Camping at Minilya, not quite cloudless today !

A very humid day today as the wind has dropped making for a hot and sticky day in the Land Rover. We’d had a disturbed night with a party with loud music and an even louder woman at a house near the camp site which saw us through to 2am. At around 4am one of the boats started up and proceeded to idle it’s way along the bay with it’s unsilenced engine for 30 minutes. At 5am our “neighbours” decided they would break camp, making as much noise as they could in the process until finally departing at 7am. By then we’d given up and decided we may as well get up and get going !
The aim of the day was to get as far north as we could comfortably manage, aiming first for Carnarvon and then see where we got to from there.
Carnarvon is a pleasant enough town and as we arrived at around 12 we had a spot of lunch while watching the sailing dinghies in the harbour. I’m pretty sure the crew of one of the dinghies will need an ice pack on his head tonight after his skipper turned the boat without warning him and the boom caught him square on the back of the head.
We exited Carnarvon via the HMAS Sydney II Memorial Avenue. The ship went down in 1941 with all crew after a battle with a German warship disguised as a merchantman. Each crew member (645 in total) is remembered with a small plaque and these are set on each side of the road as you drive for maybe 500 metres.
From Carnarvon we continued north, eventually stopping for the night at a rest area with free camping just south of the Minilya roadhouse. I suspect after last night the occasional road train passing by won’t disturb us too much. The noise from the crickets may drive us to distraction though 🙂
Tomorrow we’ll head to Coral Bay and have a look around before heading to a site to the south of Exmouth, Bullara Homestead Station. We’ll use that as a base for our trip to Exmouth on Saturday morning for the snorkelling trip over the Ningaloo reef, probably returning to it on Saturday night before heading inland on Sunday.