My 2021 Mystery Tour (includes 2020 reprised) @lindoig8 - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook (2024)

A Final Wrap-up

A few statistics for anyone other than me who might be interested in these things. The easiest one is my birds. I identified 328 species on the trip, 50 of which were ‘lifers’ – never seen and identified by me before. This brought my life-list to 798 Australian species (seen in Australia) – excluding the 647 seen overseas – a few of which are on both lists. I intend recasting my lists in a different format (a massive undertaking) and the application of extreme rigour and access to some updated official Australian and international listings, could conceivably tweak those figures by a very small margin.

As for the trip itself, we were away 266 days or 38 weeks and according to our odometer, we drove 40,142 kilometres, towing the van for 27,411 of those kilometres. But because we have oversized wheels on the car, the odometer naturally reads a little slow. I have measured the difference over long distances several times and it amounts to about 2.9 or 3%, increasing the total distance to about 41,306 kilometres and the van distance to about 28,206 kilometres. But however I calculate it, it is a long way – further than the length of the Equator (40,075 kilometres) and the polar circumference (40,007 kilometres).

As for damages, we had five tyre problems on the car, requiring two replacements (and one new wheel) and three van tyres, two of which resulted in replacements. We had to replace both the ancient batteries in the car in quite different circ*mstances and the poor van suffered a few internal issues, but nothing of great significance – our serviceman is well aware of our philosophy about abusing our van. If we want to go somewhere, we will go and enjoy it – and fix any issues afterwards. For years, he told us to stay on the bitumen and avoid anything that looked like fun but we have finally educated him and he now accepts that he is there to fix things, rather than stopping us doing the things that give us pleasure.

Along the way, we ticked over 3 years living in the van – in 35 trips, ranging from single nights away to this one. (And those 35 trips involved driving over 187,000 kilometres, including more than 136,000 kilometres with the van in tow – more than four-and-a-half times around the Equator.) We crossed twelve State borders, only one of which caused the least delay, and we drove through at least 14 time-zones – possibly several more as we tracked near the borders and meridians on several occasions.

It was great to catch up with so many of our family and friends – a couple of special friends, and most of the surviving part of my side of the family – some of which had been lost to me for about 70 years. It is wonderful how family members can retain vibrant links irrespective of the decades – it was just like reminiscing about last week’s events – only 70 years ago.

The scenery was (naturally) indescribably beautiful, dramatic, spectacular, grand, awe-inspiring…... Where do I stop? We saw hundreds of types of hills, rocks, valleys, plains, gibber, forests, scrublands, wetlands, grasslands, coasts and deserts – wherever we travelled, we were blown away with the beauty, grandeur and spectacle of what we saw. We visited several meteorite craters and marvelled at numerous other geological features. We climbed, trekked and strolled on many of them and drank in the many thousands of plants, trees, shrubs and wildflowers – utterly mind-boggling – delicate, colourful, bold, a thousand intricate shapes, totally beauty-filled. We saw a huge array of wildflowers in the traditional wildflower country north of Perth, but the best displays were probably a month or so later in the spectacular Eastern Goldfields – simply staggering in their diversity, colour and beauty. And the wildlife – not huge numbers of any species this trip (apart from some massive flocks of several species of birds) – but we saw several species of kangaroos and wallabies, dingoes, crocodiles, lizards/goannas, feral cats, camels, donkeys, horses, and no doubt more.

We broke our mould and did a few touristy things – a rodeo and stock drafting day, a music festival, visits to Rottnest, the Abrolhos and Thevenard Islands – even ate out at local pubs a few times. Of particular note were our two visits to the William Creek pub for Heather’s birthday and for Christmas dinner. Of course, we always ate well - it is impossible to beat Heather’s skill and creativity in our tiny kitchen – true gourmet meals every time. These were often enjoyed after Happy Hour around our makeshift campfire, possibly with the generator keeping the freezer at temperature – both of which we used (and enjoyed) much more than on previous trips.

We had our share (more than our share) of extreme heat, with many days and nights of gale-force winds, but very little rain, never once impacting our plans to do whatever our situation suggested.

We set out to travel some of the last unsealed adventure drives in Australia, some of the historic stock-routes, in the footsteps of our early explorers – and we achieved most of what we wanted. My post of 22 August listed quite a few of our achievements to that time, but perhaps the most significant additions to that were the completion of the remaining 1500-odd kilometres of the Outback Way and the whole of the Strzelecki Track (again). We also drove many long stints in Western Australia, but most of the important ones for us over there are now sealed. There remains the Canning Stock Route and the Gunbarrel Highway, but they may need to wait because we are already filling 2024 with travel plans – the adventures simply don’t stop – until we drop!

That’s it for this blog. I will post some more photos, but look out for lindoig9.tumblr.com, coming soon, maybe about April 2022.

Saturday to Tuesday, 1-4 January 2022

(My last post actually covered three days (Wednesday/Friday, 29th - 31st December). The first two days and nights were spent in steamy Tibooburra – a somewhat eclectic place I really like, although it might just be the cute name and the wonderful area around it – Sturt National Park and the romance of Corner Country. Then on the 31st, we drove down to Wentworth and camped at as little park in nearby Curlwaa – a really great little place run by lovely people.)

Saturday – New Year’s Day 2022

Happy New Year to everyone! Hopefully, it will bring us all happiness and prosperity – emotionally, if not financially. It was a very quiet night here in Curlwaa (on the outskirts of Wentworth – still in New South Wales) with nary a sparkler, a hoot, or a car-horn to wake us. Mind you, I was awake throughout. My itchy arms kept me awake until about 4 am and I was awake again soon after 6 so I am struggling a bit today.

New Year’s Eve was perhaps our lowest-key event ever with sleep being far more important than pointless celebrations.

We spent the whole day around the van and environs. I strolled around and looked for birds, a pointless exercise because it was very hard to reach the river where I could hear some birds – the levy ran right around the park, but there was then more than 100 metres of jungle to the current course of the river. We both went for a walk around the park too, once it cooled down a little, but most of the day was spent hiding out in the van under the air conditioner just wishing that we were starting our trip rather than ending it.

Sunday

We drove to Ballarat today – a long drive, but very different from the long days over the past nine months. There were a lot more trees, more green, lots of small settlements and a few bigger towns – and of course, most of the country was much more familiar to us, having visited it many times over the past 30-odd years. It was all so different from our outback experience, but enjoyable for all that. We arrived in Ballarat about 5.30 pm, just in time to get set up and enjoy dinner.

Monday 3

Neither of us slept well and we woke up still feeling a bit zonked but despite that, we did a massive cleaning and reorganising/rationalising job that took all morning today. We basically cleaned and reorganised almost half of the caravan with all our cooling devices working overtime and a continuous supply of cold drinks being consumed. We have a LOT more to do when we get home, but we should be on bitumen for the rest of this trip so we wiped down almost half the inside of the van and it is probably a few kilograms lighter following the removal of so much red dust. We will have another go at it when we get to Burwood but one morning’s strenuous cleaning was enough for us today. At least, the weather in Ballarat was about 16 degrees cooler than up on the Murray.

Tuesday 4

We were up early and had everything ready to go by 8am. Heather had found a place where we could wash the caravan. The place we have used before no longer operates, but this place seemed OK even if it was 11 kilometres back across town from our caravan park. Our GPS took us via a very circuitous route and it was right out in the ‘boonies’ and hard to find. It was hidden on the approach to a shopping centre but we had to drive through the shops to find a place to turn so we could access the place – and we had to ask two groups of people for directions before we finally reached it. Alas, it was positioned at the side of a parking area and was being used to park a few cars so it was impossible for us to even get into the place, much less use their equipment to wash the van. The staff said that, despite their advertisem*nts, they were not operating at present, but even if they had been, it was by appointment only (not that they tell anyone that!). So, for the foreseeable future, our poor caravan will remain looking somewhat forlorn and neglected.

Then it was essentially a straight drive back to Melbourne and out to Burwood where we parked the van and loaded the car with as much as we could fit in and headed for home. And that was that.

But not quite…… We are now preparing for our next excursion, probably just for 6 to 8 weeks from the beginning of April – but more of that in due course.

There was, of course, the task of cleaning up the aftermath of such an epic journey. We did about 20 loads of washing – everything needed a good clean – curtains, bedding, blankets, towels, every stitch of clothing and heaps more. We spent a couple of days out at the van cleaning and reorganising, but we are leaving some things until after we have the van serviced early in February – just so our servicing agents can see how much dust enters from all the places they have allegedly ‘sealed'. The car also needs a service and a clean from one end to the other – there are dozens of things to do, but we will take our time and tick them off in an orderly fashion.

Wednesday to Friday, 29-31 December

Wednesday

We had intended staying two nights in Innamincka so we could go out to Coongie Lakes, another Ramsar birding site that had been recommended to us by a couple of people. Alas, due to the recent rain, the road was closed and it seemed likely that it would remain closed for some time, possibly up to several weeks. A pity, but perhaps a good reason to come back in the future.

This meant that we had potentially picked up an extra day and could get home a day earlier.

We expected to drive to Tibooburra via Nockatunga (or Noccundra) today, a trip of close to 500 kms. The two names are a bit confusing and seem to be interchangeable for some people. Both are shown on the map but it seems that Noccundra is the name of the station but it is the district name rather that the town's (or location's if there is no town) - but other things I have read say that the name has changed at least twice, swapping from one to the other and back again - so I really have no idea which is correct. But as it happens, we never went there anyway because Heather found a shortcut that took about 150 kilometres off the trip, albeit on more gravel, but mainly good gravel. Some other roads to Tibooburra were closed due to the rain, but the one Heather found was open and we drove about 350 kilometres without seeing a single vehicle - just a very occasional line of fencing with a grid, a few items relating to the gas pipelines and a couple of directional signs. Otherwise, we could have been on the moon. (Maybe we were, but I doubt if the moon ever gets that hot.)

One feature of the drive was the number of WIlly-willies (dust devils) surrounding us for hundreds of kilometres. We drove right through several, but at any one time, we could probably see at least 4 or 5, some close, some towering on the horizon, spiralling to the heavens in the blazing heat.

Thursday

We booked in at Tibooburra for two nights, thinking that we might stay for their big New Year's Eve rodeo, hoedown and fireworks display, but it was just so hot that we decided to head south in the hope of a slightly cooler environment.

