Last I wrote, we were stuck in Broome. We finally made it out on Friday, 6 March after becoming experts on river flood levels in the Kimberly due to the utter lack of information provided by WA Main Roads other than “road’s closed folks”.  Sigh. Before we left Broome, we enjoyed more time walking on the beach and relaxing by the pool. That was the life.

The (not so) Great Northern Highway officially opened on Thursday (our first attempt to leave was on Sunday so we ended up “stuck” for 5 extra days), but not until 11 am and only for part of the way we hoped to drive. The rest was open to high clearance 4wd vehicles only. Thus, we set out Friday morning when the whole road was back open with “only” 200mm (~8 inches) of water on the road in some spots.  We drove ~11 hours to Kununurra, trying to get as far as possible toward Uluru. The scenery along the drive was unexpectedly beautiful. There weren’t many opportunities to stop and take it in, but it made the 11 hours go by faster.

We had two more long driving days to get from Kununurra to Larrimah (7.5 hrs + 1.5 hr time change) and then Larrimah to Alice Springs (10 hrs). Larrimah is home to a mysterious disappearance/murder? (see Lost in Larrimah) and the Pink Panther Hotel. What could go wrong? Well… the room was quite possibly the worst of our trip, but the hotel manager and bartender were lovely as were the other guests who stopped by for drinks. The hotel manager showed us the resident zoo animals up close and personal. We got to see feeding time for the albino crocodile and the big crocodile. We also got to pet a wallaby, so cute!!

Our hotel in Alice Springs was a significant upgrade over the place in Larrimah, but the drive there wasn’t super interesting. Oh well.

We just needed to get through the night to head off on our journey to our actual destination for this super long portion of our drive – Uluru. We’d heard good things about Kings Canyon. It was a bit out of the way and we’d have to make it by 11 am to hike anything if the temperature was going to be higher than 36C (96.8F), but luckily the temp was only going up to 35C (95F) so we were free to hike when we arrived around 11:15 am. We did the Kings Canyon South Wall hike, a 4.8 km hike into the canyon that was gorgeous. It was a great way to break up the drive, and then we drove on to Yulara, a lodging specific town outside of Uluru where we setup camp for the last time.

Yulara is a strange phenomena. It only exists to provide lodging for people visiting Uluru. The whole town is run by a single company so there is every type of lodging from camping to luxury all at a premium price. The cheapest hotel room far exceeded the most we’d paid for any room  during our trip so we cheaped out and decided to camp. That was a mistake. We knew it was hot and we knew there would be flies, but did we? We did, but we didn’t know there would be other campers that were ruder than anywhere we’d stayed previously. They opened and closed car doors constantly, cooked dinner at 9:30 pm with pots clanging away, and the best was that one of the women enjoyed herself an awful lot in the middle of the night. Sheesh. We’d booked two nights of camping, but decided to bail on the second night and cough up the $260 to stay in the budgetest of motel options. It was the best decision ever. It was the most I’ve ever appreciated budget accommodation.

On our way to Kings Canyon/Uluru we finally invested in fly nets for our heads. The fly net proved to be worth its weight in gold in keeping the rampant flies a safe distance from our faces. I know I’ve rambled on trying to emphasize how bad the flies were in prior locations. If I had to rank the locations now that we’re (spoiler alert) back in Brisbane, I’d say Uluru, Blow Holes, Kalbari area. So you see, Uluru was. the. worse. Even with fly nets! Amazing. Jon and I are still seeing flies in our sleep.

On to the good parts… Uluru was gorgeous. It really is an amazing rock and it is totally worth going to see in the middle of nowhere. I just recommend going in the winter when it is cooler and there is supposedly a chance of fewer flies. In addition to Uluru, there is Kata Tjuta (aka “The Olgas”) which is also gorgeous. We loved hiking around both rock features and seeing the sunrise and sunset.

After Uluru we headed to Coober Pedy, a place known for being so hot and full of flies that most of the town is built into hills/underground. How could we not stop? It’s also considered by some to be the “opal capital of the world”. We were told 80% of the world’s opals come from mines in the area, but I couldn’t find an official reference for that fact in my one second google search. We enjoyed checking out the local museum and shopping for opals. The highlight though was staying underground, definitely worth a one night stop.

We were back to more long days of driving as our plan from Coober Pedy was to get to Melbourne to visit friends. We decided to get to Mildura, an 11 hr drive and into the same time zone as Melbourne so we’d have a short-ish drive the following day. We got up early to get going and managed to catch a lovely sunrise after a stop at our last “big thing”, the Big Winch.

