Yesterday I decided I’ve been in Newman long enough so I took my work car (with prior approval, naturally) out of town to do some exploring. I arose relatively early, fuelled up on a proper breakfast (egg, bacon, sausage, beans, mushroom, tomato, hash brown, and a glass of juice - see below) and got ready to go. My electric frying pan actually claims to be a Family Banquet Frypan, but apparently an Australian banquet equates roughly to a large English breakfast - and I’m sure I would have comfortably filled it if I’d had a second egg and hash brown.
After my breakfast and a brief stop off at the Newman Visitor Centre (open 7 days a week) for a map with GPS co-ordinates and an access road permit, I hit the road.
My first (and as it turns out only real) stop was at Wanna Munna - about 74km up the highway from Newman. Wanna Manna has ancient Aboriginal rock carvings and a permanent pool. I successfully navigated here and drove along the short dirt track to get to the pool, and it was quite stunning. Below is a panorama shot I took of the pool, with the rocks in the background.
To really see the carvings (essentially very old graffiti) on the rocks, it’s necessary to climb over them and look for them. Amazingly, almost every rock has some sort of markings on them, and all you have to do is take a look around to find some. I took some (possibly too many) photos of the rocks, including playing with the fancy options on my camera to tweak the colours (possibly a mistake). Anyway, I have embedded my photos I took from Wunna Munna below.
After spending some time looking around Wunna Munna I headed back to Newman. I stopped off home to eat some lunch and restock my supplies (the grapes I was munching for the car ride) and then headed off for the afternoon to Kalgan’s Pool - keen readers may remember I went there when I did my 4WD DTEC course last year.
After turning off the road to get to the pool, I headed along the same way we took last year but quickly came to a stumbling block. The riverbed we had driven across looked pretty soft and there were some deep tyre tracks in it. I stopped the car and got out to inspect it. It seemed pretty solid underfoot so I proceeded to drive slowly onto it. The car then went about 3 metres before completely digging into the sand.
I then flagged down a passing car who towed me out (thank you everyone in the Pilbara for carrying 4WD rescue equipment “just in case”) and I took a longer was around. Along the route there were some shallow streams that hadn’t been there when I went last year, so each time I gout out of my car, inspected them, walked through them before picking a route and driving through. On one (probably only about 1km from the actual pool - bearing in mind it’s about 25km off the road), the water was murky, it was a longer crossing and I didn’t really want to get in it to check.
Despite that I knew for a fact the car that had towed me out had gone through not long prior, I decided I didn’t want to risk it in a vehicle I don’t actually own and decided to go home instead. Since I hadn’t brought my swimmers and was mainly taking the trip for the 4WD experience, this wasn’t actually a disappointment for me at all. So I reversed to a convenient spot and took the 90 minute drive back.
All in all it was a pretty interesting experience. I’ve found that I’ve now become an incredibly nervous 4 wheel driver - definitely not the same as before I had my accident, but I’m happy to take it all at my own speed and to draw a line when I’m scared rather than to get reckless about it. After I got back to Newman though I got back on my bike and went for a long cycle - I came to the conclusion on the ride that I’m definitely a road cyclist and not an off-road driver. All in all it wasn’t bad for a day’s action though.
No tricks, this is an actual Google search. Thank you very much, Google.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned on here, but I’ve recently invested in a late Christmas present for myself - a 2011 Avanti Giro 4, and I’ve taken a photo of it which you can see below.
After waiting patiently for my helmet to arrive (stupid Australian helmet laws - don’t even get me started…) I’ve managed to ride it the past two days. I’m very impressed with it; it goes like a rocket when I put my foot down, and I’m sure it’ll be even quicker once I get the engine back in shape. In order to log my progress, thanks to the wonderful suggestion of Edd (as all of his suggestions invariably are) I have created an account on Strava and learned about a whole world of features on my satnav that I didn’t know existed.
So in short, Strava makes pretty graphs and maps of my cycling - so that I can see exactly how fast I cycled the whole way along my rides, and this will enable me to easily criticise my performance when I find out that it isn’t improving with time. For anyone else who also wants to be critical, I’ve added a widget to the left of my blog so you can see exactly where I’ve been cycling and how quickly I did it.
And just for sh*ts and giggles, I’ve also embedded the ride I had this evening below…
[video]
“What? Like pancakes?” —
- Everyone whom I’ve told about my flapjacks from yesterday.
How have I gone my whole life without knowing that Americans (and hence Australians) call their pancakes ‘flapjacks’?! This completely changes the scene for me in Groundhog Day (what was the popular culture reference for a day repeating itself before Groundhog Day?) when Bill Murray gets pulled over by the police after driving down the railroad tracks.