We needed a rest so we spent all day in the van, hiding out under the airconditioner, the fan and the evaporative water cooler, trying to avoid the heat to the greatest extent possible.

Friday

As we were packing up to leave, I had trouble extracting our power cable from the supply. The plug was faulty and almost came apart in my hands. It had effectively welded our cable to its socket and was really very dangerous so we reported that to the managers, but I will need to replace the plug on our cable.

We intended just driving down to camp at Broken Hill, but the road was mainly pretty good, all sealed since we last drove that way, although it still had quite a few very sharp dips in the early part. We arrived in Silver City about 2 pm and decided quite spontaneously to continue through to Wentworth and maybe pick up another day and arrive home even earlier. We drove almost 600 kilometres on the day and found a lovely little park beside the Murray River and camped there.

We then realised that the place we usually park our van in Burwood is closed until Tuesday, so there was no real advantage in saving the extra two days so now we need to enjoy four days travelling the 500-odd kms to home. Tough, but we will manage.

Had some nice HNY phone calls with our kids but it will be a quiet NYE for us.

Here endeth 2021!

Monday/Tuesday, 27-28 December

Monday

We are set to start the last of our targeted iconic outback tracks today – the Strzelecki Track. This has been on our radar for at least 12 years, so it is good to finally be ticking it off.

When packing up to leave, I turned off the tap and disconnected our hose to roll it up and found that the tap was still pouring precious water onto the ground. There are several signs around asking people to be very careful with their use of water so I decided that we needed to report the problem. We also needed to empty our loo at the Dump Point and it was locked so we had to go to the Service Station to get a key for that and to report the water issue. (The servo is at least a kilometre away from the park.) We had already connected up the van so had to drive that to the servo and back again to use the Dump Point, and then take another trip to return the key. In the meantime, a guy had come down and was already working on the plumbing problem.

We finally got out of town and drove up to Lyndhurst where we turned onto the Strzelecki Track. We had driven the western third of it (disappointingly mainly on sealed road) on our way north eight months ago, but most of the eastern section was unsealed and sometimes pretty rough. We pulled off the road at one point to eat our lunch and a guy in a car driving in the other direction stopped and asked us where we were going. When we said ‘Innamincka’, he said that the road was closed due to flooding from a rainstorm a couple of days earlier. He said the mining company from Moomba was out there pumping water away in the hope of reopening the road – and he thought it would be passable within a couple of days. We were still debating what to do when another car going our way stopped to see if we were OK. The couple in that car had previously worked at Moomba and were very gung-ho about it and said they were certain they could get through, although our van could possibly be a problem. They told us where we could park at Moomba if we wanted to and we eventually decided to give it a go and hope that the road would dry out enough for us to get through in a day or two. It felt so hot and dry, it was hard to imagine flooded roads not too far ahead.

We drove as far as Moomba (as much as we would normally drive in a day anyway) and set up the van at an elevated rest stop (no ‘No Camping’ sign for a change but we had a good excuse this time anyway) overlooking a wide flat area with the refinery and all its related plant a couple of kilometres away – 'Wonderland by Night' with all the thousands of lights and the huge flame once it got dark. We ran the generator all night and kept things reasonably cold but we have had to toss out several lots of vegetables that have gone off in the absence of adequate refrigeration.

At least, there were no mosquitos there, so we sat outside for a while to enjoy our Happy Hour.

Tuesday

We heard trucks passing our campsite almost from dawn so we knew that the road was open again so we packed up and set off for Innamincka. The road was like Bourke Street with scores of heavy vehicles roaring along, making up for their lost time in the past couple of days, but with almost all the traffic going the same way as we were. Most were massive road-trains and there were many places, some a kilometre or more long, where there were just two hard wheel tracks to follow, and deep boggy mud on either side – and evidence of vehicles that had taken the wrong path and had to be dragged out again. But there were also long patches where the road was wide, smooth and dry and quite a few of the trucks moved over to allow us to pass. Most of them were travelling at 40 kph or slower and we were able to do up to about 80 kph so we passed dozens of them. There was just one moment when we were passing three road-trains together when a smaller approaching truck pulled out in front of us and I had a moment’s panic. Fortunately, I was able to accelerate hard and the big trucks gave us room and we got through with plenty to spare, but I still don’t understand what the smaller truck thought he was doing – especially because he was facing a big lagoon of water at the time.

We arrived in hot, dusty Innamincka around lunchtime and were just doing a loop around town to get the lie of the land, when the local District Nurse bailed us up to advise us where to go to park. There are two places, one hot and dusty, and the other with a bit of shade on the banks of the famous Cooper Creek – still hot but perhaps not quite as dusty. She chatted for quite a while, explaining where to go, what to see, how to get there – a real mine of information and most helpful.

We drove around to the Trading Post and purchased fuel and then explored the parking options. We set the van up on the very edge of the Cooper under some huge River Gums and disconnected the car so we were more mobile. The Cooper was orange but it was a real torrent, maybe 70 metres wide where we parked but much wider in shallower areas. We were greeted by about a dozen turtle noses, milling around right outside the caravan door. The Cooper is dry for maybe 90% of the time so it was special for us to be there when it was full, but not in flood – when it might be many miles wide. Apparently, there are always some puddles where the turtles, and several species of native fish, can hole up and survive while they wait for the next inundation – usually a month of two after heavy rains in northern Queensland.

An important sighting for me was quite a few Red-rumped Parrots, a subspecies in this area and another lifer for me.

We drove out to the ‘Causeway’ across the Cooper and crossed a couple of times in 30 centimetres of muddy water. We sat beside the Creek to eat our lunch and waxed lyrical (just between ourselves) about the romance of the Cooper and the brutal history and epic personal stories we have heard about it – the Tom Kruise stories among others.

We then headed off to visit the Dig Tree – something neither of us ever imagined was a possibility. There are a few ‘impossibles’ out here (Poepels and Haddons Corners among others) that have always seemed beyond practical access and this was one of them. It was 71 kilometres from Innamincka but only 14 kilometres of it on really rough road, and it was a huge buzz to see it and think about the insanity of the early explorers who probably imagined they were taking a stroll in the Old Country rather than challenging the world's harshest of environments in arid Australia. It was a sobering experience and we followed it up with a visit to Bourke’s Grave (his remains were subsequently exhumed and reburied in more salubrious surroundings in Springvale in Melbourne).

This was a pretty big deal for me: not something on my Bucket List, but a very significant place to visit and think about the history of Australian exploration. We have seen many significant historical and exploratory sites and memorials, but for some reason, this one seemed especially important.

Back at camp, we ran the generator all night (almost 22 hours, the longest we have ever run it) and enjoyed a wonderful Happy Hour – despite some problems. We were both a bit zonked and we both spilt our celebratory bubbles, and then knocked the bottle over in our enthusiasm – so the Cooper actually claimed more than half our bottle – but at least we enjoyed our prawns – purchased in Alice Springs and hidden unseen at the back of our fridge.

The birds were wonderful, thousands of Corellas, dozens of Reed-warblers and plenty of other species, constantly singing – simply delightful – a continuous cacophony of birdsong, with even a little musical calling throughout the night.

We used our double-sided pan to cook an exceptional roast pork dinner. It had been a wonderful day!

Thursday to Sunday, 23-26 December

Thursday

I was up soon after 5 am to connect up the car and drag the van 15 metres onto a lawn area where we could drain the water tanks. Heather had been complaining that she could smell the water although I thought it was the drain. Irrespective, we decided to drain the water and refill the tanks before we set off again. It took me a while scrabbling around under the van to find and open the tank taps and then an hour or two for them to drain. We have never been quite sure which tanks, taps, fillers and drain plugs relate to each other and we thought this would be a way to clarify it. Alas, all it did was confuse the issue further. After proving conclusively that a particular open tap on one tank released water entering from a particular filler, I closed that tap so I could fill the tank - but it would not accept any water and continually overflowed when I tried to fill it. Insane, but none of the four tanks would take anything like the volume that empty tanks should, so we ended up with all tanks seemingly full when they couldn’t possibly be. There must be air locks or other obstructions in the pipes so I hope we don’t run out of water on the way home.

We had to reorganise the car a bit and transfer everything from our rented cabin back into the car and van but Heather did a great job and we were finally away by soon after 10.30.

It was another very hot day – at least 42 again – and our drive out of town and south to Stuart’s Well was a bit uncomfortable and unpleasant with a horrible ‘rotten egg’ smell accompanying us all the way. We had noticed the smell a few times in the past 3 or 4 days but had put it down to city odours or fumes from other cars, even to the Opel fuel we were not accustomed to carrying. But we stopped at Stuart’s Well for a snack (giant home-made sausage rolls) and to check out the smell and it was certainly coming from our car. I rang Toyota in Alice Springs and spoke with a very unhelpful guy who said the heat or possibly an overcharge can sometimes cause the battery to break down and smell – but he wouldn’t say if it was safe to drive on, or back, only that even if we drove back, they were far too busy to even look at it until sometime next year.

We did a bit of online research to establish that the problem was almost certainly as suggested and after more phone calls to ensure that we could get a replacement in the Alice if we went back, even if we had to fit it ourselves. We decided to return to Alice rather than risk going on (I rang each of places in the next 400 kms and none had either mechanics or batteries) so we drove the hour or so back into town and ended up at Mycar again where we bought our tyre yesterday. They were just in the process of closing down for Christmas but were very obliging and fitted a new battery at a very reasonable cost and we were on our way again, just 3 hours and 175 kms since the last time we hit that bit of road.

We had originally intended stopping at Erldunda for lunch but after our big snack in the late morning and a feast of cold watermelon as we drove out of Alice the second time, we were no longer hungry. This time we drove straight past and ended up at Kulgera where we sat in their very quaint air conditioned bar and had a drink and a big hamburger that substituted for our dinner.

The brilliant glowing sunset as we continued south was utterly spectacular, one of the most beautiful, colourful and dramatic I have seen, and we eventually got to Marla at about 8.30 (Central Summer Time) after driving 611 kms on the day, about twice our normal target, but at least we were back on schedule for Christmas lunch in William Creek. Marla is in South Australia and we had to show our border passes and vaccination certificates to the cop there to get into the Roadhouse and caravan park. The park is very basic, power but no water, no grass, just a burning dustbowl with temperatures expected to remain around 30 degrees all night.

