“If you don’t leave, you may have to move to a place where you don’t want to be.”
Our experience and the realities of being an interstate traveller, staying on the Ningaloo Coast in Western Australia.
In the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic.
On Saturday, the 14th March, our family arrived in Karijini National Park for a 5 day stay. It’s a stunning Park located in the Pilbara region of north-west WA. There are numerous gorges and waterfalls to explore, surrounded by red ochre rock formations that are rich in iron ore and dangerous asbestos. Travellers from all corners of Australia and the world make the trek inland to see this ancient land. There is zero wifi or phone reception and you are completely isolated from any news from around the world.
After our Karijini stay, I did a grocery shop at the Coles in Tom Price. It was here where I first came across restrictions on quantities for not only toilet paper, but also pasta, rice and long life milk. I can tell you now, it’s pretty much impossible to hoard food when you live in a caravan. Tiny living doesn’t permit excessive storage space. I knew we were making our way to a remote campground, so with careful planning, I made sure I had enough nutritious food for the whole family.
Our next planned stay was Ningaloo Station, and after calling the cattle station owner, they advised the camping areas had just changed into WA Parks and Wildlife’s hands.
We were told park rangers would come to collect fees and all the gates were now unlocked. So, on the 19th March, in extreme heat, we began the arduous task of getting to our campsite at Winderabandi Point, with out breaking anything on our 4WD or caravan, on the heavily corrugated tracks throughout Ningaloo Station.
That same day, with a snippet of mobile phone reception, I received a text from a family member in NSW that the NT border may close. This meant when we needed to go back to the East Coast, we would have to self isolate ourselves in the caravan for two weeks, before moving on.
It was in our plans to visit our NSW investment property, which was severely damaged in the February storms that lashed the Central Coast. As our plans were always quite loose, it just meant we would need to cross back through South Australia, adding a significant amount of kilometres, to get to New South Wales. At this stage, we weren’t too fazed by the news.
Ningaloo Station is roughly halfway between Coral Bay and Exmouth, in Western Australia’s Gascoyne Region. The World Heritage Listed Ningaloo reef is accessible from the many bays and beaches on the station. Most campsites are absolute beachfront, where turtles, stingrays, sharks and fish swim by everyday. The entire coastline is arid and it’s incredibly remote. Just like Karijini NationalPark, there is no reliable phone reception or wifi.
We arrived on the 19th March and other travelling families joined us at our campsite. There were also fellow campers from Perth and Exmouth sparsely dotted along our chosen campground at Winderabandi Point.
We emerged into a changed Australia.
8 days later, we ventured into Exmouth for drinking water, fresh food and beer. We emerged into a changed Australia. Borders were closed. There was talk of WA regions closing too. People were worried. The Mayor of Exmouth Shire Council made an announcement on a Facebook post, that told all travellers in the region, in effect, to piss off.
For a town that heavily relies on tourism, there was this bizarre hostility online towards travellers, following the Mayor’s Facebook announcement. There was an abundance of keyboard warriors in the Facebook Exmouth Community Group. We heard that local vigilantes had put in a road block and the police were called to remove them. Things had escalated so quickly, it made us feel uneasy and unsure of what the heck was going on. We could completely understand that if you were a holiday maker, you needed to return home. It’s for the greater good. It’s to flatten the curve. It’s to save lives.
But, we are different to your regular holiday maker.
What if a caravan was your home? What if your home is quite literally where you park it?
There are approximately 70,000 people who live in their caravan and travel permanently full time around Australia.
From grey nomads, to singles, couples and families, these full time travellers don’t actually have a fixed address. Some have sold their homes to embark on a lap of a lifetime. Some are transients and love to contract work for a little while, before moving on to their next experience. Some have tenants living in their home while they travel and/or work around the country. These people inject hundreds of millions of dollars into regional towns. They are staying in regional towns for more than a weekend getaway. They are living in your community. These people are your locals. And these people are Australians.
A government announcement that changed our world.
When the WA Premier, the Hon Mark McGowen announced that everyone must cease non essential travel, he was very clear about exemptions and showed compassion towards full time travellers.
“The state government announced on 27 March that as of 12am Wednesday 1 April, all travel between regions is banned. The only Camping exemptions are for people who are of no fixed address, backpackers or travellers from overseas or interstate who are unable to return home or can not find alternative accommodation.”
On the same afternoon, we received a visit from a ranger, who made it very clear that we were not permitted or welcome to stay in the National Park.
“If you don’t leave, you may have to move to a place where you don’t want to be.”
Even when we explained we have no fixed address, live permanently on the road and our campsite was a mammoth two hour drive from any other people. It was suggested we go to Carnarvon, another small town that was still within the Gascoyne region.
We were left with a printed handout that clearly explained the Premier’s announcement. We were exempt from having to leave the National Park campground.
What followed over the next few weeks was repeated and regular visits from different park rangers, requesting us to move on. We repeatedly advised we were exempt. They also informed us that they had discussed our situation with the local police, who had advised them that it was not a police matter.
We began to wonder if the Park Rangers had the entire office betting on who could persuade us to leave the region. I’m sure some day soon, we will look back on the way they were handling us and we will be able to smile about it.
While the park rangers were trying their best to make us leave, our weekly trip into town to get essentials supplies was an entirely different matter.
In Exmouth, every shop attendant and the locals we met (from a minimum 1.5 metres) were very helpful and kind towards us. Even though one of the rangers told us we would receive grief and trouble in town with our interstate car plates.
As of today, we have been living off grid, in isolation at one of Australia’s most remote beachfront campsites for 43 days. In this period, we have injected $3,850 into Exmouth’s community. This includes camping fees, food, diesel, gas bottles, fishing tackle and a new car battery. We are also considering replacing our car tyres in town. We hope that however little we have contributed to the local community, that it has helped in some way.
