20/9/18 Headin South

  Leaving Port Hedland , we head south to a campsite we were at 3 years ago , road trains kept on coming at us , we passed a few as well going our way . Our friend Garry is now driving one of these monsters for around 12 hours a day and 700 odd klms each trip .

  The scenery changed from coastal plains to orange rock outcrops to the Hammersley Ranges - stunning scenery .

 Wildflowers lined the road the further south we travelled , making for pleasant driving .

 Arriving at Auski Roadhouse , we then knew we were close , another 15klms or so and we were there . Just a nice drive through Munjina East Gorge , up & over the hill and turn off to the lookout .

 We drove up and turned up the hill , missing the lookout and up to our home for the next 4 nights , and what a view we have out the kitchen window .

 Another angle .

  Tell me if you wouldn't want to be here , it's great , room for over 50 vans , cars , motorhomes , whatever your choice .

 The memories of our previous visit bounced around our heads for a while before we sat and soaked in the view again . Sunset was another stunner .

 This is the view from the lookout , straight down the gorge .

 I have mentioned the Cockroach Plant before , here's a picture of the seed pods . The plant produces so many seed pods that from a distance you would think it's not seed pods , but orange flowers - a great contrast to the purple Mulla Mulla . We won't get carried away with wildflowers just yet .

 After reading a Wiki Camps comment on this campsite , we decided to have a look further up into the camp area - there's a track that leads up the hill past where we are , so away we went . Plans for the day were to go into Karijini , but that took a backseat for today . The track led us through many good spots to camp and up a 4wd track - Lyn was certainly getting some off road experience here . After crawling over rocks , dodging branches of trees , we made it to the top and parked on a patch of rocks - that's all there is apart from spinifex and small trees & shrubs . The views were stunning , this one is of a valley beside us to the south .

 Rugged rocks stick out of the hillside glowing red in the sun .

 This is the ground that everything grows in here , doesn't look like anything else but rocks !!

  Looking down , I found a grasshopper moving around , it was the most amazing looking one I'd seen - it was short one back leg , but still moving okay - moving well enough to dodge the camera's focusing ability - hence the slightly blurry photo . It was dark brown in colour , with orange spots and stripes and only a few centimetres long and disappeared into the spinifex quickly .



This one is over the other side of the ridge , revealing another gorge and the mountains on the other side . The other ridge is 870 m asl and we were only about 70m below it .



 This is looking back at the main camp area - our van is middle left , obscured partly by some trees .

 This is the track back down and our view over Karijini NP .

 The next track took us into the large valley to the south , and we followed the track to the end of the valley where we had some lunch , wildflowers were coming out everywhere , but the best spots seem to be where it was burnt off last season .



  The track ended , so we headed back to the van and called it a day . The drive up the mountain and valley were a nice treat that we hadn't been into before - what a bonus !! Here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=16zKI6coqZ-eM_xZhLWWpgF--9qWu5d1H&usp=sharing