As an unrelated aside, I mentioned back in early May (I think, although it may have been late April) that I had counted at least 70 planes stored at the Alice Springs airport due to Covid-related shutdowns. I saw an aerial photograph on Facebook today and counted at least 128 planes stored there – with at least a dozen different liveries. Big business, no doubt, and a boon for the local economy.

Friday

Christmas Eve! We topped up our tanks at Marla and set off on our much-loved Oodnadatta Track – I think we worked out that this was our sixth traversal. The road to Oodnadatta is always a bit rough and this was no exception, but we kept up a reasonable speed and drove straight through town shortly after lunch at about 1 pm. We just kept driving with few stops on the day because of the heat (42 degrees again) and because we were reasonably familiar with the Track and had seen its secrets a few times before. We arrived at William Creek around 5pm and were the only people in the campground. We wanted to be here so we had power for the air conditioner but were very pleasantly surprised to see that we also had potable water throughout the park – I think that must have been installed since we were here in April.

We were told to park anywhere so we are set up laterally across three sites to mitigate some of the direct sun, with power and water laid on – although the water is lukewarm at best.

We had a good phone catch-up with most of our kids and that was nice – closer contact despite our remoteness. We love the remoteness for a variety of reasons but there are certainly wonderful links with family that no time or distance can diminish. And to enhance the Christmas atmosphere, we strung our Christmas lights (pathetic though they are) around the van and that added a bit of extra festivity to the evening.

We had a delicious meal at night and a cold (coolish) shower in our own cubbyhouse before watching a DVD and sleeping the sleep of the dead.

Saturday, Christmas Day

Merry Christmas to everyone! Christmas Day - and what a wonderful day it was from the moment we awoke until we slept as innocents late at night.

We woke soon after 7 am to a hot day at the wonderful William Creek in the middle of the desert, seemingly a thousand miles from anywhere – certainly close to a thousand kilometres from anything resembling a city. Just marvellous and nobody at all to break the silence. Only the rustling of the leaves outside and an occasional birdcall.

We did our usual half hour or two of puzzles, interrupted by a lovely phone call from Karen and Dave. Porridge for breakfast despite the threatening temperatures and then an hour or two reviewing the last week or so as we wrote a bit for our blogs. What inspiring memories, simply thrilling.

A week or two ago, we had booked Christmas lunch in the pub’s dining room but we were the only people here and they actually rang us to tell us when dinner was ready to serve. The population of the town is 3, but the chief pilot was away so it was just us, Trevor (the owner of the entire town) and Rose, the Jill of all trades - cook, cleaner, receptionist, bar staff and everything else that doesn’t have a name.

We walked across to the pub in extreme heat and were welcomed with a big tray of goodies as we walked into the bar. Trevor served us our choice of drinks ‘on the house’ and we were then ushered behind the curtain, into the air-conditioned dining area with a table set for the four of us, groaning under the weight of roast turkey and pork, almost a dozen different roast vegetables, gravies and other delectables fit for the kings and queens we felt we were. What an absolutely fabulous lunch we had!!!

Trevor and Rose were great company and we are hugely impressed with Trevor in particular. He is obviously a very astute businessman, a really deep thinker, widely experienced and an all-round good guy. We sat and chatted for a couple of hours and were enthralled and entertained by him. He said lunch was also on the house - as the only guests, we fully expected to pay a premium for such a feast as that was his only source of revenue for the entire day, but no, all was on the house. We had intended moving on to Coward Springs during the afternoon but changed our minds to take advantage of the power available for our air conditioner – but again, he said not to pay for our second night. And if we are around in the morning, he offered us a personalised tour of the whole town – in the meantime, help yourself – everything is unlocked at the moment so explore to your hearts’ content. We felt very privileged to have shared this experience with both of them and filled with admiration for Trevor in particular. He is definitely someone who shared very similar values and opinions to us.

Back in the van, we wrote a bit more but then made quite a few phone calls, catching up with all our kids, our siblings, and a few special people we just wanted to talk to out of the blue. It proved to be a fantastic family and friends day despite not being within a thousand kilometres of any of them.

Heather had a little afternoon nap, a bit overcome by our big lunch and the heat of the day, while I wrote – and then we watched a couple of episodes of our DVDs, and a couple more after dinner at night.

The whole day has been very special from dawn until midnight. We have had some very strange Christmases in recent years, all quite wonderful, but 2021 will go down as one of our very best.

Sunday, Boxing Day

Driving, driving, driving. We slept late and enjoyed the relative cool of the morning – it got to at least 38 degrees later in the day, but there was a cooling breeze first thing. We puddled around slowly and eventually readied ourselves and the rig for the road so it was about 11.30 before we actually headed out. We elected not to take up Trevor’s offer of a tour of the town but called in to add some more special thanks for his and Rose’s contribution to our great Christmas Day. Then it was basically a straight drive through to Marree at the end of the Oodnadatta Track to hang a right and follow the bitumen down to Leigh Creek where we camped for the night. It is interesting that each time we drive any of these iconic tracks, we notice new things and other things that change between visits. We drove quite a few kilometres on a section of the Oodnadatta Track that has been refurbished since we drove it in April and quite a few more kilometres where there are dumps of gravel along the road in preparation for further upgrades – fortunately, it all looks like a gravel upgrade as compared with a huge stockpile of blue metal that we passed near Oodnadatta yesterday. We are completely appalled, but it seems likely that the western end of the Track is about to be sealed, totally destroying it for most of us and certainly creating an irreparable scar on the landscape. Today, we also saw at least two old station ruins that I don’t recall from previous trips, and some great mesas and dry lakes that we don’t recall but would probably only be noticed on an eastward journey.

Tomorrow, we will retrace the last 38 kilometres we drove today back to the start of the Strzelecki Track, but we came down here today to purchase fuel and to take advantage of a slightly better caravan park.

Tuesday-Wednesday, 21-22 December

Tuesday

We had a fairly easy day catching our breath after the extreme heat of the last week. First up though was to try to lock in our air conditioner repair. They wouldn’t give us a time but said it would be before we left on Thursday – pretty hard to do it after we leave!

We had a bit of shopping to do so I dropped the punctured tyre off at Bridgestone and we restocked our comestibles at the Coles supermarket. We bought lunch at the mall and I got a call from Bridgestone to advise that they had found the puncture, but that it was too close to a previous puncture repair for them to attempt another patch. Moreover, they didn’t have a suitable replacement tyre and he had phoned all his contacts across town and none of them could assist either. You might imagine that having a second spare tyre for both car and van might be overkill, but with conditions such as they are, we have no wish to be stranded on the roadside in an isolated location with no replacement tyre. We really need a replacement before we tackle the Oodnadatta and Strzelecki Tracks on our way home.

Fortunately, we tried Mycar and they said they could help us – obviously, Bridgestone hadn’t tried them – so that will be a job for tomorrow. We got 150 litres of diesel and 10 litres of unleaded petrol at a discount and will top up again tomorrow before leaving on Thursday.

Heather rang the air conditioner people again and got onto the guy who was actually going to do the work and he was not far away and said he would be around in an hour or so. And then he rang back to say he had just been called to an urgent job and would be here first thing tomorrow.

Wednesday

We were up early and had breakfast before the air conditioner man came at 7.30am. He was great! He tracked down the problem quite quickly – a burnt out wire – and fixed it within half an hour or so. In the meantime, I had asked him about the poor performance of our two fridges – in the car and the van. He and his apprentice explored behind the van fridge – quite an access issue that was too! – and found that the flue had come adrift and fallen down behind the cooling unit causing a heat build-up. They fixed that and we noticed an improvement pretty soon, but it is still struggling with the persistent extreme temperatures, with very little respite even overnight.

He also looked at the car fridge and offered a couple of suggestions but none of them are likely to be all that helpful. The way the fridge is installed, there is just not enough room for the heat to escape. At least, we have the larger section of that set as the freezer and that works consistently well. It is mainly the smaller section that struggles, but is still works adequately for drinks and bread, etc., that do not need to be fully frozen all the time. (I subsequently received the bill for the repairs - charged one hour only with no call-out fee. When we originally booked the guy, I was told there was a $125 callout fee - and I reckon he was there at least 2 hours so we certainly got a bargain there!)

As soon as the fridge repairs were underway, Heather did a big load of washing and once that was on the line and the technicians had left, we went to Mycar and got our new tyre. They couldn’t quite match the other tyres on the van, but we ended up with a slightly better tyre at a very reasonable price so we were quite relieved about that.

Heather had a haircut and we purchased a couple more things at the Woolworths supermarket that we had not been able to get at Coles. And I had a few pharmacy items to buy and got them quickly and easily too. We then topped up our tanks and jerrycans and found a pathology group where we could get some blood taken. Justin had sent us both authorities to enable a serum test to ensure that our Covid boosters had been effective and we had planned to have that done when we reached Broken Hill. But when we reset our homeward journey yet again and made some phone calls to both Broken Hill and Mildura, we found that the collection places in both cities would be closed during the times we would be there so we opted to have the tests in Alice Springs rather than killing a few extra days waiting for those places to open later in the trip. Some of the logistics of this trip have proved challenging to say the least. Thankfully, we are pretty adaptable and have enough flexibility to go with the flow most times.

Friday - Monday, 17-20 December

Friday

We were up a little earlier, partly due to the extreme heat – we had four successive 44-degree days with no cooling other than the car air conditioner – and checked in at the Information Centre to receive the news that the bushfire was well-contained and no impediment to our journey. Everyone has told us that the road conditions deteriorate badly as you head east so we were glad of the first 51 kilometres of bitumen. Then it was gravel for several hundred kilometres, but surprisingly good gravel with absolutely nothing to hint at the conditions predicted (apart from the ferocious heat) and certainly far better than many of the roads we experienced earlier in our Aussie Odyssey. There were plenty of corrugations, some pretty trying, but nothing we haven’t experience for many hundreds/thousands of kilometres before.

A grader had obviously been through very recently although we never saw it and it had obviously focussed exclusively on the very wide verges instead of the road itself - but it was all much less terrifying than everyone had warned us about.

