

Ok ok what really happened this week is that I was introduced to the world of dole bludging but without the dole! All the things i have listed above revolve around one thing....my tv routine....something I never thought I would hear myself say but with no car and everything a bus ride away I have been pretty much confined to the caravan.

It all starts with VIP, a bodyguard firm that is run by Pamela Anderson (believable!) and then Fairly Legal which is a show about a legal mediator who solves everyone's problems of course in style and I actually looked up how to be a mediator as a potential job opportunity. Covert Affairs is next with CIA agents solving mysteries and kicking asses. Things then change gear (or is it channels?) to cooking shows between alive and cooking to New Zealand on a plate - can life get much better? The answer is yes because then my personal favourites...Ellen, now this lady is funny and I have had many little giggles at her ridiculous antics. And then Friends reruns....this has got to be the BEST tv series ever....it doesn't matter how many times I see an episode, things said in this show are so priceless they just never get old! I have found myself laughing out loud many times in the last week....it is so clever! Drama comes with home and away....if brax and his brothers go down, Ricky has got some serious ass kicking coming her way (between all these shows I have learnt a few kickboxing moves!)

In my defense it has been raining a lot which is also ironic because its the "dry" season here!

I have hit the real world a couple of times, riding public transport for the first time in 10 years, getting my haircut, going for runs along the beach but mostly I have been in a tv world all week.

Joel comes back Friday hopefully and from here we are pretty undecided about what we are doing moving forward.

This week has given me a lot of time to think about life, work, love and the ever pondering question....how the hell do young people live and not work?!

Carly

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Day 94 - Day 101

5 - 12 May 2013

You wake up pretty early around here, I think it's because of the bloody heat! You can't possibly sleep when it's 30 degrees inside the van by 9am!

This week we have had time to look around Broome and see what is around...markets on Sundays ...any place that has markets is fine by me! Would have only been about 15 stalls with food, clothes, tours and pearl jewellery. Was a nice walk around but not too much we were interested in.

The town centre of Broome is pretty small just your regular shops, bakery, take aways, cafes and Coles. A little up the road is a bigger shopping centre with woolworths and target etc and then there is an industrial area with bunnings, arb, clark rubber etc so pretty much have all bases covered in the shop department.

They also had an expo on the weekend which was sort of like a camping boating fishing employment and business expo all rolled into one. Costa the crazy Gardner was there guest speaking and Scott Hillier talking about barramundi fishing. It was quite interesting but it was so hot, we definitely have not become climatised to this heat yet! Wow the sun packs a punch!

Checked out the beach and camel rides which we will do one of these days. We are lucky we have a pool where we are staying so we have been in it everyday for a swim to cool off from the heat!

Joel started his new job on Tuesday and lasted till Thursday before he politely told them it wasn't the job for him. Was quite a few things he didn't like, they didn't wear safety things like a mask when welding, paint was stored under welding tables, it was the same work he was doing on the coast, and no one knew what they were doing! There was a few other jobs he could apply for so we went to work on these and in the meantime a 2 week job came up in Derby. Called them on Thursday and they asked if he could start now! So Thursday we spent organising everything and Joel left for Derby on Friday morning. Derby is about 3 hours from Broome, which means we now have 14 days apart while I stay in Broome and Joel goes to work his bum off in Derby. This is a great opportunity for him, it is a mining services company that builds equipment and repairs equipment for mining companies. This is what he has wanted to try for a long time so it couldn't be missed....the money is really good too!

After a couple of days he is going ok, he is learning a lot, there is a couple of good guys working there (a bit rough but not too bad) and its not hard work so 2 weeks will fly by anyway and who knows where it may lead. If nothing else it will look great on his résumé.

I haven't had much luck with work, have applied for some but haven't been actively looking because we still haven't decided if we are staying here for a long period or not. A lot of hospitality work around which I have not done any of and they all want experience. I was talking to my sister the other day and she told me I should just add on my résumé that our family owned a takeaway shop and I worked in there. They don't need to know that I was 7 when we owned that shop right?! And the only thing I remember doing in that shop is stealing freckles from the lolly section and I had to hide them in my cheeks so mum and dad didn't know I was eating them! Haha I told mum this story and she said oh great no wonder the shop didn't work out, you were eating all the profits! Haha needless to say I have decided to leave this off my résumé!

