Sunrise at Bullara Homestead

A bit of a transport stage today as we continued our inland journey towards the Karijini National Park. Temperatures are still a bit on the high side for us but have dropped a bit to 33 C and there is a light breeze. It might drop as low as 22 C tonight… 🙂
We intended to take it as it comes rather than committing to a long trip but once we got on the road we just kept going as the scenery was interesting and the thought of stopping in the high sun with no shade didn’t appeal much. So, in the end, we ended up driving the full 500km from the Bullara Homestead to Tom Price, which is the small town on the edge of the national park that we’ll use as our base for a few days to venture into the park.

Monitor Lizard (?)

One of our stops, for a coffee, a sit in an air conditioned cafe while we drank it and a couple of chilled bottles of pop for the rest of the journey, was at the Nanaturra Roadhouse where we also got our first close up view of one of the larger lizards which happened to be about 20 feet from our parking spot. I’m pretty sure it’s a monitor lizard.

The camera doesn’t do the view justice but you can see in the wing mirror why you don’t want to follow another vehicle !

The rock formations on the last part of the surfaced road and the 50k section of unsurfaced road just before you reach Tom Price are an amazing sight, particularly with the emerald green scrub, the deep blue sky and the ever present deep red sand and sandstone.
The site at Tom Price (Tom Price Tourist Park) seems pleasant enough and we even have some grass to pitch on.

Pitched at Tom Price Tourist Park

We’ve booked in here for 2 nights initially although we may well extend our stay if the site turns out to be as good as our first impressions suggest and/or we find plenty to do in the national park.
Tomorrow we’ll take our first trip into the national park and see if it lives up to it’s reputation 🙂