A nice cruise down the Northwest Coastal Highway today from our camp at Barradale to Minilya River and another nice rest stop. As we arrived today a man was installing new fire pits so we christened one of them tonight, as usual inviting some of our neighbours to join us. One of those neighbours was a young German couple travelling in a small van to see Australia. They turned out to be a nice, university educated couple but they have already had a bad experience with an overbearing, expecting too much boss. We explained that most bosses are nice people and that they should keep trying to get a job to help pay for their trip.

Back to the road south, there was a lot of roadworks today which is a good thing indicating improvements. I keep harping on this theme and it is pleasing to see the efforts being made to attract tourists to WA. The improved roads are one sign the other is the rest stops and we saw another example today. This was a shelter at a small rest stop near the turnoff to Exmouth, it had well presented and detailed story boards promoting the benefits of visiting North West Cape - well done but it is getting to the stage of needing a bit of TLC. I suspect that free camping grey nomads are not the major spenders in any region but the combination of travellers by all modes of transport are, in today's world important to the survival of large parts of this wonderful country of ours. All travellers are involved as they talk to other travellers and extoll the virtues of the places that they have visited or, horror, complain about those places. It doesn't matter what means of travel the word spreads and we all need that word to be positive. For those who don't realise it there is a wonderful variety of things to see particularly if you are prepared to look off the main road.