14 June 2024
On Wednesday, 12 June, Nicole and I reached the Indian Ocean at Broome. This is somewhat of a milestone, as well as a chance to reflect (and rest).
Our first glimpse of the Indian Ocean at Cable Beach.
Some trip statistics so far:
- 76 — days on the road since leaving home
- 9,394 — kilometres driven
- 123.6 — average km driven per day
- 66 — nights powered site camping (too high)
- 84 — dollars per night as most expensive place to stay (Yellow Water Campground)
- 9 — nights in Darwin as longest single stay
- 2.60 — highest price ($/litre) paid for diesel (Barkly Homestead)
- 23 — number of times emptying toilet cassette (approximate)
- 0 — number of tyre punctures (touch wood)
- 4 — bird strikes in the motorhome
- [too many to count] — number of road trains we’ve seen coming the other way.
On arriving at Banana Well Getaway (Cape Leveque) we had driven 1,728 km in 4 days, so needed a break. We’ll now be staying in Broome for 12 nights to recuperate, recharge and relax; a “holiday from our holiday” so to speak.
We’re conscious that we’ve been moving quite quickly through some sections, such as Mt Isa to Katherine and Kununurra to Broome. This is due to factors such as:
- Many attractions are still closed as a result of the deluge the region received earlier this year.
- A lot of the things to see are down very long dirt roads, which we’ve decided we want to try to minimise so that we don’t damage our teeth and the motorhome too much.
- We’ve reached our saturation point for visiting gorges (like with churches in Europe, and castles in the UK).
- There really isn’t that much to see through these stretches, apart from a lot of termite mounds and roadkill.
We’ve had decent lay-ups in Katherine, Darwin, Kununurra and (now) Broome, and need to do a bit more of this. However, we’re also getting to some areas where there should be a lot more to see and do.
We’re also starting to think we may be able to spend some more time in Victoria and (perhaps) Tasmania as well. There’s no pressure to decide now, so we’ll just see how we go.
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