November 4

NOTE - It is now Nov 8 and we have just entered Meekatharra, heading south now on inland roads. I have a few moments to get this blog post uploaded while Alan gets some supplies in from the local supermarket.

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Well waking up this morning I was itching to know if the jellyfish tent had survived the night in one piece, blow me, it did. The young couple packed up early and were on their way to their destination while we were still contemplating sorting ourselves out and making a move too.

Onto Carnarvon (unlike Carnarvon on the west coast of Wales, there is no castle here). Now the thought of another town was not too enthralling but we needed a few more supplies which were not available in Denham yesterday, a ready made salad, and some precision screwdrivers to try and fix my small camera which has lost its capacity to zoom since it's ordeal back in Chicago Dunes. I was trying to get a picture of the sand blowing along a sand dune ridge but seem to only have achieved getting sand into the zoom lens area - it is still taking great pictures without zoom so not all is lost).

Carnarvon is a rather nice place, I could move here quite happily, not big, spacious, single story homes and a rather gentile feel about the place. Wow, I am being complimentary about human habitation for once . We found a Woolworths (supermarket chain) and went on a hunt for the ready made salad, that found the next challenge was the screwdrivers, easy too, two isles away. With no need to continue shopping we headed for the checkout. Now by the salad were some rather nice mandarine oranges and I had grabbed a bag of them. Oh dear, the lovely lady at the till face dropped when she saw them, she knew she was in for a problem as apparently their bar-code had not been entered in to scanning database. She tried scanning them on the off chance, no good, she tried again, still no good. Time to type the barcode in manually, that didn't work either, she adjusted her glasses brought the oranges a little closer and tried again, crap, still not recognised. Now I hate it when the customer at the front of the queue holds the traffic up so I said 'no worries, I will just leave them'. By now this was becoming a personal vendetta with the lovely lady and the customer behind me joined in, she picked up the oranges and read the bar-code out loud, still not recognised. Two more tries which failed and the oranges with put in my bag free of charge, I bet they are the best oranges we eat in a long time.

I had a thought, a mall would have a toilet with a toilet seat. This little luxury has not really been missed, in fact today it seemed more like a novelty trick, I had to investigate. Hurray, clean, smelling nice and hand wash too, what a relief all round. Now to grab a coffee and a big cream filled donut and head back to the car park where I will be able to upload all of the blog to date. Doing well here, but I think after Carnarvon we will be out of communication for a while.

Time to give Winston a drink and head off on another adventure. We headed up the coast to an area which is apparently legendary with surfers. Our first stop is some blow holes at Point Quobba. The main blowhole here spouts water about every 20 seconds so the blurb we have read on it says. This coastline is awesome, rugged, vicious, totally awe inspiring. Between Alan and I we have taken about 300 pictures in this location. It is going to be difficult choosing only a couple for the blog.

I apologise here, I thought it would be really neat to get this blowhole on video and quite happily became a film producer for a few moments. In the car later I realised I had turned the camera to portrait, it seemed obvious at the time to do this but my brain failed to acknowledge that to view the flipping thing one would have to turn their heads or their monitors/laptops 90 degrees. I apologise for the inconvenience but an going to upload it anyway.

Our next stop was Red Bluff where we camped for the night. So far we have only paid to camp in the Francois Peron Nationl Park but this is a private campsite and something we have tried to avoid. However, it is so well laid out and we had a location on top of the sand dunes with crashing waves beneath us and about half a mile from our neighbours so we still had the feeling of being on our own with nature. Now, I guess paying for this camp site has one benefit, we have another loo, with a loo seat and toilet paper, and to top that off even hand washing lotion has been provided. It is rather a posh outdoor loo, the walls are made of banana leaves, the door a piece of green mesh and there is no roof so you can sit and contemplate your next move while looking at the stars.

While sitting relaxing, watching the waves we saw a spurt of water in the distance, could this be a humpback whale? I managed one very quick shot while Alan set up the tripod. A bigger lens was attached to the camera but the whale had moved into the sun I could not catch it again. 20 minutes later I looked behind me and saw two kangaroos hopping around in the distance, about a mile away at a guess. I tried to capture them on film but could not get the focus. Sitting back down in my super comfy chair with drinks cooler in the arm I saw another spurt of water in the distance, another whale. More photos taken but too far away. Not long later another whale passed us by, much closer to shore but still too quick for me to get a really good picture but I will share a couple of pics (just for evidence sake) with you.

After all this excitement today and sunset time once again. Hope you like the choices. 

Winston's home for the night

A view of Winston's home taken from the beach down
below.

 Bye for now.