Mingenew Moments

 

A sea of yellow

Mingenew  If you have watched TV recently you would have heard of Mingenew a smallish town 360km north of Perth inland from Geraldton in the centre of wildflower country.   We try on our winter excursions north to time our return trip to at least spend a few days in the wild flowers. As they had done a couple of times before our good friends from down south headed up to north to could catch-up and spend a few days together taking in the sights around Mingenew. 

Pink wind mill on the way to Mullewa

Day one saw us heading north to Mullewa, across to Pindar to check out the Wreath Flowers just outside Pindar. Unfortunately, we were a few weeks early and the wreath flowers had not achieved famous “wreath” shape yet. With a diversion via Morawa back to Mingenew it was still a great day out driving thru the wheat, barley and golden canola fields and stands of wild flowers.

Is that a Koala ?

Day two saw us doing a shorter run to Coalseam Conservation Park (no dogs - so the faithful hound was confined to barracks for the day) Coalseam  which is promoted as one of the best wildflower areas in WA. It is truly a very pretty place with Irwin River cutting through rolling hills to provide small gorges, valleys, meadows, and riverbeds all bursting to the seams (that’s a poor pun) with flowers.  We even found some coal at the old coal mining site at a Miners (strange name?) camping area which also has a big camping area suitable for large caravans (no hounds though).  Great day out in a pretty place with friends.

Photo of photographer

The town of Mingenew was once the rail hub for all cattle shipments south to Perth from as far north as the Kimberly and is a clean and tidy town with lots of history.   The “famous” Mingenew Bakery lived up to its reputation and the local pub served up a bloody good steak for dinner. The caravan park in town is well priced, and like the town, is clean and well run.

My Mum loved Kenny G and her flower garden so this video is dedicated to her and can be found HERE 

The Art of Bugger All

That arrow is pointing at us!

There are times when your travelling when your just killing time for a few days or a week where you don’t unhitch the van and practice the art of doing bugger all. This was the case as we travelled south for seven nights to meet up with friends at Mingenew Caravan Park. Three nights at Galena Bridge free camp and two nights at Ellendale Pool were spent refining our “Art of Bugger All” techniques.

Doing “bugger all” is not for everyone as it takes time to get used to slowing down to a bugger all pace. 

Nothing happening here!

A typical day looks like:

Hake a cup of tea/coffee in bed, have a second cup of tea/coffee in bed, align the solar panels towards the sun, have breakfast, take the faithful hound for a long walk, drag back some wood you found on the walk,  re-align the solar panels, get the chain saw out and cut up the wood, have you seen the dog?, sharpen the chain saw, cup of tea dear?, where’s that dog?, read the book I found in the last laundry we were at,  re-align the solar panels, have lunch, have you seen that mongrel dog!, read my book, have a poppy nap, cup of tea dear?, take the hound for another long walk, did you see that blue wren?, align the solar panels, where is that bloody dog!, read my book, that duck has eleven ducklings, here dog here dog, check out the swans and four cygnets, re-align the solar panels, yak to the old fella in the next van, get home dog!, cup of tea dear?, what’s for dinner, get the fire ready to light, re-align the solar panels, have a one minute shower, tie that bloody dog up!, open that first cold beer, light the fire, get thrashed at Yahtzee again, more beer, cook dinner, wash-up, take the faithful hound for its last walk for the day, cup of tea dear?, read my book in bed, get off my bed dog!, same stuff tomorrow.

Time to move those solar panels

Sorry for rambling on but we are at Ellendale Pool doing bugger all!

Short video is HERE

Gnoorea Point (40 Mile)

 

Having a cuppa at the main camp area

40 Mile (aka Gnoorea Point – pronounced “new-re-a”) is a beach campsite about 65 km south of Karratha very popular with the Grey Nomads as an alternative to Cleaverville. With the Karratha Shire now mandating a maximum stay of 28 days in any 3 months at any of its camping areas many folk who used to stay at one of these sites for months now stay 4 weeks at each.

One of the attractions of this camping area is the unlimited availability of free (gold coin donation for RFDS) pure RO water at the Devils Creek LNG Plant which is situated at the turn-off to Gnoorea Point (raised over $4,000  so far this year and over $45,000 since it started) So - showering every night was not a problem. A lot of the folk I met at the Devils Creek water tap had large water bladders which they filled once a week. The availability of water like this is unique to Gnoorea Point in the Pilbara camping areas.

