Sunday, 19 May 2013

Tues 14th, Ballara to Ningaloo Station

We finally get the courage to brave the weather and go into Ningaloo Station two days late on our booking. Pack up and we are heading out a bit after 9am in the morning. Pick up a load of firewood which we carry on the front of the Modcon camper.

Take the Ningalo turnoff on the Exmouth Coral Bay road, let our tyres down to around 22psi, road is a bit corrugated but comfortable at about 50 to 60.

Get to Ningaloo Station and have to wait a while for the group ahead of us. Finally Jeff, Helen and ourselves go in to the caravan and get inducted by Phil. $35/head/week + $100 key deposit. We also have to hire an enclosed fire place for $10 to keep ash off the beach. We both have porta loos so we don't have to hire them.

We drive to Winderabandi Point over a moderately rough bush track and go through the locked gates and then try and find campsite 10 which is supposedly big enough for three groups. Can't find it, have to let tyres down a bit more in some soft sand. Give up and go walking, the campsite numbers are on buried tyres some of which are totally under sand. We find 10 it is on the beach whereas previous numbers have been in the sand dunes at the back. Why we have been given a single campsite which Phil says is big rather than three consecutive ones we can only put down to greed. We basically block each others view. Also the campsites are a lot closer to each other than we expected from the literature.

After a Couple of abortive placements we setup our camper trailers, the wind is still blowing a moderate 15+ knots, sand is blowing through everything. We wished we had now taken the time to setup the skirt along the bottom of the trailer. With the 10" sand pegs we've dug down to firm sand to give them a good anchor point.

The tropical roof on our camper is once again ripping off the velcro attachment in the cross breeze. We let it go. The remainder of the two campsites are OK in the wind.

It has been a cold day only reaching a maximum of around 19C. How can you get a cold northerly in the tropics? This is practically the same latitude as Mackay which I bet is a lot warmer.

We turn on the central heating (Weber BabyQ) and gather around it while it is cooking our marinated lamb roast which we picked up from the Exmouth butcher. Yummy roast with roast potato & pumpkin served with gravy and green peas.

Turn in early for the night.

 

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