Back home in Norway, 59 40 N, 10 36 E

Saetre, Hurumlandet, Friday 20.11

Finally getting my act together after the 12,000 km overnight plane trip from Perth to Oslo via Singapore and Copenhagen, over 30 hours in all from Monday to Tuesday, door to door.

Daily routine still not stabilised and missing the sun and warmth of Australia in the just-above-freezing fog and rain of early winter Norway. And especially missing the outback, just wanting to do the Savannah Way again, next time more by 4-wheel drive off the main roads! Warm thoughts of all the places and experiences on an unforgettable road trip, with not a single bad day or regret - not one unpleasant person on the way either - the Australians are truly a generous, friendly, open and kind-hearted people! Only two bad short episodes - for me my my first experience of a wide-load roadtrain, which nearly creamed me and the Wicked van off very early in the trip, and for Ros her spidery fright in a Cape Range loo! Not bad for such a long trip!

Good to be home though, although our house by the sea doesn't quite look the same in the dour grey half-light of mid-November as it does in the enclosed picture, an aerial photo taken in early summer (ours is the mid-picture pale cream house with the black roof, newly cut grass slope looking quite piebald in front of it...)

Now getting ready for the next venture, leaving in 6 days' time for a working visit to Uganda, helping geologists there establish a working stratigraphical scheme for the surface and subsurface Neogene rocks of the Lake Albert Rift. We'll have meetings in Entebbe and a field inspection of the Lake Albert exposures - in westernmost Uganda on the border towards the DRC - that should be quite exciting - Watch this spot!

Perth, Sunday 15.11, 4157 km

Perth, 31 59 S, 115 48 E

And that's as far south as we'll get on this trip! Which in total, Cairns to Broome to Perth amounts to 8613 km..... And I'd just love to keep going, all the way around the coast back to Cairns, only another 8,000 or so..... Tonight we sleep in a proper bed kindly provided by friend and colleague Myra Keep from the University of Western Australia......

Cervantes, 14.11, 3867 km

Cervantes, 30 30 S, 115 04 E, 3867 km

Woke at dawn to huge flocks of galahs (the local pest, a lovely grey-pink cockatoo) screeching and cavorting in the tamarisk trees and overhead wires, great clowns as they hang upside down and hop around clumsily around the campsite water taps..... Then on to the morning ritual of feeding the pelicans on the beach just opposite the campsite, yet another circus as 6 pelicans fight with the gulls to catch the small fish being thrown by the gathered onlookers. After breakfast, yet more birds as we visit Rainbow Jungle, with the largest parrot and lorrikeet aviary in Australia, hundreds and hundreds of local and foreign birds in amazing varieties of colours. Then the sea-horse aquarium, a real touristy morning! Before heading off along the impressive coastal cliffs in the same old sandstone, with arches and natural bridges, all totally unspoiled by any form of human development.

Then ever southwards for over 300 km along or just behind the massive coastal dunes fringing the pristine beaches with the Indian Ocean’s waves crashing in. Here and there salt pans developed in the lagoons behind the dunes, one of them the famous “Pink Lagoon” , coloured crimson by some strange algae, contrasting with the blindingly white saltpan. Past the buildings of an historic convict colony from 1853 ( I knew Botany Bay – Sydney – was first settled as a convict colony in 1788, but didn’t realise they continued to transport convicts from Britain for so long – now find out they only stopped in 1868). All the time now we were passing into steadily more "civilised" countryside, now farms with grasslands, wheat and flax fields and no longer remote cattle stations. Then Geraldton - the first “real” town with over 20,000 population, that David has seen in the last 8,000 km and 5 weeks – a very strange feeling to be back in urban reality!

On through undisturbed heathland covering the coastal dunes and to Cervantes, with the Pinnacles National Park, arriving just before sunset, a perfect time as the thousands of up to 5m high pillars and needles and monoliths are highlighted by their long shadows in the moon-like landscape of the golden desert floor, accentuated by the white sand of the dunes behind them. Unworldly!!! Then back to a definitely urban camping site, the caravans built on to make little houses, with boats parked beside them and tractors to tow the boats over the beach to the sea besides them again... A good working class escape from Perth, contrasting with the millionaire holiday mansions just over the road.....

Our last camping night? Very cool as the temperature in the camper dropped to a chilly 16 degrees - how oh how will we manage Norway?

