What kind of farmer would I be if I didn’t talk about the weather?

Right from the start we were dodging the rain. The day after our first night at Iron Knob in SA, the whole town and the road North to Coober Pedy was shut due to major flooding. All along the Nullarbor Plain it was threatening to rain and the odd drizzle, but nothing serious, and yet in Kalgoorlie, we met up with another farming family from SA who were a couple of days behind and they said it was torrential rain the whole way across for days! We met another couple from Warragul in Geraldton who were complaining that they hadn’t had any nice weather or warm days since leaving home a couple of weeks before us. (They went down to Sth West WA for a bit). They weren’t impressed that in the week we were at Kalgoorlie and Perth that each day for us was between 30-35 degrees!! We stayed in Lancelin and Sandy Cape and had fantastic weather too.

But once we reached Geraldton the wet weather finally caught up to us. While there we got over 70mm and the in the week we were there the whole area changed to slight tinge of green and the farmers were working ground up and sowing in earnest. Exmouth (Where we currently are) got over 400mm in the same period. In Carnarvon we got another 11mm. (In Exmouth they got 115mm) Further up at Red Bluff (Near Gnarloo. Think about “Farmer wants a wife”) we got 18mm one night. (Exmouth got a further 90mm). This area has been in drought for the past 3 years. The caretaker at Red Bluff said that last year they received 25mm for the year and the previous year 23mm!

So in other words, we have dodged the worst of the weather and Exmouth has had major flooding and has been declared a natural disaster zone. I spoke to a local who showed us lots of photos of the flooding. In Cape Range National Park which is 30km from Exmouth a number of campsites have been obliterated and will never be recoverable. A caravan and a camper trailer is now somewhere on the Ningaloo Reef as they were swept out of their sites. 2 ton boulders have now replaced the caravans. Another couples van got swept into the trees and thankfully the trees stopped them, but they were stuck in there van until rescuers came. 2 kedron caravans in the caravan park we are now in got their boots flooded and the batteries shorted out and fried the electrical system. $25k damage to both.

Just yesterday the road was opened back into Exmouth. Thankfully the road was opened only 20minutes before we got there, (maybe it was lucky we blew a caravan tyre just after lunch to stall us a little) so at 3.00pm we decided to head the last 250km to Exmouth. This included a pretty deep and long crossing of the flooded Lyndon River. The road further North and into Karajini is still shut. We have to wait 5 days around here while we wait for some new caravan tyres to arrive anyway, so hopefully the roads will all be open and we can have a clear path into Karajini next week.

At Shark Bay we stayed at Nanga Bay Resort. We left a day earlier than we had originally planned, and our new friends Barry and Linda, who happened to be staying there had a mini cyclone the night after we left and they were convinced their caravan was going to get blown over.

So we are ever thankful that we have been looked after and have stayed protected from the worst of this crazy weather! Photos to come.