Tom Price

Want to know what the mining boom is doing for the country ? We are travelling using a Lonely Planet guidebook for WA which we had purchased on our last foray west in 2006. Because it is school holidays here, we are booking our accommodation ahead, and I am glad we did in Carnarvon where we got the last motel room in the entire town. We can't get into Exmouth because the town is booked out as a consequence of the school holidays coinciding with the arrival of the whale sharks. I attempted to book a motel in Port Hedland, which turned out to be full anyway, the Lonely Planet was a little disparaging about it, down at heel etc... noting that the room rate was $40 to $50 per night. Today an unrefurbished room in this establishment is $380 per night !

We had an excellent stay in Carnarvon, which we found to be a charming town in a lovely setting.

After walking the historic mile long pier, we scaled the lookout tower which is a converted water tank, previously used to refill steam locomotives which serviced the ships at the end of the pier. We shared the viewing platform with a group of aboriginal kids all about six or seven years old. We struck up a conversation, and they told me about the recent flooding of the Gascoyne river. In the corner I noticed one young fellow scooping tomato sauce out of a receptacle, and using his finger to spread the sauce across the top of a pie he was eating. In a lull in the conversation he looked at me and said "Have you had a feed ?" I said that I hadn't. He promptly offered me the half of the pie that he had not eaten. I made the necessary excuses, but it did remind me of the story of the Englishman who returned from a holiday in Australia. A neighbour asked him if he had had a good time. "Wonderful" he said, "Lovely country, but best of all, delightful people, kind, helpful, honest and generous, they would give you the shirt off their backs. It was the white ones that I didn't like "