Kalbarri, Friday 13.11, 3438 km

Kalbarri, 27 43 S, 114 10 E

A last walk along the Denham beach collecting some of the many and varied shells, then on our way back down the peninsula we stopped at Eagle Bluff, a cliff overlooking the shallow bay with its shell-sand bottom and vast sea-grass meadows. From our viewpoint we could watch the sting-rays and sharks gliding in among the sea-grass, the sharks coming all the way up to the beach, no doubt smelling for unwary tourists’ toes – an impressive last farewell to this unique area!

On almost 400 km southwards to Kalbarri – via the Billabong Roadhouse (shades of “Waltzing Matilda” – the map telling us that we’re on the edge of civilisation, this is the last outback roadhouse, from now on it will mostly be normal towns with gas stations). We’re now in yet another National Park, this one famous for its Murchison River gorges, it’s rocky coastline and (in spring) its wildflowers – yes we’re so far south now that we’ve really left the tropics and here they have winter and summer, although the very short and mild winters are to be laughed at in our northern European terms. The landscape changed drastically as we drove south, trees getting higher, grass greener and more common until we were passing through rolling wooded grassland – almost like rural England, if you forgot that all the trees and plants are totally foreign to us! Then out on to the flat coastal heathlands around the river gorges – which in spring are ablaze with wildflowers, but we’re too late, although there are still some patches of pink, lilac and yellow here and there.

I’d read in advance that the gorges were cut into the Silurian Tumblagooda Sandstone 430 million years old, so was looking forward to coming “home” to my original research interests, though far removed from the Oslo Region and the Welsh Borderlands. But when we stopped at a lookout over one of the gorges it turned out that the rocks are now thought to be older at 450 to 480 million years, putting them back into the Ordovician. Interesting deltaic and tidal sandstones though, with lots of lovely sedimentary structures!

A cool breeze at sunset,the temperarure dropping to a chilly 19 degrees - we had to dig out warmer clothes to wear, the thought of Oslo in mid-November in 4 days time is quite alarming!

(We've been talking several times about the sheer size of Australia - I just checked on Google Earth and found that my little trip across the north from Cairns to broome, 4456 km, was actually 14 km longer than the distance from New York to Los Angeles, so there......)

Shark Bay, Thursday 12.11, 3030 km

Denham, 25 33 S, 113 33 E

The westernmost "town" on mainland Australia, population 1120, incredibly beautiful, with blindingly white shell sand beaches fringing the pale turquoise lagoonal waters of Shark Bay - which more than deserves its World Heritage Site status - probably the most impressive area on the whole trip - not because of the landscape of unrelenting scrub-covered rolling dunes and raised beaches on the peninsulas sticking out into the sea, but its bays, lagoons and marine life are out of this world.

We've seen the famous stromatolites of Hamelin Pond - rocky mounds formed by blue-green algae, one of the few and certainly the most impressive examples of now-living representatives of the first life-forms I saw in 3,500 million year old rocks further north; awe-inspiring in their simplicity and all they represent, bubbling out the oxygen just as their ancient ancestors did, when they were building up oxygen content in the primitive atmosphere long ago. Fascinating and inspiring to walk about the site with Bob Morris, present proprietor of Hamelin and totally interested in all aspects of life and evolution, quite a few laughs with him about my creation/evolution discussions earlier in the trip. Then on to view sharks, turtles, sea snakes and incredible numbers and kinds of fish at Ocean Park, an aquaculture centre just outside of Denham.

Denham itself, certainly the loveliest little town we've seen on the trip, sports an impressive World Heritage Information Centre and also the best caravan site we've stopped at. Then this morning crossing the peninsula to see the local dolphins being fed at Monkey Mia - another unforgettable experience.

Denham lies on the Peron Peninsula, which at its narrowest in the south is only 3.5 km wide. Like the rest of Australia, the original wildlife has been decimated by British colonists' introductions of foreign species like rabbits, goats, sheep, dogs and cats. CALM, the Dept of Conservation and Land Management (great acronym!) has started “Project Eden”, running an impressive electric fence (which even includes recordings of madly barking dogs when you approach it!) across the isthmus and then proceeding to kill of all foreign species north of the fence and re-introducing the original animals and plants – an enormous project, but it seems to be succeeding – Good on’ya!! As the ozzies would say....

