Author: Chris Riley

The crooked Carrot

| Chris Riley

Most definitely a quirky little eatery The Crooked Carrot is located approximately 35 kms from Bunbury on the corner of Rigg Road and Forrest Highway, in Myalup, in the South West of WA. It opens at 6.30am for breakfast, and stays open until 4pm, seven days a week.

It’s a paddock to plate cafe as much as possible with produce coming from garden beds on the premises, as well as the owner’s farms and market gardens in the vicinity.
On site garden beds

I’m told they have a dedicated cake cook. The cakes on display in the cabinet certainly don’t look like the run of mill, bought in, cakes that seem to be apparent in so many places. I gather they make their own pies too.

There’s plenty of tables, both inside and out. I particularly liked the colourful little booths.

Dogs are welcome with the usual dog rules. Apparently every one with a dog seems to do the right thing.

There’s lots of play space for the children, catering to both little kids, and the bigger kids in different areas.

Can you see the dragon in the tiny tots play area?

The bigger kids would have to be a lot braver than I’ve ever been to climb up that towering climbing net.

There’s an old Tram, which is gated off, but I believe there’s plans to turn it into an eating area.

I’m sure lots of farmers will get a kick out of recognising old tractors and farm machinery. There’s plenty of them on display.

The toilets are in another converted tram building.

There’s a set of rules posted in both playground areas.

I love the old truck. We were talking to one of the gardeners there who told us the old truck on display used to be gorgeous. Sadly the children’s owners don’t seem to be as responsible as the dog owners. Parents have been known to watch on as ‘little Johnny’ smashes the headlights, or whacks away at the paintwork, which is now in rather a sad state compared to how it was when originally displayed. I gather this isn’t an isolated event either, it happens on a regular basis.

The mind boggles – perhaps there’ll come a time when children will only be allowed if kept on a leash. I guess that’s not particularly politically correct to even suggest such a thing in the year 2019, but one does wonder what will be next. Today, behaviour such as wrecking a gorgeous old truck is tolerated without a word of reprimand. Will the same sort of behaviour be indulged when directed towards another person tomorrow. We wouldn’t want ‘little Johnny’ to get traumatised by being prevented from letting off steam now would we! ( Now back in my day….. – I think I’m turning into my parents….)

The Crooked Carrot is on the highway in the middle of nowhere. You can’t miss it as there’s always dozens of cars parked outside. It’s popular from the minute it opens until closing time. Be sure to stop in if you’re passing by. Good coffee, fresh paddock to plate meals, and be sure to save some room for one of those delicious cakes though. This place is an absolute gem!

Stats for Katherine trip 2019

| Chris Riley

This is probably the maddest trip we’ve ever done as far as covering a lot of distance in a relatively short time. It was tiring, but we enjoyed it. Would we do it again – the distance most definitely, but at least three months would be our preferred time frame. Less than five weeks was just a tad crazy!

For those of you interested in cost and distance details, I’ve put together a few stats for you.

We were away from home for 33 nights in total.

The journey was completed in two legs for each direction, with a stay in Broome to rest before continuing our trip. We stayed for three nights in Broome on the way up to Katherine, and for nine nights on our return trip. We also spent two nights in Kununurra on the way up.

The first leg
The second leg

We were at the farm in Venn for a total of eight nights (Venn is 25 kms south of Katherine.) During those eight days we helped plan a wedding, helped with the decorating, and the catering, and helped with the clean up afterwards.

All other stopping points were for one night only.

The return trip – 3rd leg
4th and final leg

There were 8 driving days in total in each direction with an average daily distance of 513kms. The longest of those days was 818kms – and yes, it was to long! Between 400 and 500 kms is a good distance on WA and NT roads. More than that is too much, less than 400kms and you never seem to get to where you’re going.

The total kms for the entire trip, including all the daily trips when we were in one place for more than a night totalled 9680 kms. The total fuel cost was $2684.