We had a vicious trailing wind almost all day and this caused some places to be so thick with dust that visibility was very poor, sometimes for a kilometre or more at a time. The first Roadhouse at Tjukayirla was closed due to Covid restrictions so we simply drove past and eventually made camp after 320 kilometres at an old road workers camp clearing. We ran the generator all night to try to keep things cold in both the car and van fridges, but it was so hot that they struggled a bit pathetically right through the trip.

A quirky thing we had read about was the propensity for travellers on this road to count the number of abandoned wrecked vehicles they passed. One article we read said that there were something like 180 along the road. We counted 159 that day, many old and rusty, most upside-down, almost all burnt out, mainly well off the road reservation – but with an occasional shiny wreck, although still totally trashed, every window broken, wheels removed, etc. Of course, if we were counting the many thousands of wheels, tyres, hub-caps, bumpers, mufflers and other car parts strewn along the roadside, they could probably be cobbled together to increase our count tenfold. And if we were counting the persistent plague of flies that harassed us almost constantly, they may well have run into the millions!!!

On the day, we saw one snake curled up in the middle of the road (and a few dead ones), a fox(?) that trotted along near the road, seemingly unconcerned by us (Heather thought it was a dingo and she may well have been right because it didn’t look all that much like either species), and a few camels – one group of at least ten and a few other loners. There were a few birds, but there were long stretches without seeing a single bird, followed by areas where we saw several within a kilometre or so – but nothing identifiable that we had not seen earlier in the trip.

Saturday

Our fourth successive 44-degree day but it was not too bad in the car with the A/C running on high. We drove 464 kms on the day and counted 190 wrecked cars. By ‘cars’ I mean ‘vehicles’ because there was a very occasional truck, or a caravan, a trailer, even one lonely motorbike set up vertically beside the track.

We stopped at Warburton for fuel (and a bucket of yummy chips). We expected it to be a bit of a challenge with a raft of rules specified on our travel permit but it all went smoothly. Diesel was $2.45 a litre and petrol was $2.50. We needed petrol for the generator and it is illegal to carry ordinary unleaded fuel out there due to the petrol-sniffing pandemic. You can only use Opel fuel and it is hard to find but we filled a couple of small jerrycans there and were soon on our way again. The Roadhouses are well away from the aboriginal communities and are forlorn and desolate places with just a couple of locals hanging out, usually in a dilapidated wreck of a car that will soon join the others along the roadside. We drove past one place to get to the roadhouse where I reckon there were at least 70 wrecks littering a small paddock. We never added them to our tally, but there were a couple of tumbledown sheds there that could easily have been hiding another hundred wrecks, either inside or behind.

One important place we stopped was at the junction of the Heather Highway, just a couple of clicks short of Warburton. The Heather Highway is another of Len Beadell’s great outback roads and it runs through the Gibson Desert. And given that my Heather is nee Gibson, driving at least a few kilometres on the Heather Highway in the Gibson Desert was quite a priority – something she has been wanting to do for at least a decade. We drove a few clicks up the highway before turning back to refuel at Warburton. Needless to say, that day’s Happy Hour included some celebratory bubbles.

We stopped at a couple of jump-ups and even went for a walk at one of them where I saw quite a few interesting birds, but it was simply too hot to chase them very far trying to get some photos.

The drive itself was never boring - but then, I simply can’t remember a drive that was. If I open my mind and simply observe what is passing me by, there is always more than enough to fascinate me.

I have fallen in love with the desert oaks again. They are so different as they age, starting with a straggly post with an unruly scattering of leaves, through to the mature tree with its cascades of drooping foliage, thick enough to provide shade and visual beauty but sparse enough to let one see the wonderfully elaborate structure of the trunk and boughs that support the lesser branches, twigs and leaves. Quite beautiful and we have seen thousands of them standing majestically across the landscape.

We drove through dune after dune, mainly rich reds and oranges but often in a strange fishbone pattern, running at an angle to each other and converging where the road cuts through. Very strange and I can’t hazard a guess as to how they developed, but they are certainly thought provoking. There were also dramatic rocky mountain ridges along the road or across it, forming a natural barrier to direct rivers and creeks (mainly dry just now), forcing them into runnels that might otherwise defy gravity.

We stopped and started many times along the way, attempting to find and explore every feature mentioned in the various printed and electronic resources we carried. Unfortunately, these references were often misleading, quoting distances that are wildly inaccurate and we were unable to find quite a few of them - or we found them by accident many kilometres from their recorded positions. We found quite a few, but maybe we need another trip at a later, cooler, time to explore numerous others.

We had intended staying overnight at Warakurna, but when we arrived, we couldn’t raise anyone. We left a couple of phone messages, but nobody ever rang us back so we decided to keep on driving to a suitable roadside camp. We eventually set up at a bush clearing called Camels’ Last Resort, just a couple of gravel loops a couple of hundred metres off the main track and there were even a few birds around to sing to us. It stayed very hot overnight and neither of us had much sleep that night.

Sunday

We were hit by the cold snap today – only 42 degrees with the promise of a crash to a frigid 38 tomorrow!

A couple of kilometres from our overnight camp, the road was closed and the cops were in attendance checking border passes and vaccination certificates – but only for people entering Western Australia, not escapees like us. We chatted with them for a few minutes and they opened the road and waved us through. A couple of hundred metres further on, some aboriginals were changing a wheel in the middle of the road, but we drove around them and went on our way. Five or six kilometres further on, we realised that we had missed one of the memorials we had wanted to see so drove back almost to the cops until we found a very narrow track a couple of kilometres into the bush where there was one of Len Beadell’s original marker plaques attached to the stump of an old tree. I have talked about Len a couple of times before and he is/was one of the great outback engineering icons and we wanted to see this plaque – as well as another one we saw a couple of hundred kilometres further along on the same day. We could have continued along the side-track that looped back to the main road, but that would have involved another discussion with the cops so we did a U-turn in the space available and shunted back to the main road and continued east.

We detoured to Lasseter’s Cave a little later and ate our lunch there. Lasseter sheltered in this cave for some days before making his final fateful flight for civilisation with the help of some aboriginals, but he died in the attempt after about three weeks of desert walking. The cave is beside a river and there were still a few areas of water there and hundreds of birds. We saw Little Corellas, Budgerigars, White-necked and White-faced Herons, Diamond Doves and quite a few more - with both the Doves and Budgies in squads of at least a few hundred.

We had encountered a couple of quite short bitumen strips, but as we approached the end of the gravel, we started seeing bigger rocks and hills until we were driving on the blacktop with the Olgas (Kata Tjuta) growing large in our field of view. They are so much more impressive to both of us than Uluru that is just a big boring lump of rock with little to recommend it. The Olgas (and Mount Connor that we will pass tomorrow) are so much more interesting than Uluru.

We saw only 32 wrecks in the 376 kilometres we drove that day and it was noticeable that the further we drove east, the less wrecks we encountered. And road traffic was also lighter – we only saw three other cars that day.

We really don’t much like the Rock and Yulara is just as bad, but we wanted to stay there so we could have showers and run the air conditioner for a bit of cool comfort in the van. We were the only van in the big caravan park and we certainly had cool showers, but when we turned the air conditioner on, nothing happened. It was dead and we couldn’t see any reason for it so decided on the spot that we would have to recast our plans yet again and detour to Alice Springs to try to have it repaired. Another very hot and uncomfortable sleepless night.

Heather has also been complaining that our tank water smells so detouring to Alice Springs will also afford the opportunity of draining our tanks and refilling them with fresh water.

Monday

We rang a couple of places in the Alice and found a company that was willing to look at our air conditioning problem so we packed up ready to head to the big smoke again – until I noticed that one of our caravan tyres was nearly flat – the eighth wheel we have had to change this trip, five on the car and three on the van. I got stuck straight into it and with a little help from Heather, we soon had the spare wheel on and were (again) ready to leave. At least, changing a wheel on the van is easier than changing one on the car.

We were the only van in the big park, but I had seen a couple of cars drive through and out at the far end of the camping area so we set off in that direction looking for an Exit sign. There was none so we had to guess where to go and clearly, we guessed wrong. We eventually ended up on a sandy fire track skirting the luxury hotel and were then confronted with a securely locked gate with no possibility of turning around or reversing back out to any other similarly unmarked track. A guy coming out of a nearby building saw our predicament and eventually drove Heather to the Security Centre where a couple of guys drove her back to unlock the gate to let us out. Alas, someone had changed the padlock so the security guys’ keys didn’t fit (a local turf war was said to be the issue about changing padlocks with both parties attempting to keep their rivals out of their territory). They had to go back to their workshop to collect some bolt-cutters to remove the chain and release us. One of the guys was a huge Maori guy and it took all his strength on the end of a 1.5 metre pair of bolt-cutters to set us free. The guys were both really wonderful about it all and just couldn’t do enough fast enough to help. They were great – and we were finally wending our way through the Yulara labyrinth to the main road and on to Erldunda 350 kilometres away.

For the record, we saw only 3 wrecks between Yulara and Erldunda and 3 more through to Alice Springs. Obviously, the further one goes west, the less concerned people are about abandoning their cars in the desert.

I calculated that we could get to Erldunda without needing to buy fuel in Yulara, but we chewed through more than expected so about 15 kilometres shy of Erldunda, I emptied two of our jerrycans of fuel into the tank. I am sure it wasn’t necessary, but I like to turn the jerrycan fuel over before it sits too long unused – and although I tried not to put too much into the tanks at the expensive Erldunda prices, I reckon we still had about 300 kilometres of fuel in the tanks when we reached the Alice.

Erldunda completed our journey of the full length of the Outback Way this trip – we did the eastern half a few months ago. In retrospect, it is clear that one should ignore the scaremongering of the overly-conservative puss*cats about road conditions. The western half of the track holds very few fears for even a moderately experienced driver. Two-wheel drives would be completely capable of making the crossing, even with a van or trailer behind them. Obviously, one must be careful and drive to the conditions, but it was only a mildly challenging track. Sure, conditions can change quickly after rain, but we both reckon several of the other roads we have driven this trip (including the eastern half of the Outback Way) were much more challenging (but no more rewarding) than this one.

