ARCHER TRAVEL NEWS

Towns we Visited Along the Way...

2010-03-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

Please don't forget to read our LAST Blog Week Thirty-nine...

NSW
Frenchs Forest
Norah Head
Redhead Beach
Scone
Nundle
Tamworth
Armidale
Glen Innes
Tenterfield
Lismore
Byron Bay
Helensvale
Tallai
Tweed Heads
Labrador
Helidon
Pittsworth
Dalby
Kilkivan
QLD
Noosa
Hervey Bay
Burrum Heads
1770
Agnes Water
Mount Larcom
Gladstone
Rockhampton
Yeppoon
Farnborough
Great Keppel Island
Kinka Beach
Clareville
Sarina
Aligator Creek
Mackay
Airlie Beach
Bowen
Townsville
Charters Towers
Prairie
Hughendon
Richmond
Julia Creek
Cloncurry
Mary Kathleen
Mount Isa
Camooweal
NT
Barkley Homestead
Three Ways
Tennant Creek
Devil’s Marbles
Gem Tree
Alice Springs
Glen Helen
Corroboree Rock
Uluru
Kings Creek Station
SA
Coober Pedy
Glendambo
Woomera
Port Augusta
Iron Knob
Kimba
Wudinna
Ceduna
Penong
Nullarbor Roadhouse
WA
Madura Pass
Eucla
Cocklebiddy
Caiguna
Belladonia
Norseman
Esperance
Ravensthorpe
Hopetoun
Jerramungup
Albany
Cosy Corner Beach
Denmark
Walpole
Northcliffe
Pemberton
Augusta
Karridale
Margaret River
Dunsborough
Busselton
Mandurah
Perth
Mundaring
Orange Grove
Emu Downs
Pinnacles
Cervantes
Geraldton
Northampton
Port Gregory
Kalbarri
Shark Bay
Denham
Monkey Mia
Geraldton
Perth
York
Meckering
Cunderdin
Southern Cross
Coolgardie
Kalgoorlie
Norseman
Bunda Cliffs
SA
Ceduna
Smokey Bay
Haslam
Streaky Bay
Port Kenny
Venus Bay
Elliston
Sheringa
Coffin Bay
Port Lincoln
Tumby Bay
Port Neil
Arno Bay
Cowell
Whyalla
Port Germaine
Port Pirie
Port Broughton
Wallaroo
Moonta Bay
Port Victoria
Corney Point
Coobowie
Port Julia
Ardrossan
Port Wakefield
Clare
Burra
Tarlee
Largs Bay (Adelaide)
Windsor Gardens (Adelaide)
Langhorne Creek
Meningie
Kingston
Robe
Beachport
Millicent
Tantanoola
Penola
Naracoorte
Mount Gambier
VIC
Dartmoor
Portland
Yambuk
Skenes Creek
Lorne
Geelong
Melbourne
TAS
Devonport
Penguin
Wynyard
Crayfish Creek
Stanley
Hellyer Gorge
Tullah
Rosebery
Zeehan
Strahan
Queenstown
Derwent Bridge
Hobart
Port Arthur
Sorell
Swansea
Freycinet
Bicheno
St Helens
Binalong Bay
Derby
Scottsdale
Launceston
Longford
Evandale
Ross
Hobart

Week Thirty-nine - the end of our epic journey!

2010-02-25T02:49:00.000-08:00

We decided to visit the Woolmers Estate at Longford, Tasmania in the morning of our friends Stephen and Christine’s last day travelling with us. Paul and I felt really at ‘home’ there as the Estate was settled in 1817 by Thomas ARCHER, and was continuously occupied by the Archer family until the last one died without an heir in 1994 and the Estate passed to a Historical Foundation and opened to the public. There were six generations in total. We would love to be able to claim some direct heritage!

Woolmers was a colonial settlement with the original homestead built in 1819. Thomas Archer brought with him a great knowledge of sheep farming from England and became very successful. Eventually his three brothers joined him from England and the surrounding estates belonged to them. The Estate and surrounds were just delightful, capturing different eras, with collections, antiques, machinery, outbuildings, the main house and a wonderful garden of roses and vegetables. There were vast green parklands with lovely deciduous trees and the whole feeling was of being in English countryside. We explored it all in detail and took heaps of photos and declared it a great experience and one to be repeated.

Time was getting short for Stephen and Christine to get to their flight back from Hobart, but we did stop next at Evandale for the National Penny Farthing Championships! Sadly time ran out for them and we said our sad goodbyes, then Stephen and Christine drove like bats out of hell to get their van back and on their flight in time. Paul and I stayed on in Evandale for the rest of the afternoon and enjoyed watching the Penny Farthing heats and parades of old cars, marching bands and fancy dress costumes. It was a very jolly village event and wonderful to see all those experts riding the difficult penny farthing bicycles round the race course in the village centre.

We continued towards Hobart, staying overnight in a rest area. In Hobart we called into the Shelomith Doggie Country Club to check on the dogs who were boarding there,
and drop off some more medicines and special food for Tia. The doggies were all fine after their first week and we were happy to leave them for a second week.

Big News Update: during our time in Tasmania, we had made a big decision to stay in Hobart for the rest of the year, rather than relocating to Melbourne. We both had fallen in love with the City and surrounds – the lovely mountains and hills, fresh “home grown” food, the River Derwent, the wharf area and the warm people, the dog friendly beaches and vibrant but relaxing atmosphere. So we plan to end our travels and start looking for a home to rent, not an easy task with doggies!

We will stay in our motor home in local caravan parks for a week or two while we search for a place to live, and sort out the next phase of our lives. We hope to keep our motor home for a few more months, so we can still explore Tasmania at weekends – there are many places we have to see and places we have passed through much too quickly and want to revisit. Funnily enough we are both looking forward to the cooler winter weather. It will be wonderful to be able to rug up explore the countryside with the dogs and we are well over the sweltering heat of some places we visited on our trip.

So that’s really the end of the 'Archer Travel Blog' –at least for now. Thank you for following us around Australia and we hope you were amused and maybe even inspired by our adventures. Of course we will keep in touch with you all. But for now, take care everyone and don't forget to visit us in Hobart!

Kathryn, Paul, Muffin, Ian and Tia xxxxx

Week Thirty-eight

2010-02-19T01:09:00.000-08:00

After a great dinner cooked by Paul at Friendly Beaches in the Freycinet National Park, we had a little visitor Wallaby hoping for some leftovers. He was very sweet but we resisted giving him anything but a small piece of strawberry. We both slept very well, listening to the roar of the sea crashing on the pristine white beaches all around us.

Paul found a little mouse right outside our van who looked unwell, so he gave it a little water and some oats and put it in the shade. Fortunately it seemed to recover and went on its way.

We had a very lazy morning whilst our friends Stephen and Christine drove further down the Peninsular and did a walk to Wineglass Bay. Paul and I did walk along the beach in the afternoon, exploring lots of rock pools, photographing the sea slugs and enjoying the wonderful scenery. The weather was beautiful, warm and with blue skies.

We left our camping spot in the mid-afternoon and bounced along the 4 kilometres of ridged unsealed road in our van until we hit the A3 heading to Bicheno. Bicheno is 195 kilometres from Hobart and was settled in 1803 by whalers and sealers as it has a safe harbour. Here we re-met up with our friends outside the Information Centre and they had already sussed out a nice caravan park in town. So after we were all settled in and showered, we walked the Foreshore walk which follows the coast line.

We were very taken with the little town and the lovely beaches and Paul in particular liked the huge granite boulders along the coastline. We arrived back at a Tapas Restaurant in time for happy hour and enjoyed cocktails and a few Tapas before moving to a fish restaurant with a great view of the sea. After a glass or two of wine it was definitely time for bed.

The next day we made our way rather gently towards the Bay of Fires, a stopping point that we were all looking forward to and had heard a lot about the area. We had a break at a tiny village off the A3 north from Bicheno called Falmouth. It was really delightful, with a little estuary running into the sea. We splashed in the water and along the ocean and Paul had a dip while the rest of us just got the bottom of our shorts wet.

We had a short stop in St Helens, a picturesque fishing port, to pick up maps at the Information Centre and decide on a rest spot for the night, then on towards Binalong Bay, but we turned off on Garden Road which curved along the spectacular Bay of Fires. Our planned destination was Swimcart Beach and we lined up the two motor homes nose to tail directly on the beach top with nothing but sand between us and the rolling ocean. The weather was perfect – blue skies, a gentle breeze and about 25 degrees or so. The sea was clear turquoise and the beach made of dazzling white coarse shells, scattered with granite boulders covered with bright orange lichen. We agreed that this was probably the most beautiful coastline and countryside we had seen on all our travels. Paul rustled up a pasta salad with all sorts in it and we lapped up the view and perfect location with a glass or two of Tasmanian wine.

After a good night’s sleep with the sound of the waves roaring in our ears, we went off on a long walk along the coast back to the little town of Binalong Bay. We walked on the sand, through the waves, over granite boulders, round bushy headlands and found ourselves close to the town of Binalong. We decided to go for a coffee and ended up staying for a long lazy lunch. The restaurant was one recommended in the gourmet guides and we couldn’t resist trying it out. Apart from a few hiccups with the delivery of wine, the food was declared delicious.

Of course we had the long walk back to our vans, but the journey seemed quick as we were well fed, enjoying wonderful scenery and good company. We all decided to stay another night at Swimcart Beach so spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing, sleeping and reading. The two boys gathered wood for a fire and Paul cooked an omelette sandwich..Not a bad life!

We left the Bay of Fires and stopped firstly back at St Helens to stock up on provisions, then we took the A3 to Derby. The roads were fantastic, passing over hill and down dale, through fields and then rain forest. We saw echidna and snakes, cows and wallabies. Derby was a very pretty and historic tin mining town and we wandered around the exhibition at the Information Centre and saw a very informative movie on a huge quadruple screen which told us about the origins of the tin mine, the dam that was built there and the tragic loss of life when the dam was breached by heavy rain and flooding. It made the area all the more interesting as we passed through.

Our next stop was at the town of Scottsdale that boasted it was RV friendly – and so it was. We got maps and brochures from the Information Centre, got all our washing done at the local laundrette, had a swim and hot shower at the swimming pool. We then found our way to the town’s free camping ground where our friends Stephen and Christine had reserved a magnificent spot for us next to a little stream that backed onto a vast ‘People’s Park’.

The sun went down and Christine cooked up a storm with a vegetable stir fry and we settled down for the evening. The realisation that our 9 month journey around Australia was nearly at an end suddenly hit us and we were both sad and also excited to see what the next phase would bring.

We were visited the next day by a family of ducks who were begging off every van. Mother was very carefully shepherding her six ducklings from van to van and they were getting lots of treats. They were very sweet and looked very healthy and well fed!

The next day we made our way through Launceston, to Longford stopping firstly at the Lavender Farm just outside Scottsdale. Whilst the acres of beautifully lined up Lavender Bushes were not in flower, the farm and surrounding scenery with large ancient Oak Trees was just fantastic. It looked like one of those old oil paintings. Of course we were sucked in by all the Lavender products that were on sale in the visitor shop and ended up buying body oils and colourful violet hats and scarves.

We found Launceston town centre not very RV friendly for parking, so we just picked up some maps from the Information Centre and then followed Stephen and Christine’s van up a steep and windy road to Cataract Gorge, only 10 minutes from the town centre. It was a lovely green area with a river and swimming pool and natural rock pools. A swinging bridge crossed the river and lots of walk ways wound their way along the river edge and surrounds. There was also the ‘longest span’ cable car through the surrounding countryside.

We had lunch there before heading off to our stop for the evening at the river bank near Longford. This was an unofficial camp site, but all the official ones were full as there was going to be a big festival in nearby Evandale the next day that was to involve Penny-Farthing races...and we wanted to be there. We had a couple of chatty visitors who came over – a horse trainer and another traveller who were both passing by, but we were lucky that no-one else seemed to have discovered the place and we had a relaxing evening with our two vans lined up next to each other, and Stephen and Christine cooked dinner again! And so we enjoyed our last night together as the next day we would all be heading back to Hobart, and Stephen and Christine would be flying back to Sydney.

Week Thirty-seven

2010-02-15T02:46:00.000-08:00

Monday morning we had a stroll around Straun, in particular enjoying the wood gallery and timber sheds which carry huge quantities of natural Huon planks that artisans can purchase and turn into some magnificent furniture. Then we drove on along the windy, mountainous scenic roads to Queenstown. Even though it was only 40kms, we took it very slowly and carefully and stopped to take in the magnificent scenery.

Queenstown is dominated by the Mount Lyell copper mine. The Mining and Railway Company was founded in 1893 and after changing hands a few times, the mine is now in the hands of the giant Sterlite Industries (India). The mine has produced more than 1.4 million tonnes of Copper and 43 tonnes of gold to date.

Queenstown has the look of a ‘wild west’ film set with character 19th century buildings surrounded by the hills and still some bare tailing areas looking like desert dunes. I visited the Galley Museum and Information Centre and was told about the infamous sports oval in town which is made of gravel not grass and is open for motor homes to stay overnight. So having somewhere interesting to stop we decided to stay and explore the town.

We saw the old train that travels between Straun and Queenstown come in on the restored original Mount Lyell Mine Railway and we walked up Spion Kopf look out - named by soldiers returning from the Boer war, it gave us a fantastic view of the city and surrounds. We then went into the Federation Empire Hotel for a drink. The hotel featured a carved Tasmanian Blackwood staircase built in England in 1901 from wood sent over, and then returned to the hotel for installation. Apparently there were no local craftsmen of the required calibre in Tasmania at that time!

Our night at the sports oval was fine and we had a quick walk in the morning which turned into a tug of war between us and the dogs as the streets around were full of rabbits running madly around. Our dogs went mad, barking and straining on their leads so we all got lots of exercise. We were almost inclined to just let them go and see what happened!

We drove back towards the railway station as Paul had booked himself on to an Enviro-mine tour. So off he went to find his group whilst I found the local laundrette and did a bit of washing. Paul came back and said he got a look at the mine from the top and also the open pit and got a good understanding of the devastation that was caused by the mine at the turn of the century resulting in terrible deforestation that has still not properly recovered after 80 years. Apparently the environmental damage was caused by sulphuric acid leached from the tailings and disturbed rocks. Before and after pictures show some growth of new trees but there are still huge areas of white chalky hills.

On we drove towards Derwent Bridge, stopping for the night at a boat ramp on what appeared to be a river, but was actually a connection between two lakes. Again we were confronted by an ‘awful’ sight – as far as you could see, vast areas of trees had been cut down along the water’s edge, leaving a barren muddy coating on the banks littered with poor dead tree stumps. It looked like an end of the world scenario or a Mad Max backdrop. We were amazed as this seemed so out of context with our view of ‘green’ Tasmania. We found out later that water is regularly taken from the lake and so the level goes up and down and this has killed the trees.

We stayed the night there along with 4 other mini-me camper vans, and Tia and Paul enjoyed a dip in the water. We walked along the river bank the next morning trying to work out what had happened to the landscape and then drove to the famous ‘Wall in the Wilderness’, just a few hundred yards from Derwent Bridge. This is an amazing Huon wood carving by artist Greg Duncan and is a work in progress. Currently it is 50 metres long, 3 metres high and has taken 5 years to create. Eventually it will be 100 metres long, depicting the history of the harsh Central Highlands from indigenous people to pioneering timer harvesters, Hydro workers and miners. The sculpture is housed in a timber and iron building along with other works by the artist. We were quite fascinated by the whole project and the talent of the artist.

Our next stop in our journey to Hobart was another 80 kilometres along the Lyell Highway (called Rivers Run Tourist Route) when a succession of rugged mountain ranges, towering forests and winding hills overheated the van brakes and a horrible smell emanated from the bonnet. So we had a forced rest stop to allow everything to cool down. Paul decided to take over the driving and we limped slowly and carefully into the Hobart Showground at Glenorchy pretty exhausted from the drive and ready for a rest and dinner.

The Showground proved to be a pretty bad place to stop. We had to pay $15 for a powered site – cheap you may think, but the site was sloping and very crowded with other motor homes. There was just one ladies toilet and one shower (same for men) for everyone to use and it was very dirty, and hot water cost another $1.00 in the shower. So we moaned but it was too late to move anywhere else and we had to make the best of it. However, I did take some photos of the ‘facilities’ and wrote a very stern email of complaint, with the damming photos attached, to the people in charge – and felt better afterwards!

Our itinerary for the next couple of weeks was going to be pretty complicated - we had decided to spend a couple of days exploring the city sights of Hobart and then make a run to Port Arthur for another day or two before meeting our friends Stephen and Christine in Sorrell. They were flying in from Sydney and renting a van to travel with us round the east of Tasmania. So we had decided to leave our three doggies in boarding kennels for the next 9 nights to simplify things for us and give them a rest from the travelling. After much internet research we decided upon a Canine Country Club near Hobart Airport, so the next morning we left the Showground and delivered the dogs to their holiday venue! It all looked very luxurious and we felt comfortable leaving them, they of course didn’t look back but trotted off happily...

We drove on to Hobart Information Centre and with the help of a parking inspector found a central parking place for the van for the day. Then off I trotted to the Mall for a haircut and Paul did some computer work and shopping and we met up at Salamanca Place along with a lady from the Tasmanian RSPCA for lunch at a trendy venue close to the wharf area.

I had bought a new bag and dumped my old one in a bin in the Mall and half-way through lunch I remembered that I had taken off my ear-rings when having my hair cut and put them in a little pocket inside by old bag. Oh no! So after lunch we both rushed back to the Mall and I rummaged in the bin and luckily found my old bag with ear-rings still in it. What a relief. Paul said he wished he had taken a photo of me bent over the bin like a bag lady...

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around, having a drink and then a wonderful fresh fish meal at Mures on the wharf. We walked back to the van and drove up the road to Treasure Island Caravan Park for the night.

We were up early the next day to have our Swine Flu jabs at the Hobart Travel Centre and then we boarded the red double-decker explorer bus for a 90 minute orientation tour with commentary around Hobart. The driver/commentator was a lot of fun and we heard about the early convict days and main historical sights to see. We then wandered the town, having curried scallop pie for lunch at Salamanca Square before driving to the Aquatic Centre for the afternoon so Paul could have a swim and shower.

Paul had arranged to meet a Tasmanian friend and his family that he had got to know when skiing in Whistler, and so we drove back to the wharf to wait for them. After a little confusion regarding the meeting place, we had a wonderful evening with dinner at the famous and quirky ‘Drunken Admiral’. The fish dishes and Tasmanian wine were delicious and the ambience very congenial! As we left the restaurant it started to rain a little but we made it back to the caravan park in one piece.

We had planned the next day to drive down to Port Arthur, stopping at placed of interest along the way. A highlight was the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park which was half-way into the Tasman Peninsular. We enjoyed seeing and hearing these little black fierce carnivorous marsupials being fed and chasing and growling at each other. They are being decimated by a fatal face cancer and many are killed on the roads, so it was really good to see the efforts being made to ensure their survival. We also enjoyed seeing Tasmanian birds of prey, quolls and a special species of Kangaroo – all unique to Tasmania.

The drive on to Port Arthur was lovely with water views never far away. We pulled into the caravan park just before the famous historical settlement and booked in for one night, along with a scary ghost tour, starting at 8.45pm. Whew! Our days are just so full and there is still an amazing amount that we miss through lack of time, but at least we are getting a good feel for Tasmania and it is certainly a wonderful place.

The ghost tour was great and gave us a good night-time preview of Port Arthur and its convict history. Our guide was good at telling the scary tales and Paul was designated as the lantern bearer for the front of the group. The atmosphere was only slightly spoilt by a young child who chattered and gurgled during the silent bits when we were anticipating the appearance of a wailing spirit...

The next day we did the full tour of Port Arthur, whole books have been written on the subject so I won’t try to tell you too much here. The old brick and stone buildings were amazing – some were in ruins and others were completely restored houses from the 1850’s that we could walk around – the lunatic asylum, the barracks, the Commandant’s house, the Penitentiary, the church and many homes. The place had a restful aura and the grounds were covered with beautiful deciduous trees 150 years old that had been planted to remind the free men and convicts of home in England. It was all fascinating.

We left the site in the afternoon, anxious to meet our friends Stephen and Christine who had flown in from Sydney to spend the next week travelling with us in their own rented motor home. We were going to have us a ‘convoy’!

I have managed to get Stephen to recount the last couple of days - from when we all met up at Sorell just outside Hobart - and so give me a rest from writing the Blog...

Visiting Author Stephen Rust writes...
With severe trepidation and high anxiety we inched closer to the Sorell RSL, or more correctly the rest area at the back-end of the RSL, commonly called the meeting place for grey, greying and pretend (us) nomads. Would they (the Archers) be there? Would they be excited or would they be dreading our appearance? Well both parties risked it and at the agreed time Kath and Paul crawled around the corner of the RSL in Sorell, some 15mins north of Hobart Airport. They were smiling; what a relief!

After warm greetings of hugs, laughs and handshakes we got straight into the serious business of where to go for our first night? After debating for an eternity we settled on Triabunna, a little settlement on the East Coast, 60kms from Hobart. Why? It had a caravan park. Options were Triabunna, Triabunna or Triabunna. I could already see that decision making was going to be a highpoint of our week together.

We drove out of the RSL and turned left, in the opposite direction to Triabunna! Kath had, unbeknown to us, spotted a must do activity of picking strawberries at Sorell’s Berry Farm. This turned out to be a good thing as we used this opportunity to take our first photos with the feature rich TZ10, Lumix’s latest traveller camera. And we also got our first view of Paul and Kath’s bums as they furiously picked strawberries in the late afternoon and under the threat of a 5pm closing time. I can report to their family and friends that their bums are in good order and if anything are slightly tighter after 9 months in the Kea saddle!