Carpet, fire, footy on TV and sand fly repellent!

40 Mile has two main camping areas – one at the Point surrounding the “caretaker” site with room for a hundred of so vans if you include the extended area to the east, and one smaller area on the way in with room for around a dozen vans. We chose the smaller area as friends from Collie were staying there for two of the seven nights we planned to stay. Didn’t have the views over the Indian Ocean like the Point but was nicely nestled behind the dunes and only 45 metres to the beach where we could swim and the fat whiting lurked. Nice spot with clean dunnie and dump point. 

Only downside was the sand flies on the beach and mangrove areas – Linda was scratching herself mad after multiple bites, yet I did not get a bite. I have a theory that beer is a sand fly repellent if ingested in sufficient quantities each evening?

Its tough on dogs in the Pilbara!

It’s funny how quickly you acclimatise to the warmer temperatures when you have been north for a couple of months – it got up to 38C while we were here but at night quickly plunged to 20C so it was on jeans, coats and light the fire!

Sad fisherman after last fish for 2020 trip

We didn’t end up staying the full 7 nights as originally planned as after 3 days of over 35C and 38C forecasted for our last day we decided to head south one day earlier (even having a swim didn’t help as by the time you got back to the van you were dry and hot again). Our trip south was going to be a rush compared to our trip up with 6 one-nighters before arriving at Mingenew (inland from Dongarra) for a few nights (forecast 3C this morning!). 

Gnoorea Point is a nice spot to swim, fish and relax with reasonable facilities and that magic fresh water supply nearby.  Short video is HERE

Point Samson

 

Where's my whine ?

While we were camped at Cleaverville Beach we took a day trip out to Cossack, Wickham and Point Samson. We liked the look of Point Samson so booked a week for our return trip after we reluctantly pointed the Pajero south from Pardoo. 

Point Samson is a real gem of a town with pristine beaches, tidy streets, boat ramps and marina, and grassy parks and views over the Indian Ocean. 

There are two caravan parks at Point Samson one large one and a smaller one (only 20 sites) next to the Tavern and 50 metres from the beach. It was a difficult decision, but we decided on the park next to the Tavern and beach. 

Miserable weather!

It may surprise readers that Point Samson is also at times - a fishing hot spot with creeks, causeways, marinas, rocky headlands, and sandy beaches. After a few unsuccessful forays at the creeks and headlands I was walking the hound along the beach next to the Park one afternoon and spotted what looked like whiting in the shallows? Out came the whiting popper gear and next day 17 nice whiting were resting as fillets in vacuum sealed bags in our freezer. This became a daily routine with the run out tide after lunch fishing best as the water was at least 5-10 degrees warmer in afternoons. Some of the best whiting on poppers sessions I have fished with multiple fish chasing every cast at the right time in the tide. The only downside to the fishing is that the sand flies at the beach are in squadrons and you need to be 100% covered in repellent before venturing down to fish. 

Out for our 31st Anniversary dinner

The Tavern at the end of the Park has ½ priced beer every afternoon between 5-6 PM and is renowned for its Fish (snapper) and Chips (called “Famous Fish and Chips” on the menu). Despite having a freezer full of fish fillets, we dined out several times - sipping on a point of beer whilst eating Famous Fish and Chips and watching the sunset – its pretty tough up here! It was our 31st wedding anniversary while we here so that was a good reason for one of the dinners.

A real oasis on the beach between the red dust of Port Headland and Karratha. 

Very short video is HERE

Marble Bar

 As we had never been to Marble Bar we decided to take a 200 km diversion east on our way south from Pardoo Station (also our freezer is half full of vacuum sealed fish fillets so we thought we would give the fishing a break for a week). 

For some reason I had this preconceived idea that this was a land of spinifex, and flat desert like country but to the contrary - the drive in and around Marble Bar is a land of red hills, gorges,  flood plains and of considerable beauty (a little like Flinders Ranges in SA). 

Eggs with the lot - Coongan Pool Grill

We stayed for six nights 35 km north of town on the Coongan River at Coongan Pool (aka Long Pool) – nice little camp area away from the main highway with grassed river banks and cool water to have a dip and wash off the red dust. 

Gumtree TV

Bird life was prolific and you didn’t need an alarm clock as the thousands of white corellas that come in on dawn for a drink made sure you were awake. With temperatures ranging between 30C to 15C it was a comfortable camping with a swim during the day and a fire at night.

