Tuesday 11th March, 2008
Another moving day today as it is time to head off up the highway again, destination Coral Bay which is about 240 kilometres North of Carnarvon.
While 'One of Us' gently serenaded the air with sounds that were not silence, the 'Other One' rolled out of bed at an unhealthy hour of 6:34am (yeah.. alright.. don't forget we have daylight saving time and for an old bloke like me, that still seems like 5:34am!!!). With the packing up done at the frenzied pace of a snail in oil, and 'One of Us' finally rising and making herself even more beautiful, we eventually hit the road at about 8:11am and made our way back down the 130 kilometres out to the North West Highway at the Overlander Roadhouse.
From here we turned North once more and had a pretty uneventful 197 kilometre drive passed Wooramel Roadhouse and on to Carnarvon where we filled the Patrol and 5 twenty litre jerry cans with diesel at the Shell Coles Service Station. We made a real saving here as we had a Coles docket and it saved us $6.00.... Really noticeable when you fork out over $300.00 for the fuel purchased.
As our transformer for our 110 litre Waeco fridge freezer had decided to go on holiday, or (strike, not sure which, but we couldn't get any work out of it!) we made our way a kilometre of two in toward Carnarvon town site and located a business that sold Waeco products so were able to donate around $140.00 to his bank account and walked away with a replacement transformer. We have to admit he was very helpful and seemed extremely knowledgeable on the subject.
With fuel and the transformer on board, we then headed out of Carnarvon and made our way up the North West Highway for another 150 kilometres before turning off this Highway just past Minilya Roadhouse.
The next 80 kilometres traversed many rolling hills, particularly as we approached the final turn off to Coral Bay, however we were required to stop and wait for a couple of emus to stroll across the road in front of us at one stage as they obviously considered that they had right of way. They were not in a hurry, maybe they were just posing for the camera as we did manage to get a bit of video footage of them.
Our last 5 or 6 kilometres in to Coral Bay was a pleasant little drive and we found our way to the caravan park by about 3:10pm after traveling almost 600 kilometres for the day.
The rest of the afternoon was spent setting up the caravan and getting everything done to keep us comfortable for the next four days, including the free to air TV and Foxtel dish so 'One of Us' could watch her favourite Tuesday night TV program 'It Takes Two'.
Before the day had bid us goodbye, we also took a stroll down to the water just in front of the caravan park and cooled our heels (and the rest of us as well) in the beautiful ocean water, along with a good number of other swimmers and a fair number of North West Snapper nibbling at our toes (well around them anyway) and a couple of inquisitive small stingrays with very long tails.
The end of the day saw us sitting out with a cold drink in our hands, watching over the bay and enjoying the cooling breeze prior to a dinner of BBQ Pork chops and salad and wondering where life went wrong.... Oh yeah!!!! |