Hi from Tom Price at the centre of the Pilbara mining region.

We've seen and done so much since we last wrote it's hard to know where to start describing these last weeks ! We've snorkelled in Shark Bay with shovel head rays (which look very much like sharks when they surprise you !), whole families of stonefish, tropical fish and local snapper. We've lived off fish for days - on the barbie, fried, marinated island-style, filleted or whole, we have feasted on them while we could!

We've been to Cape Range National Park where we had white beaches, amazing turquoise waters and spectacular coral reefs 30m offshore almost to ourselves. In the Ningaloo Marine Park we've swum with turtles, rays, sharks, schools of snapper and barracuda, with the highlight being a day's diving admiring the amazing soft and hard corals and abundant tropical fish.

The last couple of days we have been in Karijini National Park, inland in the Pilbara region and the change in landscape was spectacular. Suddenly there are trees, and green all around us. Immense red mountains rise out of nowhere. There are tropical storms almost every night somewhere in the distance and you can really feel that we've hit the tropics. We've been walking in the park visiting awe-inspiring lookouts where the sheer gorges cut out of the red rock over the millennia make you feel very, very insignificant. We've descended into a couple of gorges to swim in the beautiful fresh and clear pools (they got hit by the edge of the cyclone up here, which is good for us as it means that the water sources are well-stocked and the campgrounds are fairly empty).

What we haven't done in a while is had a proper shower or slept under a solid roof but we don't really miss those things when there's so many beautiful landscapes to see out here!

Today we are heading towards Karratha along a private railway road (which to be allowed to use we have had to watch a very serious introduction DVD about what not to do, including wearing red and
carrying alcohol!!), destination Burrup peninsula for more beaches and fishing and the ancient petroglyphs...

PS. Florent wants me to say that Big Mama is still going well, apart from a couple of fuses that didn't survive the heatwave in Perth (the plastic melted it was so hot!).