For the past three days we have been on and off the Easy Rider bus a hundred times! We would drive for an hour and get off and see some sight. Jump back on and drive another hour and do the same. It's a 600 km drive from Exmouth to Broome if you go straight up the coast, but we headed inland to see the Karijini National Park as part of the tour and what a fantastic place it is!!! Check out some of the photos.

We left Exmouth and drove for a while to get off the peninsula and then started to head inland. As soon as we get a little inland, the landscape started to change from miles of flat with scrub brush and an occasional sickly looking tree to a very green, lush series of rolling hills. We spent the first night in a town called Tom Price. It is a mining town in the strictest sense of the word. Tom Price was an American who convinced the Australian government to allow iron ore mining in a small area in WA. He worked for years to get it approved and the day he did, he walked out of the meeting and promptly dropped dead of a heart attack. They named the mountains and the town after him. There is a touch of irony to the story! The Aboriginal people are not happy about the mining as you might imagine, and even less so about the mountains being named after the man who made it all happen. However, within 50 years of the start of the mining, there will be no more mountain, and therefore, no more monument to Tom Price:)

We spent the night there and had a mother kangaroo and her baby (joey) come into the campground. She was very comfortable around people and allowed herself to be petted and photographed.

The next day we drove into the heart of the park and hiked down into some of the gorges and swam in the river. It was an overcast day, otherwise it would have been unbearably hot. As it was, the temperature was in the low 90's. The gorges are millions of years old and the earth is layer upon layer of pure iron ore and asbestos. The rocks are bright red with blue streaks running through them. The blue is the asbestos and there are areas of it just laying out in the open. I imagine it could be dangerous if you stayed around long enough and played with the stuff, but it was pretty interesting to see.

After the hike, we headed to Port Hedland. A town whose entire existence is to support the mining in Tom Price. It's a port town where the iron ore is loaded onto ships and sent primarily to China and Japan for processing into steel. If we didn't have to break up the drive from Tom Price to Broome somewhere along the way, we never would have stayed here. Our driver, Pete, made it a point to tell everyone not to go outside the backpackers in a group smaller than 3 people because it isn't safe. They have had backpackers assaulted and one of them was hospitalized! Apparently there is a huge alcohol and substance abuse problem there. One of the folks on the bus referred to it as Port Headlice, and others made jokes about what a terrible place it is.

In any case, we survived our night there and left early the next morning for the final push to Broome. The day promised to be hot, over 100 degrees. We only made a few stops along the way, but more memorable was the fact that the air conditioning on the bus kept going off. By the time we got to Broome, tempers were a little frayed, and we all began a solid session of beer drinking as soon as we got checked into our rooms. Within an hour, all our frustration melted away and we all talked about our favorite places or times we had on the trip.

For us, it was 3 weeks, 8 cities, 10 dives, countless snorkels & hikes and almost two dozen new found friends. All in all, Easy Rider was a great decision and I would recommend it to anyone who has some time and wants to see Western Australia.

We're only here in Broome for a day and then we fly across the Katherine, as the region is called, and spend our last few days in Australia in Darwin.

Look for one more journal entry before we leave, and then an update to the home page.

Until then, happy trails,

Eric & Val