Step 2: In Progress

 Plan K is coming along so nicely, y'all! I successfully completed Steps 1 and 1a (drive to Exmouth; travel via Karijini) and am already 6 days into Step 2 (work 4 months to complete visa requirements for third year). But let's back the train up...

I managed to leave Perth last Tuesday, 16th Feb. Mick and I did some final car projects, I got my roof rack loaded up and ratcheted down (I'm getting quite good at using ratchet straps... learning new skills all the time here in Australia!), I made a final Kmart run to get a cooler sorted for Manager Jess (which was kind of a nightmare, but I can't even recount it here because it'll make my blood pressure go up. Suffice to say it was a whole bunch of little nuisances that all rolled up into one small headache. It got sorted out though), and then left town around 12:30! Drove as far as Mount Magnet, WA, watching storms on all sides for most of the ride. Such beautiful lightning, way far off in the distance! BUT I thought perhaps it would be prudent to get my own camp pitched before getting caught in a storm cell and having to do it all in a deluge. It sprinkled during set up but didn't start raining in earnest until after I was settled in for the night. Thank you, guardian angel!

I used my new awning as a secondary roof over my swag in case of rain

Fair few flies decided to visit me in camp so I was super happy to have my mosquito net hat with me!

The next day I was up and at 'em around 6:30 but spent probably an hour and a half puttering around; I wanted to let everything dry out properly before packing it up and that served as a perfect excuse to have some breakfast (yogurt kept beautifully chilled by my new car fridge) and ease into the travel day. All my gear is still so new to me that I was still settling into being able to get it set up and packed down efficiently, and I didn't really care to start my day by doing something as silly as stressing about hitting the road ASAP.

Long day of driving, but I called into Newman as I got close to Karijini so I could scope out the pub that was almost my employer! You may recall that back in June there was another job in a tiny mining town in the middle of no where that was going to guarantee me my days for the second year visa work requirement, but then I decided to go back to Exmouth after lockdown instead... that was the pub I stopped at. And let me tell ya, that town had to be at least 90% male populated. I would definitely have ended up with an accidental husband if I'd lived there. Thank goodness I came to Exmouth where all men are Peter Pans and emotionally unavailable (maybe I'll find a town with a happy medium between those two extremes sometime... HAH!). The pub itself was unremarkable, but the surrounding hills and mountains were beautifully decked out in lush green from all the rain they'd been getting. I had to keep reminding myself that I was seeing the town at its absolute best, aesthetically, and that most of the year it's dry, dusty, and hot. Not unlike Exmouth in that regard, actually, but without the sea breeze to cool things. I digress. 

Got back to driving and made it to the campground at dusk where I found Jess happily puttering around the magnificent campsite she managed to set up all by herself! Two huge gazebos with mosquito nets (one for our swags, so we had a second rain protection layer, and one for our living/cooking space), and she was busily cooking some lamb chops. Man does she know how to camp in style!

The stars were SO thick in the sky

The next morning we were easing into the day when my Karijini Park Ranger friend Jay stopped by for a visit and a chat. I had told him I was coming in for a few days, and since there were only 6 campsites booked in the whole park he didn't have to look very hard to find us. He updated us on which parts of the park were open and closed (turns out only a few gorges were open because of all the recent rainfall), and invited us to dinner the following night. So away we went for a morning hike into Dale's Gorge, right next to our campground. 

Jess

Underneath the waterfalls at Fern Pool

Fern Pool

The path out of Dale's Gorge

We came out of the gorge to eat some lunch back at camp only to realize it was WAY too hot for that to be enjoyable. So we had a quick bite and then headed back into the gorge to hang out at Fern Pool 'til things cooled off a bit. There's a little platform with a ladder to get into and out of the pool without having to climb onto a muddy bank, and there are tiny fish that congregate around the platform who will, given the chance, nibble the dead skin off your toes and legs if you leave them dangling in the water. So not only did we get to spend peaceful hours beside this stunning pool and waterfall, I got a pedicure to boot!

Back to camp for dinner and we were pretty exhausted. The day was hot, the hike was long, and while I'd slept well the night before (too tired not to), Jess had not. So around 8:30, as we were watching more thunder storms doing their thing off in the distance, we decided to pack it in for the night and head to bed. Perfect timing, because we were hardly in our swags when the skies opened up! Idiot me had left two car windows cracked and I debated just leaving it be - the buckets had been pouring down for maybe 10 minutes when I realized, so surely everything was already wet. And surely the storm wouldn't last much longer at the intensity it was falling. But I couldn't get the idea out of my head so out I ran to close my car windows. Muddy feet, wet clothes, but my belongings in the car would at least stay dry. Back to bed and minutes later remembered my phone was in the other gazebo. Surely it was fine!? But couldn't get the idea out of my head. So out I went to grab my phone (which was, along with my backpack, sitting in a giant puddle of water that was rapidly growing inside the other gazebo). Thank goodness it's waterproof for something like 30 minutes of being fully submerged, so I wasn't worried about that. But I was well glad to have gotten it up and out of harms way. Back to the swag, even more wet and muddy this time, and the rain was still absolutely thrashing us. The wind had picked up and was blowing the other gazebo about, so I was really glad Jess had attached everything so well to the ground. 

