Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 72 - Wednesday July 20th 2016 - Carnarvon to Exmouth, Western Australia

The alarm went off at 06:00 (and this is meant to be a holiday). The idea behind the early morning was that we could get the four-hour drive to Exmouth over with and actually have some time in the town to explore and relax and take in whatever it had to offer.

We left the campsite at seven thirty making a brief stop for petrol before hitting the road.

For three hours or so of the journey the landscape did not change, it was more low bush and red soil with the occasional dead Skippy at the side of the road.

The last hour things did change a little, gone were the medium high bushes to be replaced by flat grass lands, meadows but these were littered with termite mounds constructed out of the red soil. They were literally everywhere, all different sizes and shapes protruding out of the grassy fields.

As we got closer to Exmouth wild sheep filled the fields. We can only presume that they were wild in the way that the Dartmoor ponies are wild. They are obviously attended to at some stage, their wool sheared, bathed to protect them from ticks and termites.

Just outside Exmouth was a huge Australian Air Force base and we were to go on and find out that the town was actually only built on the back of the U.S. military, explaining why there are still many mixed forces bases actually in Exmouth.

The town was born in the mid 1960’s at the height of the cold war with Russia and America and the Cuban missile crisis. The Americans had a blackspot in their ability to monitor radio transmissions and submarine movements by the Russians so they needed to build an antenna station and Exmouth was the site that was chosen and given to them by the Australian government.

At the far end of Exmouth on the headland stand thirteen narrow tall radio masts and a web of wires connecting them all. This is what the Americans built here to fix the blackspot and it is still used today as a listening post. The centre mast is actually taller that the Empire State building in New York but it doesn’t look it. The mast has nothing to scale it up against, its thin metal work lost in the sky so it has no real presence.

We arrived in Exmouth by 1130 and went straight to the campsite to check in. Exmouth is obviously a very popular destination for retired Aussies as there are about five campsites in town and all of them are completely full for the night so we were actually quite lucky to get a powered site. We had only booked it online the day before but when we read the sign at the visitor information centre that all campsites were full in the area. What you do when you arrive somewhere and there is no room at the inn I have no idea, I guess you just park up discreetly somewhere up a side road or a layby and hope that you get away with it even though there are signs everywhere here that tell you camping outside of campsites is not allowed.

So we knew where we would be sleeping for the night but we certainly did not want to connect up everything just yet, we had got up early to go and do something so that’s just what we did. First stop was the tourist information centre to see what they had going on. Online we had read about boat trips to see the coral reefs and sharks that lived out in the bay here. We over heard a couple in front of us in the queue who were paying over £200 each to go out on a boat trip. There was no way that we were going to pay that, it’s beyond extortionate so we left armed with a local map of the area and other highlights to see.

To be honest we later found out that as we were travelling in the winter months here in Oz many things like the day boat trips and glass bottom tours were actually shut down for the season. This may explain why the few tours that were on offer were crazy prices. Still there were other things to do here than go out on a boat so we headed up the coast about seven miles outside of the town to explore. After passing the huge area occupied by the radio listening centre we took a left and headed up a beautiful coast road. The sea here was the colour paradise, a real turquoise blue like you get in holiday brochures that have normally been photoshopped. Like most of Australia’s beaches in remote locations, the sands were absolutely deserted, not a sole on them and no one was in the sea.

Our first stop out of the van was a lighthouse, positioned high up a very steep road but with views out across the coast and the various bays that we had just been driving along. It had been built due to a steamer running aground just off Exmouth and that wreck is still something that you can see just off the coast today. The Vlamingh Lighthouse dated back to 1812, well before the town became a centre of communications for the US. The lighthouse itself was built from lovely pale limestone, not too high as to overwhelm it surroundings and looked like something from a picture postcard. Its views were along the Ningaloo Reef, as we said earlier there were no boats out exploring the reef today, at least not that we could see. It was a completely empty sea apart from a couple of Kayakers.

On the lookout was information about the towns role in defence and world war two again building on its history of the town with the military. You could also really clearly see the VLF towers, the radio masts which are the second tallest structure in the southern hemisphere.

So back to some history on the town itself.

Had we visited here before 1963 all we would have seen would have been some dusty roads winding through the flat landscape to the lighthouse, there would even have been no town at all at this stage. It was only when the United States were given permission to build what became known today as the Harold E Holt Naval Communication Station that the town was born. They declared Exmouth to become a new town to support the radio station in December of 1963 and construction of the first buildings started in February the following year. The pace of development really increased when the US navy decided to build its first family houses in the town (rather than on the base, where the single men were housed). The Australian Government soon recognised that in order to attract sufficient permanent employees to support the station in would need to provide quality amenities.

A power station was built, bore hole dugs for water and pipes were run to feed the water straight into homes. Streets were sealed and kerbed (unheard of in the north west of Oz) schools, a hospital, swimming pools and community halls and a library all followed. Landscaping to make the town look more attractive to perspective movers took place and the town was officially opened on the same day that the US communication station was officially operational on September the 16th 1967, It’s now one of the youngest towns in the whole of Australia.