We stopped to make sandwiches at a rest stop past Port Augusta and were so excited by the lack of flies we decided to eat outside. But, Australia got us again, this time with ants. Zillions of them started biting my feet before I even spread any peanut butter. Back to the car for lunch.

We got to Mildura with time to grab food from Coles to make dinner and had our first experience with empty shelves due to COVID-19. It was Thursday, 12 March and they were only out of toilet paper as far as we could tell. Prior to that we’d heard a lot on the news about panic buying, but it hadn’t made it to the bush yet so seeing that ramped up the nerves a bit.

The next day we drove to Melbourne after sleeping in for the first time in a while. We actually got to enjoy a lovely outdoor lunch in a park in a small town along the drive. The janitor was restocking toilet paper in the public bathroom and told me that he’d had to do it every day because people kept stealing it. Ugh.

We made a quick stop at Chadstone shopping mall to get a free replacement pair of Havaianas (flip flops) for Jon since his broke after only 5 months. I also looked for some cheap pants as we had packed for summer and it’s almost never summer weather in Melbourne, but I couldn’t find anything.  We stopped by an caught up with friends before heading to our other friends house to stay the weekend.

It was a wonderful weekend and our hosts were amazing as usual. We were lucky to catch up with lots of people and enjoyed tons of fabulous food and good beer for the first time in a while. Unfortunately, the pall of COVID-19 hung over the weekend as the government concern level and measures kept changing each day. When we were heading to Coober Pedy we were debating if we should take some more time and drive up the south coast of New South Wales, taking the long way back to Brisbane. This was an area we were keen to visit, but couldn’t on the way out due to the fires. Well… by the time we’d been in Melbourne for a day, it seemed the best thing to do would be to get back to Brisbane as quickly as possible.

We left early on Monday, 16 March,  and drove to Dubbo. We stopped at a couple of grocery stores along the way to see if smaller towns had more stock. We were lucky to stock up on some canned goods, but no stores had toilet paper. Given that we’d been away for 7 weeks, we weren’t exactly sure what we had left at home so that was a bit concerning.

The next day we got out of Dubbo early and made it back to Brisbane in time to hit Costco and Coles to stock up on fresh and frozen goods. No toilet paper at either place, but plenty of food to allow us to hunker down and we found we had 7 rolls of tp to buy us some time.

We’ve been back in Brisbane since Tuesday, 17 March (Happy St. Patrick’s Day!) and we’re laying low, staying inside except for walks and runs when the least people are out on the trail. I hope everyone out there is staying healthy and sane. If you need anyone to talk to let me know. I’ve got lots of free time 🙂

Jon managed to document a lot of our stops, almost up to present day, so now I’ll try to get the rest captured for posterity while we’re in one place for more than one night.

We arrived in Carnarvon from Kalbarri on Thursday, 20 Feb. The super friendly owner, Deano, had a sign setup to welcome us and gave us a tour of the grounds.

We checked out the town, got settled and then joined Deano and some other guests/friends of his for drinks. It was fun to get some local knowledge before heading in to make dinner and fall asleep watching Crocodile Dundee.

Carnarvon is the start of the “Coral Coast” and we’d read about an area with blow holes and a beach nearby called the aquarium for the good snorkeling so we decided to stop on our way out of town. The Quobba Blow Holes were super cool, but unfortunately the flies were out in force enjoying the view too. I assume it’s not always that bad which would make it a great place to hang out. Unfortunately, that was not the case for our visit so we quickly enjoyed watching the blow holes and checking out the interesting landscape before jumping back in the car with a few new fly friends.

Our next stop was Coral Bay. We’d thought about staying there, but lodging was scarce and more expensive than the not too much further Exmouth. We didn’t really understand why until we actually got there and discovered the town is basically one caravan park with all types of lodging along one street. It is incredibly gorgeous and luckily the flies hadn’t infiltrated so we enjoyed pb&js with a view and then rented snorkeling gear to drift snorkel down the beach along the Ningaloo Reef.

We made our way from Coral Bay to Exmouth for the night. Since we got in later than usual, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner and beers at one of two local breweries (!). The food and beer were delicious and a great way to cap off a great day.

The next day we repeated our snorkel adventure at a beach near Exmouth, Turquoise Bay, in the Cape Range National Park. Another day another gorgeous beach with even more interesting fish including a reef shark sighting. Wow.

Exmouth almost seemed too perfect to be true, 320 days of sun a year, super close to the Ningaloo Reef which you can snorkel straight off the shore, two local breweries, what’s the downside? Well… there isn’t much of one really, but they do get bad flies according to locals we talked to and it is normally much hotter there in summer, 40 C (100+ F) vs mid-30s C (mid-90s F) with low humidity while we we were there. Oh and it is definitely one of the most remote places I’ve ever been to so maybe I’ll keep looking for perfection. Sigh.

