On the 28th of February, Daniela’s parents could pick up their rented campervan and wie met up at a shopping centre in the northern suburbs of Perth. We continued to the campsite at “Willowbrook Farm” close to Gingin, where we celebrated Daniela’s birthday with grilled sausages, salads and a self-made “crocodile cake” (Alemannia Café with Iring and a sugar crocodile). Unfortunately, the made-in-china-candles did not burn properly and Blei out with the slightest air breeze. Of the balloons produced in the same country, only few survived the inflation and none the next morning.

t is not exactly known how these columns were formed, most probably they originate from petrified tree trunks.

We spent the Night in Port Denison and the next day, we went to Kalbarri national park with interesting rock formations at thr coast. We spent the night some kilometres further south at Wagoe Campsite. The next day, we went snorkelling at the Blue Holes in Kalbarri Park where it is possible to go into shallow rock pools directly from the beach and observe colourful fish while standing – also Nora got to see a lot.
After a short drive we also hiked to the lookouts in the gorges of the Kalbarri-parkes before spending the next night at the 24h-rest area at Four Mile Pool on the highway.

With stopovers at the Overlander Roadhouse (Hans-Peter spent a night there a couple of years ago) and the Shell Beach close to Nanga Station wie went on to Denham with our Crocomobile and the campervan. On the campground, Nora and Fiona practised swimming and snorkelling. Because the Francois Peron Park is only accessible for 4WDs and unsuitable for the campervan, we split up the next day: Mechthild was sent to the Denham aquarium with Nora und Fiona, Hans-Peter drove to the park with Daniela and Markus. We Even persuaded him to drive the Crocomobile himself through the Sand – he probably would have loved to change his campervan for a 4WD and would have continued…From Cape Peron, we saw manta Rays, a little shark and a ray.

After a night with lots of flies next to a radio tower close to the high way, we went via Carnavaron to Point Quobba. The attractions there are on one hand the “Blowholes” – natural Rock holes where the water is squeezed through under pressure and Comedy up aus fountains – in the other hand the lagoon with ideal snorkelling conditions for the kids.

In Coral Bay wie did 2 boat trips to nearby Ningaloo Reef (coral reef): first a glass bottom boat tour with all of us. We drove directly over the corals and colurful fish, saw giant turtles and our children got the chance to feed the fish.
This tour turned out to be a private one because nobody else had booked in. We got the opportunity to learn a lot about this underwater world.
Markus und Daniela did the snorkelling tour afterwards: it was impressing to swim over the corals among the fish and turtles!

In Exmouth we discovered our car being next to another car with a Swiss number plate at the shopping centre. On the campsite we met the Buchmanns, a family touring Australia over the same time as we do (www.fambu5.ch).

We spent two nights at Ningaloo Caravan and Holiday Resort with a big pool and a water playground in town. The kids took the chance to play with Len, Suena und Zoe Buchmann. We continued to the Cape Range Park where we snorkelled at Turquoise Bay and at Oyster Stacks between lots of colourful fish and even Fiona got to see some fish through her goggles. One morning we hiked through Mandu Mandu Gorge.

We left the park towards the south via Yardie Creek in the early morning (exactly at 06.09h, when the tide was lowest), drove along the coast back to Coral Bay – the campervan had to take the tarred road via Exmouth and we met up again in heat, storm and flies at the Barradale 24h-rest area. The next day we went to Onslow, a salt mining town, without any important touristic attraction. Because one campground (Ocean View Caravan Park) was a major construction site, we accomodated at Discovery HP Onslow.

For the next 36 hours, the campervan and the Crocomobile separated :
unfortunately, the Millstream Chichester Park is only accessible on Travel roads which arerreichbar, die für das Mietmobil verboten sind. In Pannawonica we got the permit to drive on the road which is maintained by the mining company from Millstream Park to Karratha (permit is for free after watching a 20-min video). The western part of the park is like an oasis with its lakes and gorges compared to the surroundings, but we were the first visitors of the season and especially at night it was unbearably hot. Due to the temperatures and because not even the rangers had seen the condition of the walking tracks, we only did a short loop close to the visitor centre.

We met Daniela’s parents again at Dampier Transit Caravan Park where they had already spent the previous night. The campground is next to the freight harbour where you can observe the loading of the huge ore ships. The Pilbara is known to be the biggest ore mining region worldwide and with trains of several kilometers in lenght the ore is brought to the coast. The next day, we had by chance a private tour at the North West Shelf Visitor Centre, where we learned a lot about exploitation, drilling, processing and shipping of the gas.

In the afternoon, we visited the Aboriginal Art in der Deep Gorge in the recently founded Murujuga Park (Burrup Peninsula) before going shopping in Karratha.

On the further way towards the East, we visited the abandonned town Cossack (former important harbour and economical centre for pearls) with police station, post office and shops and then went snorkelling at Honneymoon Cove at Point Samson. The bay was nice, but compared to Nigaloo reef there were disappointingly few fish.

We spent the night at the Peawah-River and drove on to Port Hedland the next morning . There we tried to observe the loading of ore ships, unfortunately there a lots of fences and you cannot see a lot. We bought 3 additional plastic diesel jerry cans and a safety flag for the planned desert expedition (Canning-Stock-Route). The next stopover was the Karijini National Park. The campground at Dales Gorge is accessible on a tarred road, the rest of the park unfortunately only on gravel roads. The next morning, we squeezed into to Crocomobile to explore the western part of the park. The gorges are impressing, we walked the Weano Gorge with Oma and the kids and afterwards, Markus and Daniela walked through the more challenging Hancock Gorge. Here, in the lower part you can choose to climb over the rocks or to swim through the pools…Because Markus was carrying the backpack with the photo-camera, it was decided who walked and who climbed. At Kermit-pool, the backpack was deposed and also Markus refreseh by jumping into the water.

On the way back, we realized a clapping and grinding somewhere on our car. At the campsite, Markus removed one rear wheel and saw the origin of the noise. The covers of the brakes were torn and were now only attached to a single screw after all the bumpy roads. After taking them off, the noise was gone. The nett morning, a dingo visited us for breakfast.

In Newman wie brought these covers to a garage for welding and booked a tour for the Mount Whaleback Mine (iron ore mine ), which we found disappointing compared to the superpit-tour because we left the bus only at one viewing poinr far away from the mine and the guide only read their papers. But the amounts of ore which were mined were impressing: 14 trains, each one which 34200t iron ore in 259 wagons of a total length of 2.8km leave the mine each day towards the coast and fill up one ship.

At Gascoyne River next to the highway we had a farewell sausage and farewell beer from Opa.
The next day wie quickly met them in Meekatharra for an ice-cream and then turned off to Wiluna while “Oma und Opa” slowly had to go back to Perth via the goldfields.

In Wiluna we enquired about the condition of the planned desert track, the Canning Stock Route – we wanted to di the southern part up to Kunawaritji. At several official sites (police, shire, petrol station, campsite) we were told that there was an unusual amount of rain for the season in the last days and that nobody had done the Canning Stock Route so far in this season. This meant that it would be impossible ro get more concise infomation on the current condition of the track. They disadvised us to do it, dass the first groups were expected in mir-april. We saw huge puddles of mud next to the road around the town, we tried the first few hundred metres of the Canning Stock Route and indeed, again mud puddles (which wie could have passed easily) – but the question was how it would continue. We thought of the upcoming creek crossings, especially the Savory Creek at Well 19. We decided against trying it and for the moment we drove northwards on the North Road and later on the highway towards Newman.