Then it was another 200 kilometres of excellent bitumen north to Alice Springs and we booked in at the G’Day Holiday Park where we have stayed numerous times before – this was our fourth visit this trip so they know us pretty well by now. Given that the air conditioner in the van was not working and we were pretty buggered after the long hot dusty trip and the morning’s ordeal with the tyre, we decided to invest in a cabin for a couple of nights before setting off on our next little challenge.

Sunday to Thursday - 12-16 December

Sunday

We were woken by a sharp shower of rain: not a lot of it but quite heavy for a few minutes, then very little for the rest of the day. That was quite appropriate because we went out to the Mount Arid National Park that day where it was quite warm and dry.

As usual, the roads in the National Park were pretty dreadful, but no worse than many of the other roads we have tackled recently. We first went in to the Thomas River/Yokinup Bay area of the Park and the rocky coastline and pristine beaches were fantastic. We ate our lunch there and walked across the flat rocks to some great coastal views, but there were lots of warnings about the dangers of the sea so we kept a careful eye out and didn’t go too close to the edge – but it certainly was a spectacular place and we had it all to ourselves.

We then accessed another part of the Park via Poison Creek – the Poison and Arid adjectives seemingly suitable until we got close to the coast. The track we were on was fine for quite a long way but got progressively narrower until we reached a section that we reckoned was going to damage the car even more than all the other ones that have left hundreds of scrubbery/shrubbery scratches all along both sides of the car. We had to back-track to another road that allowed us to approach the Park entrance from the north, rather than the west – a few extra clicks but what are they in the 37,000 we have done in the past seven months?

The Park is Western Australia’s largest and is well east of Esperance and home to an exceptional variety of plant and animal species. We saw heaps of plants and a few animals, including quite a few kangaroos and maybe a hundred or more rabbits – far more than we have seen in the whole of the rest of the trip.

As we were driving into the Park, we met the Ranger driving out and he stopped to ask if we had our entry permits. Of course, we did and everything was cool, but I wonder what would have happened if we didn’t have them – given that the pay station for that section of the Park was still more than thirty kilometres ahead of us. Had we not already visited the previous area, there would have been no reason for us to have had entry permits. Irrespective, we sat side by side in the middle of the road and had a fascinating chat with the ranger for twenty or thirty minutes, fortunately with no other traffic in sight.

By the time we got home that night, I was completely zonked, perhaps unreasonably so, and I was very soon asleep right after dinner.

Monday

We were late packing up and leaving and mucked around deciding and undeciding and redeciding whether or not to get fuel in Esperance or Kalgoorlie and that added about twenty kilometres to our day, driving to a couple of servos and back before we were able to get what we wanted.

After that, it was a pretty easy day. It was about 40 degrees so we tried to find a tiny bit of shade while we ate our lunch at Salmon Gums. Precious little shade really so we ate quickly and set off again as soon as possible to avoid sitting in the scorching sun. We often eat with the motor running to keep the air conditioner going because opening the windows invites hundreds of flies in to share our lunch – not our preferred approach even if they do add extra protein to our sangers. We often leave the motor running when we stop briefly for photos too, especially if the van is connected. Our camera on the back of the van (essentially our rear vision mirror) seems to require rebooting – disconnecting and reconnecting one or other end of the cable between the car and van – almost every time the motor is turned off – so we don’t turn it off unless we think we will be away from the rig for more than a few minutes.

We stopped at least three times along the track for a little bit of exercise. We usually stop many times every day for photos or to look at the plants or birds, but today, we just stopped and walked around the car and nearby bush purely for exercise – odd, but for some weird reason, it just seemed a good idea on that particular drive.

We stayed at the same South Boulder park we had stayed at on our way through to Perth and they automatically upgraded us with a drive-through site and an en suite. It was great and we really enjoyed an overdue cool shower in spacious luxury.

Tuesday

We spent a lot of the day on ‘business’ – all the usual stuff with paying bills, recording data, responding to emails, Owners Corporation Committee business, etc., but Heather spent several hours organising our Northern Territory and South Australia border passes, and our two Aboriginal Land Council Access Permits to allow us to travel the Outback Way, aka the Great Central Road, and Australia’s Longest Shortcut. Until a few days ago, we had serious doubts about the wisdom of attempting this reputedly extreme challenge, but we eventually decided that if we didn’t do it now, we might not get another chance, so the die was cast and we locked in our intention – hence all the extra permits, etc. For anyone who may not know, the Outback Way runs for 2700-odd kilometres from Laverton to Winton, although other definitions have it running from Perth to Cairns (makes more sense to me) and that is 4600-plus kilometres without any detours. We drove the eastern section earlier this trip and set ourselves the challenge of doing the western stretch (1500-odd clicks) on the way home.

It is surprising how much ordinary business still needs to be done when we are away from home. Maybe we have less area to clean and keeping it spotless is less important, maybe we wear our clothes an extra day so washing is not as urgent (although we did a big load today – or maybe it was two loads?), maintaining a social life may perhaps take less time – but Facebook and our blogs are at least an equivalent – but all the usual things like shopping and cooking and car and van maintenance and the usual business of modern life are at least as onerous as when we are at home. There are always tasks to do and communication to maintain and many of these things actually add to what fills our ‘lay-days’. But we are not complaining – the upside trumps the downside every day!

Wednesday

It was a stinker today – about 44 degrees: hot with more to come.

We had another phone consultation with our GP about having some tests to ensure that our Covid boosters had been effective. We agreed that having them when we reached Broken Hill was about suitable timing and he emailed us pathology authorities to facilitate that.

We had a bit of shopping to do, including buying new ‘Windowsox’ – rear window protectors that are great for back-seat security (wouldn’t be without them!!). Our old ones were becoming increasingly tattered due to the conditions and their regular violent contact with the passing and unforgiving shrubbery. We had to go to several places before we found the right ones and then there was grocery shopping and refuelling the car, etc. Once we got back to the van and unpacked our groceries, we discovered that several things were missing and others had been completely mis-scanned so Heather rang them and we had to return to Coles to get the rest of our items and get a credit for the mis-identified items. (Do beetroot look like avocados? Who stole our fish? Should oranges be scanned as mangoes – and so on?)

We did a bit more on our blogs under our struggling air conditioner and then ate in the caravan park dining room – a huge meal, 3 courses if you wanted them, at a flat rate of $20 a head. It obviously works well for the miners and contractors working and living in the park, but it lacked a little in ambience for us – and no booze is allowed.

A huge windstorm hit at about 10pm and I had to wind the awning in urgently before collecting several items that we had left outside the door and that were now distributed to the four corners of the park. It was like a gale that struck instantly but was past within an hour or two.

Thursday

We eventually got all the permits and passes we need to drive the Outback Way after Heather spent another hour or two on the phone and texting and emailing the additional data that was required. What a business!! but at least we are now ready to roll with all the required documentation except for a couple of border crossings that we can’t apply for quite yet.

We decided to pack up everything ready to leave before making use of our en suite for a final cooling shower before we tackled the heat of the road. On the way out of town, Heather bought us a minimal set of Christmas decorations to make Christmas Day seem a little more festive. There was very little available but her purchases will add a little extra fun on the day. Then it was braving the heat (definitely over 40!) en route to the official starting point at Laverton.

We ate our lunch under the scarcest of shade at Menzies and continued north to Leonora where we topped up with fuel again on the assumption that prices would continue to rise as we headed east. And they did!

We planned to stop at Laverton overnight and start our adventure next day, but as we approached town, indeed for about the last 50 kilometres, we could see smoke on the horizon and we were concerned that a bushfire could even now thwart our plans, despite our extensive preparation. We called in at the Information Centre as soon as we arrived in Laverton and our concerns were partially assuaged with an assurance that the fire was a way north of town and not considered a serious threat - but check again before heading off in the morning.

We set up the van in 44-degree heat in the somewhat desolate caravan park with only one other van there. Those people had also intended starting the Outback Way the following day, but had been stuck in Laverton for a week after one of their van wheels fell off as they were driving into town. It was a big, quite new, van and when they finally found someone to make some temporary repairs, the repairer found another major problem with their brakes so they had abandoned their plans and were heading back to Kalgoorlie for some additional repairs and comfort before sprinting for home to Mount Macedon via the Nullarbor. They were very disappointed but that didn’t dent our enthusiasm.

We had a couple of delightful phone calls with some of our kids before dinner and had an early night, still feeling a little trepidation about the horrors that might lay ahead in the next five or six days. Almost everyone we had spoken with in the past several months has warned us about the dreadful conditions ahead of us, but we are going to give it our best shot anyway.

Thursday to Saturday, 9-11 December

Thursday

We spent a lot of the day writing our blogs, interspersed with a few other tasks. Heather did some washing while I went out on a fruitless birding excursion. I googled ‘Esperance Wetlands’ and got hits from all over Western Australia, some well over a thousand clicks away. But there was one local one at Lake Warden, just a few kilometres out of town. I drove out there, using Google Maps that took me all over Esperance before delivering me to an impassable track, allegedly 200 metres from the lake. I followed the track on foot for maybe 2 kilometres before encountering a locked gate. I had been walking parallel to the lake for about a kilometre, but always at least 3-400 metres away across impenetrable scrub, but was forced to retrace my steps without getting any closer to my intended destination. I saw very few birds, not one well enough to hazard a guess as to its identity – although I heard plenty. That seems to have been my experience for weeks – plenty of calls, but the scrub has been much too thick to see any at all. I have seen larger common birds flying – Silver Terns, Magpies, Magpie-larks, Crested Pigeons, Ravens – but not much else at all.

Back at the van, we worked conscientiously on producing stuff for our blogs and Facebook, but the internet access was so poor that we couldn’t post anything. Telstra has broadcast a few SMSs in the past few days advising that they are upgrading their service in the area, but even the smallest thing took ages to load and most things timed out, so using it was pretty pointless. Telstra’s work is now supposedly finished but their service is still far worse than appalling!

Friday

We both woke up feeling second-rate with more than our normal aches and pains so decided on another rest day. We think it is still the dregs of our reaction to our booster shots. The BOM was promising 37 degrees and strong winds so staying put was probably a good decision. I tied our awning down – attached one end to the van chassis and the other to a nearby tree to mitigate the noise and shuddering of the wind under the awning lifting and shaking the whole van. We also spent an hour or so plotting and scheduling the rest of our trip home via 3 alternative routes.

