Pilbara Trip - Part Three

By Andrew Tyler

Thursday April 19th - Karijini to Karratha (6 hours)

We got up this morning and started packing up. It was a shame to be leaving Karijini, but we had achieved all we wanted to and it was time to head off and see somewhere else. The original plan was to drive to Tom Price, then take the Hammersley Iron Rd, or Roebourne Witenoom Road to Millstream for a night, then onto Karratha. As we found out a couple of days earlier, it was still closed from the flooding, which meant we had to take the long way by going back out to the Great Northern Highway and up to the North West Coastal Hwy. This part of the trip took about 6 hours, and was a VERY boring drive, not much scenery at all.

I think the highlight of this leg was lunch at the Whim Creek Hotel, which is situated on the North West Coastal Highway about 2 hours east of Karratha. We had a great pub lunch, the owners of the hotel had a pet joey, which sat at the table with us while we ate, then when we left it was sitting eating with the owners.

Joey at Whim Creek Hotel

Reaching Karratha around 3 pm, we set up a basic camp, and headed off to have a look around town and get some shopping.

Friday April 20th - Dampier

We had a look around Dampier today, nice place (as is Karratha). We did some 4wding around this headland, it was great, had everything from sand, rocks to water crossings.

4WDing in Dampier

Once again, seing blue water next to those dark red rocks is really impressive.

Scenery

After a look at the North West Gas Shelf Facility, we headed off to Port Samson, which is about 30 kms east of Karratha. We stopped at the Port Samson Hotel for a lunch.

Port Samson Tavern

It had been pre-organised that the mrs would take the wheel from now on, so i washed down my steak my about 4 pints of beer (and a few roadies on the way back to Karratha).

That night we went to meet my brother's girlfriend, who had just started working at Karratha in one of the mining accomodation facilities. We got the seafood buffet for $25 each, great stuff.

After eating about $80 worth of seafood we headed back to camp for the night, as we wanted to get an early start to Carnarvon the next morning.

Saturday April 21st - Karratha to Carnarvon (7 hours)

We left Karratha around 8:30 (didnt get that early start we had hoped for). This was another uneventfull drive that seemed to drag on and on.
We didnt end up reaching Carnarvon till around 4pm, as we made a few stops on the way.
We set up camp.

Carnarvon Camp

We went out for a quick look around town, seems like the sort of place you only visit if you have a purpose, like fishing. For us, it was serving as a nights stopover before continuing to Kalbarri.

Carnarvon Sunset

Sunday April 22nd - Carnarvon to Kalbarri (5 hours)

Once again, another uneventfull drive saw us arriving in Kalbarri around 2pm. We set up camp again, and headed to the pub for a refreshing beer.

We spent 3 days in Kalbarri, was basically a bit of a rest before we headed home on the Wednesday morning. Just relaxed, ate out at the cafes and pub (had 2 seafood platters on consecutive nights), went fishing (don't ask) and generally lazed around.

Anyway, by the time we arrived home in Perth we had covered a total of 4500 kms (thats a LOT of Diesel). Was a great trip, already started thinking what we can do top it next time.