Well I got some sleep, obviously not enough because I still didn't look to pretty in the mirror this morning but enough to get back to this.

@AKS,,You can get a latte at the Bluff and they don't even have toilets for the lights not to work in.........and I haven't heard the hardcore surfies complain.
And I wouldn't even bring your Pirus up the road after the flood damage,
Do you have AKS t-shirts and stickers?
Perhaps i should get one of those really big vans and trailers and write Kite at Gnaraloo all over it and drive it round Scarbs...be more productive than selling latte's
Thanks for the vote of confidence that I am trying to do a good job in general but it may be you that is missing the fundamental point that...it's not only kiters, sailors and surfers that come to Gnaraloo. Many people just come to enjoy what you say is disappearing, so how can that be. This is actually a benefit to you guys, if most of the camp just want to snorkel and lie on the beach sunbathing ( nude even, cause its coming,,,hehe what u going to say about that) then there will be less out on the wave. The Ningaloo Cluster ($36 MIll of research) has determined that the usage of the Ningaloo Reef for surfing is 5%. SO kiting and sailing would be soooo much less.
I have to cater for all the people that come here just like u have lessons for beginners intermediate and advanced.
Most people come here to escape society in the holidays, sure during the holiday periods there is a little hustle and bustle, your self employed, you have the luxury to come outside of those times. If you want to try to re-establish a connection with the earth, I'll lend you a shovel cause there is lots of flood damage that needs filled in and if you feel the true values in life are getting swept aside by all encompassing commercialism and consumerism pack your business in and get a job in government......hehe

@TurtleHunter....dangerous ground brother. if you get your way with the post code thing then you, SBD, Paul1, Stamp, bjw, and arkgee cant ever kite or sail Tombies again......what do you Eastern Staters think of that?.
Localism won't be tolerated at Gnaraloo, sure u can fight out on the wave but you won't be staying at 3 Mile or the Homestead and you will have to get your latte at the Bluff.
You are totally right though to be concerned what the government has planned for the future of the Ningaloo coast. They won't be reading seabreeze to see what you guys think and trust me......they can't even spell consultation never mind carry it out.

@Oceanfire...I didn't like being rude either but I found it funny too

@Weta...spot on, some people were lucky enough to be there at the start, and it is inevitable that things change, they should feel privileged they got to experience what others never will instead of complaining all the time about what was.

"Nothing stays the same, enjoy it while you can or manage it wisely and enjoy it forever.".....can you please pack ur job in and get one in government that's the logic that we need!...ohhh on second thoughts, you said wisely......you might get sacked from government.

@westhammer...never go to a pub in Perth you will be disgusted at how much more they charge for a beer than it would cost you sitting at home and definitely never go to any gigs. At Ministry of Sound 3 years ago I had to pay $11 for a Jim Bean and cola...they are half the price at the 3 Mile shop. And the days of no respect for other campers are gone, if your are still kiting when you have a family who knows one of those Darliks might be you.

@dave.....sure do

@TurtleHunter....we agree again, mind you if it is 100 years I doubt either u or I will be here to see it.

Your comments about the strategy aren't strictly true though. 2015 is when all the Pastoral leases get renewed subject to areas being excluded from them (e.g. tourism, mining and higher and "better" uses). The coastal station on the Ningaloo Reef were however forced into an early surrender by the Labor Government but we have fought hard and held our ground with only Carabia signing off. And its looking like 5 years of fighting with government may have reduced the arbitry 2km line to one that is now based on scientific environmental knowledge and much smaller. The strategy is actually a West Australian Planning (WAPC) document and was put together with minimal or no consultation by people from Perth with minimal or no knowledge of what the Ningaloo coast is actually about. Gnaraloo doesn't disagree with the need for protection of this area but is very concerned about future management after the areas are excluded given that it will be DEC responsibility to manage this area. DEC are currently underfunded and don't even have the staff to manage their current land portfolio never mind another maybe 60 000 hectors of land stretching 280 km along the Ningaloo Reef. As far as 3 or 4 tourism nodes ..bull**it try..... 23 of various sizes and styles between Carnarvon and Exmouth.
It's not my place to comment on other stations all I know is that Gnaraloo is working very hard to prove that we have the capability to EFFECTIVELY MANAGE the area under our control for WISE and RESPONSIBLE USE and ENJOYMENT.
You can check out the Gnaraloo Ethos at http://www.gnaraloo.com/main/news-letter/gnaraloo-ethos.html
I hope you are right that by proving we can carry out DEC duties to the standard that they require we will be able to continue to sustainably manage Gnaraloo for the use of all. Thankfully the change in government brought a change in the management of the Exmouth DEC office, with the previous management there was no way forward but the last 2 Managers since gave us a chance to prove what we could do and we were able to establish the Gnaraloo Turtle Conservation Program (www.facebook.com/pages/Gnaraloo-Turtle-Conservation-Program/108817312525609). In fact for the first time in 10 years thanks to the current manager I was able to have the Gnaraloo staff trained as Honoree DEC rangers so that we could more effectively manage the coast. It's a pity Fisheries were not as progressive in their thinking. Mind you it has to be said that to date the State Government has provided no funding towards this.
Gnaraloo is the only station in Australia, not owned by a mining company that has a FULL TIME Environmental Advisor.
As far as the exclusive Gnaraloo Bay Eco lodge Node....we will fight that to the end along with any plans to either tarseal the Gnaraloo Road or extend it through to Coral Bay, I hope all you guys and girls that read this Forum will give Gnaraloo support when the time comes.
Lurch and Chris6791, who I assume are DEC rangers are the wrong guys to ask, the land grab at the expense of conservation mentality comes from higher up like the Peter Sharp's and Kieran McNamara's, they are the people that you need to question regarding the future of the Ningaloo Reef. Ask them how they can justify selling of some of the 23 proposed nodes to International Developers who's primary and sole objective is profit and not triple bottom line management and therefore not concerned with the existing users and environmental protection.

