North to Camballin

We left Mt Augustus and traveled another couple of hundred clicks out to the Great Northern Highway. Once again we took a back road ( no traffic ) which was beautifully graded and through fantastic station country. We passed 3 stations, one near Augustus, the next one about half way and the last one near the great northern Highway. Now all the stock from the first two stations go west to the Coastal highway, and the last stations stock go out to the Great Northern Highway. What’s interesting about that is the four lane beautifully graded road changed as you went past the second station to a single lane, grass in the centre of the road and is probably graded every few years going by the size of the trees growing right next the road. We honestly thought we had missed a turn we should have taken but alas no it’s just what happens in out back Australia and as we passed the last station it was back to a four lane highway again amazing. We had a lovely bush camp on the last station with plenty of fire wood. Then we went north up the great northern Highway to Newman then north east up through Nullagine, and Marble bar, bush camping on these back roads as we traveled to Broome. On one of the back roads we encountered a train carrying iron ore from Gina Rinehearts Roy’s Hill mine, on a railway crossing in the middle of no where, and as we approached we decided to let it go first and watch the 100 odd carriages go past. Well as Mr Murphy would have it the train stopped right on the crossing, two carriages in with no way round him. We sat there for a few minutes wondering what was happening then train driver yelled out to us, have a beer as we might be here awhile. He then invited us up into the train to have a look at one of the latest trains pulling iron ore. It was while we were getting the low down on this very plush machine we found out what the holdup was. Although he is in control of the train he gets all his orders, on computers, from Perth, and Perth computers had crashed so he had to stop where ever he was, unfortunately right in front of us. It took about half an hour before he was going again, by then there was 6 other vehicles waiting, but none of them got a VIP tour of the train, a small blessing in our favour.
Then a few more bush camps as we headed to Broome. We were going to stay a night in Broome and stock up a little and fuel up , but as there is no free camp within 150k of Broome and no accommodation in Broome we moved on to Derby. Before we left I went and saw the council ( much to Bess’s disgust ) and what they could do for us and basically got told to f….k off, politely of course. But really for a town that squealed like a stuck pig when Covid hit , took hand outs from the government tax payers money , but now they are full again they couldn’t give a shit!!! They are copping a lot of flack because of their attitude and hopefully it might lead to change ( dream on). So we fuelled up and stocked up in Derby and moved on to Camballin.
At Camballin we went out to the barrage, a dam on the Fitzroy river, to divert the water to irrigate a big plain around Camballin. It failed after about ten years as two massive floods ( not seen before and has never came close to it again ) and this is a river that gets to 23 kilometres across in flood so it begs the question what was the width during those floods. There are lots of fresh water croc’s and Barra here and even with out Tristan I caught my share. Had six beautiful days here and met a lots of lovely people, one who had been coming here for the past 13 years just to catch Barra and cherrapin ( a type of small cray fish).En savoir plus