We chose to purchase some goodies at the Farm including jams, chutneys and an assortment of locally brewed beers.

Finally we head off to Triabunna along a sealed but definitely small Tasmanian country road. The trip is a pretty one with many parts of windiness and flat stretches. Everywhere the countryside was dry, parched in many places and sheep aplenty. Sadly native road kill including a Tasmanian Devil was all too common.
We wound our way into Triabunna to the caravan park about 6:30pm and in the drizzle quickly claiming our spots.

Next task? Choosing a gourmet restaurant for dinner no. 1. We selected the best on offer and headed to the nearest hotel where Paul had an altercation with the waitress over his order of mussels. I listened on the sideline and was impressed by Paul’s articulation of his needs. It went something like this: “Madam, I would like a main course size of your mussels on the Entree menu. Is this possible at this outstanding establishment and what incremental charge would apply?” The waitress went off to consult Chef and returned enthusiastically declaring to Paul that Chef could add veggies to the entree serving, thus expanding the dish to “main” size and she suggested an extra $8. Paul initially accepted, but I could see that he didn’t really grasp the concept. Slowly his brain was churning and then he spluttered: “No, no that’s not what I mean. I want a main course size of mussels.....you know, bigger than entree size”. Now this really confused the waitress. She couldn’t get a grasp of Paul’s idea at all and declared that his request simply was not possible. Paul was perplexed and after some attempts to seek out the underlying cause to Chef’s inability to add a few extra mussels, he gave up and spitted out “fish & chips”. Ordering all meals and first round of drinks took 15 minutes. I am happy to report that the restaurant was near empty and we were the only guests placing orders.

Food arrived, was eaten and we left after a few laughs. We headed back to the caravan park and after a very welcome ‘horny blonde’, Paul and I called it a night. Yes you guessed it, the horny blonde was a cheeky beer Paul had collected on his travels. I went to bed drifting off to sleep thinking Day 1 was full of fun and looking forward to Day 2.

As with Day 1, the weather was not kind on waking with a drizzle and very heavy sky. We breakfasted at 8am and hit the road in the direction of Swansea, a quaint seaside village with spectacular views across a large bay to Freycinet Peninsula. We stopped for coffee and cake and pottered around looking at the tremendously peaceful views and very attractive buildings. Real estate is so much cheaper than in Sydney where we live. The highlight on this front was a 2500sqm property on a rise from the beach, with beach frontage and a jetty, fully developed gardens and a substantial house. Just 50m from the village centre and only $1.5m. In Sydney, this would be more like $25m!

We left Swansea determined to reach Bicheno for lunch on scallop pies Paul had purchased in Swansea. Paul swore to me that cold scallop pies are delicious. This did not receive a sympathetic response from Kath or Christine and I must admit I was not too keen either. On the way we came across Freycinet Vineyard and stopped for sampling and acquisition activity. We bought a delicious sparkling wine we hadn’t tried before and also an enjoyable pinot noir and Riesling. I noted Kath and Paul did not participate and I noted a keenness to depart.

Returning to the highway, after a short while Kath pulled into the turn off to the Freycinet Peninsula and stopped. She told us she was “ravenous”, couldn’t wait until Bicheno and must eat. So we did. The scallop pies were luke warm and frankly, a surprise. With chutney acquired yesterday the pie was fantastic. Kath and Christine had sandwiches.

Still overcast we drove down to Coles Bay and sussed out a spot at Friendly Beaches for our two vehicles. Then a 1 hour stroll along beautiful pure white beaches separated by granite outcrops was a prelude to settling into Kath and Paul’s “front porch” for drinks and dinner.

Pity about the weather, but Paul and Kath’s continuous good humour is ending a wonderful day and it is with regret that I close off this guest blog and hand back to the maestro of traveller blogger, Kath.

Week Thirty-six

2010-02-05T20:52:00.000-08:00

After a sleep in the van and a run on the beach we drove to the town of Penguin about 50kms west of Devonport on the coast of Tasmania. We discovered that the place to stay was at the Lions Club park in the centre of the little town, so we made our way there and settled the van and doggies. The town of Penguin lives up to its name with penguin litter bins and a giant penguin on the sea front.

It was all very quiet late on the Saturday afternoon, but Paul and I decided to have a drink in the local pub and stayed for a meal – curried scallops for Paul and garlic prawns for me. It was very nice and then we watched the ladies Australian Open Final on the giant TV in the pub lounge.

The next day we took the dogs to the off leash dog friendly beach right by the van and Tia immediately got jumped on by a huge grey mastiff dog which must have been twice her size. Paul went to her rescue and when I next looked there was Tia with the mastiff on top, and then Paul on top of them both in a sort of sandwich heap! The mastiff wasn’t really angry, just over excited and his owner was pale with anxiety as he rushed over to help Paul pull his dog off poor Tia. The mastiff had clearly never had a human leap on its back – it had a puzzled look on its face as Paul slid off. Like – “what the.......???”. Anyway no-one was hurt and the dogs just walked off quite unconcerned, so all was well. I did think Paul was brave to throw himself into the middle of it and I was just sorry I didn’t have my camera at the ready...

I went to the local Penguin Market and wandered around stalls of bric-a-brac and crafts, while Paul did some work on his laptop in the van. The weather was humid and thundery looking as we travelled on through Burnie, a large industrial port town pop 20,000, with a prominent paper mill on approach. We decided not to stop but drove further into the Tasmania north-west corner to Wynyard for lunch. The town was surrounded by rolling hills and wonderful beaches with the River Inglis estuary flowing into the sea. We had a lovely walk along the river which was a shady alternative to our normal beach walks with the doggies. We laughed at the little crabs which scuttled sideways into their holes in the muddy river bank when our shadows fell on them.

This north Tasmanian coast has miles of nesting ground for the small fairy penguins. In nesting season (December – January), they can be seen scuttling back up the beach at nightfall to feed their young nesting in the dunes. Much of the coastline is sensitive terrain under stress for them and fortunately the authorities have created some conservation areas to help their survival.

We drove to the Table Cape lookout and Lighthouse, past fields of poppy seed pods which were ripening, and empty fields which would be transformed by tulips in spring time. The sky was very misty so the views were a little limited but beautiful anyway. Table Cape is a great plateau 180 metres high. The volcanic lava lake of 12 million years ago is now the richly fertile soil that is perfect for growing tulips. We must come back for a visit in spring!

On we drove again, further west to Crayfish Creek Caravan Park for the night. This park was in a bush setting with trees all around and very basic facilities. Apart from flies and mosquitoes, there were beautiful and unusual birds, giant bees that should be in the Guinness Book of records for their size, and later in the evening some bouncing quokka-like animals appeared. Hopefully they weren’t just giant rats...

Our destination the next morning was the beautiful town of Stanley – which has the title of ‘Prettiest Fishing Village in Australia’. It is also supposed to have the purest air of anywhere in the world. It is positioned against the lower slopes of a great table-topped monolith, made by a plug of lava from a long extinct volcano. The local call the lava plug ‘The Nut’ and it extends out into the Bass Strait with a wonderful beach on each side. After gathering maps from the Information Centre, we headed first to Tallow’s Beach for a magnificent run with the doggies in the shadow of the vast ‘Nut’. The beach was almost empty and went on as far as the eye could see and to our delight there were no council signposts with long lists of what wasn’t allowed such as No Camping, No Dogs, No Swimming, No Fires, No Golf. It was wonderfully ‘freeing’.

Stanley was settled in 1825 as the base for Van Diemen’s Land Company to administer the enormous sheep farms across Tasmania’s north west. The town itself is still full of the original 19th Century cottages, all immaculately kept with flower gardens and brightly coloured paintwork. There was not one bit of litter or any graffiti to be seen, no hoons and no hobos. We were totally captivated by this perfect little town – beautiful beaches, chocolate-box scenery and friendly locals. I took a ride on the Nut Chairlift (the only thing missing was a pair of skis on my feet) to the top of the lava plug and enjoyed a circular walk around the Nut State Reserve in the company of Mutton Birds and Quokkas, while Paul bought lots of goodies for dinner in the Providores shop and then ‘ran’ up the steps to the top of the Nut – what a champion!

We parked up for the night at Godfrey’s Beach with a couple of other motor homes and our view from the van while we had dinner was definitely a million dollar one – rugged coastline, stately rocks and roaring sea pounding on to a pristine sandy beach. A dinner of sweet and sour Tasmanian caught fresh blue grenadier and scallops followed by Tasmania Brie and Cheddar with fresh local Blueberries and Tasmanian Riesling. Yum Yum!

The wind picked up during the night and by the next morning the town of Stanley was being well buffeted along with our van. The windows were covered in a sea haze film and we could hardly see out. We did want to visit Highfield House which was recommended in our guide pamphlet, and so we drove along a very scenic coastal road for just a couple of kilometres outside Stanley to the historic house. It was built in 1835 for the chief agent Edward Curr (with wife and 13 children), of the Van Diemen’s Land Company and was only recently restored by the National Trust.

We did enjoy walking around the elegant Regency styled house and estates, built by convicts and imagining the harsh life for the first European Colonists, who initially loathed the land they had been sent to, even those with some means and education. They called it “a hateful Country’. Eventually they warmed to Tasmania but it was always a long and hard struggle. The Aboriginal people were treated dreadfully and so very many were murdered, often the perpetrators weren’t even put on trial.

By the way, the Van Diemen’s Land Company (VDL) still exists today. Its original wool enterprise failed at the time, but the cleared land proved excellent for agriculture and the company profited from land sales. It now operates from New Zealand and Woolnorth at Cape Grim.

In the afternoon we visited the Stanley Marine Aquarium and saw all the sea creatures we had read about (or eaten), live in large tanks: crayfish (lobsters), eels, crabs, seahorses, sharks, baby octopus, star fish, puffer fish and much more.
After a walk along the edge of the beach with the dogs (it was high tide, so we had less than a metre to walk on without getting our feet wet) we drove 50kms back to Wynyard and stopped at the showground along with about 10 other motor homes for the night. This was a free ‘night rest area’ for self-contained vehicles – you could stay as long as you slept in your vehicle, had your own water, waste tanks, toilet and cooking facilities. Great for us.

It was windy and stormy the next day though still quite humid and we spent most of the day in Wynard walking, shopping and doing heaps of laundry at the local laundrette. It was good to get the dogs beds, seat covers, sheets and towels done, though there was another person of dubious character who had positioned himself in the laundrette, along with all his belongings!

We decided to get to Hellyer Gorge for the night as the rest area there had the big tick of approval in our camp book. Sure enough, after a 50km drive along very narrow and windy roads on the Murchison Highway, we came to a beautiful rain forest valley, full of giant tree ferns and a rushing, stony river running through. It was a lovely place to camp for the night and we settled down to watch the first version of Mad Max and have dinner after a bracing walk with the dogs. The rain came down and carried on for most of the night, keeping us awake with large drops falling from the trees on to our van roof.

In the morning we continued on the ‘Western Wilderness” touring route and travelled through Tullah, stopping only to find out if the bush fires that had been raging for the last few days in the area were well and truly out with the rain. We could smell the smoke still and the hills looked both smoky and misty with drizzle. On we went to the mining town of Rosebery at the foot of Mount Black, Paul visited the mine heritage centre and we parked by the active zinc mine for lunch. Then we all went for a short rain-forest walk to Stitt River Falls, but missed the turn and did a complete circle back to our van without seeing the falls! It was a pretty walk, but extremely humid, and once back we all jumped back into the van and turned the air-conditioning on. Apparently Rosebery also has the steepest golf course in Australia, along with Tasmania’s highest rainfall and highest postcode...

Our next stop was Zeehan, which we could quickly see was a near ‘ghost town’ with homes and buildings in varying states of disrepair. In 1642, Abel Tasman became the first European to sight the island that now bears his name, and his brig, a tiny vessel by today’s standards, was called the Zeehan. Zeehan was established to service the mining industry and became Tasmania’s third largest town.

In its mining glory years, Zeehan was called ‘the Silver City’ and there was still some evidence of this in the restored Gaiety Theatre in which Dame Nellie Melba had performed. We visited the West Coast Pioneers Museum next door which was an amazing display of early pioneer photos, minerals, surgical instruments and steam locomotives. We also visited the Zeehan Lodge (now closed) and found out a little about the Lodge secrets!

We were both badly in need of a hot shower, so we booked into the local caravan park for the night and again it rained most of the night. In the morning we did a final walk around the near deserted town before driving to our next anticipated stop at Strahan. It was only about 50kms away but the road was windy and rough and towards the end we noticed that the van suspension was getting a bit squeaky again. Hope it’s not serious.

Strahan has many extraordinary attractions and is called a ‘microcosm’ of the history of Tasmania. It is on a huge waterway called Macquarie Harbour – about 6 x the size of Sydney Harbour - which was discovered in 1822 by the whaler/adventurer Captain James Kelly. A harsh British convict settlement was established in 1822 on Sarah Island in the Harbour. It was designated for re-offenders and turned into a ship yard using the abundant Huon Pine and the convict hard labour. The penal colony was closed in 1833 after more than 100 ships had been built. The entrance to the Harbour was just 80metres across and became known as “Hell’s Gates” by the poor convicts who sailed though not knowing what fate awaited them!

Strahan then became a major port servicing the inland mines but eventually the ships became too large and the entrance too narrow, so fishing and tourism took over. We had been told that the unmissable Strahan experience was to cruise the Harbour and Gordon River on a catamaran, so we headed for the Information Centre and managed to make a booking for the next day – with me to go in the morning and Paul in the afternoon so we could baby-sit the doggies!

The sun had come out and the weather was much brighter so we went on a lovely walk through ‘The Peoples Park’ to Hogarth Falls and then stopped in town for a drink and fantastic local fish and chips – maybe The Best Ever... Then we drove to the golf club and paid $7.00 to stay the night parked on grass by the first tee along with 5 or 6 other self-contained motor homes.

The night was absolutely freezing and the temp dropped to 10 degrees, my feet were like blocks of ice and I had to add extra covers and eventually sleep in my dressing-gown. But no worries as the next day was just perfect for our catamaran trip – blue skies, hardly any wind and the mist completely cleared so the mountain and sea views were clear and bright.

The boat trip left the jetty at Strahan and headed straight out of the harbour entrance at Hell’s Gates which has a lighthouse on each side, viewing Tasmania’s longest beach called Ocean Beach, then we powered back in to the harbour, passing modern fish farms that harvest salmon and crossing the length to the entrance of the Gordon River.

The water here was satin smooth and the banks covered with thick rain forest that is recognised as part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. It is one of the last true wilderness areas on Earth. Many of the trees are protected species and we got off the boat for a walk along a board walk to see Myrtle Beeches, Huon Pines and Sassafras trees. The biggest danger to this area apparently is a bush fire that would allow the common Gum Trees to take over. There seemed to be moss and lichen and fungi hanging off the trees - one Huon Pine was over 2,000 years old.

Our next stop on the boat trip was Sarah Island and we had a tour of the ruins and heard the island’s history from a passionate actor/guide. I had been reading the classic “For the Term of his Natural Life” by Marcus Clarke – all about the brutal life of an innocent convict sent to Sarah Island and written only 50 years after the penal colony closed, so it was pretty special to see the setting for the novel and be able to imagine the story unfolding. Then it was back to shore , our brains buzzing and plenty to discuss, recall and mull over before a second night at the Strahan Golf Club.

Week Thirty-five - Great Ocean Road to Tasmania

2010-01-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

We lazed around the next morning after a walk on the beach and a run for the doggies. Then we carried on the Great Ocean Road, around the narrow hair-pin bends, often in 3rd gear and often having to pull over to let our ‘convoy’ go past. But the scenery got better and better – the coastline was really beautiful along that stretch. We arrived in the little holiday town of Lorne in the mid afternoon and got an easy parking spot outside the Information Centre that was specially designated for motor homes. We felt very privileged, especially when a parking inspector wrote out tickets for all the other ordinary cars parked there and just smiled benevolently at us!

We were now in absolute peak holiday season – the Australia Day long weekend, and it was obvious that all the caravan parks were totally full. Paul had a great idea and went over to the Bowling Club next door and asked if we could park overnight in their very pleasant grassy car park if we had dinner there. And the answer was yes! We both rushed over to the swimming pool for a quick $1.00 hot shower to smarten up a bit, and then into the Bowling Club for a surprisingly excellent meal. The Chef and Maitre ‘D were very charming and eccentric, and the food was delicious. We had a lot of fun and then walked a few steps into our van for the night. We stuck a sign in the back window saying “Guest of the Bowling Club” - as suggested by the Manager, and I did notice a few envious looks from other caravan travellers as they walked back to their overcrowded and expensive little pieces of ground in the caravan park, while we had a wonderful amount of room in a very pleasant setting, all for free.

We really loved Lorne. There was a beautiful bay with a jetty one side and rocky breakwater the other. An enormous stretch of green grass connected the beach to the shops and cafes, and in spite of the huge number of holiday-makers, the town still had a happy and relaxing aura. The beach strip was full of interesting shops and a huge variety of places to sit and watch the world go by. Most of the town seemed quite modern – like a larger Dee Why perhaps. Some of the houses set on the cliffs were architecturally spectacular.

Our next stop was at Geelong – a shock to the system as it was a big town – second in size to Melbourne. However we coped well and after a short stay in the Deakin University car park in error we caught our breath and moved to another free special parking spot for motor homes recommended by the Information Centre just a block back from the Geelong Pier. All along the foreshore there were markets and events happening in anticipation of Australia Day. So we strolled around soaking up the atmosphere and having an ice-cream. Two police were entertaining everyone by singing on the stage and there were people on stilts amusing the crowds, tents selling food and other gifts and souvenirs.

I did a quick shop at Coles and after we had loaded our provisions on board and fed the doggies, we drove on around the coast on the freeway for another 25kms towards Melbourne and stopped for the night in a service station forecourt/rest area advertised in our ‘Camps 5’ book. It wasn’t quite the scenic standard we had come to expect from our recent experiences, but we did have a field of cut wheat on one side with sheep and rabbits bouncing about, even though the view on the other side was all asphalt!

We slept well and drove on to Port Melbourne on Australia Day. We arrived at the Spirit of Tasmania wharf, so we could check out where to go for our voyage to Tasmania on 28th January. The area was getting busy with people, children, dogs, bicycles and cars - so we quickly found a parking space and had a stroll around the seafront with the doggies, admiring lots of new apartments. It got more and more hectic and we struggled to find a toilet and somewhere to sit and have lunch and a drink in the shade. Eventually Muffin told us in no uncertain terms that she had had enough and let rip at Tia under the cafe table that we had just sat down at. So after a burst of public growling and gnashing of teeth, Paul and I got up and left, hauling the dogs with us. What must the other cafe patrons have thought – it sounded like we had a couple of vicious dogs! Quelle embarrassment!!

We got back to the van and drove to Albert Park, vowing along the way NEVER to take three dogs to somewhere so hot and crowded ever again. We felt a bit better after a sandwich lunch and put our GPS ‘Lee’ on to guide us to our caravan park for the evening, out to the north of Melbourne at Craigieburn. I had hardly driven a few paces when I was confronted with a low bridge – only 3 metres clearance, our van is 3.4metres high...

Lee was hopeless and kept trying to get me to do a U-turn. He was determined to get us under that bridge. We had to switch him off and try to navigate ourselves round an awful detour route through the city and up the Hume Highway.

Having never driven in Melbourne before, avoiding the trams, right-hand ‘hook’ turns, cycle boxes, U-turns, low bridges, and traffic honking up our back was a complete nightmare. Eventually we limped into the Apollo Caravan Park just before 5.00pm for an evening of washing, showering and computer work. I have to say that the day was not a good introduction to Melbourne, Paul would say otherwise...

The next morning we set ‘Lee’ again and drove to Clifton Hill for a meeting with an Estate Agent called John who we had met travelling in Richmond, QLD. We furnished him with our details as we are hoping to rent a house in Melbourne for 6 months from the end of March to September. We explored the area a little on foot and ended up back near Port Melbourne to find somewhere to stay for the night close to the Spirit of Tasmania departure point. We ended up parked in a light industrial area and settled down for the night. We were woken at 5.00am when lights came on and cars pulled in and we realised that the company car park of ‘Box-Fit’ wasn’t a cardboard box company, but a gym. All the manic keep-fit people had arrived for the early class! Still, it meant we got to the ferry in time.

As the poor doggies were going to be in little cages for the journey we took them for a run in the half-light of the early morning to give them some good exercise. We were very anxious about how they would cope for 11 hours in such a confined space with no chance to wee or poo... We left it to the last minute to drive on board the ferry and got the dogs into the cages on G3 lower deck and ourselves into very comfortable ‘ocean-view recliners’ on deck 8. The journey was fortunately smooth and uneventful and the doggies did really well with no “accidents” in their cages and seemingly not too stressed by it all. The time seemed to pass quickly actually, as we read and talked and walked the decks a little, had lunch and snoozed.

We arrived in Devonport at 6.45pm and apart from a short hold-up with quarantine inspections (which we passed with flying colours) we drove off the Spirit of Tasmania with van and doggies intact. We went a very short distance to the nearest caravan park and settled down for the night and slept very soundly indeed.

We found any stresses and strains from the past few days simply dropped away on arrival in Tasmania. What was it? The pure air? Or the lack of traffic, the peace, no high rises, beautiful scenery, friendly people? We will find out over the next 4.5weeks.

We spent the next day in Devonport just pottering around. We visited some beaches, did some shopping, we phoned some friends and Paul cooked local trout and vegetables and we watched the “Spirit of Tasmania” come in again at 7.00pm. A magnificent sight and it gave us the chance for some photos that we didn’t get the previous day in the rush. We decided to go to see the movie ‘Invictus’ with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. It was based on the early part of Nelson Mandela’s Presidency and his support of the South African rugby team in the world cup in 1994. Yes, they did win. It was an OK film, not one for our top ten list though.