We left the lighthouse behind and followed up the coast road for a short drive before heading up a short sandy path that would take us to the beach. We parked up in the car park with one other van although there was no sign of its occupants anywhere, for the next hour this would be our own private paradise, our own beach, our own view, just me and Trev. Lunch stops really do not get any better than this.

We put up the little side table that slots onto the side of the van and made more cheese sandwiches (we really do need to go food shopping for lunch stuff). With lunch made and towels around our necks we locked up the van and headed down the sand dune onto the deserted beach, laid our towels down and stopped and did nothing for what felt like the first time in ages.

We should add here that he weather was glorious, we were now in shorts again and flip flops so had really left the colder weather of Perth right behind us and confirmed our decision to travel north to the sun.

Laying there eating lunch, just the two of us and only the sound of the ocean to break the silence was a very beautiful thing. The beach was white sand, the sea crystal clear azure and turquoise blue and the sandwich was not too bad either! What I am really trying to say here is that there are not that many places in the world where you can just be on your own and enjoy the silence but this was one of them. We laid on the sand for five minutes, letting the hot rays colour our skin, not talking, not even looking around but we both knew how lucky we were to experience such peace, a beautiful moment.

We left the beach behind and followed along the coast road and turned up another sandy road that took us to the wreck of the SS Mildura. Again we climbed the sand dunes to get to the beach but this time there were other people, the silence had been broken.

The SS Mildura was actually a cattle transporting ship that hit the shallow rocks here in 1907 and you can still see a hull shaped object not far from the shoreline. It was not an interesting wreck, there was not that much to see but it was a piece of local history and for that reason we came to have a look. Equally fascinating though was the beach itself. Unlike our little piece of paradise that we had just left behind this beach was still beautiful white sand but it was also littered with shells and coral pieces some of which were beautiful. You know when you see those complete shells in shops, huge ones that people put in their bathrooms as an ornament, well we actually saw one in the wild, now that was a real first. Were we tempted to take it? The thought did cross our minds but believing that a living creature had taken up residence inside the shell we were not about to kill it off and deny it of its rather splendid abode so it was left on the sand where it was with only a picture of it taken to remind us of the first time we had ever seen such a large beautiful shell out in the wild (so to speak).

It was time to head into the town of Exmouth and see what that had to offer and after eating cheese for lunch again we thought that we ought to do some shopping and stock up on a few essentials.

The town centre or shopping area was rather uneventful. It was like a T shape of shops, all the essentials and one supermarket, that was it. You really would need to be a kind of person to accept this as you lot, the other nearest town is a day’s drive away (there and back). Both Trevor and I confirmed out loud that there was no way that we could ever live in a place like this, as nice as it is in a rural way it’s certainly not for us.

We walked around the stores eventually stopping in the bottle shop to pick up essentials such as red wine then onto the supermarket for less essential items such as bread and cheese and some chicken to make dinner with tomorrow night.

We had already decided that we were eating out tonight, the first time since picking up the van and well deserved it would be too. TripAdvisor had thrown up a good restaurant that was number 1 in town so after finishing shopping and having a quick coffee in town we headed off to reserve a table for tonight at 7pm.

Now we were at a rare point of the day, we had seen what there was to see, been shopping and it was still only four’ish in the afternoon.

We headed back to camp and plugged the van into the mains and put everything that we could onto charge. This was indeed a rare moment to just chill out and lovely it felt too. We ended up taking the mattress cushions out of the inside of the van, laying them on the grass and taking in the last rays of the day. Trev laid out and watched a Death in Paradise on his iPad whilst Jonathan read the paper on line and played some scrabble. It was again really lovely to just be in the sun and relaxing. Jonathan was going to do the washing as that was mounting up but the campsite did not have any driers so it wasn’t an option, there was not enough daylight hours left to dry it all off in the sun.

We got showered and changed ready to walk up to the restaurant “Whalers” that we had booked for this evenings meal. We were running a bit early for our boking but figured it would be fine, as we had yet another early start tomorrow getting back to the van earlier was not a problem at all.

The food at Whalers was a complete delight, a real mouth full of flavours all washed down with a bottle of Shiraz. They had really proved why they are the number one rated restaurant in town. Trev had a massive bowl of chilli mussels for his starter complete with some great toasted garlic bread whilst I had some homemade fried jalapeno chillies with melted cheese, yum yum! For main Trev had a crispy blackened Alaskan salmon fillet whilst I went for the main course size portion of the chilli mussels. Both were fantastic and we left the restaurant feeling completely stuffed. It was lovely to be civilised again, nothing wrong with eating in the van at all, don’t think that, it’s just nice to come out every now and again to soak in a different atmosphere and sample some local cuisine, this find had been a big win.

We walked back to the van and sat up for an hour before calling it a night at 22:00.

Tomorrow is our biggest driving day of the whole trip and the alarm had been set for 06:00 for the second day on the trot. Jonathan really does refuse to get up any earlier then that unless we have a flight to catch, “it’s just not decent to be up at those hours of the morning”.