15 years and counting.
Posted: June 12, 2025 Filed under: Iconic Australian images | Tags: Australia, Camping, Cape Range National Park, hiking, nature, Ningaloo Reef, Nyinggulu, outback, roadtrip, snorkelling, travel, WA 3 Comments
Osprey Bay is our favourite of the 11 campgrounds in Cape Range National Park. Cape Range is the most accessible entry point for Ningaloo Reef requiring a two wheel drive vehicle, and 20m walk into the water to see reef fish going about their business. We’ve been coming to Cape Range since around 2010, and our first favourite was Lakeside campground before a severe storm washed it away along with someone’s camper trailer, which has not been seen since.
Each of the bays offer something different. Turquoise Bay is Insta famous for its prettiness. Oyster Stacks for the amazing array of fish, and Osprey? The turtles. So many turtles, it’s turtle soup. You can also get a campsite right on the water, with a view of the ocean, sunset, and whales breaching between August and October. Of course, there’s a cost to this. Not the $20 a night we pay for our prime real estate, but eight months prior we get up around 15 nights in total at 2.30am Adelaide time, in order to book a site. Harder to get than an AFL Grand Final ticket, sites are released at midnight Perth local time, six months ahead of the available date, and book out within LITERAL seconds. Waz has it down to a fine art, honed over many nights poring over multiple screens to eventual fail yet again. His commitment and attention to the matter of booking Osprey every year is probably one of his greatest achievements to date. Determined to beat all odds, he had me lurch awake with him at 2.10am and sit in front of my laptop and iPhone with strict instructions and a timing countdown to the second for when I was to repeatedly refresh my screens.
So here we are. At our favourite place, in our favourite site. Over 16 years of travelling around Australia, we have finessed the set up somewhat. We started staying at Roadhouses where there were so many mice the ground looked like it was moving. We stayed in Backpacker Hostels with the great unwashed and your stuff went missing from the line. We’ve stayed in Motels where you wake up with mouse poo on your pillow, freakishly next to your mouth. About 2009 we upgraded to a swag. For the non-Aussies that’s a giant canvas pillowcase you put your sleeping bag in, squeeze into that, and spend the rest of the night claustrophobically seeking air around the canvas covering over head. At Mt Dare in the centre of Australia, we had dingoes sniffing our toes, and awoke to a blanket of frost on the swag exterior, and 100% condensation in the interior.
In 2010 we spoilt ourselves with a two room tent, the construction of which was longer than the time we slept in it, and a solid marriage tester. In 2011 we hired a soft floor camper trailer and giddy with the luxury, decided to buy one off Gumtree located in Brisbane, not so far from Woodend, Victoria. One week after spending four months long service leave around the country in the soft floor, Waz got all excited and bought a hard floor, our first Aussie Swag, a triumph of Australian engineering and practicality. We had moved to Perth at the time, so I was dispatched to QLD to retrieve it. I had nights on the Nullarbor alone, but the busy Roadhouses were actually scarier. To get to your room you have to walk past a line of male guests sitting outside their rooms smoking and holding a tinny of Jack and coke and silently watching you. Then there’s the vehicles that double back when you’re at an outpost service station, and the driver pulls up to chat. No refuelling.
9 years and about 200000km later we are we are in our second Aussie Swag and out at Osprey, we are an oddity. It used to be a mix of hippy camper vans, a chaotic mess of two minute noodles, incense, tie dye, and an interior that looked like it needed a forensic clean, grey nomads in well loved Millard, Coromal and Jayco caravans, and tiny two man tents housing hardy Scandinavians, shelf stable wraps, cans of tuna and boiled eggs. Now it is either enormous caravans, roof top tents, or fancy camper vans, and about every two weeks a camper trailer may appear for a night or two. The demographic has changed over 15 years as well. What were hardy fisher folk, adventurous grey nomads, alternative lifestylers and remarkably intrepid Europeans are now mostly young families doing a one year loop, retirees, 25-30 somethings on a two week break seeking Insta moments, and a considerable representation of the European and South American continents. Campsites are awash with bikes, boats, scooters, skateboards, inflatable stand up paddle-boards, satellite and Starlink dishes. Some sites look like a teenage boys bedroom, others are, well, like ours.