I am filling my days with tv, exercise, swims in the pool, sewing some dresses, Internet and keeping this van spotless. I know I sound busy but really all this takes about an hour so I still have lots of spare time. I actually think I might be losing it because I just watched the same infomercial for about 30 mins and I now really think Soupmate Pro would be a necessary addition to my kitchen! Hahahahaha

We also did a few modifications to our camp set up to allow us more space to sit outside of the van and to give us more room to store things from the car etc while we are here. We got some shade cloth to put around the awning that comes off the back of the van. And we bought a gazebo with some walls which is great as we can sit outside for dinner etc without sitting on top of each other, and in this heat sometimes the van is just too hot to sit in!

My topics of conversation have definitely decreased so I am cutting the blogs back to weekly or possibly even monthly while we are back into a normal routine. Hoping to still explore on the weekends so if there's something to write about, I will, otherwise please feel free to ask us anything or send us emails to catch up while we aren't blogging.

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 93

4 May 2013

Early morning start to get our road trip of 850kms over and done with! Headed out of Dampier and through Karratha, another strange town. It is just bizarre that into this area and out of this area is quite literally nothing but red dirt and shrubs and then all of a sudden there is a maccas and Kmart?! What the! Sort of like when you go overseas and see maccas, it looks weird but you are super glad to see something familiar! Haha

On the way out of this area are a few towns to see, not with much more than a servo and few houses but still something to look at. Roeburne turned up a great sign at their servo...

Port headland was another big mining business town, like a town full of roadworks would be how I describe it and the trucks my god never seen so many trucks in one place. The trucks here far outway the cars on the road! The termite mounds with hard hats stuck to them was another weird and interesting sight!

Between port headland and broome there is a lot of kms but only two roadhouses and that's it! So we pretty much just put pedal to the metal and powered on. A lot of music playlists were used in this road trip!

We stopped at one of the roadhouses for fuel and Joel met a fellow dmax owner. I left to pay for fuel and when I came back Joel was pretty quick to end the conversation with this guy so we hopped in car and left. As we were driving out Joel is just shaking his head and going what a wanker, what a dickhead....so of course I said why....Joel's reply..."this joker just told me that he got bogged in the sand in Broome, so I asked him if he let his tyres down and he said....oh no that's just a myth, that doesn't actually work!" Well this did not go down well with Joel, I then got the scientifics about why letting your tyres down works and trust me he didn't have to convince me, I have seen it with my own eyes on many occasions when Joel decides to go sand and doesn't let the tyres down till he's bogged, tyres down and bang out of the bog. I think at this point Joel was ashamed that these are the kind of people driving dmax's out there! We came to the conclusion that we are sure this guy is in the minority! Haha

Finally made it to broome, drove from 7am to 5pm! Pulled into our caravan park and set up for a good nights sleep!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 92

3 May 2013

Today we packed up and left Exmouth. We were ready for a long haul of 500+kms to Dampier. It has been a while since we have done big k's like this so will be interesting to see how we go.

Well again there is not much between towns here. We saw 5 emus, 6 sheep, 8.5m wide load, few cars, lots of road trains with 3+ trailers and not much else. The heat was hovering between 39-41 degrees for most of the trip and by the time we got to Dampier we were well and truly into the 40's! As we drove into Dampier it goes from nothing but bushland to suddenly all these new roads and infrastructure (built by mines) with traffic lights and in the distance you can see huge estates of brand new houses. Look to the right and there are huge train lines and trains as long as the eye can see, to the left salt lakes where Dampier salt is produced.

Just before you head into the town of Dampier there is an information bay where Red Dog's statue can be found. We loved this movie and in return fell in love with the red dog story so we were really looking forward to seeing this.

Off to the caravan park in Dampier for the night. We were buggered and decided to head out to get dinner. Everything in this town is covered with a nice layer of red dust so everything looks dirty! We happened to run into an IGA so decided to just get something to make from here. Everything was relatively expensive here as expected and every person we saw was wearing a yellow or orange shirt! Whole different world here, you would not believe unless you had seen it!

Back to camp and bought a few red dog souvenirs from the caretaker including a stubby cooler with a bit of the story. Also while we were here, a lady that had actually sat next to red dog on the bus all those years ago was staying here too! I can't remember in the movie whether this happens or not but the story they tell here is that once he lost his second owner he used to hitch rides with people from Perth to Broome and unfortunately they believe someone poisoned him and that's why he died! It's like sammy the seal all over again! I mean really don't people have a heart?

