OK plan A was too stay at Nillibubbica until our friends Laureen & Tom caught up with us on Saturday. Then we heard about this nice place called Telegraph Pool, a little bit rough driving in but doable, and on the way to Derby not far from our camp, so it would be a good idea to spend a couple of days there and come back to Nillibubbica. Off we went about 34 kms to the turnoff, then 1 km down the road finding out that it was much too rough so we turned around. Back at the main road we decided that we might as well go forward and meet them in Derby, so we went to Derby and met Laureen & Tom. After a very friendly catch up chat they continued to the rather expensive ($44) caravan park that they are staying in so that Tom can do a fishing charter tomorrow. We went out to the rather fancy sounding Mike'N'Ath Savanah Retreat which turns out to be an empty paddock with facilities, which suits us anyway and is a much more reasonable $15 per night. It just goes to show that there are many ways to skin a cat.

Derby is a fairly small town boasting a Woolworths shopping centre, a town shopping centre further down to Main Street and various other shops and small businesses spread all over. It also is home to Curtin Air Base which also serves as the commercial airport, the Regional Prison, a boat person holding centre (I think), a port with quite along jetty and very high 10 mtr tides (not all time time, that is peak tide) , the prison Boab tree and lots of other heritage type things. Like most of the towns in rural WA they are trying to promote their points of interest to attract tourists. I suspect that there is a very big opening for someone or multiple someones to assist in this process because in my humble opinion it is not being done properly outside of each town's zone.

For those who are feeling the cold the weather is beautiful being both hot and dry.

Another thing to note is that this part of the world is home to the rather beautiful Boab tree. They have huge bloated trunks with lots of branches going every which way and in season lots of leaves. Described by a friend of ours as having a permanent mad hair day.......does that make them all female?