We finished our stay in Denham at the “Old Pearler” Restaurant, a quaint little place built of cemented shell sand (looks like breeze/Leca blocks really!), Ros happy and enjoying her longed-for rock lobster (a giant crayfish) and David his fresh oysters and grilled catch of the day, followed by marsala and mango cheesecake, yummy! The best (and most expensive) of many good meals to date, but very cheap at the price compared to Norway.

Carnarvon, Tuesday 10.11, 2612 km

Just crossed the Tropic of Capricorn yesterday on our way south - it's getting cooler already - a maximum of ONLY 33 degrees forecast today. Carnarvon's a lovely place, but problems with the public library's internet system, but now finally here's the last few days' update:

Ned’s Camp, Cape Range National Park, Saturday 7.11, 21 59 S, 113 56 E, 1982 km

Talk about “on the beach” – here we’re in one of 12 camping grounds with a total of 102 spots on a 60 km stretch of National Park, no other camping allowed, no water or electricity, just wild nature and the 300 km long Ningaloo reef just a few strokes offshore, then the Indian Ocean and about 7000 km westwards the first land is Madagascar. A little too much wildlife for Ros in the outdoor loo though – a tarantula looking spider over the door, as big as your hand! Termite mounds she can handle, but not these spiders!

A pleasant sea breeze and tamarisk shade makes a pleasant contrast to the intense desert heat – in fact we were quite “cold” last night – it was only 22 degrees and we had to use a down for the first time. It will be quite a shock getting back to Norway in 10 days time......

A great “happy hour” at sundown last night as people from all 12 spots here gathered for a beer at sundown – an ozzie camping tradition it seems – talking to pensioners who’ve been travelling Australia for 13 years and to “first-timers” who’ve taken a year off work to see their own country... Like other people we’ve talked to, they move from place to place, taking the odd job here and there for a few weeks at a time, generally enjoying life, the nature and the climate – makes us quite envious! So a fantastic night by the ocean, with a kangaroo for company as the sun comes up over the inland dunes behind us....... Today snorkelling and sunning planned, a lazy beach day.

Ningaloo Lighthouse, Sunday evening 8.11

Plans changed a little yesterday – Ros woke with a stomach bug and i got burned to a frazzle snorkelling in the lagoon behind the reef at beautiful Turquoise Bay – very careless, forgetting that I’ve been driving for so much that I haven’t had much time to enjoy the Australian sun! So we decided to hunker down and rest in a pleasant camping ground on Vlamingh Point just north of the National Park boundary, in a basic but (as usual here) very comfortable little cabin, campervan plugged in and recharging outside.

Strange to think that this entire area was barren sheep station country with nothing but a lighthouse until the early 1960s – a temporary air base during WW2, but otherwise nothing. It was only in the 60s that Ozz and the US established a large secret communications base – extreme low frequency to communicate with all the subs in the Indian and Pacific oceans – that Exmouth developed as a town, originally to serve the base, and gradually to cater for tourists – with building now started of an horrific marina complex which will transform this dozy nondescript but pleasant village into a high-rise nightmare....

Today didn’t do much at all, a short trip back into the park for a quick dip, but low enthusiasm because of all the bush flies – and agreed that the lagoon snorkelling wasn’t all that exciting compared to Timor or Queensland’s Barrier Reef. Watched sunset from the lighthouse high on a (Miocene) limestone bluff and then the news on TV for the first time for weeks, followed by a very good programme on Charles Darwin..... Onwards tomorrow, all being well.

Carnarvon, Monday 9.11, 24 53 S, 113 40 E, 2612 km

So now we’re officially out of the tropics! We passed the Tropic of Capricorn about 150 km north of here and duly took piccies of each other in front of the sign by the road. Carnarvon is a major centre in the area, all of 7,000 population, along the Gascoyne River estuary, with fruit and vegetable farming (looks like mainly bananas) and fishing as its main pursuits, as well as servicing all of the cattle and sheep stations in the area (Carnarvon “School of the Air” provides radio schooling for all the stations within an enormous area – including Giralia Station, where we stayed on Thursday). Looks a pleasant place as we arrive just an hour before sundown, and the temperature certainly more moderate than we’ve had for a while – forecast max tomorrow only 33 degrees, quite cool!

In Exmouth we met yet again the Japanese cyclist who we’ve passed several times recently and stopped to talk to him for the first time. He spoke very poor English and had a bad speech impediment, but I understood that he’s cycled the same route from Cairns that I’ve driven – that’s 7,000 km in 11 months – an average of over 200 km a day! And in this climate......