We both share the same preferences of routes – the Outback Way, the Nullarbor, or a direct sprint for home. Assuming we chose not to pursue our least favoured route, we concluded that there was no way we could get home in time to participate in the planned family Chrissy do on 27 December. In fact, our preferred route takes us home on 4 January (at best) and our next preference would still have us arriving home on 31 December – when our parking place in Burwood may well be closed.

Our conclusion was that we will try to take the Outback Way (assuming it is open and passable), track down to the Strzelecki Track via the Oodnadatta Track (booked Chrissy dinner at William Creek!) and go home through the corner of Queensland to Tibooburra, then on to Broken Hill (love that place), Mildura and eventually home about 5 January unless we decide otherwise (or circ*mstances dictate) along the way.

Most of the rest of the day was spent in the van, resting, writing, attending to some business, and thinking about our future travel. We did a supermarket run and put a couple of hundred dollars of fuel in the car and drove along the beach for a couple of kilometres – pretty but not a lot to see around the built-up area. We didn’t need the fuel to drive along the beach – it was more than 1000 kilometres since we last filled up so another 4 or 5 should be fine.

Saturday

I had a dreadful night with itches and general restlessness but things improved with scrambled eggs for brekky – after our puzzle routine of course. Even my strong sleeping pills seem pretty ineffective against the itches.

We drove out to Cape Le Grande and explored some of the area before lunch. We found ourselves at the end of a fairly rough track at lunchtime, but it was quite wonderful. Heather spied a fair bit of splashing in the sea just down from where we were parked and there was a pod of about a dozen dolphins just having fun. They were leaping and diving in and out of the water, sometimes spiralling right out and glistening in the sunshine, others were doing a lot of tail-slapping and rolling over and over in the clear water, just playing and entertaining us for at least 10 or 15 minutes. We were far enough away that they didn’t know they had an audience, but close enough for us to see and marvel at their antics.

The whole area above the littoral dune was quite flat with low scrub, but close to where we were parked, there was a small area signposted as a Bird Sanctuary. It was a small area of trees, none more than 10 metres tall and only roughly 40 by 30 metres across, in an ocean of low scrub. I spent a bit of time in there looking at the many birds that lived there. There were plenty of birds and quite a few species, but nothing we hadn’t seen numerous times before. It was quite unique though - such a tiny area of trees and so many birds whereas we saw almost none at all in the surrounding lower scrub.

We explored as much of the area as we could, including Hellfire Bay, Thistle Cove, Rossiter Bay and, of course, Lucky Bay where everyone goes. We then went back to the main road and drove further east to Condingup and down the Orleans Bay Road to the Duke of Orleans Bay and explored as much of that as we could. Some of the roads we took ended up in the middle of nowhere, but at one place, we even had a drive along the beach for several kilometres – I think that was at Lucky Bay where there were lots of cars on the beach. Some of the places we saw rivalled Point Ann for their beauty and spectacle, but they were all more populated and hence less attractive than Point Ann.

Back in Esperance, we explored a few of the local lakes, and drove a couple of kilometres on the dry part of Pink Lake as well as several shorter bits on the other lakes. We drove along the Twilight Beach road and called in at many of the vantage points. The coast in this area is quite spectacular and there are many bays where you can park and view the wonders of nature. We walked and climbed to the best photo points at quite a few of them, but it was getting dark and still very windy so we headed back into town and bought the worst fish and chips I have had for years quite close to our caravan park.

We asked what the fish was before we ordered it and were told it was New Zealand Hoki. We didn’t know what that was, but ordered and looked it up to find it is actually Blue Grenadier – my most unfavourite fish – strong, gamey and really not to my taste at all – and when it arrived 50 minutes later, it was drowning in salt, dripping with grease and so horrible that we threw half of it away. Even the chips were refried and over-salted. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.

Monday to Wednesday, 6-8 December

Monday

We did our grocery shopping and purchased another 65 litres of fuel to top us up and still managed to get away by just after 10 am. (We deliberately split our fuel purchases because we can get at least 8 cents a litre discount in many places, but only on the first 150 litres. We carry over 300 litres when full so split our purchases to take advantage of the discount – stingy aren’t we!) Most van parks say you have to be out by 10 so new customers can come in, but it is very rarely a problem – only once that I can remember this trip. And many parks won’t accept new customers before 11 am, some as late as 2 pm – so we are never too stressed about being off the premises by 10 am.

We drove through to Bremer Bay and were there by early afternoon. We got set up and went for a tour of the town and nearby coast. It was very pretty and some parts of the coast were pretty rugged but it was the entrance to the inlet that particularly drew our attention. The sandbar blocking the entrance had only recently broken through and the current was quite strong, but the colours were wonderful. The sand was very white and the inlet and river water looked slightly milky but in a variety of shades of green and yellow. The sea on the other hand, was a variety of blues and greens with blazingly white surf so the whole scene was very colourful.

The caravan park had a few rules about lighting fires, but they were allowed, and they helped campers to enjoy them quite a lot. I had to sign a paper acknowledging that I understood the rules and would be careful, but the main thing was that you had to use a firebox and it could not sit on the ground – but they delivered a stand and set up our firebox on it for us so we had a great fire: the first we had been able to enjoy since Gemtree, over three months ago. I had collected wood when we were there and were still carrying it on the back seat of the car and I wanted to get rid of some of the bigger pieces and they burned very hot and kept us warm despite the cooling wind. Happy Hour by the campfire!

Tuesday

Heather had a few things she wanted to do first up so it was late morning before we set off to explore the area a bit more. We decided to go to Point Ann with absolutely no idea of what was there.

It was quite a drive: certainly a lot further than indicated on the map. It is in the Fitzgerald River National Park and looked to be maybe 40 kilometres by road but it was 26 kilometres of horrendous corrugations from the Park pay station to the ocean and we had certainly driven at least 40 kms before that. (We subsequently read that it was about 80 kilometres.) The country was mainly flat, very flat, but with a few impressive hills jutting out of the plain. We drove in to one of them, West Mount Barren, where we ate our lunch and explored the wildflowers. I also listened to quite a few birds, but saw none.

We rattled and bumped quite a few more kilometres before sighting the ocean: probably the most beautiful thing we have seen this trip. Perhaps it was something of a relief to see the end of the road, but the scene was absolutely wonderful. We crested the brow of a hill and saw a long symmetrically curving white-sand beach, perhaps two kilometres or more in length with a mountainous backdrop (insofar as Australia has any mountains). There were rocky outcrops book-ending the beach and the colours of both ocean and land were spectacular. Row upon row of curling breakers were rolling in and the land was a cacophony of greens (yeah, I know green isn’t cacophonic), each separated by the eye-watering white of the beach. It was gob-smackingly beautiful and we watched it all the way down the hill and into the parking area.

It seemed to be so remote, so hard to access over the dreadful roads, yet the facilities there were outstanding. There were well-made boardwalks and stairs to several lookouts and two large, covered picnic areas with well-maintained furniture and free barbecues, and each with its own toilet facilities. There were extensive paved areas big enough to cater for hundreds of people. It is apparently a good vantage point for whale-watching and that may be why the facilities are so extensive, well-maintained and clean – but there are no whales to see at present and we saw only one other guy on the beach a kilometre and a half away.

We walked out to one of the lookouts and I saw quite a few birds, including about eight Swifts, wheeling and swooping around below us. I took about a hundred photos in the hope that I could get a conclusive identification, but I couldn’t find a single bird in any of them back in the van – they were just flitting around so fast that I never caught anything well enough to find later on. But I can’t think of anything else they could be so I am going with Fork-tailed Swifts.

We shuddered and bounced down quite a few more roads to other wonderful beaches and rocks and eventually ended up on a somewhat better track that ended almost opposite our caravan park about 200 metres away on the other side of the inlet but about 20 or 30 kilometres to get back there by road. Until the inlet opened recently, we could have driven another half a kilometre and we would have been home.

Once back at the van, I lit another fire (using some kindling we had picked up during our outing) to use some more of our bigger pieces of wood. It was still very windy so I positioned the car as a partial wind-break and we had another great Happy Hour outside. We used up all our big pieces of wood – but then a permanent resident just across from our site came over with two big chunky pieces – a mallee root that would probably burn for at least 6-8 hours and another chunky log that would also burn for a few hours so that replenished our stock of firewood, but at least we were able to condense our supply into a more manageable volume.

Wednesday

We set off intending to go through Jerramungup as far as Ravensthorpe to camp – or perhaps go south to Hopetoun on the coast. As it turned out, we reached Ravensthorpe by lunchtime and decided to go straight on to Esperance.

Heather had an appointment for a phone consultation with our wonderful GP and the phone signal was so poor that I was bustling along, hoping to reach Ravensthorpe in time for the consultation. Unfortunately, as we went along there were a couple of huge thumps in the car just as a huge road-train passed us and we pulled up in the middle of the road to see what the damage was. No big deal really: it was just that our bog-mats had flown off our roof-rack. The road was elevated well above the surrounding country with very steep verges that I couldn’t possibly negotiate with the caravan so we had to drive on a couple of kilometres until we could find a place to turn around and go back to retrieve them. We had stopped just over the crest of a hill so couldn’t stop there. Then we had to find a place a couple of kilometres on the other side of our loss before we could do a U-turn to collect the bog-mats – one pair on either side if the crest. We just grabbed them and threw them into the van and kept driving, but all of that had taken 15-20 minutes so we never got to Ravensthorpe in time for the consultation. Fortunately, when Justin rang, we had a good signal and were right near a convenient pullover – the first for a score or more kilometres – and we had a lovely chat with Justin that put our minds at rest on a couple of issues.

We ate our lunch when we finally reached Ravensthorpe and we had a long discussion about whether to camp there, try to go to Hopetoun or drive on to Esperance. Heather made a few phone calls and our decision was eventually made for us because the only available park was in Esperance. (Incidentally, I was using Google Maps this morning and noticed that the instructions I was receiving sometimes pronounced it Esperance and sometimes Es-prance-y with the emphasis on the prance. Cute!)

