Millstream Chichester National Park

From Cape Keraudren we continued on to Dampier as we had the car booked for an overdue service at Karratha. We stayed at the Dampier Transit Park on the shores of the port at Dampier, quite a pretty spot. That evening we dined at the Rio Tinto mess next door, boy can those burly miners put it away. We did our best to keep up as you could eat as much as you liked, but we retired defeated to listen to the sounds of Dampier. There were plenty of those!! Apart from the continious roar of the port loading facilities, the sound of the seemingly endless line of carriages being emptied one by one was relayed to us as each carriage in the line jerked forward one space and so on down the line to infinitum, all night. The next morning we headed back into Karratha and marvelled at the seventeen kilometre queue of Toyotas, each carrying only the driver, heading off to work at the mine in Dampier. 

We waited for the car to be serviced and were grateful to be on the road again to Millsream. We travelled via Robourne and found some of the most spectacular countryside consisting of vast plains of pale green spinifex stretching out through red earth plains to majestic red capped ranges. We camped at Crossing Pool (photo) next to a lovely water hole where we swam and canoed, and enjoyed a wonderfully social atmosphere with other campers in this small and intimate environment. We enjoyed visiting several gorges and swimming in the gorges (photo), but the spectacular display of wildflowers throughout this park will be remembered for a long time. The park has reportedly had the best rainfall in sixteen years and this has generated this wonderful display of colours (photo). We also had plenty of exercise, especially when we hiked the 12 klm return journey up the old camel road that was completed in the mid 19th century only to be replaced by a route with easier grades. The views were simply awesome.