We drove 5 minutes up the road to Coles Beach and stayed there for the night for $5.00, along with a few other motor homes and vans. The next morning we went for a long walk along the Don River trail, which starts at Coles Beach, travels partly along the railway and then through hectares of Swamp Paperbark trees and Costal Black Peppermint trees – it was just lovely. We arrived at the Don River Railway Station quite tired out and asked (on the off chance) if we could take dogs on the train. The answer was YES, so we bought two tickets, wandered amongst the collection of steam locomotives on display and then all climbed aboard the train back to Coles Beach. It was a novelty for the doggies - travelling on a vintage train, manned by volunteers.

Time for lunch and a little power nap before our next tourist sight...

Week Thirty-four

2010-01-23T02:13:00.000-08:00

We spent the night in an unremarkable rest area between Naracoorte and Penola and it turned into a stormy night with rain and branches cracking around us. We didn’t get going until much later on Sunday morning and then drove steadily towards Mount Gambier. We passed thousands of hectares of softwood timber plantations. Forestry is the largest of the region’s industries and exports one million tonnes of softwood chip annually. The plantations of young trees looked like Christmas Trees, and one was even decorated with tinsel! But most had towering straight trunks and were destined for Carter Holt Harvey timber mills.

We spent the night at a Top Tourist caravan park – the first time we were in an official park and on electricity for several days. A good hot shower was very welcome in the morning and then we drove into the town centre to collect some mail that was waiting “Post Restante” for us at the Mount Gambier Post Office.

The city of Mount Gambier is set in a unique and ancient landscape of volcanic craters, lakes, limestone and underground aquifers. It is best known for its “Blue Lake” – a lake in one of the three craters of the volcano and the source of fresh water for the city. The Blue Lake water colour changes from blue steel in winter to brilliant turquoise blue in summer, and we spent a good while walking around the whole 3.6 km crater rim with the dogs admiring the lovely colour of the water and the scenery. Apparently the lake contains 36,000 million litres (ML) of water and the city uses 3,700 ML annually. At one point we had great views of both the Blue Lake and the Leg of Mutton Lake next door – which is a smaller crater that has been dry since 1859.

Our next stop was at Umpherston Sinkhole. Once a cave, the top of the chamber fell to the floor, creating an environment for a sunken garden. James Umpherston originally beautified the garden in 1886 and there was once a little beach and boating. When we visited, there was very little in the way of water, but the plants and flowers, bees, possums and lush lawns in the floor of the landscaped garden were very pretty.

We discovered that the Showground in the middle of town was available to motor homers. So we paid our fee at the Mobile garage across the road and got given a huge set of keys to the toilet and showers. We found a good spot in a small grassy enclosure, plugged in our power lead and settled down for the evening with a gin and tonic and some TV.

We headed for the volcanic craters again the next morning and did a long and strenuous walk around the Valley Lake Crater called ‘Mountain Trail’. There were some wonderful lookouts that were worth the steep climb up and back down. Unlike the Blue Lake Crater, the water was a darkish green and the contrast in colour was very strange as the two craters are almost next to each other. We really felt we had done some work when we got back to the van and all the doggies had enjoyed themselves and Muffin seemed very happy and not tired at all.

We did a few tasks in town before driving off in the mid afternoon to our next stop at a tiny town called Dartmoor, about 70kms from Mount Gambier along the Princess Highway. It was on this stretch of road that we passed from South Australia into the state of Victoria. Dartmoor had lots of amazing wood carvings on posts lining the streets as we drove through the town. The carvings had been done by a local chainsaw sculptor and were quite a novel feature. We had been told that there was a very nice rest area near there alongside the river, and that was true. We found it very scenic and relaxing, under trees and on lovely green grass - a great spot for the night.

We set off for Portland the next morning and along the way, Paul jumped out for some free range eggs and then we headed for the Information Centre for local maps. Portland had been a Whaling industrial town and this had led to its original settlement. Now it was a busy industrial and agricultural town. The Information Centre was on the Warf front and we could see the Docks with a huge sheep carrier waiting to be loaded. The Aluminium Smelter dominated the right horizon and huge piles of wood chippings by the Bulk Shed. It was drizzling a little but we still took the doggies for a run on a small beach the other side of the Information Centre and they all said hello to a little black Staffie. Muffin ran like the wind and wasn’t at all breathless or tired, so we are still wondering about her recent bad heart diagnosis.

We found out that the movie ‘Avatar’ was showing at the cinema in town, so after Paul had a swim in the local pool and cooked a very nice Tuna dinner, we left the dogs in the van parked outside the cinema and went inside. It was an old and rather dusty cinema with the world’s smallest screen! Still we enjoyed the movie very much and our brains were racing when we came out.

We had been given the ‘nod’ by the Information Centre that parking overnight in their car park was OK. So we returned there, but quickly decided that we weren’t going to get any sleep, as cars kept coming and going up the street past us, even though the road was a dead end. We couldn’t imagine what they were doing at 1.00am... So we got dressed again with plenty of moaning and muttering and drove to a side street on the outskirts of town, opposite some tennis courts. I didn’t sleep well – a combination of seeing a very exciting movie and having to relocate in the middle of the night.

We both woke up tired the next day but still managed to drive out the Aluminium Smelter for a walk around the surrounding area. The smelter was opened in 1988 and now employs over 600 people and is one of Australia’s largest export earners. Then we drove on to Cape Nelson lighthouse. We paid for a Lighthouse Tour so we could actually climb inside the lighthouse which is 32 metres tall and was built in 1882 of local stone. The light was officially lit in 1884 after there had been three ship wrecks off the point. At the top we were able to walk outside and the view was spectacular, though we didn’t see any Blue Whales sadly. Our tour guide did a good job of explaining the history and we saw the signal room with the original telescope and flags.

Afterwards we had lunch at ‘Isabella’s cafe’ which was surprisingly excellent. We had smoked salmon and fetta baguettes with capers, dried tomatoes and salad. The chef and his fiancé were managing the place whilst having a break from travelling around Australia and after a chat we also scored some delicious ‘petit fours’.

Then we drove back through Portland and along the A1 to a tiny town on the coast called Yambuk. It had a grassy low key caravan park on an estuary that was dog friendly and we decided to stay the night there so we could have showers and a good night’s sleep. The dog policy was very ‘free’, with doggies running around everywhere, so we introduced our three by letting them off their leads too. No-one seemed to mind. We met two French boys travelling for a month in Oz and sleeping in the back of a van. Naturally they didn’t think much of Australian wine – too expensive. We had a good walk on the beach and it was very pretty.

Our next stop was at Port Fairy – a very nice historic town with heaps of old buildings. We stopped in the high street for coffee and cake and chatted to a lady visiting with a large dog. There seemed to be dogs everywhere, so we felt at home! We both agreed this would be a good place to spend more time in, with its little harbour and beach and lots of cafes. We drove along The Great Ocean Road, stopping off to look at a disused Methodist Church that was for sale (in our dreams!). We shot through Warrnambool, just getting diesel and discovering that the Woolworth supermarkets are all called Safeway in VIC. We did stop at the Cheese Factory for a tasting and bought some nice cheeses. But we couldn’t cope with the busy, built-up feel of the town.

Then it was onwards through the heart of The Great Ocean Road and we stopped at some of the views from the cliffs of all the rock formations: Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, The Arch etc. At Port Campbell, Paul went for a snorkel in the sea and saw a huge ray that scared him a little. We got some fish and chips for dinner and sat on a bench overlooking the sea with a glass of red wine.

Then we did a final run to The Twelve Apostles in the late afternoon. The sun was low and the light on the huge limestone rock stacks was very arresting. The place was buzzing with tourists and cameras along a boardwalk that enabled you to have a good view. The sea was pounding against the vertical cliffs and the Apostles stood tall and proud in the water, even though they were taking a beating from the sea too!

We walked back to the van which was parked at the information centre there, quite overwhelmed by the scenery and planning to get some warm clothes and a flask and go back to see the sunset. But sadly the clouds built up and the sunset was not going to happen, also Muffin decided to have another spat with Tia in the van, so it wasn’t a good idea to leave them alone just then. The van parked next to us was also a KEA with 4 people and we all agreed that we would spend the night parked there instead of driving on in the dark to a campsite. There must have been about 15 other cars and vans of all sizes who did the same, so we were alone. The wind picked up and the van was buffeted through the night, then a water tanker woke us at 6.00am – oh well.

Perhaps because of the scenic sensory overload and disturbed sleep, we had a bad morning, going over our plans for when our trip is finished and we have to get back to the real world in just a month’s time: finding somewhere to rent in Melbourne (with 3 dogs), getting our paperwork from store in Sydney for our tax returns, furniture removal at some point, will we sell the van?, Muffin needs an appointment with a cardiologist vet, missing our friends in Sydney, planning a UK trip – and so on and on. Getting a consensus was difficult and we were both moody and a bit depressed with all the ‘stuff’ we had spinning in our heads! We really would like to just keep going and not have to face the music...

The drive from The Twelve Apostles to Apollo Bay was very hilly and windy and made driving quite arduous. Faster cars kept queuing behind us and we often had a little convoy. I managed to fall out of the van carrying a basin of water and twisted my ankle, but no lasting damage done. Eventually we made it into the town of Apollo Bay – a fantastic place with wonderful sandy beaches in a sweeping bay, turquoise sea and surrounded by hills and falls. The downside was that it was peak tourist time (Australia Day long weekend) and the place was teeming with families and fishermen, kids, dogs, bikes and caravans. We couldn’t get a spot for the night anywhere close and eventually got a tip off from a local to go 6kms out of town to Skenes Creek where we parked for the night in a little picnic area where the river meets the sea. It was very pretty with the rolling hills behind us –and it was free, no noisy tourists and dogs to be seen. Hey ho. Paul cooked a tasty pasta and did some Italian reading, while I wrote up the BLOG.

Week Thirty-three

2010-01-16T18:56:00.000-08:00

We had a walk along the beach at Kingston when it had cooled down a little at 8.00pm on Saturday evening. The swimming beach opposite the campsite was lovely, but as we got close to the jetty, there was seaweed banked up like mini cliffs either side, along with a strong rotting smell! We turned towards the town and stopped for a drink and a chat with a happily inebriated local, who owned a dog friendly bush camp near Mount Gambia. We had a laugh and got given a brochure for future reference.

Sunday dawned hot, hot, hot again. Temperatures raced up to 45 degrees and so we booked in the caravan park at Kingston for another night. The place was just about full and we had to move to another site, which was no problem as we were planning to drive out to a food and wine festival at nearby Cape Jaffa. We arrived as the festival was just opening and took it in turns to wander through as there was no shade to park under - so one of us had to stay with the van and doggies with all the windows open. We bought some local produce made from bush plants and fruits produced by a co-operation and farmed by Aboriginal people – lime marmalade, salad dressing and cordial. As it was really hot we didn’t stay too long.

We were relieved to get back to the air-conditioning in the afternoon. Our new position in the caravan park was amongst a whole tribe of tents and caravans belonging to one extended family. There were heaps of children, bikes, toys, games, cans and junk all around and it reminded us that it was still the middle of school holidays....

In the late afternoon Paul went for a swim in the sea while I sat under a shady pine tree with the dogs and took photos. We strolled along the sea front again and bought a couple of grilled Garfish fillets and watched the sunset which was quite beautiful.
The next day we moved off early to a town called Robe. It reminded us very much of Noosa QLD, maybe 5-10 years ago – an up and coming seaside resort. There were lots and lots of tourists all having coffees and cakes in the cafes along the street. We found a wonderful parking spot under a huge dense and shady pine tree right on the sea front and then promenaded up and down the main Victoria Street looking at all the quaint old stone cottages which were now antique shops or bakers, newsagents, coffee shops, trendy clothes and beach wear etc.

The most blissful thing was that a strong cool breeze blew off the sea and the clouds rolled in and the temperature cooled down significantly. It was so wonderful to be able to stroll around and take in the ambience without the sweat pouring down your neck and back!

We walked out to the Cape Dombey Obelisk which was built in 1853 as a navigational guide into the Bay, and the limestone cliffs and rock formations in the sea were treacherous to see. Again the sun came out and the temperature increased, and poor Ian dug his heels in and told us he had had enough walking now!

We carried on driving down the coast to Beachport, past a series of salty lakes. We had booked to stay the night at Southern Beachport Caravan Park in town, which in our book had the pet friendly symbol. However, on our arrival at the main gates, we saw a sign saying “No pets during peak holiday times”. Paul had a long discussion with the manager who was very accommodating and said we could sneak back late at night and park up the very back with the tents, as long as we were discrete! So we spent the late afternoon and evening enjoying a meal of prawns, pasta and salad with a drink or two at the local pub and then we all sat on the beach just chatting and watching the world go by. When it was almost dark we drove back to the caravan park and settled in quietly for the night.

In the end, we had a good position on the grass with the tent campers, away from the other motor homes. Most of the vehicle spaces were booked side by side with only a hair’s width between them.

School holidays are an awful time to stay in a caravan park as the place becomes like Piccadilly Circus, with thousands of children running around yelling or careering about on bikes and scooters. This can be quite stressful, especially for our three doggies who get a little agitated and excited by the proximity of the noise. Funnily enough the next day we listened to a radio program about a gated community of over 100,000 people in Florida that has banned children! Apparently the people living there love it, but after some discussion Paul and I thought that was going too far... We decided that the problem in the caravan parks is simply that they cram in too many large families too close together during peak holiday time.

The hot weather really broke in the night and a storm with a strong gusty wind came through. The rain was heavy but we were very comfortable and cosy in the van and so very pleased that the temperature had dropped to 24 degrees from 44 degrees in the space of a few hours. How about that! We did spare a thought for the poor people in tents who were out in the lashing rain battling with guy ropes and leaks – and then we drifted back to sleep.

We snuck out of the park early the next morning with the doggies hidden from view and parked on the sea front whilst we had French Toast for breakfast and a walk along the jetty and beach in the cool windy weather. By then the rain had stopped and it was a wonderful feeling to be cool at last.

We sauntered around the little town of Beachport and saw the Crayfish industry first hand as the fishing boats delivered their live catches to be chilled and sold to the Asian market. Then we drove south to the town of Millicent after lunch and called in at the Information Centre. Armed with a map, we wanted to make sure we did the ‘Wind Farm Tourist Drive’ that was recommended in our guide book.

The Lake Bonney Wind Farm is the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere. It consists of about 150 turbines, each of which cost $4.2 million, weighs 23 tonne and has foundations of 700 tonne below ground. The blades span 33 metres and are 100m above the ground. One turbine produces enough electricity for 1,100 homes. The initial project was approved in 1999 and now spans an area 8km long by 3km wide. The drive was fascinating and the mighty turbines stretched as far as we could see and looked so regal as they rotated slowly.

We drove on the back rural roads to Tantanoola and found a pretty little secluded rest spot for the night with plenty of other sights to look forward to the next day.
Well the sights took a back seat the next day as we drove into the town of Millicent and parked outside the laundrette. We had decided it was time to do a huge wash of all our dirty clothes, the van seat covers, towels and sheets and the dog beds. It took all morning and 6 loads of the machine and 4 loads of tumble drying.

Muffin had been a little unsettled and was putting the hard stare on poor Tia who was doing her best to avoid looking at her. This behaviour usually ends in a scuffle, so we had to grab Muffin and distract her before any damage was done. It was quite worrying that Muffin had started this aggressive behaviour again. She settled after a walk around the town and the local streets with all the doggies, and we did a quick shop at Woolworths, then the day was nearly over.

We drove back to the same rest area in Tantanoola and had a drink and a basket of prawns and calamari before settling down to watch ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ on DVD which Paul had bought earlier in the day, so we could see Martingdale Hall again which we had visited earlier in our travels and was featured as the school in the film. The temperature was lovely and cool and we all had a good sleep.

We headed for the town of Penola the next morning and drove past the huge Kimberley-Clarke paper mill which gave off a very peculiar sweet and sickly smell – more like an brewery than a paper mill. Large trucks arrived at regular intervals loaded with timber and as we drove further on we saw huge softwood plantations that stretched for kilometres in all directions.

Penola was a wonderful historic town – the oldest in the Limestone Coast area. Many of its buildings are listed on the Heritage Register or maintained by the National Trust. We headed straight to the Mary MacKillop Centre which housed the schoolhouse, church, shrine and museum. We spent quite a while in the museum which told of the life of Mary MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison Woods who together founded the Institute of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. The Blessed Mary MacKillop did an amazing job providing education for poor and isolated children in Australia and she is currently on the way to becoming the first Saint in Australia. She made sure that any child, regardless of income or social class, could get a good education. She also has many miracles attributed to her. Father Julian was also an incredible man – a scientist, explorer, author, artist, musician and priest – and we felt he should be better known for all his discoveries and advancements.

We walked along Petticoat Lane which had kerbs made of wood and the most wonderful original cottages from the 1890’s. One belonged to Christopher Sharam, his wife, nine sons and six daughters and was made of wooden slats insulated with hessian and coated with layers of wallpaper. The cottage had only 4 rooms, but later Christopher built another cottage next door with two more rooms. The garden was full of different herbs and vegetables and for a small donation to the National Trust we were allowed to pick our own. Paul was delighted and took some silver beet, mint, sage, rosemary. We loved the old trees that lined the old street, all were 150 years old and beautifully shady. Many of the other cottages were made of stone with very pretty gardens and were privately owned with a history plaque outside.

After lunch I went off to visit the John Riddock centre next to the Information Centre. John Riddock was an outspoken Scotsman whose family had made a lot of money trading in produce in the goldfields and he bought a vast amount of land in the Penola region. He planted the first vines and laid the foundation for the Coonawarra’s quality wines. He also built the magnificent homestead called Yallum Park in 1880.

Later that afternoon I took Muffin to an appointment at the vets in Penola. I wanted to discuss her defensive/aggressive behaviour towards Tia and to see if she should have some sedation for our future trip on the Spirit of Tasmania. I was horrified to be told straight away by the vet that Muffin had a very bad heart murmur (Grade 5 mitral murmur) that sounded like a washing machine (I also had a listen through the stethoscope). This was the first time any vet had commented on it and she had last been checked about 4 months ago. Could it have developed so quickly? Or could it have something to do with the time she was shivery and listless at Esperance? Maybe she got some horrible virus then that attacked her heart. I came away armed with information and tablets that Muffin will need every day to lower her blood pressure and take some strain off her heart. The vet suspected that her behaviour and stress could be linked to feeling ill, and hopefully the tablets will help to make her feel better, although not a cure. Poor Muffin, we felt so sad for her – we always thought she would be the longest living of our tribe as she’s so energetic.

We drove off just 5 kilometres up the road from Penola to a free rest area in the Coonawarra outside the Leconfield winery - and drowned our sorrows with a glass of red and a hug for Muffin. We stayed the rest of the week in this area driving between Penola and Naracoorte seeing all the sights.

One day we had a wonderful lazy afternoon at Wynn’s winery which was the first winery in the region build by John Riddock and eventually sold to the Wynn family. The building has the famous three gables which you see on all the labels. After tasting the wine, we bought a cheese platter and bottle of Wynn Riesling, added our own fruit and sat at a picnic table in the grounds under some tall Poplar trees on the beautiful manicured grass with the doggies. The temperature in the shade was perfect and there was no-one else around to disturb us. It was a very decadent afternoon.

It was lovely to spend time in the famous Coonawarra wine region. It takes its name from the Aboriginal word for “honeysuckle” and consists of a rich, red strip of “terra rossa” soil sitting on top of limestone beds. This soil caught the eye of John Riddock and has given rise to many of Australia’s finest drops –especially its Cabernet Sauvingnon. Each winery has its own stories, architecture and wonderful wines to sample.

Paul had a swim in the local pool at Penola and confessed after that he had accidentally gone into the ladies change room and was thrown out by the life-guard! We continued to stay at the rest area in the Coonawarra. We spent Saturday at the famous Naracoorte Caves, a World Heritage Area and elected to do two of the tours: the Victoria Fossil Cave and the night-time Bat tour. The weather was wonderfully cool and we were able to park under trees at the interpretive centre for most of the day.

The caves were discovered last century and were added to the World Heritage List because of the value of the vertebrate fossils dating back 500,000 years. The first tour took us down steps into a beautiful chamber of stalagmites and stalactites and then wound through 250 metres of passages and chambers to a large fossil deposit. Our guide spent a while explaining how the animals of hundreds of thousands of years ago would fall down into the cave through a small hole and not be able to get out. Over thousands of years they would pile on top of each other, along with debris until the hole was sealed and thus the mega-fauna fossil bed was created. Of the 300 or so species of animals unearthed, about 30% are now extinct – one was called Thylacoleo Diprotodon or ‘Leo’ for short, and he was a carnivorous mammal the size of a panther that could climb trees and bring down a kangaroo. I doubt we would all be so casually wandering about in the bush if this creature still existed!

The Bat tour was equally as interesting and started at 8.00pm in an observation centre where we could see into the Bat Cave by infra-red camera without disturbing the bats who all had ‘pup’s or young at this time of year. The bats were tiny Southern Bentwing Bats who live in the caves in their thousands and eat moths, mosquitoes and other insects. They have to eat half their body weight each night and live for about 30 years, the females having just one pup a year.

We walked through the giant Blanche Cave and out to the surface in time to witness the mass exodus of the bats from a small cave entrance hole as darkness fell. Over a period of 20 minutes, thousands shot out from the hole to find food during the night. It was a spectacular sight and we could feel the brush of their wings as they cleverly avoided us as they flew past at top speed.