We drove on amazed, then stopped at Coral Bay, near the southernmost point of the Ningaloo Reef, and had a great 2-hour trip in a glass-bottomed boat over the reef, with two snorkelling stops – lots of fish and corals, but again not much colour, not so exciting as the Great Barrier – the Queenslanders we’ve talked to are right!

Exmouth - Friday November 6

We finally made it - beaches and reef here we come. Here's the blog for the last few days:

Auski Roadhouse 22 23 S, 118 41E , Tuesday 3.11, 890 km

We’re now just outside the entrance to the next big attraction – Karijini National Park in the Hammersley Range, with its world-famous Precambrian banded ironstone formations. The whole region seems to be made up of iron ore, all being mined furiously – we passed through Port Hedland today, a very red and dusty town – a third of the world’s seaborne iron ore is shipped from there!

On the way from Broome – a 600 km long trek along a dry coastal plain, the main road running 10 km inland from the sea the whole way, so you can’t see it. We stopped for the night at 80 Mile Beach, a vast and deserted stretch of beach that is actually 220 km long...... At full moon and 2 am watched for the turtles to come ashore and lay their eggs, but didn’t see them, we’d missed high tide when they come ashore, but we saw their tracks over the beach up into the dunes this morning.

We’re now over 200 km in from the coast. It’s very hot – over 40 degrees, but not the humidity that we’ve had on the coast, much more desert-like conditions. Ate supper tonight at the roadhouse diner – a delicious “special” with braised lamb shanks piled high as the mountain range we see ahead of us – they sure have big lambs in this country. The road train truckies around us all tucked in, while we could easily have shared one serving between us.

Tom Price 22 42 S, 117 47 E, Wednesday 4.11, 1108 km

A pleasant little company mining town nestled in the Hammersley Range – at 747 m or 454 m (the guidebooks disagree), the highest town in Western Australia. Iron ore mines all around here – it seems the entire area – even including the National Park – is firmly in the grip of BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. A park ranger we talked to today clearly hated both companies for the liberties they take around here, but recommended Tom Price (established in 1962, named after a company executive). We saw a corner of the Karijini National Park today, walked down one gorge and Ros swam in a palm, banyan and fern shaded pool filled from a waterfall and springs in the gorge walls, all in the 2500 million year old spectacular banded ironstone formation. Very hot though and lots of flies, so we decided to travel on, passing spectacular Mount Bruce, at 1246 m the highest “mountain” in western Australia – David overawed as these are the first real hills/almost mountains he’s seen since northern Queensland, 5,500 km back down the road.

Giralia Station, 22 40 S, 114 22 E, Thursday 5.11, 1785 km

And although that’s 777 km driven today, it’s only 617 km onwards – David got his come-uppance today, he forgot Mandie’s advice (way back there in Queensland) – “Top up your fuel at EVERY opportunity” and we found out that “there and back is twice as far”. So wot happened? In Tom Price early this morning, D didn’t bother to stop and fill up because it was only 80 km to Paraburdoo, the next mining town, so we could fill up there before the 280 km haul to Nanutarra. Pleasant drive to Paraburdoo through rolling hill country, only to find that the Shell station’s diesel pumps weren’t working, and hadn’t been since 20 September – this is a Rio Tinto town and the company clearly runs on diesel – but none to offer to innocent tourists. We might have had enough to make it to Nanutarra, but it was knife-edge, so swallowing all the swear words (and failing to tell the Shell station they could have made a bomb selling 20 litre cans of diesels at even more ridiculous prices than usual) it was back 80 km to Tom Price, filled up, then back again, the rolling hill country losing some of its appeal. Still, we made it on through Paraburdoo (not stopping this time – a miserable town, poorly signed and with the only supermarket ridiculously overpriced) and 280 km onwards along a very isolated road stretch, meeting only 24 vehicles on the way, and in the 45 degrees heat glad we hadn’t chanced it.

Filled again at Nanutarra (a gas station with a wind-blown caravan site, looking dirty, down-trodden and grim) and decided to press on to Giralia Station (an incredibly isolated sheep station way out on the coastal plain on one of the sand-dune ridges). Of course it’s no longer used as a sheep station, but as a camping spot, caravan site, overnight stay, eco-experience. So here we are, on the red dusty plain at sunset among the whispering pines, the only visitors, looking forward to a genuine porterhouse steak dinner....