October 30

I slept like a baby last night. Now why do we use that expression for a good night sleep, babies don't exactly sleep through the night without waking up for at least the first nine months. Oh well, lets just say I slept like a log, that sounds much better.

Breakfast sorted and Winston once again packed and ready for the road. Lots of tarmac today traveling up the North West Costal Highway towards Sharks Bay. After the second roadhouse it was a left turn onto the World Heritage Drive and time to explore the surroundings. We saw a sign for stromatolites, having not heard of these in school geography lessons we had to go and inspect this wonderous discovery. Now I could get all clever here and start telling you all about stromatolites but it far easier to give you the link and you can read about them from the experts!!!

 

The tracks in the next picture were made by wagon wheels when the area was a sheep farm many moons ago.  Because the stromatolites are so slow growing it be many many thousands of years before the damage can be repaired.

On our way again, up the peninsular to the left where  we have seen a sign for the 'Useless Loop' - just got to find out what is so useless about this road and it is not the tourist one, we will do that next.

 First to find a camping spot for the night. We checked out an area just north of Baba Head, a big open bay but judging by the landscape this place will flood when the tide comes in so time to turn tail and look elsewhere. About 20 km up the road and another turning to the right to be explored. This one heads to a place called Carrarang Station, it is certainly a well kept unsealed road. Ah, a sign, Private Property, Keep Out. Now earlier on we had seen a sign that we should report to the ranger in the area and let him/her know we were about, I guess this peninsular is quite remote with regard to tourist traffic. Not seeing any other signs we are assuming the ranger must be at Carrarange Station so have decided to ignore the Keep Out sign. Wow, how brilliant is this, we bumped into the owner of the land (not the ranger) and what a cracking bloke he is. His first words to us were not "can't you read, this is private property", but ' "are you looking for a place to rest up the night?" It turned out this guy has nine private beach coves which he rents out for a bit extra income to supplement his goat farming. Folks book up to six months in advance for the luxury of their own private cove but he was not busy at the moment and as we did not have a boat of fishing gear with us he refused to take any payment, even telling us to stay for a couple of nights.

Here he is showing us the way to our private beach residence for the next couple of nights.

There are still some very generous folks in this world who are not out to grab every penny possible. The stars have certainly shone on us tonight. Again no sunset to finish off as we are facing the wrong way but I leave you with some beautiful pictures of our home for the next night or two.