As we were leaving Ravensthorpe, I saw two birds fly across into a tree and I thought they may have been Noisy Scrub-birds. These birds were believed to be extinct for 80 years until a population of them was discovered near here in the early 1960s and I had been looking them up the previous day just in case we saw one. They have a distinctively shaped tail and a white patch on their throats – and that was exactly what I saw. We did a quick U-turn and I went hunting for them but never saw them again. I was quite sure of what I had seen, but further research suggests that I must have been mistaken. I am not claiming it, but I simply can’t imagine what else they could have been. Damn. We often see birds that we are unable to identify conclusively, but ticking the Noisy Scrub-bird would have been really special.

We arrived in Esperance late in the afternoon and set up the van for a few days, and I reinstated the bog-mats securely on the roof-rack. The previous straps had simply worn through. Maybe after 35,000 kilometres of wind and grit blasting them, it is no wonder, but I have now secured them with two brand-new straps that should last until we get home again.

We felt quite buggered by the end of the day so sat in the van and did some planning. We were planning our next 2 or 3 years of travel, both domestic and international. We opened a bottle of bubbles and got quite excited about our future travel opportunities. And before we got too shloshed, we had showers, inside our own little cubby for the first time in over a month.

Tuesday to Sunday, 30 November - 5 December

Tuesday

We were late leaving, but our destination was only an hour away so it didn’t matter. We drove out to, and around, the Porongurups, a small mountain range in a National Park about 80 kilometres north of Albany. On the way out of Albany, we called in to Oyster Harbour to look at some ancient aboriginal fish traps – a marine version of the riverine ones we saw at Brewarrina a couple of years ago.

These are only visible at low tide and they have been heavily vandalised over the years so there was not a lot to see, but we could discern at least some parts of a few traps. Essentially, they are long curved rock barriers that allow fish to enter at high tide before becoming trapped and easy prey as the tide recedes. We saw them at two different places but the tide wasn’t low enough to make out very much. (We called in again about a week later when the tide was much lower, but they were still hard to see, probably due to a century or so of siltation that virtually covered them when they fell into disuse.)

The Porongurups were quite scenic with big rocks and many wildflowers but we never went to what many people see as their big attraction – a Skywalk constructed at the top of a huge rock and overhanging the precipice below. It would definitely not have been my thing anyway, but there was a long Grade 5 walk to get to it and a $35(??) fee involved so we left that to the fitter and younger enthusiasts while we explored the area by car.

There is a scenic drive around the whole National Park, only about 25 kilometres long with no fees involved so we did that and detoured into the park at a couple of places where roads allowed. We stopped to look at flowers on many occasions as well as for photo opportunities a little less frequently. We saw the Skywalk from a distance and that confirmed the wisdom of us choosing not to attempt the walk in. It was very pretty country with a few bucolic farms toward the end of the circuit so it was an enjoyable pretty drive without the exertion of a steep and dangerous trek only to be terrorised at the end before trekking back again.

Wednesday

Amazing - December already!

I can’t recall what we did during the day, but we took Craig and Ruth out for dinner in the evening. Craig had to drive a school bus to Katanning that evening so he needed to leave soon after 7.30 so we ate at 5.30 (very early for us – it is often after 8 pm before we eat) and he got away in time for a comfortable drive to Katanning.

One thing we had arranged was for Craig to show me how to fly our drone. We have had several attempts and have even flown it briefly a few times, but have never known quite how we got to the point where we could fly it. The instructions are very cryptic and we have just hit buttons and followed the parts of the manual we could understand – and sometimes it worked and most often, it didn’t. Alas, Craig had been unable to help because every time he may have had a chance, it was much too windy to attempt a flight – so it looked like it wasn’t going to happen.

Thursday

We set off for the Stirling Ranges – a somewhat larger range in a somewhat larger National Park about twenty kilometres north of the Porongurups. Not far out of Albany, Heather got a phone call from her brother in Melbourne and during the call, we realised that we were only two days away from being eligible for our Covid booster shots. We talked about it and decided to try to have them in Albany before we left because we would otherwise probably eventually enter Victoria without the best protection we could have. We rang our GP in Melbourne and confirmed the importance of getting the best protection before going home so then rang the Western Australia Covid hotline to satisfy ourselves that we could get the shots on the following Saturday if we extended our stay in Albany. More phone calls (and a text to Craig advising him of our extended stay and asking if that might afford a chance to try the drone again) and after at least an hour parked on the side of the road, we had made all the arrangements and went on our way through Mount Barker and on to the Stirlings.

There were many more places to stop at lookouts and to view features as we drove around the Stirling Ranges National Park and we called in at pretty much all of them and even did a few short walks and one longer climb to view the countryside and take photos. Of course, each time we dashed in for a pic, we tarried for ten times as long to explore the flora (and occasionally the fauna as well).

We drove home over quite a bit of the same road we had travelled before – on the way home from the Porongurups and also with Craig and Ruth. And after dinner, we went for a short walk along the path running beside the caravan park. It runs along the edge of the ocean but it is heavily wooded along the dunes so there are not many places you can actually get near the water. We found quite a nice place, but it was very windy and getting quite cold so we decided to return when the ambience was more to our liking.

Friday

Our intention was to stay around the caravan and rest all day, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Craig rang to suggest we go out to try to fly our drone. It was still pretty windy and Heather stayed in the van, but Craig was able to get us flying despite the wind. He had his bigger drone with him and we followed the same steps he uses to get his flying and it worked for ours too. We did have to interpret some things, but we got it going and I feel much more confident about it now. There were a couple of administrative things I had to do, mainly registering it online, to access all the features but I think I am now ready to give it a little workout – if ever we get a day that isn’t in gale conditions. (It is now a week later and the wind is still howling!)

During the afternoon, I went for a birding excursion at the nearby lake. It is just over 3 kilometres around and I walked about one and a half times around it. I saw quite a few birds, including a couple of new ones for this trip but nothing all that exciting.

Once I returned to the van, Heather suggested a walk so we strolled along the path we had taken the previous evening but walked an extra kilometre or so in each direction – so much for a rest day. My feet were really suffering.

Saturday

We were up early and off to get our Covid boosters. We were there when the clinic opened so were in and out within an hour. We had eaten very little, just small sandwich as we drove to the clinic, so we went to the Emu Point Café (definitely the place to be and be seen – despite our daggy clothes and ragged appearance) for a hot chocolate and sausage roll. It really is a beautiful little Point, right at the narrow entrance to Oyster Harbour where both the King and Kalgan Rivers flow in – and then out to the ocean. We got chatting to a couple of guys who were flying their bigger drone – despite the wind – before rounding the Point and going back to the car.

We did a load of washing and then sat on the bed and watched a couple of DVDs – probably more restful than our previous ‘rest day’. And then I went back out to the lake to look for more birds. I saw some lovely Fairy-wrens – not Lovely Fairy-wrens, but Blue-breasted and Red-winged Fairy-wrens, as well as some Red-eared Firetails – all spectacularly pretty little birds.

Sunday

We were going to do some grocery shopping on our way out, but found that the supermarkets in Albany do not open on Sunday – obviously a job for tomorrow, early in the morning before we leave.

We drove west and then south from Albany, traversing most of the roads we could. Unfortunately, the official Albany map is pretty useless and we found that many of the roads marked on it either didn’t exist or were closed, densely overgrown, or in such serious disrepair that they were impassable, even for our tank – and we can take it almost anywhere. We went to the Mutton Bird Island lookout, Cosy Corner, Perkins Beach, Dingo Beach and Shelley Beach, but in several places, the tracks on the map simply don’t exist. We tried to find Shepherd’s Lagoon and Bornholm Beach, but gave up after many interesting but entirely fruitless kilometres. We ended up in Denmark after numerous aborted excursions and drove back to Albany on the main highway. It had been an enjoyable day, despite its frustrations and we felt that our last day in Albany had been rewarding and certainly enough to make us want to return.

We purchased 150 litres of fuel on the way through town to the caravan park – a thousand kilometres since our last fill and the tank was still not close to empty. Then it was showers and a bit of preparation for our departure tomorrow. We had to do a supermarket run in the morning so we did as much as we could to be ready to leave as soon as we had packed the groceries away.

Friday to Monday, 26-29 November

Friday

We drove through Manjimup to Mount Barker and on to Albany where we set up camp for a couple of days – and subsequently extended it to 7 nights. I had intended exploring Manjimup a bit because it is one of the big timber towns of the South-west – big timber although the town is not big. Somehow, I didn’t notice its significance until we were well through it so maybe we have missed that one. And we never made it to Pemberton either – the other little big timber town in the Southwest.

Immediately on our arrival in Albany, we tried to get our TV repaired, but were advised that due to its age and current technology, it might be better to buy a new one and that is what we did. It proved very easy to install and works well with our existing setup so we watched an episode of one of our DVDs for the first time in over a week. After we purchased the TV, Heather asked if the salesman could recommend a good pizza shop – so he introduced us to his nearby assistant who was just knocking off to go to her second job – at Jo-Jos Pizza.

It was a bit early for dinner so we spent an hour driving around the city and environs – it really is an exceptionally beautiful city and the Princess Bay Harbour on which it is situated is simply stunning. We had seen Jo-Jos immediately after leaving the TV shop, but we had a lot of trouble finding it again to buy our pizza. It is in a sort of parking cul-de-sac hidden in some one-way streets and we had almost given up trying to find it again before we saw it from afar. At least, the pizza was excellent and we were welcomed by the woman we had met at Jaycar. (A couple of days later, we mentioned this to my nephew and his wife and they said Jo-Jos is the only place to go for good pizzas in Albany!)

And after our pizza, we tried out our new TV and DVD player. It worked fine and the sound is good so we can use it without connecting it to the sound system built into the van. A little bonus because I don’t need to tweak my hearing aids to hear it.

Saturday

We started the day by doing a big load of washing (as well as some handwashing) and then a big shop at the supermarket. It was great weather so the washing was soon dry.

I spent a little time crawling around under the van measuring various components of our suspension. The van seems to be sagging a little to port, whereas it previously had a slight lean to starboard. We were parked on a sloping site, but it still seemed problematic. As far as I could see, everything measured up as it should so maybe it is just the uneven ground that makes it look as if we have a problem.

We ate our lunch and then set out for a drive – and it was wonderful.

