Packed up early (the campers next door had a young baby who woke us all up screaming just before 6am, the joys of canvas walls!) and checked out of the caravan park just before 8am. Luckily I had my eyes open and noticed a warning sheet on the desk advising that the North West Coastal Highway was closed at Minilya Roadhouse due to a massive fire that has been burning out of control for several days 60km south of the Roadhouse. There is no risk to houses, property or lives (its so remote and know one lives out there) but the fire has managed to burn through 215000 hectares and is still uncontained.
Information that we were given at Monkey Mia led us to believe that the road could be re-opened today and so we decided to move on and take the chance. A few hundred k's up the road we stopped at Wooramel Roadhouse, the lady there informed us that it was still closed but the fire situation had eased and the road should be open in 24 hours. With this new information at hand we made plans to stop overnight at Carnarvon.
I drove today from Woormael to Carnarvon and left Dave and Jade to sort our accommodation through many of the tourist books that we have been kicking around the floor of the car since we left home.
The road today long, flat and the scenery just what you would imagine in the outback - straight out of the movie Red Dog...
We arrived at Carnarvon at lunch time and setup pretty quick - we are very good at it now if I do say so myself. The weather here is HOT damn HOT! We have been complaining about the afternoon sea breeze that whips up along the coast every afternoon but today we are just dying for it kick in!!
Nice park isn't it - every now and then you get a lovely waft of sewerage smell which is devine in the 38 degree heat!
To say that we don't like Carnarvon would be an understatement - 'A' hole of the earth has been bandied around a little this afternoon. There really isn't much to do here and even the beach doesn't look appealing. We drove past the jetty this afternoon and Tom said "Mum, is that the sewer". They have become so used to the beautiful turquoise water that anything else just isn't good enough now! The picture below is of the main beach - yet again Dave won't be getting a surf in and I seriously doubt we will even get our toes wet here...
Spent the afternoon hiding from the heat in target and woolies and driving around town. On return to the van we sat down with the maps and have tried to rework the itinery again. Its really hard to know what to do - if the roads reopen how safe will it be up there - its one road in and one road out so if they get blocked like the are now you really can be stranded.
We have looked at lots of different options but the current plan is to ride it out for one more day. There's a little fishing village called Quobba not far from here so tomorrow we are going to take a drive there and spend the day, hopefully the water is a little nicer for a swim and there are clam shells on the beach to collect which could be nice.
Fingers crossed the road will re-open and then we can continue to Exmouth to see the beautiful turtles and enjoy some snorkelling. If the road remains closed we will turn around here and head for home - Dave will just have to bring me back another time - what a shame that would be....
Watching the Alerts and Warnings on the FESA Website (Fire and Emergency Services Authority) there is also another fire burning on the Nullarbor which has closed the road between Madura and Mundrabilla. None of these fires have even been mentioned on the news over here but looks like our trip back could be a little more challenged than our trip over...
The remoteness, the dryness and the intense summer heat experienced out here certainly makes life more difficult for the firefighters. The reduced numbers in population also means that they simply don't have the resources or the man power to deal with emergencies of this size. The alerts say that there are currently
20 appliances and 12 machines working on the fire. More than 100 staff from DEC, FESA, SES, WA Police and local pastoralists are working on the incident.
We hope and pray for an easing of conditions for the fire fighters, they have such a terribly hard job. Its 8.45pm here now and the temperature is still 30 degrees - tough conditions for fighting fires.
No comments:
Post a Comment