@waveslave,,,Next time you come up can you bring me some of that **** you smoke please.........hehe........... it must be good ....Dude.

@bolgo ...not sure what you are either but it's always good to have people with a balanced outlook on the issue

@default...they should have good pics because they can afford those really good cameras

@diginoz.....sorry we got no soy....you will have to bring your own or may they have some in their lattes at the Bluff cause their a bit more hippy..ish down there .hehe
.

For the record I'm not a DEC ranger but see Lurch out and about on a daily basis and knows he has his hands full at Wedge.

Can you please pump the septics for sept oct.

i tell what sucks the worst - the genny brigade - a rarity in the past - now breeding like feral cats

the noisy things are everywhere up there now - usually packed in the back of ford
F 1 billlions with quad bikes in them

or Toyota battlecruisers towing portable houses , boats ,10 gerry cans for the boat and a spare genny to keep the fridge going so the fillets go back to town once the ocean has been slammed

they go on at 7am and dont stop till 10 pm - so the kids can watch DVDs in the windsor castle.

we were surrounded by the bastard things -

the worst is when crew set them up so its quiet at their own Battlecruiser monster truck campsite - and super loud for us- the neighbours - on the wrong side of the bush / wind etc etc

a bit of a bugger - in the past the serenity of the place was one of the joys - but thats gone now.

Any chance to consider Genny specific camping areas (up the ridge or maybe at the tip) where all the deaf crew can hang out together ?

all genny abuse aside - it was packed out over easter - but the vibe amongst all the crew was great (cept for the genny angst and the odd evicted party knuckleheads) - peace to all mankind i say !

Thanks Scotty, after an easter dealing with bogans at Wedge a home coming back to Exy would be great.
I think Paul has summed it up and for the other station owners as well. I can't comment from the departments point of veiw because I enjoy my job and have a family to feed.
One thing I have been thinking about is the pressure on our coastline these days. When I was a squid we used to camp at Warroora for a couple of weeks during winter every year, usually around Pelican Point. We shot goats in the ranges and caught fish every day. Back then if you saw 2-3 camps you were lucky, there was no one there. These days its wall to wall from Carnarvon through to Exmouth and its only increasing as the population gets older and more mobile with everyone wanting to enjoy this piece of paradise. With this comes degredation, loss of habitat, dunny tickets everywhere and loss of enjoyment. Don't get me started on fishing pressure and the price of goats these days! Therefore appropriate development is needed to prevent the place from being completely trashed, whether it comes from private enterprise (which includes the stations) or from government departments. Personally I think it should be a combined effort with an outcome that has the environment as a clear first not profits.
I'm dealing with the same thing here with Wedge and Grey. We spent the Easter telling people they can't camp along the coastline, but if you have shack you can stay for as long as you want. there needs to equality for everyone so that we can all enjoy whats on our doorstep. If this means a compromise with shacks and camping or it reverts back to camping with the removal of the shacks it just needs to be sorted out. The visitor numbers for Wedge with the road going through will be up to 250 000 a year based on current visitor numbers. When I was at Cape Range the numbers were the same and increasing every year.
Sadly what we had many years ago has changed and we need to change with it, its only going to get busier and put more pressure on the environment. Lets only hope that those who make the decisions make the right ones. I encourage people to write to the appropriate politicians and decision makers so that your voice is heard, they have been put there to voice the opinions of the people who voted them in.
Saying that wewill be travelling norththis year to give my squid his first big camping experience, get a few waves and hopefully a fish or two, so we'll see you in Exy Scotty.
Hopefully the coffee at Gnaraloo is good, theres nothing bloody worse than a flash machine sitting on the bench and a station owner who doesn't know how to drive it!