Close to our campsite (just a few km away) is Doolena Gorge which is a pretty camping area nestled in between the red cliffs of the gorge. We chose the Coongan Pool site only because there is still enough water to swim whereas Doolena only has shallow water at this time of year.

We had planned three day trips around the area:

The hottest town in Australia?

Day one was into town to pick up some tourist info, and visit the marble rock bar in the Coongan River after which the town is named. Turns out the early settlers incorrectly thought the rock bar was marble, but it is in fact jasper (so perhaps the town should have been called Jasper Bar?). The Visitors Centre folk tell you to take a bottle of water to pour on the rock so you can see the beautiful colours but by a stroke of good fortune a rare event occurred the day we visited – it rained! Around 5mm - so the whole rock bar was shining in its true beauty for our visit.  

At the marble bar rock bar

Your not allowed to chip bits off the rock bar (It’s an A Class Reserve) but you can go to a near by jasper deposit for those souvenirs – Linda got a few pockets full and I snuck in a piece which is destined to be a door stopper in our house).

Day two found us packing a lunch and thermos and driving out 35km past Marble Bar to the “Secret” WW2 airfield at Corunna Downs. This remote airfield was built to avoid detection by the Japanese but allow the B52 Bombers to do some very long distance bombing raids on parts of Japanese held Indonesia (including a raid n Jakarta). Over 2000 men were stationed there in very primitive conditions with no refrigeration, air con, and living in tents. Not much remains these days except two well maintained runways and some bunker hanger earthworks but there was a cinema, hospital,  stores, ammunition dumps, water tanks and nurses quarters – WAIT a minute – “Nurses quarters” – I bet event the most homely of the Nurses looked good after a few months in the remote site! 

Ready for a beer at the "Iron Clad"

Day three was planned to be a run out to Carrawine Gorge but the 400km round trip put us off so we did a trip to Comet Gold mine and Glen Herring Gorge.  The Comet Gold Mine has a sort of museum which is managed by an old Dutch fella who is also the caretaker for the closed gold mine. You need to dedicate at least half an hour to the museum as the old fella can talk – but his sense of humour and knowledge made the visit a memorable one. Another 30km out past the Comet Mine is the quiet scenic Glen Herring Gorge (if you get the “mud map” of the area from the Marble Bar Visitors Centre – be aware that it is definitely “not to scale” and often there are no sign posts at the turn-offs to the sights). The gorge is worth “finding” and is a relatively easy walk in from the parking area and has some fascinating geological structures and a pleasant pool at the end of the walk. Molly off course – swam in every dirty stagnant puddle before we got to the clean water – but hey – that’s what dogs do.

We were glad we ventured in off the coast to Marble Bar and ticked that one off the bucket list.

Longer than usual video is HERE

Pardoo Station

The gateway to piscatorial paradise

 We had stayed at Pardoo Station for a week a couple of years ago and decided to make this our most northern destination for our 2020 winter getaway. We had booked 2 weeks as soon as the WA Regions were opened and decided on arrival to extend that by another 4 nights.

Gotta go shopping!

Pardoo Station is a working cattle station about 130km north of Port Hedland at the southern end of 80 Mile Beach Marine Park. The caravan park is a real oasis in the dry, hot, red soil of the Pilbra with shady grassed powered sites, swimming pool, General Store, bowling green (sort of) and whilst we stayed -  fresh baked bread, rolls, croissants, and sausage rolls every day. Site fees are quite reasonable as well at $240/week during the peak winter season.

As there is no fuel at the Station we did a half day trip to venture further north (only 30km) to Pardoo Roadhouse to top up with fuel (and have a hamburger) and visit Cape Keraudren Camping grounds where we had stayed on our first trio around Oz in 2011 (and Mum and Dad stayed on their big lap in 1989). Its still a beautiful camping area with fantastic scenery but seems to still have those non-stop strong winds that plagued us in 2011, very limited facilities and it’s not all that cheap to stay (about half the cost of Pardoo Station).  Still extremely popular with the grey nomads though as all three camps at the Cape were near full on the day we visited.

Gunna bring my balls next time!

Back to Pardoo Station. As nice as it is Pardoo Station is mostly an angling destination and if your not keen fisher persons it is probably not a place you would enjoy for an extended visit as there is little else to do.

Dog discrimination!

