A trip to Karratha

The rocks on the beach,
where Karratha port is 

We had a beautiful day trip to Karratha and the Dampier archipelago. We set off about 6., and settled in for a 3hr drive. We had some brekky in the car, so rubbish appeared everywhere. All our rubbish magically appears in the step up to our car. The when we open the door it all spills out, and we look like......I'm not sure, you decide.

Just imagine:

A nice quiet town, then we roar into the car-park (yes, you can hear us coming at least maybe 1 block away) and the door pops open. Rubbish spills all over the ground, out of the car, followed by 5 kids, 2 maybe in their nighties, and the other 3 at least with untidy hair and crumpled clothes. One or two may not be wearing shirts. Just imagine. Then we have to clean up from all our mess.

You will know us when you see us.

Did I forgot to mention that when we had the problems at Sandfire, the girls walked around in their nighties the whole day. Walking around at Sandfire, made us look great (see full story here: Just Trying to get to Sandfire was a headache). 

Anyway (yep that is 100% true),

The visitor information centre was really good, and recommended several places to visit. We also planned to visit the shopping centre (not everyone's favourite sugge

stion). We first headed out to Dampier, and saw the Karratha processing plant for the North West Shelf Gas Project. A big place, and apparently important, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a blight on the landscape.

I wonder what it looked like without all that???? Probably a stunning place

We saw pictures of the 3 platforms that are offshore pumping all the gas and learnt about the ships that transport all the LNG gas.

We the went down to Henderson Cove, which was a beautiful swimming spot with crystal clear water, my favourite, think Whitsunday's (from the pictures anyway, never been there), and plenty of little fish around. We got the snorkelling gear out, and started to practice for when we headed down to Exmouth and snorkel in that wonderful area.

Why did we go there (yeah good question)??

Henderson Cove

Swimming at Henderson Cove

We headed out to Karratha, as our plan doesn't include Karratha as we head down the coast, planning to go down to Karijini National Park, and bypass that whole area together. A shame an extremely enormous shame, but necessary as we don't have enough time (time machine anybody?)

We had some lunch after shopping, and then we headed out to Port Samson. On the way to Port Samson, we had a detour out to Cossack, an old heritage town. We took the drive out to the lookout, and saw some stunning views of of the ocean. That's what we like about the oceans up here, you can actually swim in there without being in danger of being eaten (stingers still).

The view at Cassock

What is it about oceans that look so inviting, and you can't swim there without being eaten by a big saltie? Swimming with salties ≠ being able to get out healthy and whole (Warning in there = Don't swim with saltwater crocs.).

At Port Samson, we had a swim at Honeymoon cove, and Joel had a good fish, no fish (as usual, *joel protests* which happens sometimes). Chloe and Tahlia built a few sandcastles and built a dam, which soon ended up stranded halfway up the beach.

Honeymoon Cove.

We were there for about an hour, and the tide had dropped so much that it was at least 3m up to the dam Chloe built, which originally was just out of reach of the water (no frantically building to protect from waves here- the funnest part).

I had a snorkel (again)- I love it!

We then had some lovely dinner at the Port Samson Tavern, and Josh got to drive home, the driving hours slowly adding up. We arrived home salty, tired, and needing a shower, and then we had to clean up mess no.2 of the day.

But, it was a great day, with plenty of lovely views and swims around the day.