Tuesday 14 June 2011

Road Kill!

Today’s blog is dedicated to Road Kill, today we hit our first road kill, a little birdy flew straight into our car and bam it was dead, the poor thing, I’m not a fan of dead things but am taking more of an interest in the decaying carcasses that are lining the highways! We are seeing a lot of headless kangaroos, (apparently they go out on the road at night to eat from the side of the road, look up when they see headlights and BAM a road train clear takes off their heads! (very sad), but the last few days we have seen some pretty amazing things, there is a lot of cattle that wander  these roads, so we have now seen sheep and COWS as road kill, the cows were really strange because someone had obviously dragged them off the road and they were upside down with their legs straight in the air, they looked bizarre, but what was even stranger was the decaying carcasses that looked like someone had deflated the cow, all the insides were gone but the hide was still in mint condition!!! What is even more amazing is watching the massive eagles lift a whole kangaroo carcass off the road, it is such a sight, today the eagle had the carcass and was raising it higher in the air, then it dropped it and SPLAT road kill again!! We were very lucky it didn’t drop it on our car, that would have been a strange incident to tell the insurance company!!! (yes a kangaroo really did fall out of the sky onto our car!)
Karratha (or as Scarli called it, Karratha Arthur)                                                                                  
Today we left Exmouth and did a 5 hour drive to Karratha, this is the hub of the Pilbara region and we only stayed overnight to refuel, again the price of caravan parks is increasing as we head further north, tonight it cost, 65$ for ONE NIGHT! We are now getting more prepared to free camp a lot more to save a few dollars as the price apparently will only get dearer as we get higher! The next morning we left windy ville (as mike referred to it) and headed to port hedland. Again we are only staying overnight on our way to Broome, we have had a quick look around the town, purchased some expensive groceries and booked into the cheapest caravan park we could find. At 40$ a night, the lady was lovely and didn’t charge for kids! (some parks charge 10$ a kid!)

We have had a wander round the caravan park which is full of permanent sites, many of the mine workers live here and it certainly has a feeling of trailer trash!!! (the watson’s will fit right in!!) it is funny to see these old caravan’s that have got trashy annexes etc then next to it, there are these huge big expensive boats, quad bikes, and 4 wheel drives!

Both in Karratha and Port Hedland there are many ‘make shift suburbs’ with rows and rows of little tin houses that are obviously for the fly in fly out crowd….a very different lifestyle and one I don’t think I would enjoy. We have definitely left the beautiful peaceful coastal areas and are now in mining country with lots of red didrt, trucks, railway lines, big piles of salt and ‘miny’ stuff everywhere!

Tomorrow we are heading out of the Pilbara region and up to 80mile beach, on our way to Broome!

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