Between tours we drove 10kms into the town of Naracoorte and walked along the Creek Trail with the doggies. We parked on a steep slope next to a park and felt quite drunk as we rolled about trying to cook dinner and feed the dogs. It’s really funny what a slope does to your brain!

Week Thirty-two

2010-01-08T21:50:00.000-08:00

We didn’t get up until 8.30am on Sunday morning and after giving the doggies a quick run on the local oval and breakfast we drove to the ruined township of Hampton. The countryside along the way was beautiful with huge golden rolling hills of harvested wheat, groups of scented shady pine trees and loads of Galahs ducking and weaving in front of the van.

The town of Hampton was founded by Thomas Powell in 1857 and named after the home town of his wife in England. It was modelled on an English village and home to 30 miners’ cottages and a chapel. Nearby was a stone quarry which supplied the stone for many of the homes in Burra. The little village was virtually abandoned in the 1920’s except for one person living there until the 1960’s. We really enjoyed walking through the partial ruins of the cottages and their overgrown gardens with pine and olive trees, and imagining how it must have looked. There was long grass all around and I got a bit nervous of snakes, especially after Paul found a shed snake skin on the ground that looked enormous!

We drove back to Burra and stopped at Redruth Gaol, the first gaol in South Australia outside of Adelaide. It was built in 1856 and was home to 30 male and female prisoners. In 1897 it became a girls’ reformatory and closed in 1922. Now the National Trust looks after it. We used our special passport key purchased from the Information Office to get inside and look around. Punishments were very tough in those days and a couple of months in gaol just for breaking a window were common. We discovered that the gaol was the setting for the famous movie ‘Breaker Morant’. So now we want to see that movie again and Picnic at Hanging Rock as we have seen both ‘film sets’ in the last couple of days.

After a stroll through Burra again and a leisurely lunch we picked a stop about half-way to Adelaide for the night – a tiny town called Tarlee. We struggled to find the rest area which was in our Camps 5 book and had to ask at the local pub – it was between the Catholic Church, the local oval and the Institute building, next to a field of sheep!

We continued our relaxed journey to Adelaide stopping briefly at Gawler to pick up some groceries and fuel. Then we set Lee (our GPS) on to Largs Bay, which is north-west of Adelaide city centre and on the beach. Paul had been there on business and wanted me to see the place. It was very beautiful with sandy shores, a long jetty and shallow warm turquoise water. Tia had a fantastic time on the beach with her tennis ball and then Paul and I had a lovely lunch at the Largs Pier Hotel on the front – seafood platter and roasted vegetable pizza with a glass each of local sauvignon blanc.

After lunch ‘Lee’ directed us to the caravan park at Windsor Gardens that we had booked for the next two nights. It was a pet friendly park and not too far from where the van was to have its 150,000km service the next day. We had booked ahead as there is always a shortage of ‘pet friendly’ parks close to cities and true to form, Windsor Gardens had a little dog of some sort tied up outside nearly every caravan. This made it a little fraught each time we went for a walk and had to run the gauntlet past all the territories of the other doggies. However there was a lovely walk and cycle path along the Torrens River right at the back of the caravan park that ran for 40kms or so, and we were able to do a little bit of that one evening.

We arrived at the KEA motor home service centre before 8.00am having successfully navigated around Adelaide with the help of ‘Lee’. Fortunately the service centre was next to a nice shady park where we could wait for most of the day while the work was being done on the van. There was a large shopping centre across the road and a MacDonald’s (good for coffees and toilets) next to the park. So whilst it was difficult being without our “home”, especially in hot weather and with the dogs, we made the best of it and read and did puzzles and relaxed.

We had to do the same journey the next day as the van service wasn’t finished and new break pads still needed to be fitted. We had also given KEA a long list of other little items that needed rectifying inside and outside, such as lights not working, air-con vents broken and a new external aerial socket to be supplied. It was great to get all these things seen to and so we bore the hanging around with stoicism!

All was finished by lunch time and we were keen to get away from the Adelaide traffic and so we set course for Strathalbyn about 60kms south-east. Paul was driving and we somehow ended up doing a detour through the Adelaide Hills on some very windy, narrow and hilly bumpy roads until the new break pads smelt like they were on fire and I threw a wobbly. Paul had the sense to stop and we turned back on to our original course after some strong words from the stressed and slightly nauseated passengers in the back...

We changed drivers in Mount Barker and made it safely and without further discomfort to Strathalbyn – a town full of antique shops and a swimming pool that sadly closed at 5.00pm. So we had a drink to cool down in the local pub and then drove on a few more kilometres to a spot for the night at a rest area called Frank Potts Reserve in the Langhorne Creek wine area. It was a lovely shady and grassy area surrounded by acres of green vineyards and fields of turf. We ate dinner at the pub which was a short walk away – a vegetable Schnitzel and a seafood platter with some local wine. The evening was quite cool and we almost wished we had bought a sweatshirt with us as we sat outside with the doggies.

We chatted to a lady called Carol who worked in the local Angus Plains Estate winery and we promised we would call in for a lunch platter and wine tasting the next day.
We had decided to give the van a bit of a spring clean the next morning and just as we finished, Sue, a lady travelling by herself in a motor home came over for a chat. We also had a talk to a Belgium backpacker visitor who wanted some boiled water for tea, so it became quite the social spot to be. Whilst all this was going on, Paul decided to hang up a fly strip inside the van, but forgot to close the doors and windows, so when we climbed back into the van half an hour later, it was buzzing with approximately 200 flies... YUK. I removed the fly strip and Paul had the task of emptying the van of flies and re-cleaning all the surfaces that we had just spring cleaned. Oh dear – not happy Jan.

Anyway we cheered up and invited Sue to come with us for lunch at the Angus Plains winery. We drove there in our van with Sue and doggies onboard and had a lovely long lunch out on the veranda. It was very hot and the owner kindly put out some electric fans for us whilst we shared a cheese platter and prawn stir-fry along with some Angus Plains wine. Sue was fun and the conversation lively, and as we were the only ones there, even Carol had a chance to join in.

By the time we got back to the Frank Potts rest area it was 5.00pm, so the dogs got fed and we did a short walk before dark.

We moved off late the next morning after a short walk to the local cemetery. We also discovered what the bad smell that wafted around our van was – a dead fox in the early stages of putrifaction on the grass verge nearby...yuk! We arrived back in Strathalbyn for a better exploration and to do a few chores: buy some more of Tia’s specialist dog food at the vets, Financial Review newspaper for Paul and some food shopping. We also called into the Information Centre and got a big map and brochure for the next leg of our journey down the Limestone Coast to Mount Gambia.

For more than 25 million years, the Limestone Coast consisted of a series of ancient coastlines submerged beneath the Southern Ocean. During this period, tonnes of marine crustaceans fell to the sea floor to form the soft porous rock known as limestone. When the sea retreated one million years ago, it left a series of caves and sinkholes along with soil that has created a region famous for wineries and agriculture. White settlers didn’t arrive until 1840 and they established vast pastoral holdings and stations.

We decided to take the road down the coast rather than inland, but the initial part of the journey from Strathalbyn to Meningie reminded us of our travels in the Northern Territories down the centre of Australia. The landscape was just dry scrub with salt pans and so hot. We were very surprised it was so very dry looking. We did get the free ferry across the mighty Murray River at Wellington which runs every 15 minutes, and we headed south around Lake Alexandria to stop for the late afternoon and night at Meningie.

The Caravan Park there was right on the edge of the Lake, but we locked ourselves into the van with the air-con on until 8.00pm. Only then did we venture out for a walk on the salty and sandy Lake’s edge. Underneath the crusty surface of the shore was thick mud and silt, and the water was hot like a bath. Tia went in the water only once and sunk into the mud and we were worried she would need rescuing. She did managed to get out by herself, covered in dirt up to her arm-pits. The smell of the almost stagnant water was quite overpowering. The sunset was very beautiful changing from burning orange to pale pink across the lake and desolate landscape behind, but we were all too tired, hot and irritable to properly appreciate it.

Still the hot weather continued the next day and we knew we had to jump from Caravan park to Caravan park, so that we could have some electricity for air-conditioning inside the van for the afternoon. The temperature was well into the 40 degrees as we drove further south down the Limestone Coast to our next stop at Kingston. This town was on Lacepede Bay and it was very nice to actually be right on the coast rather than next to an almost dried out Lake. Kingston is home to the Big Lobster and Paul bravely jumped out of the van for a few seconds to take a photo! It is also famous for a fantastic fish and chip shop named South Australia’s best and is great for holiday makers who want to fish, scuba dive, sail and swim.

We grabbed the very last powered spot in the Kingston Caravan Park and breathed a sigh of relief at how lucky we were – everyone wanted power and no-one wanted to free camping in temperatures like that. We put the air-con on full and tackled some emails, bills and photo downloads whilst we waiting for the temperature outside to drop. The dogs were happy to lie on the cool floor and sleep and Tia had the additional luxury of a soaked bandana around her neck.

Week Thirty-one

2010-01-02T00:11:00.000-08:00

The next three or four days we spent visiting sights and wineries in the Clare Valley – in between taking a breather in air-conditioning, as the weather warmed up again to about 36-39 degrees. We got into a routine of getting up very early when it was still cool and walking part of the Riesling Trail with the doggies, then all stopping under a shady tree for breakfast followed by a sight or two, lazy lunch, some wine tasting and back to camp.

Highlights of the Clare Valley that we enjoyed were of course the Sevenhill Cellars which we went to twice – the first time we visited the church and grounds and the second time to taste some wine, see the cellars and buy some of our favourite bottles. We also visited the extraordinary Georgian mansion called Martindale Hall. It was the country seat of Edmund Bowman, the son of a wealthy pastoralist who had it built in 1879. It was also used for the ladies college in the film Picnic at Hanging Rock. We spent a good while looking through every room and admiring the decorations and fine furniture. Paul especially liked the ‘smoking room’ with its shields, armour, spears, skulls and all things masculine. The layout of the hall was very symmetrical with a grand staircase and huge atrium with chandelier in the centre, lovely drawing rooms and bedrooms and of course a ‘back stairs’ for the servants.

Our only problem was leaving the doggies in the van from time to time and worrying about the heat - so we were often going back to the van to check on them, or taking turns to see sights. By this time the caravan park was really full of families who had arrived after Christmas, but we were pleased to have our spot where we could plug into the mains and get the air-con on when we got back to camp.

New Years Eve was rather quieter than we expected. The campsite had put a cover on the swimming pool and hired a security guard, so we thought that there could be some over-excited campers. But no, we did have a rather loud shouted countdown to 2010 and after that everyone went to bed. Must be the fresh air and good wine!

And hot, hot, hot it stayed for several days. We bravely checked out more wineries, ducking from the van to the lovely cool cellars. Kilikanoon winery was set in very pretty grounds and boasted the Best Riesling in the World 2006. So of course we had to sample and buy a bottle – very nice it was too.

We left Clare and drove to the historic town of Burra along the back scenic route from Leasingham through Mintaro to Burra. We had heard from other campers that the town had a lot to offer so we were not surprised to learn that it was on the National Heritage Register as a significant site as one of the best preserved mining towns in the State. In 1845 copper was discovered near the Burra Burra Creek and this ‘Monster Mine’ as it became known, was the largest metal producing mine in Australia up to 1860. It had a large influence on the struggling economy of South Australia and Burra has survived with a magnificent collection of historic buildings.

We called into the Information Office and got a key with interpretive booklet that set us on the 11km historical tour and enabled us to get into many of the sights at our leisure. We checked into the little Burra Caravan Park that was tiny and almost empty, next to a creek. Later in the afternoon we enjoyed walking around the streets with the doggies, as the temperature had dropped to a more respectable heat.

The buildings were all remarkable with their own stories: for example, next to the campsite were the Paxton Square Cottages, all 33 of them were built in 1849 to encourage miners to leave their dugouts in the Burra Creek walls. They are now available as visitor accommodation. We did walk down to see the old mud and stone dugouts which are still visible. At one time nearly 2,000 miners lived in dugouts when accommodation was stretched to the limit in the town. Other stone houses we saw around the town were original miners cottages, churches, shops and the hotel, so we stopped for a drink, stayed for a very good dinner and chatted to another couple on holiday from the Adelaide Hills.

The next day was a lot cooler so we continued the self-guided tour and walked to the Burra Mine Historic Site going passed Peacock’s Chimney with the Burra Miners mascot ‘Johnny Green’ standing on top. The site had extensive remains of the original mining operations including Morphett’s Enginehouse Museum which demonstrated the influence of the Cornish mining engineers on the whole operation. We were quite fascinated by all that had been well preserved. From the lookout we could see the open cut mine and the level of groundwater encountered by the miners. It had been an underground mine from 1845 to 1867, and then worked as an open mine until it closed in 1877. The mine was worked again from 1971 to 1981 when the low grade ore was used in timber preservatives and chemical fertilizers.

We stopped for lunch at the Royal Exchange Hotel and had a little rest, then completed the journey back to the campsite by mid-afternoon. We were all pretty exhausted from both the long walk and the mental stimulation, so it was time for a snooze and read. We had some lovely shade from big old pine trees along the creek which also gave off a wonderful smell of pine needles and cones in the heat. The evening was beautiful and Paul cooked up some marinated kingfish for dinner while we watched the Hopman Cup and Leyton Hewitt’s win on the TV.

Week Thirty - Christmas Week

2009-12-26T00:27:00.000-08:00

Map shows our journey from Sydney in orange and our return journey from the West coast in green as far as week thirty.

On Sunday morning we enjoyed a lovely walk on one of the Corney Point beaches. The geology was very fascinating and the rocks were all quite unique looking, with pillars and dykes and goodness knows what else. (Paul can add more geological input here...). The doggies found very interesting smells and pieces of seaweed and sponge to munch on for breakfast.

We drove to Marion Bay along a very scenic road. The wreck of the immigrant ship, the “Marion” near here in 1851 gave its name to Marion Bay. Whilst the town wasn’t that interesting, we did stop for a drink in the local Tavern and a short power nap next to the jetty. Then it was onwards through Warooka again and via a small wrong turn to Coobowie on Salt Creek Bay. We passed through Yorketown which was surrounded by 200 salt lakes, and the red to pink to white colour of the lakes made for some great photos.

We passed huge grain silos and a large wind farm in the distance and decided to spend the night at the Top Tourist caravan park at Coobowie as we had run out of on board water, and very pleasant park it was too. The amenities were spotless, the people friendly and we had the benefit of a large shady tree and the beach just across the road. We took the dogs for a walk on part of the coastal trail to Edithburgh and then settled in for the night.

Past history tells of three bushrangers who were captured at Coobowie and claimed they were towed there by a huge whale. Nevertheless they were taken back to Tasmania and hanged, so their story didn’t quite work!

We took off rather slowly the next morning and drove into Edithburgh. On the way in we heard on the radio that there had been a murder in town that night. We found out from a local cafe owner that a wife had allegedly murdered her husband and was in custody, so we felt quite safe that there was no manic murderer at large in the town! The couple were apparently new to the town and had had a row in the pub in the evening during which the husband threw a glass of red wine over his wife before they both went home. The husband was only in his thirties – so all very sad.

We walked first along the jetty but it was extremely windy and the dogs decided to play up by eating everything they could see (lots of bait left and pieces of crab and fish), poo-ing and wee-ing and tugging and pulling - the wind and fishy smells just got them over excited! Tia seemed to think that anyone casting a line was really throwing a ball for her! So we walked back to the town instead for a quieter life.

Edithburgh was very pretty – we loved all the stone cottages with wide verandas and red or grey corrugated roofs. The town had an olde-world feel and the harbour was scenic with boat ramps. The town once thrived on harvesting salt and sending it over the water, so it too has had its fair share of ship wrecks. It still seemed very prosperous and well maintained. An old stone house on the front was being done up and looked fabulous and we found out that over $1M was being spent on renovations alone.

After coffee and cake at the cafe, we drove out to see the wind farm which had more than 50 turbines supplying the town and farms. Then on we went, back through Coobowie and stopped at Stansbury for lunch. On the way into town Paul bought fresh snapper, and then a local man (who had overheard Paul asking if there was a crab to buy) kindly gave us a free crab that he had caught. So we were well equipped for dinner. We did a bit of a shop at the local IGA and a short dog walk and then hit the computers for a couple of hours, parked overlooking the bay and Oyster Point. If you are a fisherman, the Yorke Peninsula is THE place to be.

Our next stop was at Port Julia – a tiny town of just a few houses off the main road. There was a row of real old beach shacks (holiday homes) sitting on the edge of the water with steep cliffs all around and a little bit of beach that was just enough for Tia to get a good run. Muffin and Ian pottered as usual, taking in all the smells and sights. There was a camping area just nearby on an old original cricket pitch, so we stayed there for the night. The caretaker came round to collect the $6.00 nightly fee, and Paul cooked up a storm with the crab and snapper. There were a few other campers there but all were spaced a long way apart. Our nearest neighbours had a Christmas tree with lights powered by a small wind turbine they had set up – very innovative.

We sat outside for dinner and both agreed that the countryside looked and sounded very English. We were on an oval at the edge of a huge cut wheat field, sitting beneath lovely smelling old pine trees which were loaded with cones and with lots of birds twittering in the branches. When it got dark we retired into the van and amazingly had really good TV reception so we watched the SBS news and ‘Man v. the Wild’ and ‘The Fixer’.

We made it to Ardrossan the next morning and parked under a shady tree and explored the town, jetty and did a bit of shopping. We met a very interesting local man on the jetty who told us a lot about fishing and the tides, including the Dodge Tide where the sea hardly moves in and out at all. We saw shoals of mullet, and crabs being caught by the dozen by holiday-makers. We were also lucky to see a Dolphin mother and her baby work together to drive a large shoal of fish towards the shore and then attack them – so lots of fish were leaping for their lives out of the water, trying to escape. It was quite a sight and everyone on the jetty stopped to ooh and aah.

Our next stop was Port Wakefield and it was quite a shock to hit the main road from Adelaide with all the road trains and petrol stations and fast food outlets. We quickly took a turn down to the town centre of the historical part of Port Wakefield. It was very hot and we were just grateful to get into the little caravan park in the tiny old town. Once we were settled we did a little exploratory walk and found out that the town was originally known as Port Henry and was used as a port for copper ore which was brought more than 80km by mule and bullock train. The sad demise of the port was due to the arrival of the railway and lack of facilities. The town of Wakefield was built next to the port in 1859 and it was then that Port Henry adopted the name of Port Wakefield. The town has changed very little from those days and most of the original buildings are intact but with a very run down appearance.

The morning came with a heat wave and temperatures quickly rose to 42 degrees. We heard on the news that there were bush fires and several homes lost in Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula where we had travelled only a few weeks previously. We drove in sweltering temperatures to our ‘home’ for Christmas week – the Clare Valley. The drive was pretty and hilly, and the town of Clare was very busy and had lots of shops, cafes and hotels. We stopped briefly to explore the town and then went on to check into the Clare Caravan Park which was 3 kms south of the town.

We were amazed to find the caravan park almost empty on the day before Christmas Eve. It was a nice big park with lots of shady trees, but we stayed in the van with the air-conditioning on just to cool off a bit. It was still sweltering outside and stayed at 42 degrees well into the evening. That night the wind picked up and there was a storm with a cool front. We slept badly as there were cones falling from the trees onto the van roof and the wind was howling through the branches. We heard the banging and securing of tent ropes in the middle of the night and then the loud crack and crash of a tree branch that split from the trunk and fell down. It was very fortunate that it was on the edge of the park and no-one was camped beneath.

The morning was a relief and the temperature so much cooler and better. We took the doggies for a walk along a small part of the 34km famous ‘Riesling Trail’, which follows the former railway from Auburn to beyond Clare. The countryside was really lovely and the trail passed many vineyards and often had an English wooded feel. We walked 3kms into Clare town and back. In town we sat outside with a coffee and cake and Muffin disgraced herself by barking furiously at two little fluffy white dogs passing by. Paul had to pick her up and carry her out of the immediate vicinity whilst apologising for the noise to the other cafe patrons as he went by! Worse than having a toddler with a temper tantrum I think...

On Christmas Eve later in the afternoon we drove back into town and stocked up on festive goodies for our Christmas Day meals, then drove 15kms to a very historic town called Mintaro. The town was established in 1849 and is part of a State Heritage Area. We strolled though the old streets which have the same village charm of the English Cotswolds. Many of the old buildings feature Mintaro slate from a local quarry. There were lovely cottage gardens and an old blue stone church and community buildings. We had dinner at The Magpie & Stump historic pub with just a few locals, but whilst the surrounds were quite lovely, the food was a bit ordinary. But then I have been very spoilt with many years of Paul’s wonderful cooking!

We carefully drove back to our spot at the campsite as it was getting dark and listened to the carol service on the ABC Radio. Many of the caravans in the park had put up festive twinkling lights and decorations, and there were tables piled with bottles of good cheer. We strolled around and wished a Merry Christmas to people, everyone seemed jolly and it was a lovely environment with the trees gently waving and the stars out. And so to bed.

Christmas Day was glorious – lovely warm temperature with blue skies and a gentle breeze. We jumped out of bed, but it was a bit strange that we had no ‘presents under the Christmas tree’ to share. I had already bought Paul a folding camping table for outdoors and he had bought me two audio books – but of course these were ‘presents’ we both wanted for our travels and they were already in use! After breakfast we walked part of the Spring Gully Loop for about 2 hours or about 8kms, up the hills and down the valleys. The views were spectacular over the wineries, fruit trees, olive groves and fields. There were horses and sheep in the fields to get Tia and Ian excited and we stopped for a coffee from our flask and some ginger nut biscuits.

