THE BIG DASH: Caravan education complete
Battling headwinds, dealing with traffic roulette, and caravan crimeWe staggered out of Coral Bay feeling somewhat battered by the intensity of the experience.
Happily, unlike our struggles to park up, the exit was much easier. Many of the Bayview’s occupants had already decamped and we could drive straight to the exit; no boats to dodge or SUVs to move.
With the end of the school holidays it’s been a much more chilled experience on the road (well mostly, more on that below).
In Carnarvon our neighbour gave us beautifully fresh Kingfish, which Jane cooked up with a lemon butter sauce for one of the most memorable meals of the entire trip.
In Denham, our neighbours strolled over for a chat and to ask how the 'electric BYD' was going.
It’s nice to be back in a more gentle and familiar world.
Also read:
THE BIG DASH: Why we went Chinese
THE BIG DASH: Buying all the bits
THE BIG DASH: Sorting the tow tug
THE BIG DASH: Hitting the scales
THE BIG DASH: On the road, finally!
THE BIG DASH: Onwards and upwards
THE BIG DASH: Do we have to go?
THE BIG DASH: Walking with dinosaurs
Slurping fuel
'Tas' was back under load this week and working hard. From Coral Bay southwards the highway seemed to turn invariably uphill.
The trip from Carnarvon to the Outlander Roadhouse was especially challenging.
Into a headwind, Tas couldn’t sustain 95km/h in seventh gear. So it was back to sixth at 2500rpm rather than a more frugal 1900rpm.
The result was the highest fuel consumption we’d seen on the trip computer of the entire trip – 23.1L/100km across a 201.5km trip.
Once we turned west then north toward Denham on the Francois Peron Peninsula and the wind was no longer opposing us, the average dropped into the 17L/100km bracket.
The locals joke WA stands for ‘Windy Always’. I don’t mind that, but just not the headwinds thanks!
Tas has been on his best behaviour; no more go-slow hijinks as reported last week.
As always, when released from the caravan he’s a comfy cross-country blaster. Bloody caravan!
Here are this week’s fuel numbers:
Litres consumed: 135.41
KM travelled: 862km
Consumption average: 15.71L/100km
$ paid: $310.56 (best price paid: $2.288 per litre)
KM per $: 2.77km (was 2.67km per $ last time)
Quobba Blowholes
There are marquee attractions in WA and we’ve seen a lot of them: Lake Argyle, Cable Beach, Ningaloo Reef and Karijini to mention a few.
Quobba Blowholes are not as well-known, but probably should be. Working against it is the 70km haul out to the coast north-west of Carnarvon, which would be enough to discourage plenty of visitors.
But if you want to see an irresistible force meet an immovable object, this is the place. The full might of the Indian Ocean smashes into 10-metre high cliffs with such venom that water pours into cracks in the rock and spouts up to another 20m into the air.
Sometimes the waves roil right over the top and douse people who think they are safe spectators. Time to step back!
Once done with that you can drive a couple of kays down the coast to a bay called the Aquarium, where there is safe and spectacular drift snorkelling.
Then you can finish off back high on the cliffs watching humpback whales migrating north.
It was a wonderful afternoon made all the more enjoyable for us by being so unexpected.
Dirk Hartog Island
I came here to do a story in 2017, stayed two days and vowed I’d one day bring Jane back.
WA’s largest and most westernmost island was for many years a pastoral lease over-run by sheep, feral cats and goats.
But through herculean effort it has more recently been returned to its natural state as a National Park, while a small corner of it is a rustic resort under the jurisdiction of the Wardle family.
Sadly, our visit was only for a day and only gave us a taste of the island’s spectacular scenery and the Wardle’s hospitality. But it was enough to rekindle my admiration for the place and for Jane to declare: “We’ll be back”.
We find we’re saying that a lot these days.
Traffic roulette
The radio crackled into life: “Southbound caravan doing 90, you’ve got about 15 cars behind you, just saying.”
And there in a nutshell my evolution from road tester to caravan driver was complete. Oh the shame!