We are 5,700kms from our friends and family. We don’t have a television, there is no radio reception and this blog post is brought to you courtesy of 1 bar of 3G when the wind blows the Telstra signal our way.
We feel we are doing the right thing by staying out of the local community. We feel safer by not staying in town where people can break in to caravan’s more easily. We are completely isolated from everyone, the only visitors we receive are from Rangers, who check on us periodically.
For now, we are incredibly blessed with amazing weather, glorious sunsets and sunrises and fresh caught fish for lunch daily.
Everyday we talk about our situation, the country’s situation, the world’s situation. It seems the right thing to do for the health and safety of our family and others, is to stay put until the government says it’s safe to travel.
Permits to travel through WA’s regional borders have been submitted for approval this week.
Until then, we will tread water, in one of the most remote campgrounds in Australia right now, on one the most unique coral reefs on Earth.
X Mia
Hi Mia
Great to hear you are safe and well. You did the right thing staying put.
We had been travelling up the west coast and were in Exmouth for 3 weeks until around end of March. We had all the same issues with the local mayor and the local Nat MP based in Carnarvon. We were also told by the Police and some business offices to get out and to go home. They claimed they only had sufficient food and medical supplies for the locals. No suggestions where we should decamp to as all parks and caravan parks were being closed down. It was hardly possible to get back to Sydney in 3-4 days before all the WA regions were closed down. Neither did it make sense to move on or that we were a Covid risk as we had already been there for 3 weeks.
Under pressure, we hit the road, managed to get a pass through the Pilbara, Kimberley and got to Darwin in 4 days and in 40+C heat. Not a lot of fun but we could self isolate there. Worse, we were kicked out of safe Exmouth and transited the Kimberley when they has just identified a number of Covid cases there.
So the NT now has our money and we’re in the safest place in the country. After that very welcoming experience, I don’t think we’re going back to WA anytime soon. Best wishes to fellow travellers trapped by these lockdowns.
Hi Ron,
yes, we were told the same, that Exmouth did not have enough food to share with us. We queried how did the town normally function in peak tourist season? I agree, I did not make sense to make people get on the road, in extreme heat, especially when you had already been in the area for some time. Glad to hear you’re in a good place and are safe and well. Cheers, Mia
Dear Mia, I am so very sad to hear of your experience here in our beautiful town of Exmouth and am so glad that you were able to stay safely where you were. I would like to personally thank you for your support of our town during this regardless of how you have been treated in return. Sorry for the longer than normal post to your blog entry but I felt the need to write you…
It is true that there are definitely a “few” people who hit the mental stage of this lockdown very quickly and fear absolutely pervaded throughout their circles which in turn radiated outwards from there in waves. It for sure hit astronomical proportions and it hurt a lot of our visitors who were stuck here, whether anyone planned it or not, that was the situation. Unfortunately they were the “squeaky wheel” of the town and quickly became the face of the rest of us despite our very best efforts otherwise. Honestly, I am thankful that Facebook has a “block this person” function as several townspeople found themselves on the list quite quickly because of their outrageous antics and fear-mongering.
The various agencies here in town were not working together very well, information was disseminated sporadically, and misinformation ran rampant. So many worries and concerns: Did we have enough beds in our hospital should the virus “come to town”? How far do we take our personal safety at the expense of others? And just exactly how do we define the term “local”…who is and who isn’t? Good answers to those questions were not abundant nor were they forthcoming.
I will never say that our town handled this crisis in a stellar manner and the fallout from the way many of our “visitors” have been treated will be felt for a very long time. It will make recovery that much more difficult as well. We saw several families in our church who are “bus people” harassed unmercifully who had been here for well before the virus hit and weren’t a danger to anyone at all. They were clear supporters of our town and economy and had integrated well into the culture here. One even had a contract for six months of work but because of fear, his employer ordered him to leave town with his family with no warning. It was very ugly. Thankfully they made it to Kalbarri and are loving being there. They will not come back unfortunately and theirs is not a unique story sadly. People who operate under the crush of fear are not rational nor do they make very good bedfellows.
Being the wife of the pastor of the local Christian church here, I saw firsthand the efforts that were being made to find housing for people who had been displaced and living out of their cars or sleeping in swags on the side of the road. We saw people who were running out of fuel stranded on the side of the roads because they had lost their jobs and couldn’t get money for food or fuel. We saw poverty hit some families that were barely doing okay before this hit. We are still part of the recovery team to figure out how to help people get food and shelter…whatever that may look like.
However, on the flip side, we have some amazing people in town and I would hope that this experience wouldn’t keep you from trying us out again, under different circumstances. I can say that there are those of us in town who would love to meet you and get to know you, if you would be willing to let us. Please don’t judge us by the narrow-mindedness of the mindless minority. I have a large verandah and a lovely coffee maker should you wish to come into town for a fresh cuppa and some friendship. It sounds like you could use some good fellowship and a safe place to get out of your caravan for a bit. Many blessings from me to you xx
Hi Cheryl,
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. We love Exmouth and the surrounding regions and most definitely plan to return someday. We intend to keep our promise to our kids that we will return to experience swimming with the whale sharks on the Ningaloo Reef.
Warm Regards,
Mia
Hi Mia, it is so sad to hear stories about fellow Australians turning on our own people (not that it would be acceptable to anyone else either). I’m from Victoria and heard of awful stories of Victorians getting their tyres slashed in NSW in July 2020, we had a tow hitch pin taken off our car in Queensland but luckily realised it before we hooked up again – all because some politicians, often the Premiers, open their mouths and say nasty things. They don’t realise the damage they are causing and how it incites the nut cases to take revenge.