October 31

As you may have gathered by now, we have been out of any communication areas, heavenly, no mobiles working, no net access, just us and nature and a few other intrepid travelers. Today we are having a 4x4 driving day. There are a couple of places close by which we had to visit. The first is the Blow Holes at Thunder Bay, I have never seen a blow hole before so am full of anticipation as to what we will find. Now this area we are in as I mentioned is for 4x4 vehicles only, very sandy one vehicle width sized tracks so down with the tyre pressure again to make Winston's feet all soft and squyidgy giving us a wider surface area so we don't get bogged down. Driving at around 20 to 30 kph this was going to be a long drive in time but not too far in distance, a round trip of around 100 km. On entering this area was a big warning sign, now this sounds like fun, something to get the heart beating faster, a natural theme park

Is this for illegal immigrant watching I wonder!!!

A very deep noisy blow hole.  I am too chicken to get
closer and see to the bottom :)

 Listen to the sound of the air gushing out of this wee hole.

Coastline at Thunder Bay

Time to move on to our next location 'Steep Point' the most westerly point of mainland Australia. Last year we did the most easterly point at Byron Bay so this is just to say - been there, done that. The scenery is spectacular, sandy dunes, turquoise inlets on the right and the deep blue of the Indian Ocean on the left, which cliff tops full of shells and old coral which were pushed up from the sea bed many moons ago with 100 foot sheer drops to the ocean. I don't like heights so am not courageous enough to get too close to the edge and peer over.

Alan kept playing with his sausage, now, now, behave, I am guessing you have the wrong sausage in your minds. This particular sausage was one from a batch we cooked up the other day. I throughly enjoyed my sausage lol but Alan decided to teach his some acrobatic tricks, alas it missed the landing net and ended up in the sand. A quick bend down under Winston's tummy and turn on his tap from the water tank, a light wash of Alan's sausage then down it went, into his tummy before it could get up to any other mischief.  While Alan was playing with his sausage I discovered there is a visitors book here tucked away in a metal container, a must to sign.

Time to head home, and woopie, I am the driver. It is a very long time since I have done any 4x4 driving, back in Kenya days down Lunatic Lane where we lived which was all murram (red weathered rock/sand which when mixed with water becomes very sticky gluey gunge). Alan has been requested to be very patient with me and offer advice instead of leaving me up to finding out for myself once stuck!!!!! I have to be honest here, this 4x4 area is not bad, not like the sand dunes and subkah in the KSA but still a learning curve for me. All was going just fine and I was starting to get the hang of Winston's ways when low and behold - traffic. Two cars heading towards me down the one vehicle wide track. Now an experienced driver would not be phased in the least but I am inexperienced and my ticker was doing a dance. One would hope when seeing a female at the wheel that it would be safer to pull off the road but the two male drives didn't budge, leaving it to me to take Winston up the bank to the left at what felt like a ridiculously topple over angle to me. I got half way up and decided to stop, they could climb the bank at their side a bit and squeeze past. Not likely, the first driver got through without having to leave the track but the second driver (also in a Britz vehicle) got to the side of me and then told me to move forward. Hells bells, I was so sure I was either going to topple over onto him or slide into him, I promise, there was only about 8 inches between our vehicles at the closest point with me still at a precarious angle. It would be just my luck to be the driver who was moving when the two Britz vehicles decided to kiss each other. Needless to say, I made it with sweaty palms and a ticker beating far faster than it should to be comfortable. 'Alan - Light me a cigarette' are my final words on this subject. I continued to drive to the outskirts of the park, another 45 minutes or so then handed the wheel back to Alan for the drive home and a glass of delicious red wine (I know I am not a wine drinker but this one we have found is totally scrummy - a bit of advertising here, it is called De Borrtoli Premium Syrah Dolce).

Tonight we do end with a sunset photo thanks to Alan who went walk about to catch the light of the dying sun reflecting off the clouds which are sitting out to sea.