But let me paint you the picture. It’s the last Saturday morning of WA winter school holidays and we’re driving south on National Route 1 from Coral Bay.
We’ve clicked the cruise up to a fuel-saving 95km/h indicated (so 92-93km/h actual) and settled in for the 240km drive to Carnarvon and our overnight stop.
Trouble is plenty of other holidayers are also on the road with more ambitious travelling objectives. Some of them want to get home to Perth that day, or in two days tops.
It’s a mere 1100km away.
The speed limit is 110km/h for cars (100km/h for us) and there’s a procession of utes and SUVs, some of them towing boats and vans, steaming southward going plenty faster than us.
It’s a winding and undulating road and as we proceed I can see there is catching traffic. Moments before the obviously frustrated radio message came through, I’d told Jane I planned to move aside when an opportunity presented itself.
But there’s only one lane running each way and beyond about one foot of run-off offering unknown stability there’s solid scrub. Even if I wanted to get out of the way, there was nowhere to go.
And rest stops to pull over are rare. You can forget about overtaking lanes they’re about as common as Kia Tasmans up here.
So I tell the bloke on the radio I’m conscious of the issue and that I’ll get out of the way as soon as I can.
I speed up a little, but that’s a symbolic effort only. Finally, a long and flat section of highway opens up ahead of us and four or five cars go rushing past. Soon after I can pull aside into a rest stop to let a couple more go by.
This experience reminded me of when I was a kid on family holidays and the road up and down the east coast or even from Melbourne to Sydney was single lane and filled at holiday times with faster traffic dodging, ducking and weaving their way forward.
Traffic roulette.
Not long afterwards I got a dose of my own medicine. We caught a caravan doing 80km/h. And you know what, I was irritated. It was a 200 Series LandCruiser towing a 16-footer that couldn’t have weighed more than 1800kg.
Bloody caravanners!
Scene of the crime
I’m walking through a small caravan park in Carnarvon called Norwesta and a bloke’s just sitting in the annex of his 'van. He looks up at me.
I say: “G’day, how are you?” – we’re a civil lot, us caravanners.
He says: “Haven’t you heard?”. Not the usual response.
Turns out his 200 Series Toyota LandCruiser had been stolen the night before. That’s despite it being locked and the keys tucked away inside his caravan.
It was 2am when the thieves took off, 90 minutes later they ram raided the Toyworld store in Carnarvon’s main street.
Now our unlucky neighbours were going through the process of figuring out what to do with their wrecked Cruiser, how to get themselves back home to Mandurah (south of Perth) and then how to get their caravan home.
In all the months we’ve been on the road and heard lurid stories of crime, this was the first time we’d got up close to it.
Watch out in Port Augusta, don’t leave your car while you refuel in Coober Pedy, beware of thieves in the caravan parks at Alice Springs, Darwin, Katherine, Kununurra Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek and Carnarvon.
The warnings, face-to-face and online, have been endless.
In fact Carnarvon had been the focus for a lot of recent chat as we made our way down the WA coast. Don’t even bother going there, the locals (that’s a euphemism for First Nations people) are wild, there’s riots, there’s crime.
But we went anyway, after Coral Bay we needed a couple of days to restock supplies and get the 'van and car cleaned up.
And finally, there it was. The crime we heard and read about.
We’d asked the caravan park owner about security when we’d been booking in. “Don’t leave your car, your caravan or your bicycles unlocked, don’t leave any valuables outside,” she’d advised.
“They’ll come and wander around. They just want an easy score, they want cash, booze or anything easy to sell.”
Clearly, nicking a locked LandCruiser was a step up from their usual activities!
That night I must have checked the car and caravan were locked 10 times. Every odd sound had me up and peering out the window.
We put away a bunch of stuff like folding chairs that we’d normally leave out. Nothing happened.
But how quickly you forget. Two days later I got up to discover I’d forgotten to lock both the car and the caravan!
Thankfully, the locals were elsewhere that night!
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