Day 71 – 29th July – Kalumburu

Dave put in a monster effort today.  He drove for four hours on a heavily corrugated, washed out track.  In those four hours we covered 200km… it was slow going.  On a positive note, we managed to finish our second audio book in that time… the kids are now well and truly familiar with the Disc World (Terry Pratchett’s Disc World series… geek stuff).

Every now and then the monotony of the corrugations was broken by a creek crossing… this was a particularly nice one…

We made it to Kalumburu early in the afternoon… and what a pleasant surprise… they have a real supermarket with fresh fruit and veges and fresh milk!  Happy days!  Bad news is, nowhere to get a gas bottle filled… things are looking grim on the gas front…

We paid our $50 for a permit to be on Aboriginal land (for those that don’t know, Kalumburu is an Aboriginal community), stocked up on some food then headed 16km north of town to a seaside camp at McGowan Island.  What a gorgeous spot… This photo is for my Dad… our camp is set up right next to a mango tree… 

Here’s a funny story for you… as we checked in the guy told us about a couple of resident emus.  One of them is quite friendly and will ‘sit’ on demand and enjoy a scratch.  As we were setting up camp the kids took off to find the aforementioned emus… Next minute I heard a blood-curdling scream that went on and on and on… I went charging through the camp to see Megan running, screaming her head off, with an emu chasing close behind… Apparently she was curious and so got up close and personal.  What she didn’t count on was the emu being just as curious about her.  I think he moved in to get a closer look or was looking for some attention… anyhow, she backed away but he followed.  She got spooked so turned and ran, screaming as she went.  What do you think the emu did?  He thought, “Woohoo, someone to play with and chase….”.  She was never in any danger, so it’s OK that we spent the rest of the afternoon making fun of her escapades…

We did manage to find some more sedate animals… a couple of pet pigs.  The electric fence was the insurance that we didn’t have another ‘incident’… 

A quick explore around the campsite… these rocks are about as close to the water as we can get… After weeks and weeks of being inland, we finally get to the beach and between the crocodiles and the resident tiger shark, there ain’t no swimming here… 

Another holiday sunset… here’s the view from where I sit at our camper.  

To top it all off, a lady came past sprouting something about the International Space Station due to pass overhead at 5.56pm.  So, half the camp gathered out on the beach and with a cloudless, just past sunset sky, we watched the Space Station whiz overhead… so cool…