#31 Tom Price

It was 640km drive to Karajini Nat. park and with lunch and birding stops...

Who knew this was a good birding stop!  It's supposed to be a  river!

it meant we were too late to reach the park (we don't like to drive at night -or dusk if we can avoid it) so we spent the night at Tom Price a town that mostly services all of the mining in the area (and there is a lot of mining in the area!).  (No photo of a mine - we missed the tour! and the only other way to see one is to climb the mountain!)

The caravan park was at the base of Mt Nameless and it (the caravan park) had power! 

Nt Nameless - shortly after dawn.

Maika & Miguel had arrived the day before us and were up early to see dawn at the base of the mountain and then hike up the mountain. A 4.5 hr. hike and she thought we should try it because the dawn was quite spectacular!!!  Well luckily the alarm went off too late so we missed being at the mountain for sunrise but I had a pretty good view from my bed in the back of the van, and the colours as the sun turned the rocks bright red were quite spectacular.  No point hiking up the mountain now so off we went to Karajini. Maika & Miguel would be there so I hoped that a few more drinks with them would help me survive being off-grid.

So many anthills.

Spinifex - it looks like velvet as you drive by
 - it feels completely different!
It is very prickly.

Over drinks with M&M we discussed something that had been bothering me for a while... there were lots ( and lots and lots) of French under 30s travelling around Australia.  We saw them in the car park at Semaphore beach (one even advertising haircuts!!)  and staying overnight there for a few days. Along our route there were more French couples, and groups, some Swiss, German & Dutch … but so many French. I wondered why there were so many?  I figured it must be because there were no jobs and so they took advantage of the youth working visa (under 30 yrs) in Australia (and why not) - but if that was true then why there were no Spanish? (We know there are a lot of unemployed youth in Spain!!)  So Maika explained that back when Spain was doing well and so many people were trying to come to Spain to work (and make use of their generous social network)  Spain was trying to stop as many as they could; Europe was off-limits and so was England but Australia was one country they were able to say no to. So Australia reciprocated!   (I remembered, that when Pablo came to Australia to work he used is Finnish passport - but I hadn't made the connection.) Phew - glad to have that all sorted out!