DAY 78 - DAMPIER HERE WE COME…..

On the road again today.  We are making our way south, heading for the Ningaloo Coast.  We have over 600kms to drive to reach the coast, so we have two days to get there.  Our first planned stop was to be Karratha.  We had studied the Wiki camps the previous evening and had planned to head to Karratha Caravan Park.  

 

Roebourne Prison - something from back in England

Old houses in Roebourne

It was a stinking hot day today, so we were very pleased that most of it would be spent in the car where it is air conditioned.  It was a pretty long trip with not much of anything to see until we arrived at Roebourne.  Now this town was a total surprise.  It looked like something from way back in England, with some beautiful old stone buildings.  

We drove off the highway and drove around town a little taking some photos of some of the old buildings including the old stone gaol.  We didn’t bother getting out of the car as the temperature in Roebourne today was forecast to climb to 46 degrees.  

We arrived in Karratha around lunch time, and found the caravan park.  It was right in the middle of an industrial area and didn’t look too good.  It was also very hot there, so we decided to pay and extra $5 for the night and book into the Dampier Transit Caravan Park in Dampier which was only $35 a night but right on the water front.  

Water front at Dampier

This caravan park was OK.  You could only stay a maximum of three nights, but it was a  little disappointing that the bathrooms where not cleaned daily nor was there any hand wash or paper towels in the bathroom.  

The very first thing we did when we had set up the vans was hit the laundry with our baskets of dirty washing to get them all washed and clean again. 

We also needed a few groceries and fuel, so we took a drive into Karratha and found a Coles supermarket and did our grocery shop.  We had a bit of a drive around Karratha before heading back to the caravan park…

 On our way home though we did stop at the Information board just outside of Dampier so that we could see the Red Dog memorial.  Of course we all had to have our photos taken with Red Dog....

 Tinned soup and chicken was on the menu for dinner tonight and it really did taste very good.  Our time in Dampier was short lived.  There were a couple of things we would have oved to do here but it seems we have missed out, and will need to visit this fair city again down the track.  We need to get south to Ningaloo because the Western Australian school holidays start.