Back at the campsite we just relaxed sitting outside in our chairs and enjoying a very nice piece of Christmas fruit cake while the exhausted doggies had a special Christmas biscuit treat and a sleep. Then Paul was up and running with Christmas Dinner –a Jamie Oliver special of stuffed pumpkin with pistachio nuts, cranberries, rice, olives, spices and mange touts and parsnips along with lush giant prawns. We had mince pies and chocolates with plenty of the local Riesling wine. We watched a few really old episodes of Morecombe and Wise and enjoyed a long SKYPE video/phone session with all my family in Edinburgh. It was so good to be able to actually see them on Christmas Day enjoying a ‘White Christmas’.

Boxing Day was also warm and sunny and we walked the other part of the Riesling Trail with the dogs for about 2 hours. We took a detour to Sevenhill Cellars, the oldest winery and vineyard in the region. It was founded by the Jesuits in 1851 and still produces sacramental wines and other wines. The whole area was very relaxing and picturesque to stroll around. In the middle of the vineyard was the magnificent St Aloysius Church which was beautifully decorated for Christmas with a nativity scene. We explored the church and crypt and then we all sat under a huge Cypress tree for a rest and drank our flask coffee.

We spent the remainder of the day relaxing, reading and having a power nap. The poor doggies were quite exhausted and stiff after their long walk, but they did manage to wake up to have left-over prawns and parsnip for dinner.

On reflection, it was a very different Christmas for us this year - we had certainly avoided most of the manic commercialism, but we did miss some of the nice traditional elements. In any event we had time to reflect on the meaning of Christmas and how fortunate we are to be able to travel like this. I think this is one Christmas we will remember in the years to come.

Week Twenty-nine

2009-12-19T02:18:00.000-08:00

The carol concert at Whyalla was not what we expected. I suppose we were thinking ‘Carols in the Domain, Sydney’, but this was definitely ‘Carols in suburbia’... There were lots of kiddies, hotdogs and amateur school choir performances. I expect all their parents were very proud, but Paul and I picked up our folding camp chairs and quietly scarpered at half-time!

We spent much of the next morning parked outside Harvey Norman in Whyalla just doing odd jobs, picking up more flea and worm tablets from the vets (for the dogs), checking the van tires and a bit of shopping. Then we drove off to Port Augusta. We deliberately went straight through as we had spent time there on our way over and we drove on towards Port Pirie.

We pulled over at a rather remote farmhouse that advertised ‘motor homes welcome’, but when we had gone down the kilometre or so of dirt road and through the main gate we had an uneasy feeling that felt not unlike ‘Wolf Creek’. The parking area was all disused with bushes and weeds growing through the gravel base, and the toilets and hot showers were just port-a-loos that were also overgrown and looked as though they hadn’t been cleaned for years. We decided this was not the place to spend the night and we left and drove on a few more kilometres to Port Germaine, a very small town just north of Port Pirie.

Port Germaine boasts that it has the longest wooden jetty in Australia. And when we saw the tide go out we knew why - the beach extended as far as you could see and the walk to reach the water was several kilometres. People were driving out along the beach in their cars and then walking the last bit to the end of the jetty to swim and fish for crabs. We had a great walk, Paul dug for Pippies and Tia danced with a live crab which had been landed on the jetty. She was very excited and only just avoided having her nose gripped by two large pincers. The view of the Flinders Ranges was a lovely backdrop to the beach and jetty and we took lots of photos as usual.

The weather was very warm and it was a relief when the sun went down and we settled into a very sweet caravan park opposite the jetty. A good shower was welcome and Paul trotted off to the Hotel for a bottle of white wine to have with his ‘Spaghetti Vongole’. The next morning was even hotter and we made a quick decision to stay another night at Port Germaine at our powered site so we could keep our air conditioning on in the van. The air outside was like putting your head in an oven, must have been 39 degrees, so we stayed in most of the day. We did have a little stroll through the town early in the morning. Of note was an amazing bric-a-brac/antique shop that had all sorts of weird and wonderful items in the window: skeletons sitting in old armchairs covered in cobwebs and funny old notices and posters hand written by the owner who must surely have a screw loose! The place seemed shut up, so we didn’t get inside – even if we had dared to go in.

We had a pleasant evening sitting outside under the stars chatting to an Australian couple and an English couple. The latter had travelled to Australia six times and this time they were touring between Perth and Adelaide in a campervan. The next morning we realised that we had got badly bitten by hundreds of little mosquitoes that we hadn’t noticed and we spent the next three days moaning and trying not to scratch.

We moved on to Port Pirie but the weather was stinking hot still at 39 degrees and there was little or no shade to park under in the town. We have found this to be a common problem in many small towns and it certainly drives us away - especially as we have the dogs to think of too. We took a drive around the back of the world’s largest lead smelter in our air-conditioned van and Paul did a little shopping trip to Woolworths and felt like he had been in a sauna and run a marathon simultaneously.

Next stop was Port Broughton which thankfully had a wonderful line of Norfolk pine trees all along the foreshore so we could park there in relative comfort. It was still far too hot to think about any exploratory walks with the dogs, so we all sat at a cafe and had ‘spiders’ ie a dollop of ice-cream in lemonade. Then the cafe owner came out with three plates of chicken and ham for the doggies – what a treat for them and how kind. The joint cafe owners told us that they had retired in Perth after making a lot of money in property and had been travelling in a caravan round Oz. They saw the cafe in Port Broughton up for sale when they passed through and made a silly offer for it and here they were! They were branching out in the town as they had just bought a B&B next door.

We gratefully drove into the local caravan park and got connected to the power as fast as possible so that we could switch on our internal air-conditioning. It was still incredibly hot and we had to spray the dogs with cold water and Tia had a cooling water soaked bandana round her neck. I did some washing and it dried on the line in about 15 minutes and that included towels. Amazing. The forecast was for a cool change overnight and fortunately that came true. The temperature plummeted from 39 to 24 degrees and there was a light rain falling for most of the next morning. It was such a relief.

We moved on to Wallaroo and the drive was pleasant and only about 50kms. As it was drizzling we stopped in the town car park and Paul worked on his laptop while I wandered along the street looking at the shops. As there were four hairdressers in the street of 20 or so shops I decided to try and get my hair ‘done’. The third one I tried said yes and fitted me in that afternoon. The doggies seemed quite content to lie around in the van recovering from the heat of the last few days.

Later that afternoon we drove the short distance from the town to the Port of Wallaroo. It is a deep sea port and home to the Spencer Gulf prawn fleet. As we sat eating some excellent fresh whiting and chips (Paul had seconds of the fish and said it was the ‘best ever’), we saw several of the prawn trawlers leave the marina and head out to sea. The foreshore was dominated by the huge grain silos and long conveyor belts running out along the wooden planked jetty to deliver grain straight into the holds of waiting ships for export. There were lots of crabs being caught from the jetty and the fishing seemed plentiful there.

The Sea SA ferry used to run between Wallaroo and Lucky Bay, but not now (the old ferry was sold and a new one not bought – yet). There were plans for a huge redevelopment of the foreshore when the ferry was running, but now that the new ferry seems to be in limbo, plans have ground to a halt. The latest Wallaroo News says that the new craft will arrive next year and the upgrade is still in the Council’s long term plans. I hope so because (in their words), it was the ferry that made Wallaroo a ‘through road’ instead of a ‘dead end’.

We found a place to stay overnight in the parking area where trucks would wait before being loaded up with grain, fish, copper etc. And yes, it was an official rest area according to our Camps 5 traveller’s bible. It wasn’t very scenic but very convenient and we had a large asphalt space with just us and one other van, so all good.

In the night I was woken by feral cats fighting in the bushy area around the parking site. Paul (bless him) slept through the caterwauling as did the dogs. We went back to the marina the next morning and saw the fishing fleet returning with their haul of prawns – all their catch of prawns had been cooked and instantly frozen on board and packed into boxes. So we just watched as a small conveyor belt off loaded the boxes.

We then paid a visit to the Wallaroo Heritage and Nautical Museum and saw photos of the amazing times when the docks teamed with men and the copper smelter was in full swing delivering copper and other metals to the world. We saw poor “George”, an enormous Cuttlefish that had been preserved in a murky tank of formalin and we read about the last of the commercial sailing ships that rounded the horn. (See more about this below when we reached Port Victoria.)

Then it was onto our next stop at Moonta Bay – which was actually a slight wrong turn, but brought us out at a magnificent sandy beach where Paul flew his kite and Muffin chased the kite’s shadow barking until she was exhausted. There were shallow rock pools to explore and a Magnum ice-cream to eat... Moonta the town, was first developed in 1861 when a shepherd noticed traces of copper on a wombat burrow. There was a flood of skilled miners from Cornwall who contributed to the economic explosion and they were affectionately known as Cousin Jacks and Jennies. The little stone houses and shops along the high street were very pretty.

We drove onto Port Victoria and now we were 189Kms from Adelaide. Port Victoria was a tiny town which claimed to be the last of the windjammer ports, where grain was loaded onto the magnificent sailing ships bound for Europe via Cape Horn. The ‘Pamir’ and ‘Passat’ were the last two ships to leave in 1949 on the last commercial voyage worldwide. The town was great for scuba divers as there are eight old shipwrecks around the nearby Wardang Island to explore.

There was a museum in front of the jetty but it was closed when we arrived, so we walked down the jetty and spoke to a fisherman instead. We could see big Kingfish swimming amongst the jetty pylons and we were told that they had escaped as hatchlings from a fish farm after a shark attack had torn the enclosure. Now they were a nice big size and the fisherman was hoping to catch a couple. Back on dry land we spoke to a local couple who were very pleasant and the lady could remember the romantic time from her childhood when the port was crowded with sailing ships and hundreds of sailors and port hands roamed the streets.

We spent the night in a lovely spot just out of town overlooking a lovely beach. We were completely alone with not a car or house in sight, just the waves and sand. Once it was dark we watched an old movie starring Tom Selleck and we all slept well. I was a little troubled with sinusitis when I woke the next morning so Paul walked the ‘Geology Trail’ with Tia, which was well marked with interpretive signage and followed the volcanic beginnings of the area. After a quick shop for milk and bread we headed off for Corny Point via Minlaton.

We stopped briefly in Minlaton to look at the restored ‘Red Devil’ Bristol monoplane on show there. This plane was flown by Captain Harry Butler across the Gulf from Adelaide in 1919 to bring the Royal Mail. Harry was a daredevil and had a tragic end when he crash-landed, survived for 18 months with horrific facial injuries and then suddenly died of a brain abscess when in his 30’s. Minlaton is known as the ‘Barley Capital of the World’ and the scenery around this area is of waving barley and wheat fields everywhere. Most had been harvested by now, but all looked golden yellow and was beautifully relaxing to drive through. There was no traffic and it was a surprise to meet even one other car or van.

We arrived at Corny Point in the late afternoon and drove along an unsealed road for a few kilometres to the Lighthouse, built in 1881. The coast line was rugged with rocks and sandy coves and cliffs. The wind blew hard, and we could see Dolphins surfing off shore. The seagulls ducked and weaved, flying together in a group with the sun glinting off their wings. Matthew Flinders the explorer named this place Corny Point because it looked like a corn on the ‘foot‘ of the Yorke Peninsula. We found a place to stop for the evening on the cliff edge alongside a little dirt road and knew that we had found multi-million dollar views for free! We did just first check that there were no overhanging ledges under the van before Paul cooked up scallops and noodles for dinner. Then I updated the Blog for the week and we watched a great sunset at around 8.30pm. The sky was clear and the tide just creeping back in and again, for our second night running there was not one other person, car or house in sight. The world was all ours!

Week Twenty-eight

2009-12-12T23:56:00.000-08:00

Well we had such a relaxing day in Tumby Bay on Sunday. We slept in after watching ‘Titanic’ on the TV (again). The weather was perfect, blue skies and not too hot so we immediately took the doggies on to the 10km white sandy beach, which was just a couple of steps from our van. Tia ran ragged after her tennis ball, in and out of the water and the two little ones pottered about as usual. Then it was back for mushroom omelette on toast for breakfast for us and sardines for the dogs. The rest of the day we spent just lounging about reading, talking, listening to the radio with all the interesting Australian politics that are happening right now. I put a bit of washing on and hung it on the line and it was dry in no time. Paul made very tasty pasta for a late lunch and it was time for an afternoon sleep!

By 4.30pm the dogs wanted some action, so we went for a long walk over the estuary and round the headland. We passed a street of old holiday homes which had probably been built in the 1950s and looked like typical Australian ‘Shacks’. Then we came to a new estate of huge homes with personal jetties that had been built around man-made canals. Some plots of land still for sale and some homes not yet finished. It looked like the town was growing fast.

There was a metal set of steps up to a lookout that was obviously enjoyed by many seagulls too! From the top we could see the beautiful bay and the islands off shore. There were interesting rock formations on the beaches and a range of coastal habitats – estuarine creek, mudflats, Mangroves, salt marshes and little rocky outcrops and sandy beaches. The pelicans were flying in formation along the bay and there was plenty to explore. After a small altercation with a very excited Labrador that charged towards us off leash, we got back to camp at 6.30pm with three famished dogs.

The dogs were fed and were nicely sleepy, and the sun was getting low and so it was time for an apple ale. We sat outside in our deck chairs and listened to music and watched the wattle birds and parrots jostling for a good branch for the night. Paul got out the picnic rug and did some Pilates stretches as the sun set and then we went inside the van for dinner and a movie.

All the above activity was so relaxing that we just repeated most of it for the next five days and stayed put at beautiful Tumby Bay. We fell easily into a pattern of nice long walks along the coast and round the town in the morning, computers and reading in the afternoon, then dinner and TV/Movie in the evening. The caravan park remained almost empty so we had the hot showers, laundry and a huge area of grass and trees all to ourselves. It was very nice to have a break from travelling and perhaps we hadn’t realised that we needed some time out to recharge our batteries.

I might digress a little here and tell you just a little about our computer work, because you’re probably thinking “why are they spending so much time on their laptops?”

Kathryn: computer activities...
1)Private - monitor private bank accounts and pay bills, deal with investment property activity and agent requests, send and receive emails from friends & relatives, write up and publish Blog http://archertravelnews.blogspot.com each week, download photos, make backups, Google trip information
2)DeathRowPets – maintain database with new subscribers and bounces/opt-outs, set up and send out regular information Updates to database, edit http://www.deathrowpets.net web site
3)PACE Australia - monitor PACE accounts and pay bills, maintain PACE database and synchronisation, edit http://www.paceaustralia.com.au web site, delegate web enquiries, monitor advertising, help and support Consultants, back up data

Paul: computer activities...
1) Private - buy and sell shares, track trades, monitor bank accounts, send and receive emails from friends and relatives, download photos, notify friends of Blog updates
2) DeathRowPets - write information Updates, write letters and emails, network and make new contacts, write up and publish http://deathrowpets.wordpress.com Blog articles, deal with enquiries and comments, manage campaigns
3) PACE Australia – support Consultants, network and liaise with clients

And these are just the main computer jobs, there are many more bits and pieces not worth mentioning here. So we have not left it all behind as you may have thought. Life is still pretty complicated but I suppose it keeps the mind ticking over.

We sadly moved off from Tumby Bay with a quick stop at the next tiny fishing village called Port Neil. Whilst it seemed quite pretty the wind was really blowing and we struggled to get out of the van when we parked at the jetty. So we drove on to Arno Bay for lunch. This town was once a major port with superphosphate shipped in and cereal crops shipped out. We parked at the Jetty and admired the sandy beach piled with huge clumps of sea weed and lined with pretty beachside shacks. Now with a population of 220, Arno Bay is the headquarters of CleanSeas which is a major Tuna and Kingfish aquaculture business.

After a brisk walk along the beach we drove on to Cowell for the evening. Cowell is on Franklin Harbour, a 48sq km natural harbour. The town was settled in 1853 and has a good variety of shops and pretty old stone cottages. We had a drink and meal of garfish and roasted veggies in the Cowell Commercial Hotel and it was very tasty. We rented the DVD “The Boat that Rocked” and had a great laugh watching it in the van parked in the $5.00 per night motor home rest area in town.

The next morning we took the doggies for a walk around the playing fields and then into the town. This was a rather unnerving experience as there was a dog off leash that charged us when we walked past the other hotel in town, and then several dogs that barked ferociously and ran up and down the fence line as we passed their front gardens. In spite of this we liked the town and Paul bought a tray of mussels and two crabs from ‘Turners Oysters and Seafood’. We were also surprised to learn that Nephrite Jade was discovered in the nearby Minbrie Range in 1965, so we visited the Cowell Jade and Gemstone Showroom and had a chat with the owner. The colour of the jade found was mainly dark green with some even jet black – quite different from the jade we saw in China on a previous holiday. However all the settings seemed very old fashioned, so we didn’t think they would be selling too much.

We drove on to little Lucky Bay which was the departure point for the SeaSA car and passenger ferry to Wallaroo on the Yorke Peninsula. It isn’t running now as the owner has sold the old ferry and not yet bought a new one. We wondered if there just weren’t enough passengers to make it viable. Lucky Bay was yet another one street town with a huge white sandy beach and jetty. Paul and I thought that we were starting to get “beached out” (if there’s such a thing). We were quite bemused to admit to this as we love walking on beaches with the doggies. Can there be too much of such a good thing – or are we just very spoilt?

Tia christened Lucky Bay with a big sicky outside the van after eating some rabbit poo. Better out than in I suppose, as long as out is outside the van!

We stopped for the night in a free rest area just outside Whyalla –as usual we were the only ones there. Along the way we saw an emu cross the road and then the huge tailings from Iron Duke, the OneSteel iron ore mine in the nearby South Middleback Ranges. Paul got stuck into cooking a seafood extravaganza with our purchases from Cowell while we watched the news. Couldn’t believe it was just two weeks to Christmas. I think we must feel our least Christmassy ever – perhaps we should make an effort to decorate the van somehow...

We drove into Whyalla the next morning and went straight to the Information Centre. The staff were very helpful and pointed us in the right direction for a $5 place to stay the night in town at the local Sports club. We also found out where to top up our water, empty our toilet cassette and all the ‘must visit’ places. First stop was just next door at the Maritime Museum where we had a guided tour of the WWII corvette “HMAS Whyalla”. The ship was the first modern warship built in South Australia in 1941 and now stands on dry land 2km from the sea, having been restored and relocated! It was a very interesting tour and Paul had a chance to sound the steam whistle and sit on the gun and we saw inside all the officers and seaman’s quarters.

We moved just 300m along to the Tandarra Craft Village – once the original BHP single men’s quarters built in 1942 to house the large workforce constructing the steelworks and shipyard. Now the buildings house the permanent home of many craft clubs. It was pleasant wandering through all the rooms looking at the wares, but most of the items were very old fashioned knitted and crochet goods. I did show goodwill and bought a plastic bags holder for the van for $5.

Paul went for a swim and shower at the local leisure centre, but when I did the same, they accidentally turned the lights out on me, leaving me half washed and un rinsed in total darkness in a strange shower room. Not happy Kath! We decided to check out our night stay at the Sports Centre and after dinner we drove to the cinema to see “Twilight”. It wasn’t really our cup of tea, but was also a little spoilt by a couple of ‘Bogan’ teenagers who giggled and swore throughout the movie.
The next morning as we drove off towards the Foreshore, a lady ran after us with a whole platter of home-made sweets and said she had seen us parked and thought we might enjoy them – how lovely. And indeed they did look fantastic: coconut ice, fudge, rocky-road, apricot balls, truffles etc.

We first went up Hammock Hill Lookout at the eastern end of town. It was the site of the first settlement and fortifications with guns were built in 1942. The lookout was further developed by BHP and opened by the Queen in 1986. It was simply amazing to see the huge Whyalla OneSteel steel works and a 360 degree view across Spencer Gulf to the Flinders Ranges. Paul and I argued about which was the best view – I opted for the massive steelworks (most interesting) and he wanted the foreshore and natural scenery.

Afterwards we walked the doggies along the foreshore and wide beach with the tide out for miles. Then we walked through the Ada Ryan gardens. Paul took photos of the old workers cottages near the steelworks which were coated all over in fine red dust – a house-wife’s nightmare!

We did some shopping and then visited the Mount Laura Homestead Museum. The house was built in 1922 on station country south of Whyalla. The town of Whyalla has now engulfed the homestead but it was fortunately been given to the National Trust and preserved. The area also included the Gay Street cottage which was built by BHP in 1914 for rental to its employees. Other attractions of note were all the engines used by the farming community and the first police “lock up”.

Well after taking all this in we were pretty exhausted and decided to have dinner and go to the local Carol Concert in the Civic Park to get us into the Christmas spirit. It was nice to roll up in our van early, find a spot to park and cook dinner and then be able to stroll over to the concert with our camping seats.

Week Twenty-seven

2009-12-05T02:27:00.000-08:00

Our next stop was at Elliston which had a lovely scenic cliff drive and interesting beach to explore with the doggies, but the town itself seemed remarkably empty. It was Sunday, but everything was shut except the petrol station which was a relief as we were getting short of diesel. Anyway it was a relaxing sort of day and we slowly drove on towards a rest area just outside of the next tiny settlement at Sheringa. On the way we went down a dirt road to see if we could get to the Talia Caves, but turned back as Muffin was not enjoying the rough ride. Bumped into Colin and Jill again!

We stopped at a quirky bakery at Colton that had a self-serve honesty box for some delicious wood fired fresh bread and arrived at the rest area at about 5.00pm. It was a nice one overlooking some yellow fields of wheat and planted with native trees for shade. As dusk fell we saw two wild dogs jumping about after rabbits in the field. They looked smaller than Dingos and didn’t have the bushy fox tail, so we assumed they were cross breeds of some sort.