We’ve set up often enough now that the recriminations are long gone and we now have our assigned tasks which we have allocated without discussion. Usually set up occurs in blazing sun, occasionally with a testing wind, so the less said, the better. It takes about two hours to do the full one month occupation set up, after which there is cold beer and a swim to reinstate a sense of humour.
Not at all soft.
Posted: June 6, 2025 Filed under: Iconic Australian images | Tags: adventure, Australia, Camping, exmouth, hiking, landscapes, nature, outback, roadsides, Roadtrips, travel, WA 1 Comment
As you travel through the Gascoyne region toward Exmouth, Cape Range National Park and Ningaloo/Nyinggulu reef, the terrain quickly becomes deep red and festooned with vegetation that is generally out to get you. Soft looking spinifex will shred your shins faster than you can say “wish I’d picked another path”, and snakes, bull-ants and March flies with anger management issues sit seething in wait. Our eventual destination is Osprey Bay, 80km from Exmouth town, and 1250km north of Perth.
Exmouth was created in 1967 to support US naval operations during the Cold War, specifically a very-low-frequency transmitting station capable of sending messages to submarines. The transmissions are enabled by incredibly high spidery towers, including one that is 387 metres high, the tallest man made structure in the Southern Hemisphere until Tower 108 in Melbourne in 2019 took the title. Not sure why. In 1992, the US Navy passed command to the Royal Australian Navy and it is now run by Defence. For military buffs, Mike Hughes gives a more detailed account and the comments section has some interesting memories shared by those who worked there over the decades. Before Russia got a bit excited once more in recent times and security ramped up, you could walk around the 1960’s American base with the original architecture, bowling alley, swimming pool, and super wide streets, like it was a museum.
Over the last couple of years a veritable farm of radars has popped up, allegedly weaponised, as one undoubtably anti-vaxxer whispered to Warren. This farm turns out to be Australia’s Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC), a joint tri-nation endeavour between the US, UK and Australia, to globally track objects up to 22,000 miles above Earth, like weather, space debris, and oh yes, hostile or ‘malign’ activity.
Thundering past the radar farm every morning at around 8am, vehicles and caravans point missile-like to their allotted campsites, whereupon they circle like vultures until the incumbents vacate. Many of these stay the night before at Bullara Station, a working cattle station that started out with a few campsites on offer around 15 years ago, and now offers lodge accomodation, huts, cottages, and fancy safari tents as well for 100’s of people per night.
It features one of my favourite kinds of architecture, I call it Colonial Outback Station. Remoteness, extremely harsh environments and 1400km to Bunnings has spawned incredibly creative and beautiful re-use of practical farm equipment and materials. Horse-shoes become door pulls, windmill blades make signs, wire becomes a chandelier. Giving early settler hut vibes, you see this kind of architecture in places like El Questro, and other stations that have opened their gates to travellers wanting an authentic outback experience. With coffee. And scones. And helicopters. It makes me want to recreate it at home in Adelaide. But then it would be like the crochet beaded top I bought in Sorrento, Italy, that had no business in Woodend, Victoria.
The other thing, perhaps the main thing, about Bullara is the famed ‘Burger Night’, stated in reverential and knowing tones. People the world over book their Bullara stay for a Friday for the station beef burger and live music. Didn’t seem enough of a draw to warrant the fame, until the conga line was mentioned. It was Sunday, and with a dawning state of FOMO we resolved to book Burger Night on the way back. Tomorrow, we finally get to Osprey Bay.
You’re a galah.
Punching above its weight
Posted: May 30, 2025 Filed under: Iconic Australian images | Tags: Australia, Australian native flora, Camping, landscapes, nature, outback, Roadtrips, travel, WA, wildflowers 4 Comments
For a rural wheatbelt town of around 900 people, Northampton has managed to outdo itself in Aussie Rules football legends, producing 11 players so far. This monument to the first 9 is a stand out. Literally. Each player is life-size and eerily lifelike. I loved it, which, as someone who has zero ball skills and still asks “why has the ref taken the ball off the short guy?”, means it gets my vote as top small town artwork.