The combined costs for paid accommodation was $819.

We travelled up the Great Northern highway to Port Hedland on the way there. On the way home we came via the coast road for a change of scenery. The distance is virtually the same whichever road you take.

The average cost per km worked out to .28cents. The average cost for accommodation was $26 a night.

So there you have it. – the statistics for an almost 10,000km trip in almost five weeks.

Katherine to Busselton – days 33 and 34, Carnarvon to Home

| Chris Riley
(Amblin Holiday Park is only a few hundred metres from home)

An early start, and a long day’s drive took us from Carnarvon to Eneabba Recreation Centre for our last night on the road. A toilet stop at Galena Bridge on the way, and thank goodness we hadn’t decided to stay there overnight. We have stayed there before and loved it, but on this occassion there were about a million flies – those little pesky, newly hatched flies that try and get in your mouth and eyes, and a gentle swat does nothing to discourage them.

We continued on, and it was mid afternoon when we arrived Eneabba for the night. There’s a charge of $5 per person to stay there, and it was well worth the charge. I think we were one of four vehicles camped for the night on the big, grassed oval. I say grassed, it was really well mown weeds, but it was very neat. Each camper spaced themselves sensibly around the oval with about 1/4 of the oval distant between each caravan. We threw a ball for Tills on our part of the oval, and at the same time someone over the side was throwing a ball for their pooch. I don’t think either dog was particularly aware of the other, which gives you an idea how much space there was.

There’s no power at the site, but excellent toilets and hot showers. We had a wander around the tiny town, and were impressed as to how tidy everything was. Well done Eneabba. There are lots of public gardens full of flowering natives, and gum trees, including this tree with it’s unusual growth, the biggest growth I’ve ever seen on a tree.

A pretty inland sunset lit up the night sky, a fitting finale for our last night on the road.

Another early start the next day, and we headed for home. Our mid morning stop was at the day use only area of Regans Ford. Rather a shame that no overnight camping is allowed as it’s a lovely stop. Never mind – it’s still a lovely spot for a leg stretch. Then on to home, arriving around 1pm.

That was two days ago now. As always it’s good to be home, but the reality hits of how weeds love to take advantage of an empty house. We’ve been away less than five weeks, but by the look of the garden anyone would be forgiven for thinking the house has been vacant for at least five months. Guess we’ll be busy for a few days…..

Sometime soon I’ll try and put together some stats for this trip, so watch this space…

Katherine to Busselton – Day 32, Fortescue to Carnarvon

| Chris Riley

We set out around 8am after a refreshing night’s sleep. It had been a very hot night, so we were thankful to have access to power and could have the air conditioning running the entire night.

Our destination for our 32nd night was the Wintersun Caravan Park in Carnarvon. It was an uneventful trip with just one toilet stop on the way at Barradale Rest Area.

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Cable Beach sunset cocktails

| Chris Riley

One of our favourite things to do in Broome is to either drive down the beach as sunset approaches, or to find a table overlooking the beach to watch the sun go down.

A couple of nights ago we managed to get a picnic table in a prime spot, directly overlooking the ramp used for cars and camels to access the beach.

We had our container of ice, a bottle of Bacardi, orange juice, grenadine and a can of soda to add a touch of sparkle. Paul poured us both a cocktail made to a recipe which we made up a few years ago in order to do justice the glorious sunsets in this part of the world. We call it Cable Beach Sunset.

One lot of camels returned up the ramp, and following close behind a line of vehicles returning from somewhere up the beach.

It’s so peaceful to watch the sun descending towards the horizon. A few clouds, or some smoke haze in the sky adds interest, but even without those things, the sky lighting up into a blaze of red and orange as the sun dips over the horizon is always special.

A friend of mine loves tropical beaches with palms, but doesn’t like Broome. She said she was disappointed because there weren’t any palms. I think perhaps she didn’t look closely enough – what do you think?