By this point, the gazebo we were sleeping under had begun to leak. It was made of heavy-duty canvas, but it had been pouring down for probably a half hour by then and canvas can only do so much. So Jess and I were putting our own swags to good use as rain blocks. I'm not sure if I've gotten into this in the blog before, so please bear with me if I'm repeating myself here, but I had never heard of a swag before getting to Australia. Maybe they're used in the states and I just don't know about them? Not sure. But either way, a swag is basically an oversized canvas sleeping bag, complete with mattress, which is designed to keep you under wraps and dry while camping without having to deal with something as fully sized as a tent. Fancy ones, like mine and Jess', are built with two layers of protection: a fly net so that you can be fully enclosed and protected from the mozzies while still getting air flow, and a canvas layer to shed off all but the heaviest of rains. Jess and I had the full canvas layers over us, the rain was pounding down on the roof of our gazebo, and so we were shouting to hear each other from 3 feet away from each other. We were laughing and celebrating her skills at setting up camp when we noticed that the pegs in one leg of the other gazebo had come loose and it was flapping around a LOT. The storm was showing no signs of abating, so we rallied for my third foray into the rain to get it sorted. There we were, running around in our underpants (because my last two outings had completely drenched my clothes already), tying ratchet straps attaching the gazebo to our cars (they weren't likely to blow away!), pounding in more stakes to hold it down, righting the cooler which had blown over from the gazebo thrashing about, and generally hoping we didn't get struck by lightning in the whole thing. We were so deliriously tired and hopped up from adrenaline that we just laughed and laughed and laughed the whole time. And, thank goodness, everything was fine. We got the gazebo fully pinned down. We got the food packed away safely. We got a bucket of water to wash our very muddy feet off and got the hell back in bed. At that point, I told Jess that whatever was going to be would be but that I was going to sleep. I drifted off as the storm started to break up and the rain slowed down to a gentle fall. 

View of the gazebo that tried to escape in the storm

Some of the puddles in our living room next morning - the whole floor was a pool when we were there mid-storm

After all the hullabaloo, I was up at 5:30 to assess the damage. All's well that ends well and all we had to do was dry everything out from its wet thrashing - no issues at all otherwise. We got camp sorted out and drying, rigged up some laundry lines with ratchet straps (those straps got a lot of use this trip!), and settled into some breakkie. Jess was sore from the previous day's hike and wanted to lay low for the morning so I went out on a little solo journey. I had heard about some Aboriginal rock drawings that could be found on the walls of one of the gorges, so I wanted to find them... luckily enough, I did!

One of my swimming spots while out exploring

Made a tiny friend

And a slightly bigger friend!

I told Jess where I was going, when I'd be back, and had plenty of water and snacks to tide me over in case of emergency, but everything went without a hitch. Had a great time exploring and headed back to camp for some lunch. We spent the afternoon in Kalamina Gorge and then made our way to the Rangers Station for dinner with Ranger Jay.

I completely forgot to take pictures because I was having so much fun. Jay's neighbors, two recent transplants from Exmouth (!) who were there to get the Karijini Visitors Centers up and running for the season, joined us and we spent 6 hours hanging out, Jay and Beck played music, Paula, Jess and I hung out and discussed the local politics of Exmouth, and we all just had such a fun night. We spent the night rather than drive back to camp at midnight and hit the road Saturday morning to get back to Exmouth!

A brief stop in Tom Price for some lunch was the only big stop, but with our cars so loaded up it took a while to get back to town. We landed around 8:30 which gave me enough time to collect my room key from reception at the Hotel portion of the Potshot, unpack one suitcase, enjoy the ensuite bathroom that I have at the moment (but, alas, will not get to keep when I get moved into my long-term room in a few weeks), and pass out. I had work at 11:30am the next day after all!

Since then it's been a whirlwind of working, hanging out with friends new and old (I had two Polish dudes living next door and stayed up with them til 5am one night chatting. When will I learn that I'm too old for this!?), and generally loving being back. People keep telling me "welcome home" when they see me around town and it makes my heart sing. It's Friday afternoon, I worked lunch already and I've got to head back to the pub in 45 minutes. I'm trying to establish new healthy habits (like actually working out, not just counting my million steps walking around the pub as "exercise"), so I'm gonna do some yoga, shower, and get back to it!