Park Life

Expat Wife apologises for the lack of blog activity over the past three days but she was enjoying a glorious long weekend with The Husband thanks to Foundation Day – a public holiday only celebrated in WA in commemoration of the state’s first European settlers. As The Husband had to work the Saturday we couldn’t fly off to Perth for some much needed city indulgence, so we decided to go to the other extreme and have some quiet time. We enjoyed meals in – a barbecue, a beautifully fresh marinara pasta (only slightly impaired by The Husband managing to burn the sauce, which he insisted gave it a Creole flavour) and a homemade pizza, all washed down with plenty of excellent Aussie wine -, pottered about the house, lazed in the sun and, on Sunday, drove off to Millstream-Chichester National Park. Only an hour or so inland from Karratha, Millstream-Chichester covers over 770 square miles and is a park of total contrasts. The majority of it is covered with dramatic red hills, stretching out to the horizon and looking like the surface of Mars, but within half an hour’s drive you can be in the oasis of the Millstream wetlands where you’ll come across lush forests, date palms and water lily-strewn ponds.


I was in very good spirits as we pulled away from the petrol station after filling up the car (plus an additional container – you can never be too careful out in the sticks!) and headed out of Karratha, bound for the open road. When you live somewhere small and remote, going anywhere else can make you feel giddy with excitement and I found it hard to contain myself as we hit a previously unchartered road and sped away into the distance. I had the camera out every five minutes and consequently took dozens of pictures which all turned out to be very similar to each other. We were following a road built alongside the railway which takes trains carrying huge amounts of iron ore from the mine near Tom Price, 336km east of Karratha, to Dampier where it can be shipped off. We passed a few of the multi-wagon trains, all so long you couldn’t see any of them in their entirety in one go – they simply disappeared into the distance. I wound my window down to take a photo of one and the driver honked his horn at me and waved, which threatened to send my levels of excitement into hysteria!

After about an hour, the smooth sealed road gave way to red dirt – we were properly in outback country now. Looking behind us in the rear-view mirror, all I could see was red dust and I tried not to think about how much the car was going to need a clean when we got back. We pulled up into an empty car park and, donned in khaki coloured clothing and hiking boots, camel-back at the ready, we hiked up to the top of a mount which gave us an amazing view of the surrounding land – a vast stretch of undulating red hills, dotted with spinifex and snappy gums, with the occasional gorge jaggedly carved out, slicing its way across the soil and rock. After a further hour and a half’s hike to a natural spring and back, during which I became weirdly obsessed with the gigantic termite mounds which frequently rose up from the dusty ground, we drove on to Python Pool, a permanent freshwater pool at the foot of a jagged rust and slate coloured cliff, which soared up to the sky. Our lunchtime entertainment consisted of a couple of guys climbing the treacherous cliff barefoot, attempting to jump down into the pool below. We left before they committed what would have been certain suicide but I didn’t hear of any deaths on the news so I can only presume they decided to use their brains and climb back down again.

After the stark, dramatic scenery of the Chichester Range, it was a wonderful contrast to drive to lush, green Millstream along the banks of the Fortescue River, where we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by trees – a somewhat novel experience in the often desert-like conditions of the Pilbara. After wandering past a gently babbling brook, the water as clear as glass, and through flowering bushes and tall grasses, it was time to head home in order to avoid a dusk head-on collision with a big kangaroo. On the way back, we passed a family whose son had come off his dirt bike. His pride had been wounded but luckily he was okay, which couldn’t be said for the bike. They had no way of getting the bike back and there is no mobile phone signal in the park so they had to wait on the side of the road for someone with a satellite phone to pass. That brought home the dangers of being somewhere so remote – if you get in trouble you can’t just give someone a quick call, you’re stuck. If you weren’t near a road, you’d be in serious trouble.

So yes, yet again, we come back to the risks involved in living in the remote Pilbara. It’s amazing I’m still alive really.