Broome to Marble Bar, Western Australia
Penis head, piss hole, Parliament House, Pauline Hanson, Paul Hogan. These are just some of the alternate "PH" words we come up with as we try to keep ourselves occupied, counting down the kilometers on the mileage signs out of Broome towards Port Hedland. Every 10 kilometers, you get a sign that says something like "PH 560" telling you that it's only 5 1/2 more hours of your life to Port Headland.
We're driving down what Lonely Planet describes as the most boring stretch of highway in all Australia: the 610 kilometers between Broome and Port Hedland. But we don't take it all the way; we turn off 40km early and start seeing the famed Western Australia wildflowers before ending up in Marble Bar--the hottest town in Australia--for the night.
And I'll take pictures down the road to show everyone just how boring Australia can be.
We scoot out of town early, with only a quick stop at Coles for bread, milk, sandwich meat, and more of that yummy Bickford's Diet Lime Cordial that we both like a lot. Then it's down the road.
I decided that today I'll take some pictures here and there of just everyday places and road scenes. Chris and I have been getting flak from our email correspondents and blog watchers that we've been too harsh on Australia--all we do is complain about how hot and dry and dull and boring this country is. So, today, I think I'll show them by taking pictures out the front windscreen to let them see what we see every day for hours and hours.
It's an uneventful 300km or so to the Sandfire roadhouse. I take some pictures... and we try to figure out what to do. Port Hedland has been described as a 'hole' by Chris and Sue Darling (they were on the Cape York trip with us), who lived there for a while. The town's also had the distinction in the past few days of having liquor sales banned on Sunday to combat alcohol related problems... and not only are liquor sales banned on Sunday, but liquor in container more than 2 liters can't be sold at all. It doesn't sound like a very promising place, but it is the end of the highway, unless we want to hoof it out to Marble Bar, 200km southeast.
Which is exactly what we do, as we pass the Marble Bar turnoff some 40 kilometers east of PH. We just basically say "WTF, we have two hours of daylight left", and start down the road. Almost immediately, the car turns over 119,000 kilometers... and suddenly, we're also seeing quite a few new wildflowers for the first time in the trip. I take a few pictures, then drive some more... and suddenly we're seeing Sturt's Desert Pea (our first sighting in the wild!) and mulla mullas of a couple different types and daisy bushes and orange grevilleas and other flowers. They're not everywhere, just in clumps every 5 kays or so, then they kind of go away, and come back... at least until we cross a grid onto a cattle station, then they're gone for good. I know Sturt's Desert Pea is one of the first plants to be eaten out by cattle, and suspect the other wildflowers are just as tasty.
But the cattle station does have something going for it: suddenly, we're seeing hills and mountains again, and more surprisingly, they're reminding us strongly of the hillsides of California. They look like someone's thrown a velour blanket over a pile of clothes, the hills are all fuzzy with spinifex clumps with deep red rock and soil underneath them, and the fading daylight makes the hills glow with a golden sheen. It's all very pretty, and weirdly comforting. We're starting to see the beginning of the Pilbara, a series of mountain ranges that occurs here in the northwest of Western Australia.
By sunset, we've arrived in Marble Bar ("A Tidy Town"), with a big wide main street with grass and trees in the middle, lined with a few buildings. It looks small, but well off. After getting diesel, we pull into the town caravan park and spend the evening. We can already tell it's not quite the tropics anymore: although we're at the latitude of Cancun, at 7pm the temperature's dropped from the mid-20's down to about 12, and I think it'll get much colder tonight than it has for us in a long while.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Oh, that'd be the Sturt's Desert Pea (Swainsonia formosa). We've seen them in pots, but never on the side of the road growing wild.
I wish I can figure out the secret of growing them at home. They always get to two inches high, then wilt and die. Maybe I'll plant them in sand and gravel, like the ones alongside the roads here. They look like they like it a bit mean!