Exploring Exmouth, Thursday 11th Oct 2007

We drove to Yardy creek, the furthest point. After that we needed a 4x4. We walked along the beach and collected shells and looked at the coral sat on the beach. We left that alone and drove to the Oyster stacks, but the tourist info said we couldn't snorkel due to the high winds. On arrival find it was fine, but we'd missed the high tide, so couldn't snorkel the stacks. We did snorkel at Turquoise Bay. The coral was about 15 meters from the beach and we just loved it. We dumped in to the Canadian couple we met in Kununurra on the beach. We saw little blue fish, yellow parrot fish and other fish of lots of colours and sizes.
That night we ran out of gas and had to cook mince meat for taco's in a frying pan on the campsite BBQ :-) great times.

Again a lot of nothing, Wednesday 10th oct 2007

We had a long drive ahead of us. We had to get about 600km. We saw the NZ couple (from Dampier campsite) at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. They were heading to Tom Price. We were really happy to arrive in Exmouth, it looked great and we drove up to the lookout and light house. We watched the sun setting over the sea, shining gold's, red's and orange's. Hannah loved it.

Getting the raditor fixed, Tuesday, 9th Oct 2007

We dropped the van off at 8:30 and Victoria gave us a lift back to the campsite, after we all drove to point Samson. Nice not to drive ourselves. It was a windy day so we found a nice spot behind some rocks for shelter. The other guys went in the sea for a swim. We sunbathed and paddled in the sea. Hannah and I started playing boules with rocks the beach. We had lunch and the other two went for a walk, while we made our Xmas card photos of "Merry Xmas".

A lasy Monday 8th Oct 2007

We just chilled out, watched movies in the tv room, swam in the pool and our neighbours offered to take us shopping in their car and then asked us to go to Port Samson tomorrow. The place our radiator spung a leak and offered to pick us up from the garage when we took the van in. So really nice people.

So of to the beach with them tomorrow.

Endland V Australia rugby match, Saturday, 6th Oct 2007

Went for a walk/run with Hannah this morning, it was nice but the heat started early and theflies were out early too. Got talking to a NZ couple next to us and they filled us in on how NZ was better and cheaper than OZ. They had shipped their car over from NZ for $4000 for a couple of months and had to pay a deposit of $20,000. If they didn't have their car out of OZ by the time stated by the customs they would lose all their deposit. Madness!

We moved campsites and met a couple near us. A kiwi and a guy from france. They were watching the rugby that night and offered for us to join them England V Australia.

I took the van to a grassed area where all the local take their cars and stuff for sale. Spent the afternoon by the pool and then picked up the van later that evening.

Watched the rugby and England won. a really good match and half way through because its the middle of the night the sprinklers kicked in on the campsit e and we got a little wet, butits all for the cause. We decided not to watch the NZ V France game, as its was on at 02:30.

Dampier campsite, Friday 5th Oct 2007

A guy at the campsite next to us was playing his guitar for the evening. Just a nice time relaxing and listening to him play. We had a call about the van, our first. But they would like to see it in the next few days. We're not rushing our trip and left it with them that we'd be in Perth on the 20th-22nd Oct. Moving to a campsite in town, it has a swimming pool and its closer to the garage.

Another problem with the van, Thursday 4th Oct 2007

Making ur way along the coast towards Karratha, we stopeped at Roebourne and visited an old jail/prison. It was used until 1984 and was a stone building with 69 inmates and not mod-cons or even and inside toilet. The men we put to work on the land and roads. We walked in an a man was atlking to the reception about being one of the last inmates in 1984 on a driving offence. It was real hot and the old prison was nice to look around but I betit was bad to be there then. Visited an old town now a rebuilt tourist attraction called Cossack. It was a nice town, nice to see how it would have looked 150 years ago in this area. We drove to the lookout, which gave us 360' degree view of the whole area.

At Samsons Point we were going to drive further to Honeycomb bay and do some snorkelling, but we found a pin hole leak in the radiator. We drove to Karratha, the nearest big town to get it checked out. Feeling really down at this point...another thing to pay for.

We asked at a few places to have a look at the leak and they were saying it would be about 4-5 weeks before they could even look at it, thats not even to start repairs.

Finally found a garage and they quoted us $1000 and booked us in for Wednesday morning. We had no choice as the next big town was about 1800km south. So we're here for they time being. Checked into a small transit campsite in Dampier. We thouhgt about working in Karratha, but decided to leave it and still work in Perth. We made a for sale sign for the van today.