Giralia Station then on to Carnarvon

I suppose I should apologise for general slackness in not putting out a blog for two weeks…………….I thought about it………….no….!     :-D

We like Giralia Station. It’s certainly not flash, but it’s always interesting. This time it was a little more crowded with the addition of a number of road workers occupying the donga type accommodation, but they were an interesting, hard-working mob of blokes who started early and finished late and worked three weeks at a time.

Giralia used to be a huge sheep station but the lease has run out or has been revoked and it is now owned by Conservation & Land Management or Dept Environment & Conservation or one of that lot, although the previous owners still operate the homestead area and surrounding buildings as a station stay. There is a track that runs 30 Km or so to end at a couple of bays that are at the bottom of the Exmouth Gulf. The scenery is interesting and the fishing and crabbing seem good – our neighbours this trip caught quite a few large mud crabs in the week we spent there.

During one drive to the bay I had an interesting encounter with an Australian Bustard, a large bird that stands more than 100 Cm high. I spotted one in the scrub near the dirt track we were on and followed it on foot for some distance. The bustard often looks like E.T. in the bush!

 Bustards are not as common as they once were due to the predations of foxes and feral cats. They were often shot for food because of their size (another of their common names is plains turkey). I have previously found that the bustard can be fairly inquisitive and if you follow them slowly in a non-threatening manner and talk softly to them or just cluck or whistle they will just keep walking and watching. If you speed up, so will they and if they perceive you as a threat they will just take off. They have a wing span of about two metres and it takes a bit of a run up and a bit of effort to take off. On this occasion, after allowing me to follow for 50 or 60 metres this one took off and flew to join another three in the general area. I shot a couple of reasonable pics. The pic of the full view of the bustard was taken at Giralia on our last trip in 2008.

 The bays on the bottom of Giralia Station in the Exmouth Gulf are fairly remote at about 30 Km from the station and the only visitors are generally guests at the station who don’t mind a bit of dirt track and a bit of dust on their 4wds. The creek at the end of one bay is a good boat launching site as well as a favourite site for turtle watching, with quite a few medium to large turtles to be seen. The beaches are good for shells as well as being excellent for a wander. I would think that the likelihood of their being sharks in the general area is fairly high.

My neighbours came across a turtle on its back in the mangroves. It looked to be done for, but a dousing with water seemed to revive it so they righted it and carried it to the waters edge and it eventually swam slowly away.

Giralia was a week of doing not very much and we had a very relaxing and pleasant time. Like I said previously, it’s not flash and there’s power only for about three hours in the morning and about four or more hours in the evening but it is very peaceful.

Our next stop was to have been Exmouth, but those Exmouth parks willing to take dogs were either booked out or had been the subject of some very bad reviews on some of the websites I read.  Yardie Creek out of Exmouth had some appalling reviews based on travellers’ recent experiences with the staff so we decided to give Exmouth a miss completely.

We considered a week at Coral Bay, just down the road, but like Exmouth it was booked out. The Bayview caravan park at Coral Bay is happy to take dog owners’ money, but we found in our last visit that it treats dog owners  like second class citizens, putting them all together at the back of the park.  They eventually rang me back offering only two nights in two week’s time, but in a new low for caravan parks, wanted to charge $2 per night for the dog, so we elected to give Coral Bay a miss as well, deciding to spend a couple of days at Carnarvon and then put in some beach time at Denham / Shark Bay.

Next stop, Carnarvon then Denham / Shark Bay.

 

Robe River and new and old Onslow

Cossack was worth exploring a second time and before we left Point Sampson we spent some more time looking at the government buildings that have been preserved and looking at some of the interpretive signs around the old town. The Roebourne Art Prize exhibition was in progress at the old bond store and in a number of the other buildings. The prize money on offer was quite substantial and the entries came from far and wide, in excess of a thousand entries were on display and we spent some time admiring some of the works.

The old Cossack court house is also open and worth “a gold coin donation” – although there were some people (of course) who just visited and looked and didn’t donate. These will be the same people who will complain in future that there is nothing to see!!

I had noticed that I had not included photographs of some of the old buildings at Cossack or Roebourne in previous blogs, so I have included some shots of some of them. We also found and photographed some Sturt desert pea growing on a beach at Point Sampson – quite a way from the desert!

Having mooched around the Roebourne / Cossack / Point Sampson / Karratha area for about three weeks enjoying the excellent weather it was area time to hit the road once again and move slowly south.

After a final visit to Karratha to buy a week’s worth of food and to refuel, we headed down the highway for only 150 Km or so to a free camp at Robe River. We managed to find a very nice spot right on the river right next to a large tree full of budgerigars. The budgies entertained us for the afternoon, chattering away as they popped in and out of their nests in the numerous hollows in the tree.

As well as the budgies there were numerous white-plumed honeyeaters in the large tree and in the surrounding smaller trees. At one stage during the afternoon all of the birds quickly flew away or fell completely silent as what I believe to be a grey falcon firstly flew overhead and then flew into the large tree, hunting for food. It didn’t take long for the falcon to discover a white-plumed honeyeater’s nest and we were rained with feathers as the unfortunate occupant became the falcon’s evening meal. In a nearby tree a pair of black faced cuckoo shrikes were busy feeding  some small chicks and I was able to get a couple of reasonable shots.

We left Robe River reluctantly and headed south once more to Onslow, a coastal village about 80 Km west of the highway where we decided to stop for a couple of days. Onslow has been a somewhat sleepy backwater, known for its Dampier Salt mining / loading facility and, to a lesser extent, some fishing industry and it is also known as a support base for a number of offshore oil and gas projects. The platforms are visible on the horizon as is some sort of storage facility on a nearby low lying island.

The Mackerel Islands are not far off shore, quite a good fishing spot by all accounts and the Monte Bello Islands are also not far away. Those people of our vintage will remember the Monte Bello Islands at the site of some atomic testing in the late 50’s.

There is a buzz of activity around Onslow at the moment with work beginning on a new site near Old Onslow, site of the original town. Some of the workers setting up the site told me that they will be there until Christmas and the site, when opened will employ a couple of thousand people.  Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest of Fortescue Metals was mentioned as the prime mover of this site so anything is possible.

 

Onslow was originally situated near the mouth of the Ashburton River. We should remember that, for many years, there were no roads to speak of in this part of the world and most transport was carried out using coastal shipping, the well-known State Ships fleet, used to transport people, stock and produce to and from many small coastal towns.

Old Onslow was established in 1885 to support the pastoral industry and it also became a base for pearling luggers. The government provided a lot of infrastructure with a hospital, doctor’s residence, magistrate’s house, police station, court house and gaol. As was the problem in many towns established near the mouths of large rivers, silting began to cause problems and in Onslow’s case led to the building of another jetty nearby.

Onslow’s problems became more serious after damage from a cyclone in 1909 and successive cylcones shortly after. It was then decided to build a deep water point at Beadon Bay about 40 Km up the coast and Onslow was moved to this new site in 1925. The only buildings now remaining at Old Onslow are the old gaol and police station. The walls show some evidence of being visited by members of the RAAF, maybe there was a camp nearby during WW2

There was some wartime activity near Onslow during the Second World War and it was bombed by the Japanese at one point, becoming the southernmost point of mainland WA to be bombed.

NEXT STOP GIRALIA.