After a good night’s sleep we headed for Coffin Bay – a drive of about 100kms. Coffin Bay is a tiny town on a stunning estuary surrounded by National Park and is home to some of the finest oysters in the world. Sadly Paul and I don’t enjoy oysters, though we were very tempted to try a few! There were many meandering bays, channels and inlets to walk and drive around and the views were great.

Coffin Bay was discovered by Lieutenant Matthew Flinders in 1802 and he named the bay after Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin who had been responsible for outfitting Flinders ship, the ‘Investigator’. Sir Isaac was born in Boston and had a very illustrious career in the British Navy which he joined in 1773 when he was just 14 years old, rising to eventually become an Admiral and Baronet.

The funny thing about this area was all the names of doom and gloom: Avoid Bay, Coffin Bay, Perforated Island, Misery Point... hope this wasn’t meant to be a warning! ... (See water tank trouble next day....)

After a long walk around the shoreline, we stayed the night at the Coffin Bay Caravan Park. On arrival our first task was to sweep away all the kangaroo poo from around the van otherwise Ian would have eaten it - so would Tia and Muffin, for some reason it is very tasty to dogs! We got settled and discovered a movie on TV called “Signs” with Mel Gibson and ended staying up until midnight to see the end. We lay in bed and watched the kangaroos from the window as they grazed all around the van. It was like being in a hide.

The next day started very badly indeed. Paul connected the hose from an outside tap to the van to top up the water, turned it on full blast and promptly forgot about it. We were sitting in the van when there was a tremendous BANG which made me think at first that a gas cylinder had blown. But it was simply that the water entering the tank was under very high pressure and when full, the overflow hole wasn’t large enough to let the volume of water out. So the tank swelled, and swelled... The tank is made of stainless steel and sits in a metal frame also supported by plywood under the van. The plywood had actually split along its length but fortunately the tank remained intact.

I’m afraid that put a damper on the day and even though Paul took the dogs for another good walk along the beautiful Coffin Bay coastline, I only felt better when we reached Port Lincoln and could arrange for the repairs to be done. Port Lincoln was only 50kms away so the drive was easy, but the road was very rough and Muffin didn’t like it one bit. We pulled into a parking spot in the middle of town and fortunately everything we needed was within easy reach.

So we organised the water tank repairs, new flooring for the van (both to be done the next day), shopped at Woolworths, walked along the pier and took some photos of the statue of the racing horse Makybe Diva (three times Melbourne Cup winner) whose owners were from this town. The life-sized bronzed statue cost $180,000 and it was quite an extraordinary sight on the foreshore. Then we bought a little bit of fish and a crab for dinner and drove off to the Port Lincoln Caravan Park, just out of town on the coast for the night. We passed vineyards and olive groves which made Paul quite excited.

Port Lincoln is called the ‘Seafood Capital of Australia’ and has a population of 14,000. It is a major commercial centre for the Eyre Peninsula, with a township overlooking Boston Bay. There are some huge white grain silos that dominate the skyline on one side of the Bay, but fishing and tourism seem to be the major industries now. It is named after Lincolnshire in England which was the home town of navigator Matthew Flinders. But for a bit more fresh water it might have become the capital of South Australia. Boston Bay is three times the size of Sydney Harbour and is one of the world’s largest protected natural harbours.

The next day was “repair day”. We drove early to the caravan repair shop and left the van there so they could fix up the water tank and a couple of other minor items, and we walked with the doggies to the foreshore and had a picnic breakfast in the shadow of the Makybe Diva statue. Then we wandered and explored the town and had a cafe lunch before going back to collect the van. All was repaired, so after a quick tour of the Marina, our next stop was just a bit further down the road to the flooring place. Our new vinyl floor looked great when it was finished and it was quite tricky to cut around all the cabinetry – so hats off to Ben the layer.

We drove back to the foreshore for a dog walk and Paul was brave enough to jump off the pier for a swim in the sea. After feeding the dogs we went along to the Pier Hotel and met up with friends Colin and Jill for drinks and dinner. We had some lovely tuna, mulloway and seafood, Jill had a tasty chicken risotto. We talked and joked and watched the world go by from our table on the seafront. There was a most beautiful full moon with a ‘staircase’ reflection in the sea in front of us. So out came our cameras and long exposures and steady hands - we hoped. Around 10.30pm we drove off to our respective caravan parks – we were in the ‘dog friendly’ one, and Colin and Jill in the Top Tourist one closer to town.

Paul and I got up early the next morning as we had booked to go out on a boat to learn about the commercial tuna fishing industry from the marina, but just as we were getting ready to leave the caravan park, we got a phone call to say the trip was cancelled due to wind and rough sea. So we took the doggies down onto the beach for an invigorating walk instead, which they loved and then we came back to work on our computers and the DeathRowPets next email update for our subscribers. We decided to stay put for the day as the boat trip had been rescheduled for the next morning, weather permitting, so we would go back into town then.

The weather was really beautiful the next day as we drove to the Marina in Port Lincoln in time for the ‘Authentic Tuna Farm and Sightseeing Cruise’ on the waters of Boston Bay starting at 9.00am. I had elected to do the morning trip and Paul would do the afternoon one at 2.00pm. This meant that someone would be around to look after the doggies and van, and we could enjoy some ‘apart time’ after 6 months dancing around each other in the van!

The cruise was great and we saw fur seals and sea lions on a rocky island off shore, dolphins swimming in the wake, and learnt all about the commercial Blue Fin Tuna and Kingfish industry. We saw the Tuna Farms and ended the cruise with a tasting of Sashimi. We were amazed at the wealth of the Tuna Barons who own fishing rights and have huge house and boats and make more than $40M a year... So even though the fishing quotas have been reduced to protect the fish for the future, we found it hard to feel sorry for these millionaires. Paul’s cruise also had an underwater viewing area to see the tuna and the chance to hand feed and swim with these huge fish if you wanted.

The Tuna are produced from wild immature stock, firstly located by plane and then caught by huge nets off boats in the Great Australian Bite and towed very slowly and carefully back to Boston Bay where they are fattened up with pilchards in vast protected net enclosures in the open sea until they are 30-40 kilograms each. They are sold at $3,000 each by the fisheries mainly to the Japanese market.

We had dinner at the Marina but forgot that all the Christmas parties were now in full swing, so whilst we managed to get a table for two, the noise was a bit overwhelming and we were pleased to escape back to the caravan park.

Paul had an unnerving experience with a solitary camper who he had chatted to briefly the day before. The man came to our van early the next morning with a hand written letter covering more than two pages of very weird scribble. The poor man was obviously mentally unwell and his letter was full of strange ideas and persecutions. Fortunately we were just leaving then which was probably for the best. But we were left wondering if we should let the police, hospital or missing persons know...

The next day we visited the Axel Stenross Maritime Museum and saw an excellent movie on the aquaculture industry that provided more details on this profitable fishing business. The museum was the original boat building workshop of Axel Stenross, a Finnish boat builder who set up his business in Port Lincoln in the late 1920s. The early photographs and maritime relics from this era were very interesting - it was such a hard life in those days.

After a leisurely lunch we drove along the beautiful wild and remote coast and amongst the harvested wheat fields to our next stop at Tumby Bay - just 50kms or so. As we reached the little town we drove straight down the high street to the pristine white beach with pretty jetty and pine trees. The colour of the water was pale turquoise getting darker and deeper further out and we couldn’t wait to get the dogs out of the van and onto the beach for a long walk and swim – well Tia anyway, Muffin and Ian just paddle under duress!

We found the caravan park right on the beach just a short walk from the town centre and booked in for a couple of nights. We managed to manoeuvre ourselves under a group of trees for some nice shade and Paul cooked Barramundi fillets, potatoes, cabbage and beans with a mince pie and yoghurt for dessert. He really could open his own restaurant!

To see our photos, right click the following link and 'open in a new window': http://picasaweb.google.com.au/paularcher001

Week Twenty-six

2009-11-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

The weather cleared up and turned out very nice at Ceduna so we extended our stay to 4 nights. The doggies loved running on nearby Shelly Beach which was covered in sea rivulets when the tide went out, and even little Ian and Muffin galloped through the shallow warm water.

Ceduna Foreshore Caravan Park was a friendly little place and we had a good evening in the camp kitchen with other travellers all cooking up their fishing hauls from the day. Paul had dug up some cockles on the beach and used them in tasty looking pasta. Others had caught crabs and oysters. Dinner under the stars was washed down with a glass or two of wine and some very congenial conversation with Colin, Jill, Ben, Lee and others.

A lady guest at the caravan park found a tiny little male puppy crying with no owner to be found and he had no tags, registration or microchip. So she contacted the local Ranger and after the puppy had endured a few nights in the local pound she retrieved him and decided to give him a home with her and her husband. Then when she took him out for a little walk, a family group of Aboriginals saw the puppy and claimed him as theirs. We were not sure of the final outcome to this as we were leaving Ceduna, but we do hope that the puppy ended up in the safest and best home.... (Postscript: good news - the puppy did end up with the lady and will be much loved)

We left Ceduna feeling quite rested and made our way down the Flinders Highway for lunch at Smokey Bay - a very quiet and relaxed fishing village on a huge beautiful bay, 40km south of Ceduna on the Eyre Peninsula. There was a long jetty, one general store and a caravan park. We walked along the beach and spoke to the fishermen on the jetty. There was a strong consistent wind blowing along the coast that apparently doesn’t often let up, so even though it was summer, the locals had woollen beanies on! We spent the night at a rest area off the main road, on the coast at Haslam – a real ‘one horse’ town, with only a part-time post office and a few small homes.

It was an easy 60km drive to Streaky Bay the next morning, made famous in the 1970's movie Blue Fin. Captain Matthew Flinders named Streaky Bay in 1802 for the bands of colour in the water, which were made by oils given off by seaweed! Oysters, abalone and scallops are all very popular, but the town has a history as a wheat and wool port in the 1880’s and agriculture is still the major industry today. The town was a little more substantial that the previous couple we had passed through and had TWO hairdressers, which tells you something I suppose. Our three dogs disgraced us by barking ferociously at another ‘dog for the blind’ which was just passing by with blind owner doing his job. Oh the shame of it!

We parked the van in the shade while we decided which tourist attraction to visit....the National Trust museum, the oyster shed tour, the restored engine museum or the replica ‘Great White Shark’ weighing 1,500kg caught on a 24kg line in 1990...

We stayed the night in a rest area that was OK except for a horrible smell from the bin – what was in there we wondered? We moved off early the next morning to visit Murphy’s Haystacks – an outcrop of pink granite boulders set in fields of wheat. We were the only ones there as we wandered amongst the beautiful structures taking photographs. The sun was still low and the light on the rocks and the breeze blowing across the golden fields was stunning. Murphy’s Haystacks are ancient wind worn granite ‘inselbergs’ purported to be over 1500 million years old. We found it very scenic indeed.

We stopped at a tiny village called Port Kenny just a bit further along the Eye Peninsula and found ourselves back in a time warp – nothing had changed since about 1940! The few homes, the old store and the hotel were just like the old photos you sometimes see of a different era. We noted that the hotel did some good seafood and drove on towards Venus Bay but suddenly spotted a couple we knew (Colin and Jill) with their caravan, Ute and boat in a rest area. We had met them at Ceduna so we pulled over to say hello and ended up spending the rest of the day relaxing and chatting to them.

Paul and I did a quick excursion to Venus Bay in the late afternoon to walk the dogs and discovered it to be an idyllic fishing village with a great little jetty surrounded by scores of Pelicans and fishing boats and a sandy beach with warm shallow water for the doggies to run in. It reminded us both of a tiny Icelandic or Scottish Isle village – except the weather was warmer! We drove back to meet Colin and Jill at the Hotel in Port Kenny for a very pleasant evening of seafood and sticky date pudding in a typical Aussie Hotel of yesteryear! The landlord Alan and his wife (the chef) had just taken over the place a month ago and were trying to make a go of it. They were having an event the next night of ‘all you can eat’ prawns, so we decided we would go back the next evening too.

We all spent the night in a rest area just outside Port Kenny and got a little spooked by some rabbit shooters who were driving in the scrub just across the road from us, firing a .22 rifle from the back of a Ute by spotlight in the dark. At one point we felt they were getting a little too close for comfort so we shone and waved our torches to alert them of our presence and they gradually moved away.

The night proved to be windy and stormy with a little rain and quite grey so we moved in a convoy to a campsite at Venus Bay that we had seen the day before. It was situated right on the edge of the bay and we had a fantastic view from our van of the islands and the sand banks in the distance and the boats and Pelicans at our doorstep. The weather improved and the sun came out but there was still quite a wind. We were happy enough to get out our computers and do a bit of work and the laundry while watching the beautiful scenery from the comfort of our van.

We booked our trip on the ‘Spirit of Tasmania’ over to Tasmania from Melbourne and back. The fare is fully flexible and includes 2 allocated reclining seats with ocean view, 3 kennels for the doggies and the motor home, there and back for $890. Not a bad price for a 9-11 hour sea voyage really. We will leave on 28th January and return on 25th February 2010, so we should have plenty of time to enjoy Tassie. Then Paul cooked up an excellent porridge with blueberries and apple puree and yoghurt, and along with a coffee it made a perfect brunch.

Later in the day we took the dogs for a walk along a cliff edge track round the edge of the little peninsular. Parts of the walk were nerve-wracking as the path had been undermined and fallen into the sea, the wind was blustery and the waves were crashing and pounding against the rocks beneath. We decided it was safer to keep the dogs on the lead. It certainly blew any cobwebs away! That same evening we went back to the Hotel at Port Kenny for their special Prawns and Beer night – all you could eat in two hours for $20 a head. The prawns were fresh and delicious and huge - just off the boat. We again enjoyed the company of Colin and Jill who travelled there and back in our motor home, with Colin and Paul in the back with the three doggies and Jill and me in the front. We didn’t pass one car either going or coming back as the road was completely empty except for one rabbit that made it through to safety under the wheels of the van.

It blew a right gale all that night and the noise and rocking in the van was amazing. The next day was again very windy and stormy, but we took the dogs on the beach anyway and they had a great time chasing all the huge seagulls and other birds that were resting on the sand. We got back to the van quite exhilarated and ready for some French Toast and coffee, and to read, doze, listen to music and just enjoy the magnificent view on our doorstep. It doesn’t get much better than this you know.

To see our photos, right click the following link and 'open in a new window': http://picasaweb.google.com.au/paularcher001

Week Twenty-five

2009-11-20T20:17:00.000-08:00

We spent the Monday morning in Kalgoorlie and visited the famous Town Hall with its sumptuous decorations, then drove about 180Kms to a rest area 20kms outside Norseman next to a huge dry salt lake with a railway line alongside. The trains run between the mines and Esperance, carrying the precious minerals, but fortunately not too often so our sleep was undisturbed. That night it rained heavily and in the morning there was water shimmering in the lake. On we drove into Norseman to stock up on water, food and fuel - we had to mentally prepare ourselves for the long drive across the Nullarbor – again!

To my delight, my new glasses were waiting for me at the Norseman Information Centre as planned, which saved us having to hang around waiting for them to turn up. We picked up another map of the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor and off we went.

The first 200Kms were a doddle and then the heavens opened and we had the most horrendous storm of our trip yet. We had to pull off the road and sit part of it out as the rain was torrential and quite scary, especially when a road train went by. Fortunately there was hardly any traffic but the road was a sheet of water. We then discovered that we had a leak through the air-conditioning unit in the centre of the van. It was simply that the rain was so heavy and bouncing off the roof under the cover, so we had to put an open umbrella upside down on the van floor to collect the water – what fun! The worst however was the lightning and thunder that spooked Muffin and had her scratching and scrabbling. Once the storm died down, we limped onto the next rest area and found some high ground to park on.

The next day we covered 250Kms and started a new audio book called The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell. Listening to a good story certainly whiled away the time. We shared the driving in 50-60Km bursts and parked in rest areas or road houses to have drinks and food. We always prepared our own lunch and dinner as the offerings in these places are mainly sausage rolls and pies with hot chips. You only have to look at the road train truckies as they climb out of their huge trucks and into the road houses to see what eating that stuff everyday will do to your health and figure! Anyway Paul was frantically cooking up and using all our remaining vegetables and fruit, nuts and honey before we reached the quarantine checkpoint at Ceduna.

Crossing the Nullarbor this time round we were able to relax more on the journey as we knew what to expect and even where to stop and how much water and fuel we would need etc. Only the scenery was reversed of course, and was just as stunning, vast and remote! We saw Emus strutting in the bush and blue tongue lizards sunbaking on the red dusty paths. A ball of Spinifex chased us down the road and ended up stuck under the van. A wind storm kept us in the van at one stop and buffeted the van and sent dust into every gap but it was short-lived and, like the huge rain storm earlier, quite exciting.

Paul looked in the mirror and commented that he looked like a “wild man” and I had to agree... we were all unwashed and look like a native tribe, but there was something ‘freeing’ about not having to bother with all that primping and preening! And we had a good excuse that we were saving precious water. Toilets are few and far between, so I was grateful for our on-board cassette toilet. It is much nicer than walking out into the bush somewhere – especially in the Nullarbor, where there are no real trees to hide behind! Men have it easy of course... I might as well digress here (as I think we know each other well enough now) and let you know that our cassette toilet has only been used for No 1’s. We have cleverly devised a method using a plastic bag lining the base of the toilet bowl for No2’s. This means that we can have all the comfort of a modern toilet to sit on, but can easily and cleanly remove and dispose of the deposit. It makes emptying the cassette so much easier and pleasant too.

The sad part of this journey was seeing the road kill along the verge – some old and some new. The majority of animals killed are kangaroos and bob-tailed skinks (blue tongue lizards). At one point I managed to carefully avoid a pair of lizards crossing from my side of the road, only to see one hit by a truck coming the other way – and it’s not as though there is heaps of traffic. The driver did try to avoid it with a small swerve, but a back wheel went over one of the poor creature’s head. It was a quick death but horrible to see and all the more sad as these lizards have one partner for life. Fortunately we haven’t hit anything ourselves yet and really hope that never happens...

Our last rest stop for the night along the Nullarbor was magnificent and just on the edge of the amazing Bunda Cliffs. Excellent place to dispose of one’s spouse if so inclined.... The cliffs are Australia’s ‘Land’s End’ from which the Plain drops 90 metres into the pounding Southern Ocean. The Cliffs form an unbroken rampart for over 200km and the view looking along them is just extreme. There was only a little wind to gently rock the van and us to sleep.

We arrived back in Ceduna to be greeted by a light drizzle. We checked into the same caravan park as last time for three nights – very nice, right on the water front. At check-in I noticed that the clock on the wall said 7.00pm – very strange as my watch said 5.00pm... yes we had forgotten to change our watches on the way over the Nullarbor after crossing into SA, and somehow lost 2 hours! So Paul rushed off for a quick takeaway of fish and chips as we had finished up all our fruit and veggies before the quarantine checkpoint outside Ceduna. Sadly the fish and chips were dreadful and we threw most away. They were terribly greasy and with a watery, spongy batter. Yuk. We have of course been spoilt by the wonderful ones we got at home at both Dee Why and Frenchs Forest which we still dream about.

Little Ian kept us up some of the night wanting to go out, but nothing happening. Maybe he had a sore tummy. (He did eat some of those awful fish and chips!) And then the rain came pouring down the next day. No worries, as we just got on with the necessary chores after a Nullarbor crossing - clothes, towels, sheets, dogs blankets, dog beds all washed and tumble dried. 5 lots of washing @$3.00 each and 2 lots of tumble drying at $3.00 –a $21 worth of washing altogether and a good feeling to be clean again!

We arranged to meet some other travellers in the sea front hotel for a drink on the Saturday night and spent the afternoon catching up on emails and bills and of course the Blog, and planned the next leg of our next journey round the Eyre Peninsular.

To see our photos, right click the following link and 'open in a new window': http://picasaweb.google.com.au/paularcher001

Week Twenty-four

2009-11-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

We arrived back in Perth a couple of hours later than planned and missed a pizza with our friends Graham and Karen. We did have a lovely dessert and glass of wine with them and then slept well, parked along their front verge. We had a few jobs to do the next day and headed off to the Animal Protection Society at Southern Rivers where Paul had a meeting (wearing his www.deathrowpets.net hat). Then we collected Tia, Ian and Muffin from the kennels where they had been for about 2 weeks while we had travelled up to Shark Bay World Heritage Area. We were very pleased to see them all looking fit and well and we had a joyous reunion with plenty of jumping, wagging, licking and barking – and the dogs were excited too! (That’s a little joke...)

Then we were off to the Cannington Westfield shopping centre to collect my new glasses. Sadly only my indoor reading/computer ones were ready, so my outdoor multi-focals will have to be posted on to a future major stop, probably Norseman. It was rather annoying as I had been promised that they would be ready well within the time frame –but that would have been too easy eh?! Anyway the glasses I did get are great and make reading and working in the van in low light so much better.

Paul and I had another meeting in the car park with a lady from Cat Haven and heard all about the tragedy of so many healthy unwanted cats killed. We discussed what actions we could take and how we could help to improve this sad situation. After stocking up with a few provisions, we set Lee (our GPS) to get us out of Perth, along the Great Eastern Highway with a little detour south to York for the night. I drove and it was an easy 100kms for us and the dogs. As we travelled inland the weather got steadily hotter... The only campsite in York was very nice and run by a friendly, helpful couple. After our busy week we decided to stay 2 nights here and explore the area and town. That evening there was some back burning nearby and flocks of Galahs flew and chattered around the campsite, driven out of their roosting trees by the smoke.