With 5-7 metre tides and shore fishing options ranging from muddy creeks, sand flats, sandy beaches and rocky headlands a 4WD is almost mandatory and there are still many places that are “no go” zones on tides over 6 metres (there is a sign at the Shop saying minimum recovery cost it you get stuck out on the tidal flats is $800).  

So - it takes a while to work out where to be and when to be, but by talking to the locals and experimenting a little we soon worked it out. Places like Red Point, Pardoo Creek mouth, Banningarra Creek, Bones Beach were soon becoming fishing hot spots for us as we worked out the “when in the tide” to be there.

Enough to say that for the 18 nights we stayed we had fish for dinner every second night and still left the Station with half of our Engel full of fish fillets!

So if you enjoy fishing, easy 4WD’ing, 30C every day, and comfortable powered sites in a well-run park – Pardoo is probably for you. We have already booked for next year!

One downside of the Station is that drones are prohibited – so there is no drone footage in my video. I did a bit more experimenting with time-lapse on my DSLR and found a great site for sound effects and decided that my video should have an “Old West” theme – so turn up the volume a little and hopefully enjoy my video HERE

Cleaverville Beach

Drones eye view of camp

After leaving Bruboodjoo Point we headed further north – originally planning to stay a few nights at 40 Mile Camp and then head onto Cleaverville Beach after that. While filling up all the water tanks and jerry cans at the Devils Creek Refinery (great RO water – all you want for a gold coin donation to RFDS) we decided to head on direct to Cleaverville.

a "muddie" and me

It’s an easy 10-12 km dirt road run into Cleaverville Beach with numerous options from camping along the beach from individual sites to camping at the large shared area near the Caretaker where there are clean toilets, dump points and bins. Another reason for camping at the shared area was that there was a group of “Collie-ians” staying there who we knew from the RSL.














While we were there I had to conduct some minor repairs to “new” van – one of the high pressure pipes had chafed against the chassis and was leaking, and the inside door handle on our door broke off (while we were inside the van – had to yell to the guy in the next van to let us out). Must buy a lotto ticket as when I was trying to fix the pipe two guys from other vans came over and had spare pipe and compression fittings I needed, and when I was trying to work out how to do temporary repairs to the door – a mate from Collie walked past and had a complete spare door assembly in his van!

The Queen of Cossack

The Collie gang was going out to dinner at the Rio Tinto mess at Wickham so Linda and I tagged along – but we left early to do a bit of sight-seeing at Cossack and Point Sampson. Beaut old stone buildings at Cossack (need to spend more time there on the return trip in August) and we were so impressed  with the tiny caravan park (near the Tavern??) at Point Sampson that we booked a site for a week on the return trip south. Roast pork, crackling, pasta ragout, ice cream, ice cream, and ice cream at the Rio Mess rounded the day out nicely.

What's that bit of broomstick on the end of my line?

Now to the important part of the blog – fishing! After some pretty unsuccessful forays to my son’s secret spots (one small Mangrove Jack) we finally found a spot in the estuary that was going off every rising tide – whiting, huge bream, lots of little grunter, a couple of trevally, a small stingray and one large brown sweet lip. Linda and I scored 7 big whiting one afternoon and a sunrise session the next morning put another 60 whiting fillets in the freezer.

On the second last afternoon and evening something unusual  (for the Pilbara) happened – it rained – in-fact it bucketed down with close on 60mm – certainly settled the dust and filled up our water tanks with 60 liters of pure rain water – long showers that night.

The secret ledge Jack

Planning to be back to Cleaverville Camp for a week in August – cant let that Estuary secret spot alone for too long.

Short video HERE

Bruboodjoo Point

After a quick overnight camp at Robe River we headed up to Bruboodjoo Point camping area. Priority after setting up camp was to pack away the doona, winter coats, uggies, beanies, scarfs – with temperature mins around 15 C and maxs around 30 C we were certainly not going to need these reminders of winter. It also meant that the 100 kg  of Jarrah I had lugged from Collie on my roof rack hardly got used as it was usually too warm at night to enjoy a fire.

Busy place

Bruboodjoo Point (aka 9 Mile) is a large camping area about 40 km by road (about 20 km as the drone flies) north of Coral Bay with a lovely sheltered bay for beach boat launching and Ningaloo Reef edge about 3-4 kilometers out providing a coral playground. It has no toilets, water or bins (does have a dump point) so you need to be fully self-sufficient to be allowed to camp. The camping area was packed when we were there with around 200 vans in the area.