Between about June and September, the trip between Perth and Northampton is a wildflower wonder, so much so, that busloads of people tour about just to stop on roadsides to search for donkey orchids and kneel in ant nests.
Of course, it’s May, so only the husks of summer Banksias are left, smoke from burning grain paddock stubble, and a road that looks a bit like this.
You often see the darndest things in the 110km blur that Waz affords me as we speed north as if we stole something. Case in point. An adorable small wombat moseying along on the side of the road. Did I grab it from its mother and run laughing up the road with it? No I did not, American Sam Jones, actually Strable, ‘Wildlife Biologist and Environmental Scientist’, and hunter it turns out.
What a disgrace. Bless Australia, whose wholesale outrage prompted her to flee the country, before I hunted her down and ran my own kangaroo court.
Then there’s the Woodleigh Impact Crater. One of the world’s largest, caused by a 6-12 km wide asteroid smacking into the Gasgoyne wilderness 360 million years ago. Big numbers. Big hole. And yet, inexplicably, this is where people have decided to construct a pile of rocks and manmade rubbish spanning gnomes, footwear (specifically crocs?!) creepy eyed stuffed toys, and r.i.p mementoes. Some things I have no answer for.
It’s getting hot, we must be close to Ningaloo!
Sublime to the ridiculous
Posted: October 7, 2015 Filed under: Australia, Camping, Iconic Australian images, Landscapes, WA | Tags: Australian native flora, outback, pilbara, roadtrip, snorkelling 6 Comments
Content warning: If you are close to convincing your better-half that camping is a really great idea, disavow all knowledge of this post.
Hello! I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to post in the last three weeks due to not having enough ‘fibre’ across the top end of Australia. I still don’t fully understand because W hasn’t drawn me a picture, but apparently having coverage and having speed to upload stuff is different. Stabbing my finger repeatedly on the return key doesn’t help either. W makes a dial whizz around on his iPad and declares the location blog-possible or not. As we have made it to the East Coast, the dial should whizz above 0.84 megabits and I can get back to where I left off…
And the Landscape Design Award goes to…nature
Monitor Lizard, critter time (for Kenny)
When we packed up at Cape Range, a little surprise awaited me on the underside of the groundsheet; two poor little mice in pancake form, a vision now burned into my retina for the rest of all time. I had managed to forget the stowaway Huntsman spider, the ticks, and the poor man dismantling his two month old Toyota to evict the family of rats that were eating his vehicle from the inside of the seats out. Until then.
Mt Nameless Rd, the 4WD alternative to Tom Price. Looks innocuous enough.
We headed in the direction of Tom Price, and at 4pm set up camp on the side of the highway, close enough to deter psychopaths, far enough from the road-train that would inevitably park nearby, and run their refrigeration units all night. Opening the back door of the car to pull out bits of tent, a tiny stowaway mouse freaked out and shot into the depths of our vehicle. A forensic sweep of the Silverado coaxed it out of the car and straight under the imagined sanctity of our tent. By morning, two of them made it out alive to examine their new digs in the local spinifex.
The last time I was at Tom Price, Stevie, Suz, W and I went to the only restaurant open at 6.30pm – the hotel – where no menu item escaped the scorching love of the deep fryer. Jump aboard the DeLorean and fast forward 5 years, and we found ourselves at Crave coffee cart that not only served a great heart starter, but oh my! smoothies with kale. I caught up with the lovely Matt and Kass, mid-roadtrip to meet photographers for new venture Austockphoto, started by Kass and business partner Clare. Hallelujah for beautiful Australian stock imagery, and hooray for tangibly supporting Australian artists! The Coles was another revelation. Jammed with every kind of produce you could want, we set new records in Paleo contraband (six kinds of kinds of cheese anyone?), and set off for Dales Gorge camp at Karijini National Park.