The dogs quickly got us back into early morning walks to avoid the heat of the day and we realised that when we are without dogs we walk much less. After our walk we spent the first half of the next day huddled in our van with the air-conditioning on full just dozing, reading and listening to music – something we don’t often seem to have time for. Then it was time to explore the town of York.

York is Western Australia’s most historic inland town in fact the first inland settlement of all. It was first settled in 1831 and is now a reminder of life in the pioneering days. It is situated on the famous Avon River. We enjoyed walking over the 90 year old Suspension Bridge and especially watching Tia whose back legs turned to jelly (she is not very brave!) as we bounced our way from end to end. The York Town hall was a very splendid building completed in 1911 and we took lots of photos of the buildings. Paul was especially excited about a 6.5 acre mature olive grove nestled at the foot of a hill with large house on the market for $495,000. As it was empty we had a good prowl around and imagined what it would be like to live there and become hobby farmers...

The next couple of days passed in a bit of an angry hot haze as I got stung on the little finger by some wasp/bee/spider/scorpion/box jelly fish (editor's note" someone tell her...) as I was picking up the dogs beds from over a wooden rail. Boy did it hurt and my finger swelled up, though it became even worse the next day and was extremely painful and itchy all at once. It was hard to concentrate on anything unless I had an ice-pack on it, so the frozen vegetables from the little freezer compartment were rotated as substitutes. Paul bore the brunt of my bad temper (bless him) which was also compounded by the heat and humidity – still around 39 degrees.

We left York to join the Golden Pipeline trail along the Great Eastern Highway. This is one of the world’s great water engineering feats designed by C.Y. O’Connor 100 years ago to deliver water to the goldfields. We had already visited No 1 Pump Station at Mundering when we were in Perth and now we would be following the pipeline and passing all the other 7 Pump Stations on our way to Kalgoorlie. Its been amazing driving along the highway with the pipeline on one or either side - imagining the huge endevour of manpower in the 1890's under hostile conditions.

We spent the night at Meckering, famous only for its earthquake in 1968. The little display of distorted railways lines and photos of destroyed houses was certainly worth a look, though we didn’t get out to see the actual fault line. Then we went on to Cunderdin, settled in 1894 with the arrival of the railways and later the Goldfields Water Scheme in 1901. The No 3 Pump Station was built there and there is a great museum at the pump house that showed us all the history – the steam pump, a bush school and a train dining car all included. Paul had a huge ice-cream and we had a stroll. An evangelical motor home was next to us in the car park, complete with hymns playing from a tannoy and Jesus stickers all over the outside, but we managed to avoid a sermon.

No 4 Pump Station was at Merredin but we shot through there as the town looked quite uninviting and we drove through the Rabbit Proof Fence (editor's note - OK, we'll go back one day to mend it) on to the town of Southern Cross, just before No 6 Pump Station for the night. Gold was discovered there in 1888 by Tom Risely and Mick Toomey and they named the place after the stars that guided them there. (This was before the constellation became famous adorning the Australian flag.) Today all the streets and the salt lake are named after stars or constellations. Like many of these small towns, the common highlights are the Museum, the Pioneer Cemetery and the Lookout! Fortunately my finger was much less painful, (though still swollen)so that was a big relief.

We drove past No 7 and 8 Pump Stations and into Coolgardie. It was very hot and the town was empty. Poor Coolgardie really is becoming a ghost town now after being a vibrant town in the gold rush. We had a look in the Goldfields Exhibition museum which was housed in the two story Warden's Court Building. For $5 it was a bargain and the Varischetti Mine Rescue display was the highlight. The history goes that in 1907 Modesto Varischetti was trapped deep in a mine in an air pocket after a flash flood filled the mine. He survived in total darkness for 9 days until deep sea divers were used to navigate the flooded mine and haul him out to safety. The museum had a deep sea diver’s heavy copper helmet and suit from those times on display, and you were able to put your head into the helmet to see what it would have been like for the rescuers – well I got half-way and had to give up with a terrible feeling of claustrophobia – not something I normally suffer from. They were all so brave in those days. This was truely an amazing rescue operation - imagine 2 deep sea divers groping their way in the dark through a collapsed and flooded mine shaft trailing their air pipes to find the missing man! Incredible, and an excellent exhibit.

Another treat was the amazing bottle collection of a couple of residents who had collected thousands of turn of the century bottles of all kinds and colours. This would have to be the best collection of its type in Australia.

On we went to Kalgoorlie and found a caravan park on the outskirts of town and booked a spot for three nights, then drove back into town to the look out at the top of Mount Charlotte. We had successfully driven the 560 kilometres from Mundaring Dam in the Perth Hills along the Golden Pipeline to its finish in Kalgoorlie. Without the water that the pipeline still supplies to this day, none of these towns would have survived. So we found a nice pub in town and raised our glasses (of water of course) to C. Y. O’Connor who had made it all possible ( and of course who sadly didn't live to see the taps turned on.

The next day we went to the amazing Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) Super Pit Lookout to see the operations of Australia’s largest gold mine first hand. Mammoth mining trucks haul 85 million tonnes of material annually out from the open cast mine which then produces 800,000 ounces of gold. It was a breathtaking larger-than-life experience, an amazing human achievement and has to be seen to be believed. We were lucky to meet at the Lookout an old timer miner who worked on the underground mine before it wsa closed and turned into the open pit. He goes there every day with his binos to watch the work - how amazing is that! He had some great information for us, from his days down the shaft.

The Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame was also well worth a visit for $5. Gold had been discovered in 1893 by three Irish prospectors, Paddy Hannan, Thomas Flanagan and Daniel Shea (what great irish names!) and the area quickly became the richest square mile of gold bearing ore in the world, known as the Golden Mile. This triggered one of the biggest gold rushes in history and the Hall of Fame recognises all the individuals that have made this industry so important for Australia. There were interactive galleries, minerals collections and a gold rush town to explore. Even though it was still 39 degrees outside and Paul and I had to visit the Hall of Fame in series because it was too hot to leave the dogs in the van without the engine/air-con running, we were both enthralled.

There was an excellent exhibition of the pioneering efforts of Lang Hangcock who discovered and made the vast iron ore mining fields of the Pilbara a reality. What a man!! One day he flew down along a canyon and had the thought that the whole canyon was solid iron!. To test his theory, he landed in the spinifex and took some samples which proved to be higher grade than the best grade iron avalable anywhere - and he had discovered thousands of square kilometres of it!

After this we went back to the caravan park for lunch and a siesta. After a shower, Paul was energetic enough to go back into town by taxi for a visit to Questa Casa – Australia’s oldest working bordello. Over 100 years old it is the last of the original tin bordellos and puts on a guided tour at 2.00pm each day. He returned not overly excited by the experience... (Editors note tee hee hee, but sadly, no free samples...).

The same evening I decided to see a proper movie and jumped in a cab to the cinema while Paul caught up with more computer stuff. I did enjoy ‘2012’, one of those ‘end of the world’, all adventure, all action, edge of the seat sort of movies starring John Cusack.

The next day the weather was still extremely hot and humid and we all just lounged around the caravan park and in the air-conditioning all day – one of those days when we could just eat, drink, sleep and read and needed no excuse. And so we ended the week in Kalgoorlie, just hoping for cooler weather very soon.

Footnote: what is it with the town names around here... are they deliberately named to confuse us tourists?

Coolgardie – Kalgoorlie
Mundering – Meckering
Cunderdin – Merredin – Kellerberrin - Tammin - Gungadin (?)

(Editor's note : Conundrum was taken off the list, as it's too problematical??)

To see some photos, go here (open in new window)

Week Twenty-three

2009-11-08T18:21:00.000-08:00

After passing a huge wind farm with 48 massive turbines called Emu Downs and staying overnight in a day-only rest area, (naughty naughty) on Sunday morning we made our way north of Perth to a small town called Cervantes, but turned off just before reaching town to travel 17kms to the famous Pinnacles in the Desert. We arrived early before the ticket and information centre was open, so we decided to take ourselves on the marked walk through the Pinnacles. We both thought it was the most wonderful sight, rather like moving amongst thousands of soldiers standing very still, or maybe a huge grave yard full of amazing tombstones. The feeling was that this was a unique place and we clicked our cameras like mad. We wandered for ages amongst these tall stone structures which are set in soft shifting sand with a few hardy wild flowers scattered around, and it seemed that time stood still.

Apparently the Pinnacles are not very old in geological terms – 400,000 years perhaps, but their origins are not clear. They are either reconstituted fossilised tree trunks or ancient root systems that have been left exposed by the wind and sand. They have only become a famous tourist sight in the last 30 years or so and the area was then added to the national park so it was protected.

We went into the town of Cervantes and met some friendly locals at an art exhibition and then toddled off to the local pub for a crayfish lunch. We were yet again a little disappointed in the result of the ‘taste versus cost’ analysis and vowed that we will not be tempted by Lobster or Crayfish again – better to stick with fresh local fish. We were told that the Crayfish industry in many of the small fishing towns has been decimated by the Government’s new fishing restrictions. But the real issue has been the years of overfishing that has led the Government to impose the restrictions in the first place.

The coast along this region is called the Turquoise Coast because of the beautiful colour of the Indian Ocean. The only drawback is that it seems very windy and would be scorching in summer. One of the craggy leathery locals said “you just have to get used to the wind” - and a wrinkly sun-damaged skin too, we thought to ourselves.
Our stop for the night was in Geraldton where we took great delight in staying in a Top Tourist campsite that said ‘Dogs not allowed’, just so that we could see what we had been missing all these months of travelling with dogs. Not much it seems, this one was OK but all campsites are similar with just a very few diamonds that you find by accident sometimes. We had a little walk before dinner along the city beach and Paul was delighted to see a real oil ring all lit up very close to the harbour. It was quite a sight looking like something out of a Mad Max movie.

The weather was still warm but very windy and our eyes and noses felt scratchy and itchy the next morning as we drove towards the Kalbarri National Park. We stopped briefly at Northampton and then left the North-West Highway and took the scenic coastal road to Port Gregory and Kalbarri. This road wound through rolling hills and dry grazing land before merging with the coastal dunes and then suddenly we came across the Pink Lake. It took my breath away and looked even pinker because I had on Polaroid sunglasses! The colour of the lake is due to a bacteria (Dunaliella salina) trapped in the salt granules – this provides a rich source of Beta Carotene which is actually harvested from ponds around the edge.

We stopped at Port Gregory for lunch and a short walk along the beach and jetty. It has a natural harbour surrounded by a 5km exposed reef. The town was the original shipping port for the region’s lead mines and we had a chat with a local fisherman who had just hauled in a net of Mullet by hand and was de-scaling and loading his catch onto his old Ute. What a messy job.

On we drove and the road took us into the hills and through the National Park with glimpses of Kalbarri and the Murchison River in the distance. There were wild flowers along the road edge as we descended into the town of Kalbarri and booked into a nice grassy and shady caravan park right on the water’s edge. Nice as the campsite was, we had wanted to free camp that night, but the area was totally devoid of rest areas where we could stop overnight. They (whoever ‘they’ are!) have done a good job of funnelling tourists into paying sites – oh well. The weather was really hot and we felt ready for a rest - we have come to realise that our little brains are being very over-stimulated each and every day on this adventure. Sometimes we long to get back to a boring routine – even for a few hours, just to give us a break from too much sensory input!!

The next day we back-tracked a little and visited Rainbow Jungle, regarded as one of Australia’s most beautiful parrot habitats. And it lived up to its name with wonderful huge aviaries of exotic and sometimes rare species of mostly Australian parrots. We spent ages there chatting to the talking ones and photographing the confident ones. Normally we don’t like to see birds in cages, but these had a grand life and many were part of breeding programs to save endangered species. Then we visited one of the coastal cliffs called Red Bluff, named by Willem de Vlamingh in 1697. Of course the cliffs here were red with many little rock pools and Paul discovered a medium sized Octopus in one warm pool that I was standing in and I made a hasty exit. As we drove along the coast I spotted a whale frolicking just off shore and we pulled over for a look.

As we travelled through the Kalbarri National Park along the Ajana Kalbarri Road we stopped at Hawkes Head and Ross Graham lookouts to admire the river gorges. The temperature was now at 39 degrees and the flies were out in their thousands, so we didn’t stop long, There was lightening and a few large drops of rain, and the humidity was oppressive as we drove along to rejoin the North West Coastal Highway – thank goodness for air-conditioning in the van.

We stopped the night at a large free rest area off the highway along with about 5 other vans and gradually the temperature dropped a little, the flies went to sleep and we could sit outside under the stars and breathe the cooler air. Later we had salad and peanut M&Ms and watched two old Dad’s Army episodes on my laptop which was a lot of fun. We are lucky to have 4 big batteries that recharge as we drive, along with solar panels on the roof and an inverter, so our computers, lights etc can still work off power. And we are very pleased not to have bothered with a generator, which is just noisy, smelly and heavy. Paul in particular gets annoyed when we are in a rest area enjoying the peace of an evening and someone starts up their generator. It does rather spoil the ambiance.

We did a final run the next morning into the famous Shark Bay World Heritage Area. The first recorded white man to arrive on Australian soil at Cape Inscription (part of Shark Bay) was the Dutch trading-ship Captain Dirk Hartog in 1616 – 152 years before Captain Cook. It’s surprising that Australia isn’t a Dutch Colony when you think about it. Shark Bay is so significant in its natural beauty that it earnt a prestigious World Heritage listing in 1991.

In a nutshell Shark Bay supports hundreds of unique species of plants and animals because of its hypersaline marine environment. It has a hot climate and shallow waters with high evaporation rates. 400,000 hectares of Seagrass banks maintain the hypersalinity by restricting tidal flows in and out of the shallow bays. So there are many extraordinary sights to see such as Shell Beach, a large Dugong population and the amazing Stromatolites. More on each of these to follow...

Our first stop in the park was to walk along a boardwalk to see the very rare Stromatolites (one of only two places in the world) in Hamlin Pool. These are living fossils composed of Cyanobacteria, a salt-tolerant organism and the first life forms to appear on earth 3,500 million years ago. They grow in colonies and trap sediments with mucous to form great reef- like structures in the water. This was an example of a major stage in the Earth’s evolutionary history – and we felt very privileged to be able to actually see and read all about it.

We went a little further on to Shell Beach. This beach is made up of trillions of one tiny shell called the Hamelin Cockle, prolific because of the super salty water. The shells are up to 10 metres deep on the beach which is 1km wide and many kilometres long. In some selected areas the shells have been mined, cut into blocks and used as bricks. The weather was still stinking hot and the white shells were almost too bright for our sunglasses – so we decided to have a swim. The only problem was that the crystal clear and very salty water was so shallow we couldn’t get out beyond our knees. So much for a cooling swim!

It was time for a late lunch and a siesta so we went on to the town of Denham, once an important pearling town and now a tourism and fishing town. The heat and humidity had been building again, the clouds were rolling in and the lightning growing stronger and by the late afternoon there was a tremendous tropical storm. Fortunately we were settled in the campsite on the beach by then and catching up with emails and some of our washing.

We were up very early the next day to get to Monkey Mia. We jumped out of the van and rushed to the part of the shoreline designated as the meeting place to see the wild dolphins being fed by hand. There were five dolphins visiting who each received a couple of fish while we paddled in the water and they swam around. It was quite crowded and the rangers were careful not to allow people to touch them or stand further in the water than knee deep. We had to keep reminding ourselves that these are wild dolphins and after their treat, they have to feed and fend for themselves in the waters of Shark Bay.

We had breakfast in the van and at 10.30am went aboard the catamaran ‘Aristocat 2’ for a three hour wildlife cruise. We firstly sailed over to a pontoon from which a ‘family owned’ pearling operation is run and we were given a talk on how the special ‘black’ pearls are grown. We were amazed at the complexity and skill of the whole process - which is much, much more than just “seeding” an oyster.

Once back on the catamaran, we saw lots more dolphins playing in the bow-waves, along with some very shy dugongs which lay around in the water and then dived when they saw the boat. They have a face only a mother could love and all seemed quite sleepy until they noticed us. Apparently, like dolphins, they sleep one half at a time ie one eye closed and one half of their brain asleep at any one time. Then they switch to the other side – peculiar eh? They need to eat 75kg of sea grass per day which seems an amazing amount and so are also called ‘sea cows’.

Another highlight was seeing a hammerhead shark which came alongside the boat and eyed up the tasty children having fun riding in the boom net. Sadly the children were quickly brought back onto the safety of the deck...

We stopped off at Little Lagoon for lunch and ended up back at Denham for our last evening at Shark Bay World Heritage Area. Paul ducked in for a swim before dinner while I caught up with the blog - the Internet connection was very good.

We made it back to our previous campsite spot in Belair Gardens, Geraldton and saw few sights in the city. In particular the museum was fabulous, especially the Shipwrecks Gallery which told the story of four great Dutch shipwrecks including the famous Batavia and mutiny in 1629. We also visited the HMAS Sydney II Memorial to commemorate the ship lost with all 645 hands off the coast of Shark Bay in 1941 after being destroyed by the German raider Kormoran. The memorial is a half dome covered with 645 bird silhouettes. Just a few steps away stands a bronze figure of a woman looking out to see, grieving for her loved one lost at sea.

That evening we went to a fund raising comedy show at the Bootenal Family Tavern and had a late night as we waited for the free bus service to and from town. But it was a good show and we enjoyed it.

We walked to the fishing harbour the next morning to see the Blessing of the Fleet which marks the start of the Crayfish season. A priest blessed the fishing boats as they sailed past and there were market stalls to wander around.

We also visited the Central Greenough Historic Settlement a few miles south of Gerladton, which was magnificent. The area was occupied in the 1850’s and was a thriving hub as a pioneer farming settlement. 11 historic buildings have been restored and we wandered in and out of all of them for a couple of hours. It was a real step back in time to see the church, school, monastery and houses of the locals of that era and learn about how they worked and entertained themselves with no TV, computers, internet etc!

Finally we jumped back in the van and drove the 480 kms back to Perth, listening to The Butterfly Man being read on audio CD to while away the time. It had been an exceptionally busy week and we were pretty exhousted. Perhaps we need a holiday from the holiday?

To see some photos, click here (open in new window)

Week Twenty-two

2009-11-01T16:48:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be the part of our trip when Paul and I took off up the west coast without the dogs - a two week break from them for us, and a rest from travelling for them. Our first stop after arriving in Perth was to drop Muffin and Ian off at the Mossvale kennel for their 2 week break. We were shown around first and all looked good, but then reality hit when we had to leave the poor little mites. Of course Muffin kicked up quite a stink and we could hear her barking (crying) while we drove away. Quite heartbreaking actually...

Tia stayed with us as she had an appointment at the eye vet specialist later that day and we planned to drop her at the kennel to join Muffin and Ian the next day.

We stopped off at a large Westfield shopping centre at Cannington and Paul posted a parcel, we had lunch and I had an eye test and ordered new glasses from Spec Savers - to be picked up in 2 weeks time. Call me weird, but I quite enjoyed the process, much quicker and more pleasant than a haircut... Then it was time for Tia’s appointment – and thank goodness for “Lee”, our GPS voice who confidently directed us about town and got us there on time.

Tia was such a good girl at the eye vet. She let the vet examine her eye with all sorts of lights and lenses and stayed perfectly still. The vet thought that the red lump on her third eyelid was probably a benign haemangioma, but it would need to be surgically excised with a clear margin and sent for testing. So we booked Tia in for the little operation to be done in three days on Thursday and resigned ourselves to having her as our “only child” for the week and only putting her into the kennel for the second week - so much for our two week ‘dog free’ holiday up the west coast.

We ended the day camping outside on our friends Graham and Karen’s home at Ardross in the city (thank you Graham abd Karen!!) and had a wonderful dinner at their house, met their daughter Ashleigh and lively cat Pirate. The next day we drove to Guildford (spoilt by a railway line, main road and flight path all bisecting the town. Why would they do that??) and up and down the Swan Valley. The weather was hot and humid and the Margaret River Chocolate Company seemed like a good first stop. No sooner had we got out of the van eager to sample the chocolate, than a lost beautiful large grey Weimaraner wandered up to us and nearly onto the road and we felt obliged to spend the next 40 minutes finding her owner, who was spectacularly unconcerned – some people don’t deserve to have a dog.

Things improved and we enjoyed a delicious lunch of double baked goat’s cheese soufflé on puff pastry with rocket and a glass of Black Swan white wine. We just had to stop for a little siesta after that lunch and the afternoon ran away with us and it was suddenly 5.00pm and we hadn’t decided where to stop for the night. The only rest area in the region was on a main road and not pleasant, so Paul had a brainwave and phoned a local farm stay he found in a tourist brochure called Strelley Brook Farmhouse to ask if we could stay the night somewhere on their premises. All was agreed for $10 and we found ourselves parked in the beautiful country garden of an 1860 cottage, surrounded by lavender, rosemary and bougainvillea, with vines all around.

We were up early the next day and decided to explore the Perth Hills. Our first stop was at Mundaring where we arrived at the Information Centre and picked up some good maps of local walks and then moved into the shopping car park to do a quick wash at the laundrette and a little computer work first. Sadly it suddenly blew a storm and down came the rain. So we postponed our walk until later in the afternoon when there was a break in the rain.

We drove out to explore the Mundaring National Park and in particular the Mundaring Weir walk. We really enjoyed this walk with Tia which was developed to commemorate the incredible engineering feat of supplying fresh water to the Goldfields in 1898. Water was piped 560Kms from a storage dam on the Helena River using pumping stations and the walk took us through the history of the building of the dam and pipeline.

C. Y. O’Connor was instrumental in developing the project but it was fraught with petty politicking and eventually poor Mr O’Connor committed suicide due to the stress of it all, just before the project was successfully completed. Of course the WA Premier of the day took all the glory. We looked at the O’Connor Memorial and joined part of the renowned Bibbulmum Track – which we keep bumping into. In fact the Bibbulmum Track starts/finishes in Kalamunda which was the next little town we visited.