Readers of my blog will recall that Oyster Bridge Conservation area is one of our favorite snorkeling spots and we couldn’t resist a visit as it was only 10 km away via rough road and 4WD track. It didn’t disappoint and some underwater GoPro video is included in my video at the link at the bottom of this blog.

SS Minnow ready for action

Unfortunately fishing from the shore wasn’t particularly successful during the time we stayed despite getting up before sunrise and heading out to the “secret” hot-spot at Three Ways.  I did however get invited by Marty next door to go out squidding in the SS Minnow (small inflatable tender with fast leak) and he hooked a large squid which whilst I was trying to get into the Minnow  “inked me”  covering my face, hat and sunnies (I think I can still hear Marty laughing).

Couple of nice Spangled Emperor

By chance I also bumped into Graham (whom I used to work with) who was up north for three weeks fishing with his son. He was kind enough to take me out to just inside the reefs edge in his tinny were we caught a couple of nice Spanglies before the sharks arrived – bugger!

A "healthy" pie

The lure of the “bakery” soon compelled us to head into Coral Bay for a snorkel, lunch at the bakery, water top-up and fuel. Nice relaxing day.

The best music !

One highlight of our stay was an evening of entertainment provided by Tammy (and support team husband -  Murray) who sang for several hours under a full moon. What a great night – Linda and I even did a bit of a shuffle in our dancing thongs to the music.








I will certainly be back to Bruboodjoo Point – just got to find a son/grand-son/son-in-law to tow my boat up so I can chase more squid and spanglies.

Short video HERE

Plan B - Denham

Firstly coronavirus, and then Station licensing issues foiled our plan to repeat last year’s trip to Tamala Station – so Plan B was to head up to Denham Seaside Caravan Park with the Tamala Team.

It was a chilly 1C on the morning we left Collie to head north to spend a week to warmer weather at Denham.

Towing our newly purchased caravan we left a day earlier than the rest of the team and decided to try a couple different “one nighters” from our usual stopovers.

On the shore of Lake Indoon

Night one was at Lake Indoon – between Eneabba and Leeman. Not a bad spot next to the dry lake (there is a boat ramp) with flushing toilets and bins. Only down-side was that fires were strictly prohibited, and it was still 4C at night. A bit of excitement for all was when a van came in under a low hanging tree and tore two massive dead branches off which then rolled off the top the van. Amazing thing was that the only ones who were not aware of the incident were the owners of the van who continued onward to find a parking spot!

My new SAT TV system

Night two was spent out the back of the Billabong Roadhouse – not our usual scene but we had heard of unbelievably cheap fuel ($1.07/ltr for diesel) and free hot showers so thought we would give it a go. We were pleasantly surprised how quiet it was and enjoyed the hot shower.







After getting set up at the Denham Seaside Caravan Park (nice park next to the dog beach – yahoo said Molly after being cooped up in the car for 3 days) we had a planning meeting and a few coldies with Pete, Marion and Trevor (aka Inky Ross)  and decided on a trip out to Francois Peron National Park the next day for a bit of 4WD fun, sightseeing and fishing. As we could not take the vicious hound into the National Park we found a lady in Denham who was offering dog-sitting for $35/day – a win-win for her and us.

Inky and bream

Had a great day out in Francois Peron – didn’t get bogged, saw all the camping areas, and caught some nice whiting. So -  after picking up the hound it was time for showers, meeting up for a few more coldies (becoming a theme) and fresh whiting fillets for dinner – nice!
Next day we tried (unsuccessfully) to catch whiting around the town area so that afternoon over a few coldies we decided to head out again to South Gregories camp site in Francois Peron (Molly by now becoming good friends with the dog-sitter)  - weren’t as successful as our first visit but caught a few.


We did finally find a good fishing spot closer to town but as this was near the end of our visit only were able to fish twice – we will know next time!



Inky also caught his first ever squid (2) on a jig at the local jetty – which quickly got turned into a squid ring entrée with a few coldies.

The Team

After a great week we had our last dinner at the pub (and a couple of coldies) and next day - Pete, Marion and Trevor headed off to the freezing stormy weather down south while Linda and I (and Molly) struggled in the heat to go further north towards Coral Bay.

As a final note of recognition - Pete was the only one to catch whiting, Mulloway, and Spanish Mackerel (but that’s another story).

Short video is HERE