Pilbara

Passing into the Tropic of Capricorn, our next stop was going to be the town of Exmouth--and nearby Ningaloo National Park, with its right-off-the-beach snorkeling, whale sharks, and other marine marvels. But as we were driving into the Pilbara region, the coast was living up to its "Cyclone Alley" nickname, and a very heavy rain was a-fallin'. SR wisely decided we should stop driving earlier than planned when we saw "FLOODWAY" signs every few kilometers on the road we were traveling and the rain just kept coming down harder. So we pulled over at a rest area, where several other road trippers seemed to be doing the same thing, to wait for the rain to pass and try again in the morning.

 

Except in the morning, the road we'd been traveling down was now a river!

 

The vans and trucks--and even a couple of sedan-type cars--that we saw attempt the crossing all got through...

But as we went through our a.m. routine and debated what to do, we learned that farther ahead, the road to Exmouth was closed until at least the mid-afternoon, and we decided not to risk going through the water for a lot of waiting and then a very rushed visit to the park. Got to leave something on the "next time" list, right? So instead we pointed the car inland and headed deeper into the Pilbara region.

Soon, the landscape became dotted with enormous termite mounds.

And our little campervan began to look very small amid the sprawling scrub and sky.

We were getting into Australia's more unforgiving, harsh desert environments, and creatures who learned that the hard way (though this one was probably roadkill):

There was also evidence everywhere of the previous night's rain, with swollen rivers surging through the other-wise bone-dry terrain.

And with each kilometer we went deeper into the region, the more red with iron the dirt became.

Within a few days, we (and all of our stuff) would be covered with so much red dust that I looked like I'd gotten a deep tan and invested in a bottle of hair dye. But the beautiful landscape urged us on...