I waited for the nude swimmer to leave, Circular Pool, Karijini
The numerous campsites at Dales Gorge were spacious and shady, the serenity broken only by the grind of the Parks generator, and the five flirty European 20-somethings next door, travelling in a tardis. I still can’t figure out where they all slept.
Hancock Gorge where you wished you had worn more grippy shoes
Karijini has numerous stunning walks, some a short wander, some a sweaty ridge top walk, and a couple of sweaty-palmed spider climbs, like Hancock Gorge, rewarded by a cool gorge pool. Everyone seemed to have the same idea. It was a race against time. We all wanted to do an Edmund Hillary and knock all of the bastards off, and the same faces showed up at every walk throughout the day. Most striking were the family groups, with home-school books pressed to the back window of their packed vehicles. A typical bunch had five adults with at least seven kids aged two to ten. A beaming three year old boy matched us walk for walk and stayed considerably more cheerful than I did battling heat and mosquitoes. The older kids raced each other up every rocky ledge and tricky incline with the agility of rock wallabies, while their mother told me they didn’t really bother with the home school stuff, they had adventures instead.
A walking bottle of bug deterrent. Karijini National Park.
That night we took in an Astro-tour at the campground, run by Phil Witt, a sound and light spectacular. I thought the Milky Way was a cloudy blob, but no! Densely populated with up to 400 billion stars, I gained a new appreciation for how extra teeny Earth is, and how any number uttered with more than nine zeros recalls the horrors of Pure Maths and Stats at Canterbury University, before converting to white noise in my ears.
Millstream Chichester National Park, homestead walk.
I had read about Millstream Chichester a few years back, and never got there. Lush with wetlands thanks to an underground aquifer estimated to contain 1700 million cubic metres of water, the surrounding country supports a wide variety of species. It was worth tackling 200km of corrugated 4WD thick with bull-dust. Arriving at any campsite at dusk usually means you get the sole remaining camp site, next to the rubbish bins, and out in the burning sun. Which is exactly what happened. It was a breathless 39 degrees on the last campsite, as we paused to draw smiley faces in the red veneer of dust on everything outside the vehicle. I said to W that it’s ok, AT LEAST there were showers. Opening door after door to over-ripe bush-loos, I was confronted with the irrefutable fact I need reading glasses.
So dirty right now. That is not a tan.
The aquifer, along with the Harding Dam supplies water to ‘industry’ and residents in Dampier, Karratha and other surrounding towns. Unceasingly through the night, the inescapable drone of an industrial water pumping station sliced through the silence, but the brochure reassured me that this is to just to keep the Park wetlands topped up and ensure the survival of dependent species. Hmmm. Awake since 3am, waiting for first light, we thundered out in a cloud of red dust headed for Point Samson, an idyllic seaside spot for a shower, power, laundry facilities, and the promise of the ‘Best Beach in the world’ at Hearson Cove.
Best Beach In The World. Perhaps on another day? Hearson Cove, Burrup Peninsula.
There are many things to do in the West Pilbara Coast, ideally in the early dry season, and ideally if you have access to a boat. Having failed in our search for snorkelling and swimming, almost being carried off by midges and devoid of waterborne vessel, we headed out to the Burrup Peninsula in search of one of Australia’s most prolific Aboriginal rock art sites, with over 10,000 engravings and etchings, dating back 30,000 years. Their location is somewhat mysterious. Three hours and five failed attempts down nondescript trails later, I can confirm they are 2.2km from the turnoff to Hearson Cove from the Burrup Peninsula Road, down a gravel track. Despite the noonday sun leaching all colour from both the landscape and my life-force, the rock art looked freshly pressed.
10,000 etchings and drawings dating back 30,000 years, yet so fresh!
Our next stop was Barn Hill Station, champion of corrugated iron architecture and the authentic bush experience (covered in this post). We went from Barn Hill to far fancier digs at the Cable Beach Resort in Broome, where the rooms are lined in corrugated iron.
