Roadtrip through Flytopia

Starting the Roadtrip through Flytopia
The lady at Broome’s Visitor Centre was a character. She sat me down after I enquired about a car rental company where it would be possible to get a ‘one way’: from Broome to Perth.
She called a few companies and it turned out that Europcar had a relocation car available. It wasn’t a sedan, like I initially asked for, but a four wheel drive that I could rent at the price of a sedan. While on the phone, she raised her thumb as to say that I was going to get a great deal. It’s always good to be a bit careful when people try to manipulate like that, but when she mentioned that price, it turned out that it was indeed a very good deal.
The next morning I went to Broome Airport to pick the car up. While walking through the rental car section on the parking lot, there was only one 4wd and it wasn’t the Nissan Xtrail that the lady said I was going to get. This monster was a Mitsubishi Pajero and it didn’t even occur to me that I could possibly get this one for that great deal. But at Europcar’s rental office they gave me the keys like I had just rented a secondhand Volkswagen Golf.
Off I was!
After collecting my luggage at the YHA and stocking up on camping gear (a tent, a sleeping bag, a stove, gas bottles, a sausagepan, 15 liters of water and canned food), I left Broome for what it was and drove 34 kilometers out of town, to take right onto the Great Northern Highway.
The highway between Broome and Port Hedland crosses through the Great Sandy Desert, but in all honesty, there’s very little sand to be seen due to all the vegetation that grows there. There’s absolutely nothing here of any interest, except, perhaps, for field biologists.
But there was the 80 Mile Beach: beautiful white sand that meets the beautiful blue ocean. There weren’t many roads to get there, but when I finally found one, it led up to a campsite where they charged 30 dollars per night, like the sign at the beginning of the road said. I drove down the road anyway, as it was by all means an entrance to that famous 80 Mile Beach. After I’d parked the car on the visitor’s parking lot, I walked over to the beach, shrugged my shoulders and turned around.

Yes: I was about to travel the Westcoast of Australia (a longtime dream) and its main ingredient – sand and water – appeared too boring to even pay any attention to.
After 560 kilometers from Broome, I stopped at a rest area next to De Grey River, initially just to have a break from driving, but then decided to camp out here. Port Hedland was another hour down the road, but with the uncertainty of finding a free place to sleep there, and having found this awesome place, the choice was made.
I got the stove out, connected one of the gas bottles and ‘cooked’ my dinner by heating up the content of one of the cans. It wasn’t particularly yummie, but it was food and it did the job. After doing the dishes with water from the 15 liter tank and toilet paper, I went to sleep early, annoyed by the many insects that had replaced the zillion flies that one encounters during daytime.
The next morning it was time to drive to Port Hedland, fuel up Monster and head inland towards Karijini National Park.
Port Hedland is an industrial town and I was warned that there would be nothing to do over there. When I drove down the road that leads into town, my attention was drawn to a sign with a camera, indicating a lookout point. Following the arrow next to it, I saw how the lookout point was on the bridge over the railway, where one could take a picture of wreight trains.
Wreight trains in Australia are generally anywhere between 1 and 2 kilometres long, as they are in the United States. On one account, in Alice Springs, I had to wait fifteen minutes to cross the railway crossing before an entire train had passed me by. They are long and they go slow. I thought about going up to the lookout point and wait for one, but couldn’t be bothered and kept going towards Port Hedland to fuel up the car.
The landscape was still pretty boring just outside of Port Hedland when I drove down the Great Northern Highway, which, after several hundreds of kilometres, would give access to Karijini National Park. But later, the landscape changed and consisted of hills, with those typical Australian red rocks of sandstone and yellowish, dry grass beneath them.

Karijini National Park
In retrospect, Karijini National Park was one of the highlights of the roadtrip. It was so beautiful, in fact, that it just sucked to be here alone and it was here that I experienced the loneliness of the trip. The park consisted of deep gorges, with upright red walls, lots of green trees down at the bottom and rivers, which have carved their way through the gorges over the course of millions and millions of years, running through them.