We drove out as far as you can go on the Vancouver Peninsula. We went to the Frenchman Bay Whaling Station, but didn’t go in because we had seen it before and were a bit concerned that we would run out of time to see all the other attractions along the way. We went to virtually every place we could except for the Blowholes – jumping in and out of the car and walking to good vantage points at about a dozen places. We called in at Goode Beach and I walked in to a bird hide beside a lake, but didn’t see many birds. I heard a few but could never see them. We also called in at Salmon Holes, Stony Hill, Jimmy Newhills Harbour, Bald Head and a couple of other places, but mostly, we just looked, perhaps did a short walk at some of them, took a few photos and moved on. At Jimmy Newhill, we spoke with another couple who had just been to the Blowholes (that we have seen before) and they said they weren’t ‘blowing’ that day and it was a 2-kilometre difficult walk in and back so we decided against that one, but went on to The Gap and the Natural Bridge. We had seen all of these places before, but 30 years ago and this area in particular has been greatly ‘enhanced’ in the intervening decades. Safety was obviously an issue, but they have certainly kept people out of a lot of places that we used to be able to walk around. Even so, the improvements have been pretty good and most of the iconic viewpoints are still accessible – if grossly scary. There is a grating that now overhangs part of The Gap and although I went out there for a few minutes, it was really not a place I could be comfortable.

We had been thinking about calling in on my last remaining uncle who lives along that road, but timing just didn’t work so we never made it – and I doubt if we will now. Having said that, the whole afternoon was spectacular. Wonderful dramatic scenery, rocks, ocean, beaches, scrublands and even a few birds – and a snake or two. A great few hours along a marvellous few kilometres of Albany coast.

Sunday

We had a great day out with Craig and Ruth and their grown-up boys Cairan and Liam. Craig is my nephew. They picked us up from the caravan park and drove us out to Long Beach in Cheyne Bay. We drove along the beach a way and set up and ate our lunch, but it was very windy so we soon packed up and explored some more sheltered areas nearby. We went to Waychinicup National Park and stopped at Betty’s Beach where we walked up the river as well as down to the Inlet. There were a few other people around but very few and it was quite idyllic there. Upriver there were big pools and little waterfalls, but we couldn’t go far without getting wet feet. Downstream we clambered around some rocks and photographed the relatively calm inlet. I was interested in the birds (of course) and we saw three Ospreys flying, a pair and an interloper that was being chased away. There were also terns and gulls and as usual, I could hear plenty of bush birds, but could never find any. This seems to have been a feature of the South-west – thick bush with lots of little birds calling but never showing themselves, even for a second or two.

We called in at the tiny Little Beach but it had lots of people there so we moved on fairly soon. We had good views of the very long Two Peoples Bay Beach, but time was short and we didn’t call in. It had been a very lovely low-key day and it was great to see Cairan and Liam again, as well as Craig and Ruth. The scenery was superb and we have both really fallen in love with Albany and its beautiful surrounds.

Monday

Today was a rest day, recovering some strength after a more active day yesterday. We did a bit of cooking and cleaning, but spent a lot of the day on our photos and blogs – catching up on the past week or so during which we wrote very little.

Sunday to Thursday - 21-25 November

Sunday

(I posted a lot of photos some time ago, but no more of our story for almost three weeks. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that we have not had good enough internet access to post anything. But we are now in Kalgoorlie with a semi-reasonable signal so I will try to post a lot that I have written and then have a go at posting some more photos.)

We took the coast road down to Bunbury and detoured through Australind due to a warning about some roadworks and likely long delays on the main road. We didn’t go right through Bunbury but ‘sort of’ got lost and skirted the main part of the city that seems to be at least twice the size since I saw it last. (Mandurah is about five times the size that I remember.)

We arrived in Busselton and booked into a caravan park that had four different sites all close together. We were told that it was the first day of Schoolies Week so they were trying to quarantine all the kids in one area to protect the rest of us from any unwanted antics. It is not called Schoolies Week in Western Australia: it is Leavers Week. Despite seeing thousands of teenagers roaming the streets for many kilometres around, we never saw or heard anything the least untoward from any of them. There were a few visible cops in attendance and they had blocked off a number of streets but everything appeared to us to be completely orderly with no concerns of any sort. The only issue we saw was that every available space was parked out during the registration process – even Disabled bays and areas clearly signposted ‘Caravans Only’ were chockers with schoolies’ and/or their parents’ cars booking them into their accommodation for the week. I had to circle the block numerous times while Heather was booking us in.

When we got to our allocated site, we had to get some assistance in parking on it. The big van next to our site had decided to park diagonally, encroaching more than two metres onto our site and more than four metres onto the one behind us. I said a few words to the guy when he showed his face and I think the manager spoke to him too and he vacated the park very early next morning. We couldn’t fit our car on the site if we put our awning out but the guy next door just said ‘Stiff you-know-what.’

Despite hearing nothing from the Schoolies, we still had trouble sleeping due to a thunderstorm that lasted for a few hours including some huge claps very close to where we were.

Once we were set up we went out driving again. We went out to the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse and just managed to tag on to the end of a very informative tour that was about to start as we arrived. We walked around the area and were taken into the lighthouse itself and climbed right to the top. Our guide was great and we got a lot of information about the history and some of the dramatic events from the early days. Some great heroic stories and some not so great – like the unhappy apprentice lightkeeper that took to the massive lens with a big wrench and caused damage that is still quite visible.

I will post a photo of a little dinghy in which twelve men escaped their burning ship near Mauritius and managed to reach the coast close to Cape Naturaliste – after such an epic journey, it is amazing how they got through the treacherous reef and thunderous surf to get ashore. Twelve men in such a tiny boat for thousands of kilometres is hard to take in.

We called in at Eagle Bay and Sugarloaf Rock on the way back home. The coast around here is certainly beautiful, but very dramatic, with rocks and reefs and crashing surf, along with tiny secret sheltered beaches all hemmed in with forests and scrub.

Monday

We had booked a wine tour for the day, from 10 am to almost 6 pm. It is not the sort of thing we would normally do, but one has to break the mould at some time. We were picked up from the caravan park office and along with 4 other couples, spent a very indulgent day, visiting five wineries, a beer brewery, a cheese factory and a chocolate maker. We had lunch at one winery, consisting very largely of bush tucker. The tour company is called Bushtucker Tours and we had ham, beef, kangaroo, crocodile and emu, homemade bread, salads, cheeses and perhaps twenty or more dressings, pickles, relishes and so on to choose from – all featuring a wide range of bush tucker seeds and berries – quite extraordinary and very delicious.

As for the liquid produce we sampled, I thought they were all completely fine, but nothing stood out as a ‘Must Have’ for me. Notwithstanding, we helped keep the local industry afloat and purchased quite a number of bottles and accoutrements – and then had to find places to store them in the car and caravan.

We didn’t feel like having our usual Happy Hour when we arrived home again but still enjoyed our dinner after giving our stomachs a chance to recover from a very heavy workout during the day – more than forty wines tasted although we cheated several times and shared some of the tastings offered.

Tuesday

We went down to Augusta today, following the coast as closely as we could and calling in at numerous places as we went. We drove around Yallingup and Gracetown as well as a few other minor excursions and saw more rocks and beaches but the main attraction was Cape Leeuwin and its lighthouse. The lighthouse itself is undergoing restoration and they had closed off a large tract around it, preventing access to the area I remember as providing the best views of the coast around the Cape.

We walked around the area and spent some time in their museum. We watched a video about the lighthouse and read stories of the dramatic events dotted along its history. Whaling was a big industry all around this corner of Australia and there were a few stories about the early whaling but one thing that struck me is that today, they say thousands of migrating whales rest in the little Flinders Bay under the lighthouse each year but it is hard to imagine so many whales using such a small bay.

Wednesday

We drove the relatively short distance through Nannup to Bridgetown where we set up our van for a couple of days. A few clicks before Nannup we experienced a 45-minute delay due to the RACWA rescue helicopter being parked in the middle of the road. A biker travelling with a couple of mates had the misfortune to hit an emu. The emu was killed and the biker was very badly injured and the helicopter had to land in a cleared area at a T-junction about a kilometre from the accident. The forest was too close to the road to land anywhere else so the police had closed the road while the ambulance medics attended to his injuries and transported him down to the helicopter to take him to Perth for treatment. The police said he would survive, but he was certainly severely messed up and there were long lines of vehicles stopped in both directions until the helicopter cleared the area.

Once set up, we went out to see some of the countryside. We drove north to Donnybrook, a small town in a peaceful fruit-growing area and then on to Collie, the main coal-mining town in Western Australia – low-grade coal, but it originally fed all the old steam trains (one of my great loves) and is now used to fire the power stations further north (I think). We had some trouble finding the big opencut mine, but eventually got out there for a couple of quick photos because the whole area was signposted as No Entry! I will post a pic of the most common street sign in WA outside the major cities. We called in at a couple of scenic lakes on the way back south to Boyup Brook and thence back to Bridgetown just as dusk was falling.

Thursday

It was a rest day today, catching our breath, doing a bit more organising and working on our blogs and photos – as well as attending to some of the usual tasks, paying bills, Owners Corporation Committee business and preparing for the next few days of our Ozzie Odyssey.

One item of significance was they we have now lived in our caravan for 1095 days – a total of three years. I look forward to recording 13 years in a future blog!

Our family home for a couple of years in York (not much changed in 70 years), and our pic outside (Photo Credit: Roy Duncanson). Roy and Heather waiting for dinner, a couple of views of the mighty Avon River, a very strange disused observatory hidden in the bush, Heather and me in a grass-tree forest (thanks again Roy), the Spencers Brook pub that Roy used to own, and Roy beside a big grass-tree.

The Humps near Hyden. We walked and climbed all over them - very high and very steep. The marker at the so-called Top of the World with a gale blowing - we could easily have been blown right off the mountain. On the lower levels, a couple of aboriginal gnammas - life-saving permanent waterholes in the rock - and life-giving to one of the denizens of the deep - one of several tadpoles.

Hyden Rock water storage and capture channel from above and below. Wave Rock (a small section of Hyden Rock) looking right and left, Hyden Rock (at least as impressive as the Wave Rock section) and the Hippos Yawn. Isn't it amazing how these formations are created by nothing more than aeons of time and the natural movement of air?

And some more!