Travel – Page 2 – Kevins Adventures in Life and IT

The Gibb

Today we reached the Gibb River Road. Two years of planning (somewhat weakly as my better half says), dreaming, and reading as much as we could get our hands on. We left Broome, and headed to Derby for a refuel and then a 5km backtrack to the start of the Gibb.

And its just another bitchumen road. What the hell has gone wrong!

Well it is for the first 50km. Then the gravel starts. And it steadily gets harder. Here we go, it’s getting fun. After more roadworks, they seem to have cursed this trip, we get to Tunnel Gorge. This is a naturally occurring tunnel, formed by water over the centuries that goes for about 750m. The creek that has formed it still runs through it, providing a rare chance to walk a tunnel that has a creek and bats flying through it.

Continue reading “The Gibb”

Broome

Broome is a pretty spectacular place. We got into Broome just after lunch and managed to get a start on the normal things in life like washing and cleaning. The miracle of indoor plumbing was not lost on any of us.

Once the basics were sorted out we went out to Cable Beach Club and the Sunset Bar for one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever seen. There were no tables left when we arrived at 4, we got lucky and ended up sharing one with another couple. We had dinner at Divers Bar just down the road and ended up having a relatively early night as we were all a bit tired from the previous week.

The next night was a bit of a bar crawl starting at Matsos, and ending at Divers, with the obligatory photo of me in front of the only Irish Bar in town, called Captain Murphy. Unfortunately there wasn’t any Murphys on tap, so it was a quick pint of Guinness. Continue reading “Broome”

80 Mile Beach

First off, I don’t know how long the beach actually is, wikipedia claims it is 140 miles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Mile_Beach.

I do know it is stunning and that it is the only time in my life that I think I’ll have access to as much beach as this with no one else present.

The reason why – the drive to get here. It was horrendous. We left Karijini, refueled at Port Hedland, and then turned off at the sign for the caravan park, before taking what I can only describe as the “wrongest” turn on the trip so far. We’ve spent hours backtracking across a station to get here, all of the roads appear to be unused for a significant period of time, and the fields of kangaroos and cattle don’t appear to know what to make of us in our trucks. Given the chance though I’d do it all again. This place is stunning, and we really are spoilt in WA with our choice of beaches, this appears to be one of the best. Continue reading “80 Mile Beach”

Kimberleys Food Prep

The biggest problem that I’m hoping to face on this trip is food. The reality of three and a half weeks on the road with a week between major towns means that a bit of planning is needed. To this end I’ve grabbed some steaks, snags, and burgers from Harvey Beef and put them into vacuum sealed bags. This should maximise space and keep everything for as long as possible.

As well as this I’ve packed some Weet Bix and dairy products for breakfast and snacks, and most importantly the milk will help with my Nespresso fix in the morning.

Lunch will be cold cuts, antipasto, and sandwiches on travel days, to be honest anything I can eat whilst driving.

I’m hoping to catch some fish, however given my complete lack of ability so far I’m putting this into the “it might happen, but just in case” basket. To help here I have a couple of rods and reels, some tackle kits, and a filleting kit. If anything is caught the vacuum sealer and freezer will help to keep it as fresh as possible, for as long as possible.

Add some junk food to this and I’m good to go.

Karijini

We’ve spent the last few days in Karijini National Park enjoying walks, climbs, and the gorges there.

On the day of arrival we ended up sleeping in the overflow day parking lot as this was the first weekend of school holidays. Whilst there was barely enough room to swing a cat between campsites, this has worked out in my favour as a sparky was in the camp opposite and came over when he saw me fiddling with my dual battery setup. More on this in a separate post, needless to say it worked out extremely well for me, with about an hour of free work. Continue reading “Karijini”