The special thing about Dales Gorge, which is near the eastern entrance of the Park, is that when you look straight ahead of you from the top, it looks like the landscape continues, but when you look down, there’s this sudden gorge. There’s no indication that the ground is about to have a crack, it’s just suddenly there.
I camped out that first night at the campsite, desperately trying to keep the many flies out of my little tent. The next morning, when I woke up around seven, I stack my head outside and – zoooom! – there was yet another fly that landed on my nose. I assure you, that’s not how you want to start the day. It made me realize that this wasn’t a trip along the westcoast of Australia, but a roadtrip through Flytopia.
I walked down to the bottom of Dales Gorge and swam around in a beautiful plunge pool below a high (but modest) waterfall. Then I walked back up and used the rest of the day to visit as many gorges as I could.
To do this, the visitor needs to follow this unsealed road full of bumps. When you go fast enough, you don’t really notice them. But when you slow down to below sixty, and that was needed in some places, you feel like you’re going to come out like James Bond’s wodka-martini: shaken, not stirred.
In many places I was the only one and I felt like an explorer. It was me and this adventurous, long, red road in front of me, that meandered through the hills. Just us. And I certainly felt like an explorer when the left back tyre got a blow-out and had to be replaced with a jack system I’d never used myself before. It took me ten minutes to figure it out (including finding all the necessary tools) and then another ten minutes to replace the tyre. All in all, that could have been worse.
I found out that Australians are a very helpful people. All the cars that passed by, which summed up to about a whopping six or seven in those twenty minutes, stopped to offer help. It was unneeded, in this case, but just imagine being really fucked, then it helps that there are people that can be of great support.
I left the park after seen all the gorges and experience some of them. Once again, was there someone with me, I probably would gotten a bit more out of it, but being alone I felt quite happy playing the average American snapshot tourist.
I drove to Tom Price to fuel up and buy some food and slept that night in the car, in a rest area ride beside the Beasley River.

Exmouth
Exmouth is a small village near the top of a peninsula. It serves as a base for people who want to go coral diving, snorkling, swimming with whales and with sharks. My budget didn’t allow for such expensive diving tours (which range anywhere between 250 and 1200 dollars – depending what you’re after), but I decided to go there anywhere. It turned out to be a blast!
On October 29th, I checked into Exmouth Cape Tourist Park, which was a campsite with backpacker’s dorms on the property. Brilliant. I had the 4 bedroom dorm to myself and the beds were of a quality unique to hostels. Honestly: after a night in fly-surrounded tent and a night on the driver’s seat, it felt like heaven. Any bed would have done, but this bed was king.
I went for a stroll through town and ran into Aron, from England. Aron was a guy who I’d been introduced to back in Broome, by Michael. And Michael, from Perth, became a good friend when he was staying in Kununurra for three months. In Broome, Michael suddenly showed up in the YHA where I was playing on my laptop in the lobby. He’d gotten to know Aron on the Greyhound bus and it was in YHA Broome that he introduced Aron to me.
Michael had travelled further down to go back to Perth, but Aron had a tour booked that started in Exmouth in a couple of days. We talked for a bit and then decided to go to Potshot Hotel, apparantly the place to be in Exmouth when you’re looking for nightlife, around 8pm.
As I was sitting at the picnic table on the porch where the rooms came out to, a girl showed up with an older couple.
“Helen!” I said.
Helen, from France, had been staying in Kununurra twice for longer periods and it was a total coincidence that she now turned up on exactly the same campsite, on exactly the same porch as where I was sitting. She didn’t seem to be very happy, though. I soon overheard her on the phone, when she called Road Side Assistance, that she’d been waiting all day next to the road for a mechanic to fix her car. The man was promised to come, but never came. And so she was now back at the place where she’d been spending the last few nights.
It’s funny how you keep running into people. Australia is big in size, but small in terms of running into the same people over and over. This goes especially, of course, for the places that are popular. Places, out of all places, like Kununurra and Exmouth…
That night, Aron and I went to Potshot. Man, what a boring place. We decided that we needed some stronger stuff and we went back to where I was staying, to kill the last bit of Bundaberg Rum that was left in a bottle I received as a nice present on the last day at my last job (like all of the crew members). After the rum with coke we were in the right mood and set out once again.
It turned out to become one of the best nights out I’ve had in while. The locals kept buying us drinks and we then went on to someone’s where we got into some good conversations. When we left, I vomited all over the front yard. By those standards, it was a pretty damn good night out.
The rest of my time in Exmouth was spent with walks on beaches, in a very peaceful environment where a hangover can cure well.