Anyway had a long chat to some Victorians who travel around each year and then headed for an early night. We had 850kms to cover tomorrow to make it to Broome!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 91

2 May 2013

Today we had already decided to head off early to try and beat the heat of the sun to do a walk around the Mandu Mandu Gorge. The days here have been consistently 34 degrees or over which makes for beautiful snorkelling and swimming weather but not much out of the water!

The gorge is only just up the road from where we are camped and then it's a 3km loop walk around the gorge and when I say around I mean around! Obviously at the moment there is no water in this gorge so you first walk through all the river rocks of where the river should be and then there is a steep climb to get to the top of the gorge, you then walk along the top and steep climb down and then up the other side of the gorge, along the top and then back down to the car park. It was a challenging walk actually, like climbing up and down things for some reason, was fun.

That out of the way, we wanted to check out some of the other bays here for snorkelling. Along this NP road would be about 15 different beaches, bays, gorges or camp areas that you can go in and check out. Today we went to Oyster Bay which looked spectacular for snorkelling, however it was low tide and the coral is too shallow, you end up harming the coral if you try and snorkel so you have to snorkel on high tide. Off to Turquoise Bay which is the most popular and most talked about. We know why now, beautiful spot and the snorkelling was much better as current wasn't as strong and didn't have to swim quite as far to see things. There are two snorkels here, the drift loop which was amazing, so much coral in all different colours and fish everywhere, saw some eel fish looking things with really long noses on them, weird looking things! And then you can walk around the other side of the bay and just do your own snorkel around, there wasn't quite so much to see under the water here but such a fantastic location for swimming, just looked like a Fiji brochure or something, the water so clear and so many different shades of blue/green! Pictures just don't do it justice!

Back to camp for lunch and this is where we have stayed all arvo. Very windy here the last couple of days, which is probably good to ease the heat but can get a bit annoying too!

Flathead and homemade chips for dinner tonight.

Off to Red Dog statue tomorrow! Yay!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 90

1 May 2013

I can't believe it's May, I am going to say that at the start of every month but seriously...May...the fifth month?! What the!

Today we were off to explore Exmouth a little bit and Joel was excited as now he has a job he wanted to spend some money on a flight over the Ningaloo reef on a micro light!

First stop visitor information centre, not open....haha we were a little to keen! So decided to have a look around and well theres not too much to exmouth, it has few necessary shops, lots of new expensive houses (i think this is where miners live from Karratha cuz the airport is just down the road from here.)

Visitor centre open and we head in to book some tours. Unfortunately micro lights are not going at the moment and we will be gone by the time they start again! Joel was very disappointed to say the least! So decided to book a boat tour on the Yardie Creek to check out the gorge instead. The tour wasn't until 12.30 so headed to the marina and decided to have a bit of a fish before we went back to the NP.

Back to NP and as far as you can go south in the NP is where Yardie Creek is situated. It is just a small little creek surrounded by huge red gorges. This creek backs onto the Yardie Beach and does occasionally opens up to the beach to let more salt water in, however it is predominately fresh water.

I decided to head to the loo before we went on the tour and just as I was heading into the toilet I heard a bit of a bang followed by crushing metal, couldn't really see what it was so proceeded to the loo. Came out of the loo and Joel was over helping two girls at a ford station wagon. As I got closer I realised they had just crashed into some little barriers that separate the parking bays. They were English and had rented the car in Perth and were just having a look round here than heading back to drop the car off! Oops! The driver was in shock I think as she wasn't saying much! Joel has everything in his tool boxes so headed back to get a hammer, gaff tape and some zip ties! While he was at his truck he ran into a guy we had met at Coral Bay, and what are the chances....he was a panelbeater! So Joel let him take it from here...and just assisted in taping the front bumper back to the side of the car! Poor girls, we felt so sorry for them! And worse we asked them do you know what the excess is for this car and she was like Ahh no one ever said anything about excess or insurance when I rented it, so we have a awful feeling they may be up for a bit of money when they get back to Perth!

By this time it was just the time our tour started so left them with it. There are two little boats that run up and down the creek, they are the only motorised boats allowed in the creek however you can kayak or swim in here if you want. After the stories about the leeches in there I wasn't so keen to swim. The tour guide has lived in the area for 48 years so he was very knowledgable and it was a lovely tranquil boat ride accompanied with rock wallabies, ospreys, nests and other bird life. It was so relaxing that after we got off the boat we were both ready for a nanna nap! Haha

We ended up driving back to camp and having some lunch and then finished the day off with another snorkel.

Carly & Joel

 

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