NEXT: Broome, Cape Leveque and Derby
Lambstails, Road to Tom Price
Bungled
Posted: November 30, 2012 Filed under: Australia, Landscapes | Tags: Australia, Australian native flora, Broome, Camping, landscapes, NT, outback, Travel (2) Leave a comment
Bungle Road
The Bungle Bungle National Park is one of those places I’ve saved up. It hasn’t been on the way anywhere, and was part of the decision to take the route we did back to Perth. I envisaged much photography, angles, light changes, vistas, dawns and dusks. You know where this is going. We arrived at the entrance to the National Park, and barely slowing to 40 to dump the trailer, hit the dusty trail to the Bungle Bungle World Heritage rock formation, Purnululu. A brain rattling 90 minutes later we met sunset at the park. At these times it is a blessing W sets an 8km walking pace. We had 60 minutes of daylight left and about 8km of trails to walk. Breaking into a breathy jog, I kept pace with the diminishing sherpa who had the camera and the keys, certain my brain was now pinballing around my skull with every footfall.
The face of Another-Incredible-World-Heritage-Listed-Natural-Wonder-Fatigue
I admit right here that that was all the time we gave the Bungles. Even as I look back now I think perhaps the heat got to me. Maybe I need to return.
Meanwhile, the driver fidgeted, revved, and Broome called.
.
I love spinifex. Its ability to grow in rock, without water, to bounce back when flattened by fire. For such a soft looking plant, it is strikingly spikey. Between Purnululu and Broome I plotted to introduce a mass planting to our home garden. If anything could make a home between concrete tiles and arid sandiness, spinifex would be it.
spinifex regrowth
On the approach to Broome I once again discovered the paucity of available campground sites in NT campgrounds. Thundering past a newly established place 20 minutes out of Broome, I ordered the unthinkable. A u-turn. Brand new, modern, groovy, ablutions, kilometres of washing line, neighbours far enough away to be spared their symphony, and a communal fire-pit surrounded by generous characters offering education and home-made liquor (I learnt the difference between a bourbon and a scotch was simply the ‘flavour’ you add), made Broome’s Gateway unforgettable. And then we went one better.
We can thank friends living in Broome for recommending one of the best tours I have done hands down: Greg Quickes Astro Tour. I don’t hitch my wagon to tours as a rule, but this rocked. It wasn’t quite dusk as we enthusiastically make our way to a spot near a quarry a few KMs out of Broome. Luckily Greg had spotted Saturn and peering into the telescope, I saw what appeared to be a cut-out of Saturn. Checking the outside of the lens for a sticker, I looked again. Back to Greg. Back to the telescope. And here is where my artistic brain strains to wrap around the idea that the sky is blue but in the telescope it is black. I blame the 4WD brain air hockey. As other people arrived for the tour, they took turns peering at Saturn. Without fail, every person looked. Pulled back. Asked if it was sticker. Looked again. And the tour began. Multi-coloured jewels, millions of stars filling the viewfinder, navigating south by the southern cross, the Milky Way. No horoscope sign omitted, no question left unanswered. As the mercury plummeted to an eerie 14, (Broome was still 26) coats appeared and hot chocolate administered, I realised the best tour we had done hadn’t actually moved from one spot. Do it.
Feel the burn
Posted: August 22, 2012 Filed under: Australia, Camping, QLD | Tags: Australia, camp sky, Camping, Food, night photos, outback, QLD, Renner Springs, Roadtrips, Trees, trees 7 Comments
Boulder Opal, Lightning Ridge
Reaching the Barkly highway, we were out of opal and gems and into copper/zinc-lead-silver mining country, headed for Mt Isa where Rotary invented the Southern Hemispheres largest rodeo. Offering a side of Mardi Gras and ute muster with your bull riders, I was disappointed we would miss such heady goings-on. Fighting the urge to pick up a couple of R.M. Williams longhorn seat covers, I sought out coffee at a gorgeous restored building. Packed to the ceiling with horse, outback, and mining paraphernalia, warm scones on offer to the refrains of ‘A pub with no beer’ performed live out the back, a genuine Cobb & Co mail-coach, and stabled horses drew me out. The barista had stepped out for lunch, taking with her all knowledge of coffee production. Itineraries and spreadsheets wait for no barista to return, so W set his jaw, and we rolled on.
