r ellenberger

Jobs, they suck. I'd rather travel, or opt out, which I have. Spent a few more days in Perth bumming around, looking for a job (half heartedly), exploring and enjoying some time in a building with electricity and running water. In my time in Perth I really enjoyed Fremantle; is a place I wouldn't mind living. Its like Redfern a little bit in its youth and energy but with a little more style; and yuppie thrown in to boot.  But I wasn't idle in Perth... I had been emailing a lady who I met on a website (sounds dodgy... helpx.net) who has a property/farm near the town of Denmark (about 500km south of Perth, right on the bottom of WA, http://www.karrakreach.com.au/). She was looking for people to come and help her build her house out of mud bricks. Did I mention opt out? So that's where I am now, staying for a month with 3 Taiwanese, 1 Brazilian, 1 Canadian and one Englishwoman. The deal is we work for 5 hours/6 days a week and she in...

Was a very cold and noisy night in the tent; big trucks would go past quite often and we were only 10 or so metres from the road. I'm in my sleeping bag which is rated to comfort 5 degrees, with another sheet around me and another sheet around the sleeping bag, and track pants/socks/a jacket on and I'm still freezing each night. I think the tents lack of a fly really let's the cold in; zero insulation. So anyway we woke up to the keys bring locked in the car; the piece of wire I usually keep wrapped around the spare wheel was gone after the new wheels I bought in Broome were put on. Que me with no glasses on and christelle searching for a piece of wire. Everyone esle aside from one van has pushed off from the stop but luckily the lady in the vam was nice enough to drive 7km to the closest town where she got us a piece of wire. 2 mins later and we were in... We did a quick oil change right there and then started the drive to the Pinnacles (not sure of the NP name). Was coo...

So Monday dawned bright and sunny, off to Tyrepower we got for a  repair (hopefully). Dropped the tyre off and then drove over to the  civic centre where I waited in a line for an hour so I could vote  (they are all rubbish), then over to the post office where hopefully  my rego sticker would be waiting. The guy behind the counter said  there was no mail for me and I was just about to have my mail  redirected to Perth when he said 'hold on let me check again' and what  do you know there it is. That done back to Tyrepower and the guy says  it's been repaired but because it's a bad puncture and it's on the  edge of the tyre I should use it at as a spare and that after 6months the steel reinforcements inside the wheel will start to rust and it  becomes a throw away item. Yay. More money to be spent, but at least  we are on the road again. We headed south and camped by the side of  the road again. The weather had turned nasty with...

Things didn't go to plan. After spending the night on the side of the road to Kennedy Range NP we continued on our way. The road on our map is marked as sealed but it turned out to be a hard packed clay road instead. Anyway after about 100km we hit something in the road, I didn't see what and neither did Christelle but we heard the bang and the next thing the car is slowing down and we have a flat. Changed the tyre but I wasn't game to head along the road and try my luck at the NP without a spare so we drove back to town (100km). Unluckily and as appears to be the way of things we arrived back in town at 1pm and everything was closed for the weekend. Yay. So we did nothing yesterday but walk around the town, check the beach out and yeah, do nothing. Today we went north 70km to check out a blowhole that was actually quite cool, water was shooting 10~15m into the air through this tiny hole. We also saw a humpacj whale not far away so...

I think this is where I left off... We spent another day at Ningaloo Reef/Campe Range NP doing some more snorkelling, more relaxing in the sun and a lot more being blasted by the wind. The next morning we drove out north back to Exmouth for more fuel and then we drove south towards Coral Bay. It sits on the southern side of Ningaloo Reef but it doesn't have direct access to the NP. We tchecked out the cost of the carvan parks and they both were expensive so we just had a shower and did some laundry (Which turned out to be impossible to dry as it had started pouring with  rain) then headed south again. We camped at a road side stop as usual and set up tent. The wind really blew in the night and it also rained quite a bit so we slept in (good excuse) to let the tent dry off. This morning we drove a further 200km south to Carnavron where I was hoping to vote in the federal elections and collect my rego sticker. First problem...

