Cyclone season, and the closures that outlast it

What a season actually looks like

A cyclone does not need to hit Exmouth to change a trip. Three things happen when one crosses the coast anywhere between Broome and Carnarvon.

The first is wind. The cape is flat, exposed and covered in campgrounds, and the parks service closes what it cannot keep safe.

The second is rain, and rain is the slower problem. Unsealed roads on the cape become impassable rather than difficult, and the two canyon drives are unsealed. A week of ordinary wet-season rain closes them without any cyclone at all.

The third is the supply line. The road south from Exmouth runs through country that floods at the same handful of creek crossings every time, and a closed highway means the town's fuel and food arrive late.

Flooded crossings are one reason to know the vehicle before the season starts, and for the canyons and the campgrounds past the crossing, 4WD hire for unsealed roads is the category rather than a campervan.

The closures that last a season

The damage that matters most is not the day of the cyclone. It is what is still closed six months later.

After severe tropical cyclone Narelle, the parks service closed campsites 12 to 28 at 14 Mile Campground on the Warroora Coast from 29 October for relocation and rebuild. In Nyinggulara National Park, every campground — Janes Bay, North Lefroy, Point Billie, South Lefroy and Winderabandi — was damaged badly enough to need complete rebuilding, and damage to the park's radio tower left no emergency communications. The service gave no estimate for reopening.

A campground can be closed for a season, and the closure is announced on a page most people never open.

A closure is also a reason to keep the start of the trip in town rather than in the park, and campervan hire locations at each end of the coast is the depot page for that end of it.

Where the closure is published

There are three places to check, and they answer different questions.

The parks alerts page is the one that matters for camping and park access: it carries campground closures, road closures inside parks, and fire and weather notices.

The state road authority publishes highway closures and re-openings, which is the question that decides whether the drive north or south is possible at all.

The Bureau of Meteorology publishes the cyclone advice and the forecast track, which is the question that decides whether to move now or wait two days.

A park can be open while the highway to it is shut.

That is the argument for starting at one end of the coast rather than the middle, and Exmouth campervan hire shows the depots at each end of it.

Planning a trip inside the season

The season does not make the coast unvisitable. It changes what a plan can assume.

Do not build a plan around one campground. The whole point of the campground guide is that the sites are bookable and finite; in the wet season they are also closable at short notice. A plan with two possible bases survives a closure, and a plan with one does not.

Leave slack at both ends. A closed highway adds a day, not an hour, and the drive from Perth or Broome is already long. Two spare days turn a closure into an inconvenience.

Carry more than the plan needs. Water, fuel and food for two extra days is the difference between waiting out a closure and being rescued from one. The parks service also suggests travelling with a personal location beacon, which is worth taking literally on the unsealed sections.

Do not drive through water. The creek crossings on the unsealed roads are the ones that catch people, because the depth is not visible from the driver's seat and the road bed underneath has usually been cut.

The other season, which is easier to plan

Outside the cyclone season, the cape is dry, the roads are open and the constraint becomes heat rather than water. WA Parks advises that walks in Cape Range should only be attempted between April and September, and that summer temperatures can pass 45°C.

Between November and April there is a second warning that has nothing to do with cyclones: box jellyfish and Irukandji can appear in these waters, and the warning covers the beaches inside the park as well as the ones outside town.

So the calendar has two shapes. April to September is the walking and camping season, with cool nights and open roads. October to March is the hot season, with the reef still there, the water warm, and a set of marine and road warnings that have to be checked daily rather than once.

What this means for the vehicle

Two things follow, and both are decided before the trip rather than during it.

The first is that a wet-season trip on the unsealed sections is a four-wheel-drive trip, because the surface is the problem rather than the distance.

The second is that flexibility is worth more than specification. A vehicle collected in Exmouth can be pointed either way when a road closes; one collected a thousand kilometres south has fewer options.