I arrived in Carnarvon, which is quite a nice little town on the coast, for a restock of the larder and beer fridge.
It is hot and very humid, but a pretty brisk breeze picked up, tempering the hot days a bit. But I’ll write more about the wind later in this post…
On the Moon
Carnarvon had a very important but little-known role to play in the Apollo moon landings. During the Apollo space missions, Carnarvon was a major communications centre linking NASA to the astronauts on the moon. They are pretty proud of this history, which is celebrated in an excellent little museum set up to explain all the ins and outs of what they did here.
The dish used to communicate with the space missions is still here, although it is now defunct.
Another strange-looking “sugar-scoop” dish was pivotal in beaming TV broadcasts to WA by satellite, including the live moon landing of Apollo 11.
If you really want to know, officially it is a Cassegrain-fed folded-horn antenna with interacting parabolic and hyperbolic reflectors… Yeah, right!
Upside-down River
Carnarvon is on the banks of the Gascoyne River, which is around 830km long. The Gascoyne is a perfect example of an upside down river; it is just dry sand on the surface while the water actually flows underground.
It does flow up top occasionally and usually then it floods the town, which it last did in 2010 (when my current campsite was under a couple of metres of water).
Windy Beach Camp
Crossing the dry sandy bed of the Gascoyne, I headed north to Quobba, a pastoral station located around 60km north of Carnarvon. Quobba has about 80km of rugged coastline, so there is plenty of isolated beachfront to camp along.
The coast here is very rocky, as this is the southern end of Ningaloo Reef. The sand is littered with lots of amazing shells washed in from the reef.
Camping on the beach is usually a very pleasant thing to do. Except, this time there was this incredible wind blowing and it collected plenty of sand, ensuring the camp was constantly sand-blasted.
Unfortunately, the water was also very choppy and too rough for swimming.
However, I still managed to get myself down to the waterfront to enjoy the ocean sunsets in the evening. However, cheese and biscuits were out, as they just blew away in the wind! Also, you had to keep a hand on your beer can or that would blow off the table… And when you stood up, there was a good chance the chair would blow away, too.
Each day the wind picked up strength. The camper, with the upper part of the walls made of canvas, is not happy in very high winds and I put the roof down to prevent any damage (it is still liveable, but you have to remember the roof is now very low; don’t knock yourself out – literally – when you stand up inside!)
So, as the wind howled around the camper, I began to suspect something might have been a bit amiss…
On my return to Carnarvon, I discovered there is a freaking great cyclone bearing down on the Pilbara coast just north of here. No wonder it was so windy…
Anyway, I am now back in Carnarvon, which is fine if a little windier than usual. At least the stiff breeze keeps some of the humidity at bay.
Being 600km away, the cyclone itself is not really an issue, but there is a good chance that it will dump massive amounts of rain inland after it crosses the coast. This will likely close roads and flood local rivers, possibly for some time.
So I will sit here in Carnarvon, until I know what is happening with the cyclone. At least it is civilised and it’s better than getting stuck somewhere undesirable if it does rain.
