Kununurra to Karratha

 It's been a little while since updating, but we've done a lot since then, I can't believe it was only 2 weeks ago when we were at Derby. The trip has been getting progressively better every day since then.
 Hitting the coast again was definitely a big factor. I can't believe it but I had started to forget how good diving and spearfishing in clear water was. It's still a bit tricky this far up the coast (still big tides, even as low as Karratha) but it's been getting better as we go down.
 One thing I can't believe is there are apparently salt water croc's down this far south, and even as far as shark bay.
 I've been blatantly ignoring the warnings though and haven't seen any crocs. If you can survive diving around Darwin I'm guessing they aren't going to bother you this far south.

Trapped in the Derby Prison Boab. This was actually used to house aboriginal prisoners back in the day. There seem to be a few of these prison boabs up north. Probably not the best time to be an aboriginal in those days...

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Bus Buddies at Port Hedland - Can you guess which one we're driving? (It's not the size of the bus that counts, it's what you do with it)

Rent is way cheap in Port Hedland. Notice thats $500 a week for a room in a share house, not a whole house...




The first real taste of the west coast was when we stayed at a cattle station about 120Kms south of Broome, (Barne Hill Station) this place had a small reef coming off 80 mile beach which I kayaked and swam out to religiously over the two days we stayed there. I even managed to spear a little tusk fish for dinner which was nice.
 Also saw a very big olive sea snake one day which was very cool (couldn't get a photo though as I was spearfishing). These are meant to be quite aggressive for sea snakes but they seem very placid to me, this one didn't even look twice at me.

Barne Hill was a cool little campground, It had a really nice feel staying there. We met some new friends on the road (a Belgian couple who work in Belgian T.V, I'm pretty sure they are some sort of celebrities) and have run into them since so it will be good regularly catching up with some more people closer to our age. There was even a band playing from one of the local aboriginal communities who were surprisingly good.
 All in all we had a good stay there.

 

80 mile beach at Barne Hill Station

 We also headed over to Karijini national park where we ran into our Belgian friends again.
 In a lot of peoples opinions this is the best national park in Australia. I was very excited about getting to Karijini, and have been excited for a long time, but was a little underwhelmed after all the hype about it. It was a really nice national park, but because it is so accessible and has such easy walks it was full of the usual swathes of elderly four wheel drivers which was a bit annoying.
 It was pretty good though all the same. I'll let the photo's do the talking though.

 Dales Gorge Karijini

 Fern Pool Karijini

 Me at some chasm in Karijini

 Some kind of lizard in karijini

 Rachael traversing a chasm at Karijini

Wood pigeons in Karijini are weird.

 I can't really remember what we've been doing since Karijini, but we've spent the last 4 days at cleaverville beach near Karratha.
 This has been fantastic. There's no water or anything there, but there's an island nearby with great snorkelling. I took 2 trips out there on the inflatable kayak. The first time I went without Rachael (I was the guinea pig to test whether you could get out there easily with the strong winds) and saw heaps of fish. There were black tip reef sharks, other big sharks which I don't know what they are, heaps of sea turtles, kingfish trevally, and all sorts of reef fish. It was great. I took my speargun out though and not the camera, so no photos... On the way back in I also ran into a shark in really shallow water which was pretty cool. I tried to get a good photo but the camera wasn't working too well. The shark came right up to the kayak in the murky water, then realised how big it was and shot off really fast through the shallow water. It was very cool.
 
  The second time we headed out we both brought our cameras, but we must have put them in the housings in humid air, because they both fogged up really badly in this cold southern water and we couldn't get any good photos...

 Fish Guitar with two mangrove jacks caught at the island. Very tasty fish

 The paddle out to Dixon Island (about 2/3rds to go)

 The shark. It got a lot further out of the water, and came within a foot of the kayak. But the Olympus strikes again...

 Sturts Desert Pea on Dixon Island

Ornate Painted Crayfish were EVERYWHERE.

Crayfish and Mudcrab Dinner - We O.D'd on crustaceans at Cleaverville. Have to change to fish for a while

That is all. We're in Karratha now, which is just another mining town. We'll check out nearby dampier tomorrow though which looks nice. It is very nice being back in society with fresh water on tap.

as far as the lemon is concerned we've had a few regular issues. We headed out to a free camp north of Broome and the front left grease cap on the bearing blew again. We were driving on pretty heavy duty corrugations though so I can understand.

 What I can't understand though is how difficult it was to get the part. I rang almost every toyota dealer on the west coast and had no success. So then I rang Cairns where we got it last time and the dude there was all like 'we can't get that part' even after I told him I'd got it off them before.

 It took a lot of arguing to get the part. All that for a little bit of plastic...

 We've also had the water pump break on us (which I was waiting for... It never sounded too healthy) and the solar regulator stopped working (it was $12 on eBay, so I should have expected that...) Also the auto gas meter is now always saying it's full... (not sure how to fix that)

 Also after the bungle trip one of the chain tension adjusters on the rear wheel of the bike had come loose. This has caused the rear wheel to turn at a bit of an angle, which has resulted in the rear bearing getting a bit damaged and having a bit of play so I'll need to replace it soon...

 The usual dramas really, but nothing too expensive or which we can't handle.