We also booked a snorkel trip on a boat in order to see some of the outer reef areas. Exmouth is famous for being a place where you can snorkel with whale sharks and humpback whales, but neither are in season right now. Instead, we enjoyed seeing several giant turtles and loads and loads of colorful fish, so much more plentiful in the depths. Unfortunately, my tendency to get seasick did not take a day off so I enjoyed as much as I could before heading back to wonderful dry land. One perk of it being off season is that we had the snorkel tour to ourselves so we got to dictate the duration and had no trouble getting back to shore when I needed it most! Our snorkel tour randomly included the use of seadoo scooter

which I thought was a silly gimmick but sure, why not. My skepticism was quickly silenced as the scooters were great! They made snorkeling out in choppy seas so easy, just hit a button and you could maneuver around with ease. Such fun too.

In our last afternoon in Exmouth, we decided to take Suz out for a spin to Shothole Canyon, at 13+ km drive along a 4WD track into a canyon. It was very scenic and very bumpy going over numerous dry creek beds. I can’t imagine what that place is like the one time of year when it rains.

And don’t worry, we hit the other local brewery one night while we were there and I am happy to report they are also making delicious beer.

I almost forgot to add random emus in town in the plus column for Exmouth.

Oh and Exmouth was supposed to have a giant prawn, but nothing remained except for the stand. They also have a giant whale shark, but given that it’s about the size of a real whale shark I don’t think it should count.

After having a wonderful time in Exmouth, we were loath to leave, but we wanted to get to Broome where we planned on staying put for 5 nights so we set out on the road again. We couldn’t make it to Broome in one day so we drove a long way and stopped in Port Hedland for the night. It is quite a busy town with all sorts of road trains and other enormous mining vehicles about. I was not sad to leave the next day to get out of the chaos and on to Broome.

We arrived in Broome on Tuesday, 25 Feb, and settled in for our longest stint in one place since our first stop in Coffs Harbour. We rented a one bedroom apartment for a steal and were thrilled that it included laundry facilities. Unlimited laundry after being on the road for over a month is a luxury beyond imagination so we started some immediately. We also enjoyed stocking up on groceries that require refrigeration. It’s the little things 🙂

Broome is home to the famously gorgeous Cable Beach with famously gorgeous sunsets. Our motel is short walk to the beach so we’ve enjoyed going every night to watch. Each night has been very different, always lovely.

Jon got to enjoy a round of golf with free greens fees being part of our motel booking. We also took care of other odds and ends around town, haircut, car servicing, passport applications and more. That’s all between time taking long walks on the beach, driving around to scenic spots, and lounging by or in the pool. Good stuff.

It had been a restorative time and got us ready to get back on the road. Unfortunately, ex-tropical cyclone Esther had different plans for us. We’d read all about it and the rain impacts along our planned journey, but nothing indicated the roads were too bad to get to our next stop so we set off on Sunday morning as planned.  We drove along and the areas with water over the road started growing more and more frequent until there was one that freaked me out a bit, but we got through that without problem. Then we drove up to another spot where the water covered the road for a long way, seemed pretty deep, and was moving very quickly. There are depth markers at all the potential floodways, but not always in spots that help and that was the case here. We stopped and watched as a van on the other side made the same decision to stop and then two big 4WD trucks went through. The fact that other vehicles made it through was great, but they were higher clearance and probably heavier and it looked like the water went over their tires so it didn’t really boost our confidence. We were also worried that things beyond would be worse and we were at least 100 km (60 mi) from the next town. So we decided to turn around and based on the radar showing lots more rain moving through and the road being officially closed the next day, I think we made a smart decision. We also decided to head all the way back to Broome despite having made it three hours out of town because the only other lodging option was a roadhouse with a motel in the middle of nowhere and we expected to have to stay somewhere at least two nights before trying again.

(Side note: both Jon and I frequently made fun of all the signs that just say “Floodway” along all the roads we’ve been on thinking it would easier just to tell people all the roads are potential floodways, but we learned the signs are right where the water is when it does flood so the signs are super helpful especially when the potential flooded area is not visible ahead of time. Oops, we were wrong to make fun.)

As I write this, I am sitting by the pool back at our motel, the lovely Blue Seas Resort in Broome. We enjoyed dinner out last night at the Divers Tavern as a treat for making a smart and safe decision and we’re enjoying a super lovely day today. I’ll never complain about more relaxing!! Which in fact, I now know I get one more day of as Jon just checked the available information and it appears that all the rivers are still rising so we’re going to stay put until at least Wednesday, 4 March.