I don't really believe the point is 'how dare they serve coffee in Gnaraloo'.

Sure - you've got awesome waves, great wind/wind direction made for windsurfing and kiting.

But there's more to Gnaraloo. For me - it's the drive there, the excitement leading up to the trip, the stark beauty of the pilbara meeting the Indian Ocean, the fauna and flora, the mates new and old, the chance to walk around in the same pair of boardies for 2 solid weeks without feeling obliged to change them. It's a chance to escape from the city and everything in it - the countless emails, the clients, the bosses, the incessant chirping of mobile phones and yes, even the mechanical barking of the coffee machine.

Perhaps its an idealist's sentiment, but I would hope that when I eventually have kids, I will be able to take them up there for a wicked surf, fish and a bit of a whale watch without having to make sure that their PS3 has been packed.

I loathe the thought that there will eventually be a bitumen road right through the place, a bus full of touro's passing and stopping through every 30 minutes and an expanded peanut gallery on the cliffs consisting of people who have no idea about what this place is really about.

I believe the Gnaraloo website is emblazoned with the catch phrase 'Experience the Real Thing'. Well, let's hope that they keep it that way.

Can i suggest the name,-

Wall Street 3, gnaraloo, lattes, generators and greed

Internet at Gnaraloo progress?? Pah!

I have used the wireless and it only supports wireless 802.11b and 802.11g at 2.4 GHz ISM band connection standards limiting the actual connection rate to 54/kb/sec which translates to maximum transfer rate of 1.2mb per sec. This through put is of course pooled over all connections so each consecutive connection reduces the bandwidth by half.
Personally I don't feel this is good enough considering the wireless N standard has been ratified by IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee in 2007. When will Gnaraloo provide full compliant wireless N?.
The Access Point uses a standard 5dbi Arial located inside the shop that significantly drops the signal strength and makes it impossible to stay in my portable house. Thankfully I have followed the very helpful wireless range extension solution on YouTube *** Ok quick edit strictly speaking running this modification is illegal in Oz, sooo don't do it! And don’t use CAT6 cable instead of the CAT 5e as this will reduce latency due to shielding ****

To add to this there is no online purchasing of wireless internet credit, so you have to go into the shop and interact with other humans in order to purchase internet tokens that only last 1hour. Why can't I just buy as many hours as I want online? It's like being time warped back to 2004 ish, if we go back any further I will have to retake up windsurfing!

I have bench tested the connection and found that the download rate is 25kb/sec and upload of around 15Kb/sec with latency at around .500. That's a joke how can I seriously watch any decent Norp with that?

and as for the coffee i ask for a simple Grande, decaf, extra-hot soy Americano with extra foam and what do i get?

PaH! I know I won't be coming back till they get this sorted!

Funny thing how people are complaining about Gnaraloo being ruined by luxury. In fact in the 17 years I have been going there little has changed and much has gone backward. We all love Gnaraloo but the question is how do we not love it to death.

The road is a little better mostly thanks to developments outside the stations boundaries.

The sites are the same hardpack dirt or mud bath depending on the rainfall.

Forget the internet and mobile coverage and Lattes, none of which makes any difference to the basic hostility of the environment: heat seared, dusty, wind blasted.

None of the buildings are new although some have been upgraded.

The borewater is now less salty we are told but I didnt bring my specific gravity gauge and it still tastes much like the ocean. None the less this more than anything else keeps the hoards at Bay.

The wind fence wisely installed by previous owners has been slowly whittled down from overhead to waist high and most of it now provides little protection for tents. Likewise the frame windbreaks are now nearly all falling down.

In the last 10 years very little if any revegetation has taken place but the Casuarinas, just nascent 17yrs ago have proved their worth, especially around the shop and the ablution block soakwells. They now provide some really welcome shade at some sites. Once again thanks to the foresight of a previous owner. The coastal morts similarly were struggling with prolonged drought but should be a making a comeback now that soil moisture has been restored.

G-Boss seems to have his heart in the right place but is treading the line between wilderness experience and commercial viability. For him, even if mass appeal sounds like a money-maker he knows it will never happen without the kind of major investiture that would build a desal unit and a surfaced road, but that would never see the money back. No, better to expand on its appeal to the hardcore adventure campers- surfers, windsurfers and anglers, which is what his posts are suggesting. Planting a few more trees and watering them in a for a couple of years would be a better deal for me than any number of expressos but each to his own.

The basic environment thankfully remains the same and with foresight hopefully always will. There are mind bogglingly good wind / wave set ups on the best days. A lagoon that is filled with such variety and colour of fish that its like been immersed in a David Attenborough program. A hinterland alive with desert adapted flora and fauna. The seacliffs of contrasting Pilbara red sandstone with old coral reef bleached limestone. Lonely beach walks with sounds only of surf and seabirds.