Carnarvon
After three nights in Exmouth it was time to hit the road again. I stopped in Coral Bay, where uhm, you walk into the water of the bay and there’s coral right there. I couldn’t be bothered. It was one of those moments where you realise where your heart lies: mine is with forest, creeks and mountains, not with the ocean. That’s just unfamiliar terrain that I didn’t want to venture into. Coral? Fuck it. I left overrated and commercial Coral Bay and set out to Carnarvon.
Carnarvon was another small town, but just a bit older and with a bit more of wild west-look to it. In some places, you could still imagine the pioneers on their horses going through the mainstreet, on their way to the local pub after a few long weeks in the outback.
When I checked in the local hostel, I had to write my name down on a list. Just one other person had checked into the hostel today: Helen. I knew she’d left Exmouth before I had, but I didn’t expect her to be here.

We met that night, after I had taken some great photos of the sunset over the harbour. The next morning we went to the 1 Mile Jetty (a jetty is a pier in Australian), but as it turned out, the pier had been on fire and we could only get halfway down. It was a nice walk and the coast was in this place, with the mangroves around the jetty, beautiful.

Monkey Mia
Monkey Mia was one of those places that you just can’t miss out on when you do a roadtrip down the WA coast. It’s a resort, more so than a destination, where dolphins come close to the shore to be fish fed. The last 158 kilometers on the peninsula were terrible: nothing on the way, except for that destination down the end that you just want to reach after a long drive. Cars have to pay 8 dollars to get in, but all it really is, is a parking lot in the dunes. There’s one campsite with dorms and hotel-like accommodation, where I checked into a dorm and encountered the same quality beds as in Exmouth. A closer look taught me I was staying with the same company: Aspen Parks.
There was nothing to do. I just had a few beers that night in the resort’s bar and when to bed early, because the sightshow would begin at 7:45am.
The dolphins came to the shore, a guy with a microphone explained a few things about Shark Bay (the water Monkey Mia is on) and then volunteers picked people from the public to feed fish to the dolphins. Not too much, of course, ‘cause otherwise they would get overfed… As if this whole exploitation of nature wasn’t overfeeding of dolphins enough by itself.
I watched the dolphins, which was cool. I have to admit that. Normally, on the beach, you just swim and you don’t see anythings besides crabs and jellyfish. You know there are huge creatures in the same water, but they are often way out of the coast. And now, in this place, some of those animals came as close to the beach as they possibly could in shallow water.
After ten minutes they were off again, and so was I.
I fueled up in Geraldton and slept in a rest area next to the Brand Highway.

Nambung National Park
After a breakfast in the township of Eneabba, I drove to Nambung National Park where the so-called Pinnacles make a worldfamous tourist attraction. Pinnacles are limestone rocks that vary in size between 10 centimeters (measured from the surface) and some 5 meters. They stand there like an ancient forest of dead trees gone stone in a desert-like environment. It was an impressive place.

Visitors can walk around following a 1.2 kilometers trail or drive a 4 kilometer circle. I did both, but go a lot more out of the walk. When I drove with my big ass 4wd through this setting, doing 10km/h, I felt like a retired tourist.

Gingin
I was way too close to Perth and didn’t want to arrive there. Luckily, the places to stop and explore increase as you come closer to Perth. Gingin was one of them. The place was nothing exciting, but they a ‘gravitational waves centre’. It’s one of the six places in the world, but the only one in the southern hemisphere, where mirrors catch laser rays and send them on to the next place, using satellites to connect them. The lasers are very sensitive and catch gravitational waves, which, over time should result in the recording of sound from outer space. I tried to learn a lot, as this is science happening as we spoke. Einstein said in 1914 that there were gravitational waves, but that mankind would never be able to record them. And now, in this very place, it was about to happen.
The place had an extensive exhibition on display, with movies, information and experiments. Sadly for them, but luckily for me, I was one of three visitors, having it all to myself.

