Day 71: Coral Bay to Carnarvon

We woke up with an overcast sky overhead then as we were driving, a funny thing happened - it started to rain - the first rain we have seen in over 12,000 kilometres or in the 70 days since we left Gatton!!!

Along the way we stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn sign and took photos. It's hard to believe that we were across the country on the same line of latitude as Rockhampton.  One thing we have noticed is that the Spinifex grass is now gone - it has been our constant companion throughout the northern part of WA for many weeks but now it appears to be gone. The other thing we noticed is that there are now more gum trees. For much of the north, the gum trees have been sparse except along creek banks, no doubt due to the arid conditions.  We are seeing the country at it's best. It would be a very hard country in summer.

We continued on our merry way (listening to audio books as usual). It was still raining softly but the drive was only just over 200km so we didn't mind.

Carnarvon has a population of 6,000 but it looks bigger than that - probably because it is a fair distance from other centres. Driving into the town was like driving into Innisfail - lots of bananas and mangoes. Carnarvon is a big food producer for WA and has a 'Gourmet Trail' which we will investigate.

It continued to rain softly while we were setting up and then all afternoon.

We were short of grocery supplies so we visited Woolworths and $200 later had stocked up on the groceries - the mundane things like grocery shopping, washing, etc. do still continue while on holidays.

Our van

Tree-lined van park