Katherine @ Broome

Apparently 10 years ago I was in hospital awaiting my second baby's arrival and now we are in Broome with four children. This morning we have celebrated Emily's 10th birthday with pancakes for breakfast.
Breakfast was closely followed by lots of running under the sprinkler- a rare treat for this generation! They were drenched before they realised how wet they were.
We let Emily choose the menu and activities for the day. So a trip to the pool this morning was ordered... Done.
So here I sit stitching my insane quilt while the children swim and Bruce has gone into town in the car in search of an auto electrician and a birthday cake.

The next thing on the birthday agenda is pizza for lunch (under the caravan grill) and to the beach in the afternoon/evening for swimming and fish and chips on the beach. What a special birthday it will be for a very special girl!!

Joshua @ Barn Hill Station

Day 37:
We arrived here on Saturday just after lunch. We are staying on a 450,000 acre cattle station with 6000 head of Braham cattle. We went to a market on the bowling green on Sunday morning. Mum bought a reddish hat for Abby and Emily bought a purple one for her. We also bought some very crusty white bread. We had some for lunch. For dinner we went to a three course meal made from the local cows at the bowling green with 250 other people. Oliver went to sleep under the table (he's been sick) but asked us to wake him up when the food came. There was also a band playing but unfortunately I didn't know any of the songs. Mum and Dad says they were aimimg their choices to the over 65's. Who is Elvis anyway?!? Monday morning we went down to the beach and found a rock cave with two story's. We also found lots of rock pools and pink shells. Western Australian beaches seem to be much more rocky than we are uses to on the other side of Australia.

Coloured rocks and Gorges...

Rocks of every colour and exploring on foot has been the highlight of the last couple of days.
We have really enjoyed the walks exploring the area. A lot of the walks have big climbs up and down large rock steps. Abigail was our walk leader (there has been much discussion abut pacing ourselves with the slowest walker) to Fern Pool yesterday which is in Dale Gorge. Some of the steps on the track were taller than her legs but she was a real trouper. Once down in the gorge we discovered a whole new world of swampy, heavily rooted trees and ferns growing.
The girls stripped off for swim but the combination of cold water and small black fish meant they didn't end up getting wet. Emily did have fun climbing one of the trees on the gorge floor.
We went and visited Mt Bruce yesterday but didn't do the climb. It is W.A.'s second highest peak but at 1235m was really not that impressive -we made sure we got a Bruce photo.
Today we are heading north toward Port Headland. Josh and Bruce both have head colds and feel a little miserable, so we will take it slowly and see where we end up tonight.

Red dirt @ Karijini

We are camped in Karijini National Park and our car, caravan and feet all show the red colour of the area. It is amazing how the landscape has changed now we have left the coast. I must say I have been comforted by the presence of trees once again.
We arrived to discover that the plug off our water tank had broken off ( a big rock?) and we had no water. We have a couple of containers to keep us going for now. Bruce will head into Tom Price this morning to find a replacement part and publish this.
We went exploring yesterday and walked to Weana Gorge. It was impressive and very deep! The colours are magnificent!!
The children were not satisfied with seeing gorges from above so we found a walk down to the bottom to the water. It didn't take long for shoes and socks to come off and the wading to begin.
Abigail slipped over... 3 times and was very stoic, especially as she walked back up the gorge in only her underwear.

Katherine in Exmouth

It has been a wonderful week of perfect weather, beautiful surroundings and new experiences. We camped at Kurrajong bush camp in the Cape Range NP. What a spot- if you are ever up this way it's worth booking into sites 2,3 or 4 (see below for photo of site and our van in the middle).
We walked into Yardie Creek Gorge, spotting bats, kangaroos, rock wallabies and water birds. The view from the top and the echo was spectacular!! From there we headed up the coast to Oyster Stacks at high tide. Here you enter the water over the rocks and immediately are in the world of coral and bright coloured fish. Spectacular.

