Day 88 – 11th April 2018 – Kalbarri to Denham

The drive from Kalbarri to Denham is a longer one, approximately 5 hours including breaks.  All went smoothly and we were not far out of Denham when we saw a Motor-home coming towards us which abruptly pulled off the road and come to a sudden stop.  Col and I pulled over to see if everything was ok.  Six distressed Asians had piled out of the Motor-home and were animatedly assessing the situation.  It was a hired Motor-home and they were badly bogged.  Where they had pulled over was very soft sand and also quite a steep angle.  We were a little worried that the van looked like it could topple over.  Col tried to ascertain what had happened but none of them spoke English.  We are not sure where they were from and the language barrier made it interesting.

Col walked around the van and could see that the front tyres were pointing hard right and the back left tyre completely bogged.  He managed to ask for the keys and got in the front seat and straightened the tyres.  Two of the Asian men were standing in front of the van trying to push it in reverse.  Col and I made hand actions to explain we were driving it forward and they quickly rushed around the back of the van to push.  Col was able to drive the the van towards the bank instead of towards the road and had them mobile again in no time.  They were INCREDIBLY EXCITED.  There was clapping and thumbs up and smiles and photos.  Very, very cute.  Until one lady was standing on the road trying to take our pictures while Col and I were signing that an oncoming car was heading her way.  That would have been a very funny photo!  They were still waving out the windows as they drove up the road.  Very cute.

We chose the Shark Bay Caravan Park in Denham and are very happy with it.  They have recently renovated and the amenities are new.  We were given a large space to set up in with the boat and the van and are right next to the toilets.  They have some ensuite style toilet/showers and they are a few metres from our camp so we feel like we have been given our own ensuite, nice!  We had decided on an unpowered site to save a bit of money but we worked out that unpowered also means no water here.  Because we don’t need to use the shower in the van, we should be fine, but still interesting.  If you need water, ask for a powered site.  The ground is really hard and you can’t bang in any tent pegs, so you definitely need a drill and a masonry drill bit so you can make holes for the pegs.  We were keen to put up the Annex for the first time since it went walkabout.  The set up took quite a while because of the tent peg issue, but we got there in the end.  We are so happy to have it set up and enjoyed sitting out in the Annex watching TV in our lounge room that night!  It does get pretty windy here so you do really need it.