I think what has really changed the most about the gnaraloo experience is the demographic. Now that those original hardcore windsurfers 'live in the back of the station wagon for a month' types, have matured into slightly heavier and more wrinkled mums and Dads, there are kids everywhere, and it being the role of children to civilise their parents, I think everyone's behaviour has improved both in and out of the water.

Also my memories of my best waves at Tombies burn in the minds eye nothing like the brightness of an image of me swimming alongside 3 turtles in the lagoon with my 6 and 8 yr olds and seen the rapture on there little faces as they realise the joy that contact with nature can bring in our electronic urban virtual world. I think if there is a need to provide a little more comfort so that young children and wives enjoy those experiences then that is no bad thing. Certainly the jayco or caravan has replaced the dome tent as the accommodation of most, as people attempt to provide a small amount of daytime shade for their young families. Ironic that Darren should raise alarm bells about encroaching luxury when I've heard that he himself always travels North with the most enviably advanced of camping get-ups, but no criticism or surprise in that as he too has young children and long may they all enjoy it.

for those that may not have seen this on the SUP forum

Niall I think you have summed up the changes at Gnaraloo very well and put it down a lot more eloquently than I could have.

It's not only the hardcore surfer, kiters and windsurfers that come here anymore. They still come but as you say with their families. We are even finding that the ones that used to stay at Red Bluff have moved up to 3 Mile because they have wives and families.
But also there is a new demographic, those that just want to get away from the city and snorkel, swim, relax and sunbathe. These people are not as well equipped as the original ones so it has been necessary to increase the facilities.

It was lucky a previous owner planted the Casuarinas because they are now classed by DEC as a weed and no more are allowed to be planted, in fact any saplings must be pulled out. As far as re-vegetation, check out this pic,





I think we do well to protect the native vegetation that is there by tight controls and cordoning it off from traffic.
"Planting a few more trees and watering them in a for a couple of years".......we have started a seed bank at the Homestead in order to reveg the Homestead area with natives. It is proving very difficult to get these established. All fresh water used at the homestead is recycled as the buildings have been plumbed for grey and black water.

You will get years where the native vegetation suffers from drought, this is a natural cycle and has been happening since the beginning and will continue to happen. Gnaraloo is in extremely god native condition due to the reduced numbers of stock that we carry, 1000 instead of the 13000 in the Michaels' day. The goats are now managed due to new infrastructure that has been put in place and there is no intention of increasing sheep numbers in order to retain the natural environment.

All the buildings at 3 Mile have been upgraded and services to them renovated.

Water to 3 Mile is fed from Gnaraloo Homestead where a new artesian bore was drilled 2 years ago. Prior to this the shower water was a mixture of bore and seawater that ingresses the bore column and was measured at 18 000 ppm. The new bore measures 10 500ppm (much saltier than was projected but it's all there is).

And that brush fence..........it has come to the end of its life prematurely like all things at Gnaraloo. Your right it was a good idea as a wind break in the summer months. I have patched it and patched it as for the last 5 years I have been requesting Department of Lands to permit me to extend the campsite in order to spread people out and retain the wilderness camping feel and in order to build additional amenities blocks to spread the load. Their response has been that nothing can happen until THEY sort their **** out about the exclusion process which is still in limbo and has been, throughout the 2 governments over the last 8 years. Depending on the new layout some of the camp shelters will go and some will be replaced. It is my intention to keep the well loved character of hardcore wilderness camping at 3 Mile, it's unique and hopefully will always stay so.

Major improvements have been happening at the Homestead as this work was originally passed prior to the exclusion process. There are now an additional 12 New Cabins available for rent and they have FRESH WATER from the new de=sal plant and fly screens. (Still no latte's for the yuppies though). I do tread a line but at the moment it somewhere between wilderness tourism and commercial UN-viability.







The Gnaraloo Road is a gazzeted road and therefore i am not allowed to work on this road. I have the equipment and have offered on many occasions but keep getting declined. They also continually ignore our recommendations as to what work should be done. My priority is to remove the dangerous blind corners and crests rather than just blindly sheet sections of it. It will never be a good smooth road ( hopefully ) but if you all called or emailed the Shire CEO Maurice Battilana ceo@carnarvon.wa.gov.au 9941 000 and requested any expenditure be on the dangerous sections it may help.

With good policing hopefully the basic environment will remain the same. We also police the sanctuary zones, this is a DEC and Fisheries responsibility and not our job, but the staff feel passionately enough to take this under their wing as well in order to protect the spectacular marine environment that Gnaraloo has to offer. We can't do it all by ourselves but if all the visitors showed the respect the Gnaraloo environment deserves hopefully your kids will be able to take home the same visions u have had of them swimming in the lagoon with their kids with more than 3 Turtles and even more abundant marine life.

Long may you enjoy it............