Two Rocks
Two Rocks was different than the three ‘ghost towns’ I’d visited prior to the Gravitational Waves Centre. I passed the town’s recreational centre with library and a well-maintained park where some kids were using the small, but state-of-the-art skating rink. I drove further down Two Rocks Road and saw a sign, saying ‘Leemans Landing – Historic Site’.
Most historic sites or buildings were highly valued as part of Australia’s cultural heritage. The Telegraph Station at Hamelin Pool caravanpark, for example, dated from 1884. The significance of that building lays probably in the fact that it symbolizes the pioneering spirit of that era, more so than the year in which it was built. Nevertheless, 1884 was only the beginning of settlement in northern Western Australia, and taking that into consideration, any original artifacts from that year ARE old and, most likely, sacred to Australian historians.
I followed the sign and came to a place where history had taken place that dated well back before the 19th century. There was nothing to see, but the plaquette on a monument (erected in 1982) said: ‘In 1658 Samuel Volkersen, skipper of the Dutch vessel Waeckende Boey, mapped this coast. This chart indicated the beach below this spot, where his First Officer Abraham Leeman van Santwits had led the ship’s boat party in search of survivors of the wrecked Vergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon). He found wreckage but no survivors. Seven men had sailed to Batavia, and another 69 men had reached the shore but there was no sign of them. The wreck of the Vergulde Draeck was not found until 1963.’

It makes one wonder what happened to the 69 men who came ashore after their ship wrecked. Were they murdered by hostile Indigenous people? Have they starved to death? Did they may be become part of a friendly aboriginal tribe who ventured inland in search of a freshwater source, knowing that this tribe was their only chance for survival? Whatever the case, Samuel Volkersen did come to the right spot, as the wreck was indeed found at Two Rocks.
From the monument I saw one rock, about five or six meters high, a few meters off the shoreline in the water, breaking the waves. I walked down to the beach and when I looked to the right, I saw another rock, about 300 meters further up north. I took some pictures of the first rock, as it had the sun right behind it, and then walked over to the next one.
This other one was next to a marina, which was blocked off from the Indian Ocean by a dam of huge boulders. The dam curved 45 degrees around the marina, allowing at the end of it a small opening for yachts to enter or to exit. A huge wall of off-white stones on shore made the marine look like an old fishing village in Spain or Italy.

That night was the last night in the car. Or meant to be…

Fleeing from Perth
The next morning I drove to Perth. I hadn’t been driving in a city with so much traffic for a very long time and, being strange to this city, I had no idea where to go. I got lost, agitated and damn cranky. My German friend Robert Perfection S. (sorry, no lastnames) recommended the Billabong Resort as a good hostel in this town. It happened to be fully booked.
Then I went to the YHA. Fully booked.
I tried the Grand Central. No problem.
In the first room, it smelled like twenty pairs of stinking socks. It was unbearable. For sure, I wasn’t going to sleep here. So I went down to the reception and asked for another room. The lady told me that she couldn’t have me change rooms, for they only do that in the morning before 10am.
“You can’t possibly expect me to sleep in that hole,” I said. “Just put me up with another room.”
She did it and I went to a room where all beds were already made. I assumed it was meant to be like that and crashed out on the one that wasn’t taken. Around 21:45 (that 9:45pm, my dear American fans), all four people in the room were asleep, the door opened and three boys entered.
“Can we turn on the lights?” the first one asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. They probably needed something?
Well, no. They came to party. They said that they weren’t staying in this place, but were going to sleep in this room, anyway. They had spent last night in a police cell, had stab wounds and were taking some serious pills. They drank strong stuff and smoked in the room. Played music, talking loudly. One of them said how he had to go to court soon for armed robbery.
Normally, you wouldn’t except this behaviour in a hostel room. But over the years, I’ve learned when to shut my mouth. And I’m glad I did. These boys were pure criminals, unashamed about it, had their intelligence hanging down in their nutsacks. Their bruised eyes, wounds and cuts were a great incentive to just deal with them while they were here and then get the fuck out of this hostel as soon as possible.
That was an hour later. As soon as they left, I got out of bed, got my luggage and just left. I went back to my rental car and drove back out to the forest, north of Perth, where I spent another two nights in the bush.

I came back to Perth on Monday, with a week’s accommodation booked and paid for at the YHA. I turned in the car and, well, that was my roadtrip. It had been a great adventure, with really stunning places. No regrets. And thanks to those boys in that shithole, it got extended with another two nights. Something good may come from something bad.
Despite the flies… The outback really should be renamed: Flytopia.