The fishing charter that Bruce and Josh went on involved a 3-4m swell, lots of near catches and a few large Spanish Mackeral and Barracouda. We ate well that day on the freshest of fresh fish.
Bruce had a birthday and he and Oliver caught a fish from the beach that day to celebrate. Thank-you Spangled Emperor, you made his day.
Oliver is enjoying fishing- look at the shark he's got in the photo below- he wished he caught it!
Yesterday we went out on the reef in a glass bottom boat and snorkeled with thousands of fish and many types of coral. It was amazing.
Wild flowers are beginning to appear as we drive along which is a blessing as we are really early on in the season.
Tomorrow we head inland toward Karijini NP for a change in the scenery.

Emily@Exmouth

Today we have driven north from 14 mile beach past lots of termite mounds and arrived in Exmouth. We saw 1or 2 Emus and some kangaroos on the way.
Dad and Josh just booked onto a fishing charter for tomorrow. Hopefully they will catch some big fish!! They were told it's not worth catching anything smaller than 50cm, but really any fish would be accepted by these two because they haven't caught anything yet.
Off to Cape Range National Park now.

Joshua @ Warrooga Station, 14 mile beach

We are at 14 mile beach having lots of fun, despite the wind it's all ok. On the way in we saw three Emu's crossing the road in front of us. It was very bumpy and had to stop four times to flick a switch under the bonnet. We also saw lots of termite mounds. We drove 20km on the long sandy and very bunpy road in and since found out we could have taken a 10km route.
Dad tried fishing, unfortunately without success. Oliver and I made a big wall out of sand and then made a big hole behind to sit in. We built it fairly close to the water so that the waves would come right up to the big wall and try to break it.

Katherine@ Quobba station

We are staying at Quobba station just out of Carnarvon. It's a sheep station on the coast. The landscape is very rocky with very little beach to be seen. The blowholes at the waters edge nearby were a lot of fun to wait for and watch burst through.
This afternoon (after spending most of the morning changing a flat tyre) we headed to a local swimming and fishing spot.
We were planning on trying a little swimming until we were approached by a couple to say that they had seen a gummy shark 5 metres off shore the previous afternoon. The play very rapidly moved to the sand!!

Emily @ Monkey Mia

Today was full of new experiences. We got up really early to drive to Monkey Mia so we could see the dolphins being fed. They came so close to us that they were less than 2 meters away from our knees. After that amazing experience we walked down to the restaurant and ate an enormous brunch! Oliver ate until he was bursting. That was the first time we had seen him full!! And even Abby didn't say "I'm hungry" for the rest of the day!
Later in the afternoon we visited Francois Peron National Park for some sandy 4wd roads and a swim in the artesian spring. The homestead had all the old shearing sheds to look through. I loved seeing the kitchen and shearers quarters with all the old things in them.

Shark Bay

We arrived in Denham, Shark Bay yesterday afternoon in the rain and today we began exploring the area a little.
It was raining this morning so we headed to the local 'Ocean World' to be introduced to all the local marine life. I think Bruce and Josh enjoyed the tour of local catchable fish... still hoping to catch one of their own. The feeding of the sharks was a bit of fun and Emily definitely got the best photos there.
After lunch we headed out to Shell beach which is an amazing and unique piece of this country of ours. It is a 60km stretch of coast where a species of cockle thrive in the high salinity and have no predators. The beach is made of billions of tiny cockle shells 8-10 m deep!!
It was a lovely afternoon of building shell castles, getting wet in our clothes (we thought it would be too cold to swim) and lying about in the sun.
There is a definite focus on fishing in the area and today was the day to give the squid by the pier a go... The photo below is not a great one but does reflect the deflated hearts and hopes of the boys in our family.
Bruce has returned to the pier tonight to try again...

Josh leaving Kalbarri - Day 17

We have spent the last two days camped by the Murchison River. We have explored lots of gorges. We climbed down the Ross Graham Gorge and explored the river and lots of rocks. We climbed a huge cube shaped rock.
We also went to Natures Window which was a 700m rocky and rough walk down from the car park. Abigail also commented when we got to Nature's Window, "Where is Nature?" then she said "where does Nature have her breakfast?" that was when mum said that maybe Nature ate breakfast at the rock table she was sitting on.
We also gave the river Bream a good feed of prawns from our rods in the afternoon.