Woke up early, made a great cup of aeropress coffee and sat outside under the trees to contemplate the serenity. Today is my best friend's milestone birthday, and I am missing out on celebrating with her in person. So instead I wrote her a long winded private whatsapp message reminiscing about all the special memories and moments that we have shared over the last 20 something years. Given I have no internet, I saved it as a draft to be sent later when I had coverage.
Finally Gadi woke up and we ate brekky before packing up and heading towards Broome, about 500km. We made a quick pit stop to use the toilet at Pardoo Road House, about 50km up the road and then stopped for fuel at Sandfire Road House. These road houses are quite amazing, as they all double up as general store and caravan park too. It really hurt paying $1.59 a litre for diesel, but you have no choice out here. An hour later we pulled over to the side of the road for me to take over driving, and Gadi noticed on his walk around/inspection of the car, that the rear passenger tyre looked flat. Lucky we had a tree for shade as it was 32 degrees outside, but he managed to change the tyre while I made some lunch and we were able to get back on the road in an hour. We were a bit surprised that nobody stopped to see if we were ok. At least a dozen cars, trucks and caravanners passed by, but other than a wave and toot from one, they all whizzed past. Lucky we were ok!
Back on the bitumen we thought we might be able to make the distance to the farm we want to stay at just north of Broome so we pushed on, listening to a Phantom of the Opera CD and gazing out on the flat, semi green plains with occasional trees and shrubs, termite mounds and stray cows for added interest. Today's scenery as we crossed from the Pilbara into the Kimberly has been the least interesting to date. I definitely preferred the red clay earth of the Pilbara.
As the sun set low over the endless plains we realised we wouldn't make it to our campsite before dark - and it's too dangerous driving to an out of town location you've never been to before just on dark. So we pulled into a large gravel pit about 20 minutes out of Broome and headed into the caravan to open it up and try to cool it down as it was still 30 degrees at 6pm. Just as it turned dark we were bombarded with a plague of small moths and tiny bugs that invaded the caravan in the hundreds. It took ages to get rid of most of them. Spent the evening watching an episode of 1864 and catching up on some social media (always good to have phone reception!).
Time to chill now and say good night.
Tomorrow we finally get to Broome.
Night night xx