We could hardly believe it is the 1st of December. We had noticed the supermarkets filling with festive treats but we have largely missed any other signs of Christmas. There will be no Christmas parties, school concerts or BBQ catch ups. We realised that the season will feel completely different for the kids (and us) so I came up with an idea.
The traditional chocolate and candy advent calendars are out of the question because of the heat so we made our own. Each day the kids open up a numbered Christmas card. Inside the card are instructions for an activity, treat, decoration or small gift. In this way we can create a little bit of the festive season in and around our vans.
This morning Caleb excitedly opened up envelope 1. Being the 1st December it said to put up the Christmas tree. It’s definitely little but at least it’s a tree!
We left Karratha early because we had a long day in the car to get to Exmouth. We said goodbye to Chris and and his family as we each have different travel itineraries from here on and we are meeting up with them again on December 23rd in a Perth caravan park for Christmas together.
We arrived in Exmouth and booked into the Lighthouse park. We instantly noticed the flies. They are small but plentiful, and become very annoying. We worked out that if you let them cluster on your back and arms, most of them will stay away from your face and ears. The wind here is pretty strong so in some areas it just blows them away.
We visited the lighthouse at dusk, a heritage listed area so it was well maintained with a lot of information about the first lighthouse keepers and pioneers of the area. We then went to watch some more turtles on the beach just as it hit nightfall. The turtles here are much bigger than the flat backs we saw at the 80 mile beach and the nests were huge.
We are keen to stay in the Cape Range National Park for a few days and explore the gorges so we will be up early tomorrow to move on. I’m putting Exmouth on my list of places to return to because I remember spending a lot more time exploring here as a youngster and I’d love to recapture (relive) some of those memories with the boys.