It was 5pm. Marvelling at the diminishing light falling on Gregory National Park, my driver had the crazed stare one gets after 900km of white lines, and around eight hours of talking-book about time travel and Highlanders in the 1700s. The Widower’s words came back to us as we flew by a sign mentioning a dam. Constructed in 1959, Corella Dam supplied water to the Mary Kathleen Uranium mine. Now decommissioned, it allegedly has a hole in the wall which means it never fills. A largely unoccupied park, free campers spaced themselves 500m from each other, and we felt most when we snagged a spot near the water with a ready-made rock fireplace. “I cannot believe this spot is free!”, I exclaimed excitedly. As the arctic gale blew down the small valley through our campsite toward the water, my chicken dance against flying ember ignition in the parched grass surrounding us, kept me warm. From the house bus perched on the Ridge, Johnny Cash warned of a burning Ring of Fire, and two hardy souls hunkered down in sleeping bags, next to their fishing rods, leaned into the blast that threatened to transform their protective tarp into a magic carpet. I imagined fish caught here would prompt a geiger counter to play Verdi’s Requiem, Dies Irae, but presumably that was the least of their worries.
5am could not arrive sooner. The flappity flap of unsecured tent bits deprived all but the permanently rested of slumber. Alessi came through with a single origin colombian heart starter, and we got the hell out of Dodge.
Out the window: Barkly Highway at 115km
1/125th, F16, ISO 200, 70mm
Renner Springs presented itself in the manner of all roadhouses, at about the time when you have truly reached the limit of your ability to sit contained in a sardine tin, no music in your 1200 strong playlist hits the right note, and crumbed potato and cheese mash with gravy sounds like a well-rounded end to the day. Warmly welcomed at the Roadhouse, we threw up the Taj on the banks of an ornamental pond, eschewing pesky pegs, and paused briefly to admire the craftily silent flotilla of geese. We longed for someone to cook us a meal, and the pub, lined with caps and other clothing items fresh from years of unwashed love, looked like it would make an honest fist of a steak. When the meals arrived, they looked frightened. The seven chips on my plate attempted to conceal themselves under the small grey wedge of barramundi impersonating a jandel*. The slice of tomato, carrot shred, and tablespoon of lettuce spelt a story of eviction from their happy place at the back of the freezer. While these kitchen antics ensued, it was clear W’s steak had been stewing itself silly incorrectly sensing reprieve. It was another beautiful clear night in the Outback.
Renner Springs Roadhouse ornamental lake
* also known as thong or flip flop
Cross my palm
Posted: June 13, 2012 Filed under: Australia, Landscapes, SA | Tags: Australia, grey kangaroo, landscapes, outback, roadsides, roadtrip, Roadtrips, SA, wedge-tailed eagle 5 CommentsThe Australian Professional Photography Awards this year delivered me a Silver Award, and oh my, how I have grown.
Once crushed by the disappointment of my unrewarded works not considered worthy, I find myself in 2012 simultaneously thrilled my wedge-tailed eagle found friends on the judging panel, and that my other two (un)landscape images were not quite their cup of tea. High five for different strokes!
I traversed a most lumpy piece of ground in the trusty truck to get close enough to this gorgeous bird that wanted to fly off (but really didn’t want to leave without eating some greens). Now, I love a raptor as much as the next person, but the wedge-tailed eagles have my heart. Such a beautiful face!
No fences
Posted: August 9, 2011 Filed under: Australia, Landscapes, SA, WA | Tags: Australia, landscapes, night photos, NT, outback, pilbara, roadsides, Roadtrips, SA, Stuart Highway, Trees, WA 2 CommentsMy love of a far-reaching, uninterrupted vista is becoming more self-evident in my work. It dawns on me that this Vista-Love is directly related to my Ocean-Love – no fences and a sense of limitless expanse seen through the dive mask. W would probably suggest this relates to my alleged resistance to authority and boundaries.
I took these on our recent trip to the Pilbara and back.
.
As I see it 