The Ghost Town (13/4/14)

Once I was ready to leave I packed my last few things and loaded the bike. I said goodbye to Nina, put my key in the returns box as reception wasn't open yet and got on the road. I'd got up later than planned so left about 8.30 in the end. On the way back along the road to the highway I stopped briefly at a small beach called 'Shell Beach'. This, unsurprisingly, is a beach made up entirely of tiny cockle shells. The compacted shells were once quarried for use as building materials for businesses in Denham and there are signs asking you not to take bags of the shells away with you. At first glance it does just look like a normal beach but on inspection it is in fact billions of tiny shells no bigger than a finger nail. I didn't stop for long as the sun was already getting hot and I wanted to get most of the journeying done before the heat of the afternoon. Back at the highway junction, where I'd been two days ago, I filled up with fuel and had a short break before starting the long journey north. I parked up in the shade of a tree at the roadhouse and was surprised to see it was absolutely covered in butterflies. After admiring this for a while I got back to my journey. I still hadn't decided whether to stop at Carnarvon or whether to push on to Coral Bay as suggested as it was a much greater distance to cover. As I approached Carnarvon it was about 12.30pm and I made a decision, as I'd got there sooner than expected, to stop here for the night instead. The long straight roads, mildly uninteresting landscape and lack of company were starting to take their toll on me and at least here I would get a good amount of rest before tomorrow's even longer journey. I took the first road pointing towards Carnarvon and was surprised that that was in fact the only signpost I saw. Once in town there was nothing pointing me to the centre and so I ended up at the small harbour. I got out my phone to see where the centre was on Google maps and found my way there. I saw a sign for tourist information and rode to it but was surprised to find it was closed. I then saw a sign for the police station so rode to that. Also closed. Really? No crime today then? I rode a little further up the road and passed the hostel by chance. I pulled in to see if they had rooms available. Again, this was also closed! Are you shitting me? When in the entire history of hostels have they ever closed. I know it's Sunday but come on this isn't some back water village with 4 people living in mud huts. I was starting to think that pushing on to Coral Bay mightn't be a bad idea. I finally found a supermarket that was open and went in to ask the advice of a shop assistant. She said it might be an idea to ask at one of the pubs about rooms or to stop at a caravan park to see what they advised. I found a pub but their rooms were too expensive and then rode to a caravan park further up the road to enquire at their office. Go on, one guess. CLOSED! I reckon I could have stayed there and no-one would have known. I finally decided to ring the hostel to make sure I wasn't missing the only door that was open. Someone answered, this was progress. I asked the bloke if the hostel was open and his response was "no, not today" and he sounded surprised I'd asked. Yes of course, hostels are normally only open six days a week and everyone is chucked out on Sunday's. I asked if he could recommend another cheap place to stay and he said to try a caravan park. I asked if there was any particular one and he said "try up by the big banana". I'm being filmed again. Is this place in-bred or something? Or am I the only one not smacked off my tits? He sounded harassed at my questions so I said thanks and hung up. I started to ride out of town, avoiding the tumble weed in the road, and stopped to ask one of the town zombies if there was a big banana. I felt like a right tit. They pointed me further up the road so I continued, and lo and behold there on the side of the road was a giant plastic banana representing the banana's right to vote or something equally ludicrous probably. Maybe the hostel man wasn't stoned after all. Next door was a campsite so I pulled in and parked outside the office. There was a note....It said "Out to lunch, back at 2pm'. It was now about half one and this was the best lead so far. So I decided to sit it out by the bike. As I walked back though someone parked up, a woman, and shouted "I'm opening the office, give me five minutes". Hoorah, in five minutes there was going to be one person in an office in the whole of Carnarvon. Maybe the banana represents the boundary line after which no businesses like doing what they've been designed to do. I entered the office and actually managed to arrange staying at the campsite for the night with the woman, who told me that this was the first weekend that someone was in the office this year and that it was out of season hence my inability to find anything open. I didn't ask about the banana. I set up my tent, threw my bits in, and had a quick read of my lonely planet whilst looking at my map. There was one thing not too far north of Carnarvon that I wanted to see called the blowholes. I worked out I could get there this afternoon and would still be back in time to get dinner at the supermarket just down the road. I checked it was definitely open, with people in and not zombies, and the time it closed and then rode out of town to the blowholes. The turning for them was about 12km out of town and then it was another 50km down that road. It was sealed the whole way so I had a bit of a play on the bike as it was quite open along this last 50km and got it up to 150 km/h but only for a short while. At the end of this stretch of road was a T junction. Left to the blowholes and right to a dirt track. Up this dirt track lay what was promised to be eye burningly pristine coastline but unfortunately I would never get to see it as my bike wouldn't get me there because of the road conditions.So i turned left to the blowholes. Their location became apparent after just a few metres where just over some rocks a fine mist kept appearing periodically. I parked nearby and walked over the odd moonscape type rocks there which had little pockets of salt pools all over them. There were only about 5 people there so getting to a good spot for photos was pretty easy. I have never seen anything like this natural phenomenon in my life and it was actually quite amazing. It starts with a low gurgle, building up to a loud hissing sound and then water sprays out of holes in the rocks in a high jet reaching about 20 ft in height. It was incredible. I stood there for ages watching it, taking a ridiculous amount of photos and videos just to make sure I got a good one. I could have spent longer there but knew it was getting late so walked back to the bike pleased I'd made the effort to come and see them. I was soon back on the return stretch to the main road but was surprised by how much the cross wind had picked up. I had to lean the bike constantly at about a 10 degree angle into the wind just to stay on the road. At one point a big gust nearly blew me off the road so I had to shut off the throttle quickly just to get some grip on the surface and stop myself going off. I came within about six inches of diving into the sand at the side of the road. That certainly got my heart racing! I made it back to town unscathed though and went straight to the supermarket to get dinner. I didn't have any cooking facilities so opted for cold snacks instead. Back at the campsite I realised I didn't actually have any cutlery to eat dinner with so pestered the woman in the office to see if she had any laying about. She didn't but took me to one of the campsite's permanent residents; yes there are people that actually live here in tents, no the tents aren't in the best condition and yes they do have chicken wire marking out their boundaries; to see if they had some to lend me. The woman very kindly gave me a knife and fork set, which wasn't plastic, surprisingly, and insisted I keep them as she had loads anyway. I was pleasantly surprised and thanked her accordingly. After washing the dried egg off them both I went back to my tent to have dinner and hoped to god I'd cleaned them adequately. Have you ever looked at a pot of coleslaw and thought 'I could eat that in one go easily'? Well I did. That was a mistake. The onion content was way more than normal so I gave up half way through and after dinner I couldn't taste anything else but onions. I won't be doing that again in a hurry. During the evening I spent a bit of time blogging and the rest of it messaging people I knew to let them know how I was doing. I was in bed about half 10 and soon fell asleep. I was woken periodically during the night, however, when I realised I was sleeping next to the electronic entrance gate that gets shut in the evening so everyone who is coming and going needs to open it with a code. I'm pretty sure it has never been oiled and the whole fence behind me vibrates when the motor is running. This is a ghost town. Where are people coming back from at 3 in the morning? And where is the camera for my "Truman show" hidden in my tent. Someone please tell me. Ear plugs found and inserted.