http://rellenberger.smugmug.com/Travel/Aus-Trip-NT-WA/13319785_w9J2n#968243753_HMcuX

Woke up and did the same thing in the morning as yesterday afternoon ie drive. Arrived in Exmouth around 11.30. Exmouth's attraction is it's the entry town to Ningaloo Reef and the national park. We went to the visitor centre im town to find out what the deal was with camping and it appeared there was no deal, the park was full. Furthermore there was no booking facility for the one hundred odd sites in the NP, it was first come first served at 8am at the ranger station outside the park. It didn't turn out so bad though as we went to a carvan park about 20km from the NP entrance and spent that arvo relaxing by a pool... much more holiday like. We planned to be up at 4 am the next mroning as we heard some people were illegally camping at the park entrance, but as it turned out my alarm (or rather my setting of the alarm) saw us up at 6am. We were 8th in the que outside the ranger station and as it turned out the first nine g...

On our third day in Karinji we headed to Mt Bruce for a 5km walk along western australia's second highest mountain. The views while not amazing were enjoyable and it allowed for a view of what's around in the Pilbara ie. Mines and yeah, nothing else. After 2.5km up Christelle decided she was I'll prepared for the extended walk version but I felt delirious and so I continued on to the full 9km walk to the summit (which now had 6.5 km remaining). After that we drove to the nearest town, Tom Price, (which is principally a mining town) where we did some food shopping, and as it was a Saturday, not much else. We went a little out of town to the shell petrol station only to find there was no diesel, eta some time that night. We were pretty much running on empty after 3 days in the NP so our options were limited. I went back into the service station and asked the girl if she knew anywhere where we could get a shower for cheap because after a. three days ...

From Inde Station we drove about 150 km to the entrance of Karijini NP. We already had a 4 week NP pass so we went straight to the visitor centre to get some info on what to check out. As usual the main highlights are walking through the gorges that are spread throughout the park. First and last for the day was Dales Gorge, then today it was Joffreys Gorge and Hancock Gorge, both intersepcted by lots of lookouts. The best for me was Joffreys Gorge, and infact out of all the gorges I've seen in aus i enjoyed it the most. In the day the temperatures have been really nice, sunny but not too hot, but last night the temperature got down to 5 degrees, apparently because we are camping on an elevated plateu, so we've rugged up with lots of layers for tonight. But so far I've really enjoyed Karinji NP.

I can't check what i last posted because of my limited connectivity so I'll just try and cover the things I can remember. Sunday was spent fixing the radio, doing the oil change and checking out a bit of Broome. We went to dinosaur fossils, walked around Chinatown and basically just burnt some time. On Monday, after dad contacted the RTA to confirm with them what needed to be done to renew the cars rego (which i had called them about when i was in Sydney, but then dad called and they told him a different story, then he called again and they said something different again) we went off to a mechanic to have the car inspected. As i had failed the inspection in Darwin for an oil leak at the turbo i bought some degreaser and cleaned the turbo and engine sump of dirt and oil. We were at the mechanics around 10 and he said he would fit us in some time that day, but we had to leave the car there. So we duly left the car there and then walked the 5 k's back to town. We ...

Sooo we camped the night by the side of the road and then the next morning went about sampling some more canyons. Had a swim in one of them which was nice, then more driving. Visited one place where 100m high cliffs were entirely made of dead corals, and then another place that had a 1 km walk in a cave complete with bats and wading through cold dirty water, so some interesting stuff. Late in the evening we crossed over off the Gibb River rd onto the main road that leads to Broome. Slept the night at a rest spot, then the next morning drove the rest of the way to Broome. Was nice and sunny when we arrived but later that evening the weather went crazy. First though we checked in to a caravan park for an unpowered site. All the backpackers got put together in the shit area where the toilets were filthy and the kitchen derelict. We checked out and found another caravan place further from town that was $1 cheaper and a million times nicer. Only issue is normally it's the c...