Western Australia Road Trip – into the outback!
It turned out that our Tom Tom disagreed with Google Maps over which way we should go, which was a little worrying but we stuck with it as we were still generally pointing “up”. A few hours of driving and we were well off google’s idea of our course, but Tom Tom took us through the small township of Goomalling. By this time we really were starting to get a sense of the outback and when we stopped for a rest we thought we had entered a ghost town.
A few more hours in and things really started heating up. The ground was becoming more red, the temperature was rising and as when we stepped out to stretch our legs, the fly-count was on the increase!
Next is a photo of our (in hindsight) trusty ole 4×4 camper parked up in the rest area!
I think the broken old contraption on the right of this shot passes as the “picnic area”
Our first overnight stop was a small town named Cue, pop 300. Even growing up in the small, cut-off town of Felixstowe, England couldn’t prepare me for the eerie ghostliness of this place. We parked up in the camp site (the only place we actually found any other signs of human life) and took a walk through the town centre.
The curiously over-sized police station (considering the population)
The even more curious Bank of New South Wales – with a hand-written “for sale” sign with accompanying mobile phone number. I assume its the building and not the bank itself that is on offer.
Cue Town Centre. Bustling!
Me, taking tips on my swing from the guy in the sign. Who I have JUST realised is holding a metal detector – not a golf club!! I did wonder why there would have been a golf course here of all places!!! I’ll perhaps read the sign first next time.
After our whistlestop tour of Cue town centre, we grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading up the water tower hill to appreciate the baron landscape as the sun went down. The colours in the sky were ever-changing as the sunset moved through its phases and I made an attempt at immortalising them in photo.
The next morning we attempted to do a little more sight seeing and visit a ghost town that was advertised as 5kms south west of Cue, however it was so ghostly we didnt manage to actually find it. There was a road sign pointing the way down an off-road track, but 15 kms or so later we still hadn’t found the thing. We were not left disappointed however as we saw our first herd of marauding emu’s running through the bush (and in front of our van), which was such a magical thing to us. These birds are huge and to see so many (there were about 8 in this family) just running free was such a novelty to us. We were not fortunate to have our cameras handy however so it must remain as a memory only – although now i’ve written it down it stands a much higher chance of being a memory that I will remember in years to come 
So after our failed ghost town hunt, we headed off to our next overnight stop at Newman (stocking up at the last supermarket within 100s of kms), before heading into the Karijini National park the next day.