We spent the evening back at our friends Graham and Karen and tucked into tasty pasta cooked by Karen, drank some great wine and fell asleep back in our van parked on their front verge. We were up early again the next morning to take Tia to the veterinary eye specialist for her operation which I’m happy to report was very successful. While we waited for Tia’s operation to be done, we went to the Burswood Hotel complex and walked around the Swan River which has a walkway and some fun sculptures. Its a great place for a terrific riverside walk! The sun was shining even though there was a chilly wind, but it did feel strange walking with no doggies in tow at all!

After we had collected Tia from the vet along with her antibiotic eye drops, we drove to a campsite called Crystal Brook Caravan Park at Orange Grove for a restful evening. It was about the only one that was anywhere near the city (about 20Kms out) that allowed pets and it turned out to be full of mainly permanent residents and nothing to write home about. Paul had become a little under the weather late that afternoon (in sympathy with Tia perhaps?) so I had two invalids on my hands that evening. Oh well.

Paul was recovered by the next day but Tia was still looking tired following her operation, so we decided to spend the day at Kings Park in the centre of Perth and just have a relaxing time. Lee (our GPS voice) helped us with the drive in from Orange Grove and we found a good parking spot in the park. A female ranger came over for a chat and to meet Tia, and she told us all about her job and her new Bulldog pup and then a Singaporian couple who we had previously met in Mandurah walked passed and we all recognised each other. It was their last day in Australia and they were very interested in our Motor Home as apparently they don’t really exist in Singapore, so we invited them on board for an inspection.

After all that we had a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast and went for a gorgeous walk amongst the flowers and trees, overlooking the whole of Perth and the Swan River. King’s Park was lovely and a major highlight of our time in Perth. Paul walked into Perth city for his fix of cosmopolitan life – shops, skyscrapers, cafes, crowds, whilst I stayed and babysat Tia and read. We stayed in the Park well into the evening and saw the sun go down over the cityscape, then drove back to our campsite at Orange Grove. Tia was back to her old self and had an enormous dinner.

We had a busy day the next day, firstly dropping Tia off at the kennels where she joined Muffin and Ian. We had to explain to the manager about her soft food restriction (oesophageal stricture), antibiotic eye drops (haemangioma removal), Stilboestrol tablets and Advantix tick and flea treatment also due - a long list of special requirements for a very special girl! We were sorry to leave her there but it was only for 9 days. We had a quick chat with a lady who manages a cat and dog re-homing centre near the kennels and then we were on our way north to the Pinnacles Desert, Geraldton, Kalbarri National Park, Monkey Mia. Just Paul and me, no dogs, no worries but just not quite the same...

To see some photos, click here (open in new window)

Week Twenty-one

2009-10-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

We started this week with a visit to a very pretty cottage called Ellensbrook House which had been recommended to us by the owner of last nights campsite. The house was built in the 1850’s by Alfred Bussell, an original settler of the Augusta and Vasse settlements. The house (and the Ellen Brook flowing alongside) was named after his wife (yes you guessed it –Ellen) and was the hub of a beef and dairy cattle farm which stretched for 30Km along the coast and 2 Km inland. The white-washed walls and original paperbark roof shingles, surrounded by beautiful green grass and the gurgling brook were all very photogenic.

The coast line in the Margaret River area is absolutely wonderful with various shades of turquoise clear water and white sand, rugged cliffs, dunes and glorious beaches. And of course not too many people! Much of it is National Park but we just left the dogs in the van for half an hour when there were lovely spots to explore and photograph – after all, they are definitely very spoilt for the other 99% of the time. The outer security door grill on the van can be locked but still let the air in, and having this and the large ceiling vent has allowed us to leave the doggies quite happily and safely inside.

Then it was time to sample some more wineries. Margaret River is known by the locals as Margaret Rip-off – and we had started to find that out for ourselves! You certainly need lots of spare cash to really enjoy yourself. The wineries are mostly amazing “chateau-like” structures with huge wrought iron gates, carefully manicured gardens, lakes, landscaped walkways, statues and acres of pruned vineyards. Money seems to have been no object in the construction of these estates, and this is reflected in the price of the meals, the gallery objects and the wine.

We had a lovely time calling in at Saracen Estates on Caves Road in the famed Wilyabrup Valley and sampled all their range whilst admiring the estate grounds. We also visited Gunyulgup Galleries just south of Yallingup which was representing the works of over 80 artists – paintings, glass, pottery, sculpture, jewellery etc. The Gallery was in a rural setting, overlooking a tranquil lake and we had coffee and a banana sitting outside our van in the car park – but with this scenic view!

We spend the night in a rather ‘iffy’ campsite in Dunsborough on the edge of a huge brand new housing estate with golf course that was still under construction. It was $28 per night for a power site, but the nearest amenities block was closed and the other one was old, leaking and mosquito ridden. The washing machines and tumble driers didn’t work, so it was hardly value for money. The doggies enjoyed a walk on the next door golf course but we were careful to steer them away from hundreds of Kangaroos that were hovering around the edges, no doubt wanting a taste of the lush green grass on the fairways.

We drove on to Busselton, arriving right at the famous jetty on the beach. The Busselton Jetty is the longest wooden jetty in the Southern Hemisphere – about 2 Km. Building was started in 1865 and took 95 years to complete. The Jetty was used to ship timber products with horse drawn trucks used for loading until the railway jetty became operational. Operations stopped in 1972 and general deterioration, plus a fire and a cyclone destroyed most of it. However it is currently being completely renovated to the tune of $24 million dollars and will be a huge attraction when finished next year.

We found a great campsite called “Kookaburra” just 2 minutes walk from the town centre and beaches, and we were given a spot right on the edge of the site, so we could leave the doggies asleep in the van for the evening (with management approval) and we headed into town for a meal and movie called “The Young Victoria”.

The sun was shining high in the sky when we got up the next morning, so we washed all the sheets and towels and got them hung out on the line flapping nicely – a glorious sight! I had the horrible job of paying my enormous (it seemed to me to be enormous anyway) annual 08/09 PAYG tax bill AND a 1st quarter instalment 09/10. (What can the tax office want with all this money of mine?) I tried not to let it put a cloud over the day...

We really enjoyed Busselton and extended our stay to three nights at the Kookaburra site for $28 per night – but this one was excellent value compared to the Dunsborough site. We took Tia to the local Vet to have a small persistent red lump in the corner of her eye examined. It turned out that it could be a small tumour developing so we have been referred to a Veterinary Ophthalmologist in Perth on Monday as she may need it removed. Anyway we’ll cross that bridge once she has been seen by the specialist. Poor Tia has had so many operations...

The doggies all had an excellent time running and walking on the Busselton beaches and the playing fields, and we enjoyed the shops and sights. We decided to treat ourselves to tickets for ‘The Great Moscow Circus’ show on Saturday night as we had passed the huge marquees on our walk and it all looked exciting. We thought it may be similar to Cirque du Soleil but it was actually much more like a conventional circus that we would have seen in our childhood, but with the ultimate death-defying acts. We were thoroughly amazed and clapped and shouted until we were hoarse. The most spectacular act consisted of four motorbikes being ridden at 80kph INSIDE a large sphere made of grid metal so you could see them from the outside. How the bike riders didn’t hit each other was beyond me, but so very exciting. There was a ‘modern’ clown in a pink suit with a black nose who built a great rapport with the audience and other amazing balancing, juggling and acrobatic acts.

We left Busselton after a last walk along the beach and Muffin suddenly looked a bit peaky. Maybe she had eaten something horrible on the beach? She quickly recovered and fortunately we only drove a short distance to a rest area about 50Kms past Bunbury on the Leschenault Inlet. This inlet is very popular for crabbing (blue manna crabs) and is tidal. We arrived when the tide was out and camped on a grassy area surrounded by paperbark gums on the edge of the Inlet. We got out our chairs and a glass of red wine each, a packet of chippies and watched the sun go down and the water come in. We were the only ones stopped there - bliss. Paul heated up some pumpkin soup and the doggies snored and made horrible smells – as only dogs can.

Final stop for the week was beautiful Mandurah, said to be the fastest growing ‘sea change’ town in Australia. The traffic on the road was much busier as we got closer towards Perth and was quite scary at times as we had become so used to empty outback roads! We stayed here for two nights in a campsite quite close to town, which had mainly permanent residents but seemed very friendly. We had long walks on the dog friendly beaches and totally wore ourselves and the dogs out. The weather turned really hot and we struggled to acclimatise to the heatwave. We pottered about in the town and along the foreshore where there were huge new apartment complexes with marinas and yachts, and we both decided we liked Mandurah. It had a nice atmosphere and seemed to attract every demographic, from retirees to foreign tourists, young people and families, all blended well together. On our last night we sat outside a bar with a gin and tonic and the thoroughly exhausted doggies lying by us, and just watched the world stroll by.

To see some photos, click here (open in new window!)

Week Twenty

2009-10-18T03:47:00.000-07:00

We had heavy rain all night, but it turned into a showery day with frequent sunny breaks. We got up fairly late and Paul made some delicious French toast for breakfast before we got ready to leave the campsite. We had a short walk with Tia and Muffin only, as Ian was resting a bit of a sore leg from leaping off the seat too enthusiastically the day before. After a final look around Denmark town we drove off along the South Coast Highway to our next very important stop – the Toffee Factory and Cider Factory 17Kms away at William Bay. The scenery along the way was lovely lush farmland with cattle and sheep packed into every field, interspersed with National Park of untamed forests of Eucalypts and wildflowers. Tia was extremely excited to see so many cows and all her breeding instincts kicked in ie barking and leaping into the front seat.

The Toffee Factory was a sweet lover’s paradise with a huge range of different toffees to sample and we ended up trying most of them! There was also the Elephant Rock Cider Company which makes interesting apple and pear, or apple and ginger ciders. Of course we bought both toffee and cider and stocked up the van.

Our next short stop was Bow Bridge for lunch (yes, we did find room even after all that toffee!) and Paul bought three cooked Marron (like Crayfish) for dinner, and then we turned onto the Valley of the Giants Road. This road meanders for 5Kms in the Walpole-Nornalup National Park to the famous unique giant red Tingle tree forest. We had to keep the doggies hidden in the van as they’re not allowed in National Parks of course, whilst Paul and I walked along a special boardwalk through a grove of veteran tingle trees called the ‘Ancient Empire’. These giant trees are some of the biggest trees in the world and have reached a height of 75 metres and are more than 400 years old. We could walk through the hollowed out trunks of some of the trees. The wild flowers along the way were so tiny but beautifully detailed and coloured, and we snapped away with our cameras to make sure we recorded everything. It was a very inspiring place to be and the intermittent light misty drizzle just added to the serene atmosphere.

We drove on further just past Walpole to a rest area for the night. We were the only ones there, but ‘no worries’. We treated ourselves to the three Marron with salad and fresh bread, then lime cheese-cake and another piece of toffee, all washed down with a glass of ‘The Lake House’s Semillon Sauvignon Blanc. Perfect!

The next morning we drove on to Northcliffe, a town with an interesting history. It was founded in 1924 as part of the Group Settlement Scheme. The aim of the scheme was to get land cleared and developed as dairy farms, so the WA Government of the day encouraged settler families (often British ex-servicemen who faced unemployment) to come to the area. The “Groupies” as they were called, got a free 5 square kilometre patch of land to clear, a sustenance wage and a tent. Once they had cleared this area with axes and hand cross-cut saws they were given a corrugated iron home. If they cleared 25 square kilometres, they got two cows. But returns were very poor and the 1930’s depression caused many settlers to abandon their farms. Others were sold and amalgamated gradually into the large dairy and other farms of today. I visited the Pioneer Museum at Northcliffe which had a great photographic record of the hardships endured to make a living and build the little town and was quite fascinating. Pat, the lady on the desk at the museum was a wealth of information and I could have listened to her for many hours.

We took the doggies on the “Twin Karri Loop Walk” and small parts of the famous “Bibbulum Track”, which stretches from Perth to Albany and is about 960Kms in length. This track would be a wonderful walk to do in its entirety on another trip as it would take about 30 days. We were still in awe of the size of the trees and the wildflowers and the photographic opportunities were great.

We spent the night at Brockman’s Sawpits Reserve which was about 2Kms off the sealed road just outside Pemberton. The old sawpit was still there and apparently the poor man who stood in the pit and sawed upwards had to wear a flour sack on his head to stop the sawdust getting in his eyes. We were first there for the night but then two other caravans and two campervans joined us. One of the other vans had a cat travelling with them and the other a small dog and budgerigar. So along with our three dogs it was quite a menagerie! We had a jolly evening around the campfire with a bottle of port until the rain came down and sent us scurrying back to our comfortable accommodation!

The next morning was a hop and skip into Pemberton, though the road was very rough and we felt a little shell shocked on arrival. Or maybe it was just because we were celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary that day too! Pemberton was first settled in 1861 by Edward Brockman for horse breeding. The town’s name came from Mr Pemberton Walcott, a pioneer who arrived in 1862 and gave the town a name. The Karri trees were chosen for the Trans-Australian Railway Line sleepers and timber mills were established in 1913. Many of the sleepers were also used in the London Underground in the UK.

We parked in the high street and ducked into the local IGA for provisions and also the laundrette to get all the dogs beds washed and tumbled dried. It was quite a job, cost $4 a load x two and $4 for the tumble dryer, but it was very satisfying to have fresh smelling, clean doggie beds! We had an “anniversary lunch” of a seafood anti-pasto platter and then drove out to Big Brook Dam for a 4km walk around the dam in a magnificent setting. The dam supplies water for the town and is surrounded by Karri forest. The water was like glass and you could see the bottom really clearly. We then drove another couple of kilometres along a reasonable dirt road to the Big Brook Aboretum campsite for the night. It was a large rustic site in a beautiful setting under the giant trees.

Pemberton reminded us of the UK TV program “The Prisoner” starring Patrick McGowen –you know, it’s about a man trapped in a small town that he can never manage to leave. We got lost as soon as we left the campsite on the dirt back roads, we tried to find the Arboretum near the campsite and couldn’t, and when we headed out of town to our next stop at Augusta, we went in completely the wrong direction! Eventually we made it to Augusta and pulled into a campsite called “Westbay” 1Km from town which turned out to be just great. We practically had the place to ourselves and it was one of those beautiful spacious grassy places with heaps of trees and shrubs, birds and kangaroos. No-one was manning the office but there was a sign saying just choose a site and get settled and pay later. So that’s what we did. But where was everyone we wondered? This part of WA seems so under populated – even with tourists like us...

The town of Augusta is at the mouth of the Blackwood River and Hardy Inlet and only 9Kms from the geographic point where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. We enjoyed strolling in the town and I found and posted a present to my niece in Edinburgh for her 21st Birthday. I would tell you what it was, but she may read this and hence spoil the surprise! The only disaster of the day was when my mobile phone fell into a basin of water in the van and was completely submerged. In order to preserve my marriage I won’t go into the exact details of who, how or why, suffice to say that it wasn’t MY fault... Even with a good drying out, it was completely seized up, so I will need a new one when we get to Perth. Very, very annoying.

The weather was glorious and sunny and we had a lovely walk along the Blackwood River which backed on to the campsite and Tia enjoyed her ‘tennis ball in the water’ games. We also took a very scenic drive and visited the historic 112 year old Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse at the tip of the peninsular where the oceans merge. The rolling green hills, rocky coastal outcrops and brilliant white lighthouse were wonderful photographic opportunities, though it was windy out there.
That evening we sat at the water’s edge with excellent Snapper fish and chips, salad and a glass of wine and saw the sun go down before going back to Westbay campsite for a second night.

After a very lazy morning relaxing at the camp, we then drove onto visit “Jewel Cave”, only about 10Kms from Augusta and one of the largest caves in the Margaret River region. Apparently there are over 100 caves along the spine of the Leeuwin Naturaliste Ridge formed by the flow of water underground. We managed to arrive just in time for a proper tour and it was a wonderful journey through gigantic caverns filled with stalactite and stalagmite formations and other amazing shapes named “organ pipes”, “giant shawl”, “friendly ghost” and “jewellery box”. This particular cave was discovered in 1957 by two young hikers who wondered about cooler air emanating from a small hole in the ground and decided to explore. After their initial discovery it took them two years to map the many caverns and there are more still undiscovered. It was a very special place.

That night we free camped by a river under the trees at a place called Alexandra Bridge Camp ground, near Karridale and Paul made a great pasta dinner with smoked trout and Brussel Sprouts! We decided to relax here for another night as the weather was great and we wanted to spring clean the van a bit. We hauled out the carpet which had got a bit damp after an accident with the dogs water bowl (Muffin stood in it and tipped it over) and gave it a good beating and airing in the sun, Paul washed the outside of the van and we read our books.

After a walk the next morning we drove towards Margaret River town with a stop off at the winery “Xanadu” for lunch and a ‘tasting’. The meal was spectacular in flavour and price, but a little short on quantity. The wine was interesting and was one of the few labels around the area that we could remember seeing in Sydney. The vineyard itself was very beautiful to see and had lovely gardens and acres of vines. It was not the right time to see any fruit on the vines of course but there was lots of greenery. The man assisting us with the wine tasting told us that they had washed all of last year’s grape harvest down the drain as the weather had not done it any favours and they didn’t want to risk their reputation on a bad crop. It must have been such a disaster for them – no wonder the food was so expensive...

The first campsite we tried in Margaret River was close to the town centre. According to ‘Caravan Parks Australia-wide’, it was supposed to allow dogs, but we got the thumbs down when we drove in. However we were kindly directed to another campsite called Big Valley Campsite, just a little further out of town and about 2Kms along a winding dirt road. Well what a gold mine it turned out to be! It was an actual working sheep farm with wonderful views right over the valley, dogs welcomed and only a few other campers there. The facilities were good, there was TV and Internet reception, hot showers and we were in heaven.

To see some photos, click here (open in new window)

Week Nineteen

2009-10-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

We rather sadly left Hopetoun to continue our journey towards Albany. We got back onto Highway 1 at Ravensthorpe again and drove west to Jerramungup. At this point we had to decide whether to take the coastal road or the way through the Stirling Ranges. We felt that the latter might be more scenic and so we turned off Highway 1 and started heading towards Ongerup before we stopped for the night in a rest area marked in our ‘Camps 5’ book, (the grey nomads travelling Bible of rest areas). It was a strange place with a disused hall and very decrepit and unusable toilet block. We were the only ones parked there and it felt a little eerie but we made sure the van doors were locked and slept OK. The next morning was very cold with drizzle and low clouds and we realised that we wouldn’t see anything of the Sterling Ranges. The road out there had also been very rough as it was a ‘minor’ one, so we decided to backtrack to Jerramungup and get back on the main Highway.

We reached Albany after a rather nerve-racking drive as there were a lot of huge road trains travelling very fast on our tail on a road that was full of unexpected potholes and bumps. A number of times I pulled off the road to let them by in case they were getting fed up with us “holiday-makers”!

We went straight out to Emu Point to our chosen campsite about 8Kms from the town centre – “Rose Gardens Beachside Holiday Park”. One of the campsite owners was a Boxer lover and the facilities were excellent with masses of space and a good hot shower! Emu Point was a long promontory and even though the weather was still stormy, we were right on the beach and so we went for a bracing walk along the white sands with the dogs before dinner. All ran like crazy off lead and had a wonderful time chasing sea sponges rolling on the beach and tennis balls – it’s a dog’s life indeed.

We explored Albany the next day and realised that the pronunciation of the name was very important. It’s AL-bany not ALL-bany, as us Poms want to say. The town was first settled in 1826, two years before Perth and was the first white settlement in Western Australia. It is straddled between Mount Clarence and Mount Melville, both of which have lookouts. It was the embarkation point for Australian troops in the First World War and for many, their last view of Australia. Its coast looks out to Antarctica, several thousand kilometres away. Because of the 37 inches of rain that fall annually the area has a lush green feel with rich farmland, spectacular coastal scenery and a temperate climate.

Albany is obviously a thriving town of about 30,000 people with a wonderful natural harbour and all the attractions a discerning tourist would expect! There was lots of new development happening and a huge new entertainment centre under construction on the edge of the harbour. We took the opportunity to shop a little and I got my hair ‘done’ (what a boost) as well as getting some antibiotics from the local GP for a persistent sinus infection (what a relief).

We also visited ‘Sam the Seal Monument’ at Emu Point. Sam was a fur seal who over the years had become tame and befriended thousands of locals and tourists. In 2006 he was senselessly slaughtered by an unknown assailant in an act of ultimate betrayal that was covered by both National and International media. A life sized bronze memorial of Sam was erected, such was the impact that he had made on all who knew him. How sad – we felt quite upset standing in front of the memorial and reading the story of poor Sam.

Albany also boasts Australia’s last operating whaling station. The last day of commercial whaling was on 21 November 1978 and the site of Cheynes Beach Whaling Company’s whaling station is now a major tourist attraction called Whale World. Having seen real live Whale mothers and their calves frolicking at The Head of Bite only a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t feel the need to see film footage and photos of Whales being harpooned and “processed” – so we gave Whale World a miss!

We did enjoy a lovely Japanese dinner in a restaurant at Emu Point which made a change from our usual meals which Paul cooks so imaginatively and enthusiastically in the van with minimal ingredients and implements. We ordered Teriyaki Snapper and Tempura vegetables and Japanese-style King Prawns followed by Green Tea ice cream - yum!

The next night we drove out of Albany just about 30Kms along Denmark Road to a tiny little hamlet called Cosy Corner Beach – sounds nice eh? We arrived as it was getting dark and found a cosy corner (ha ha) to spend the night in a rest area, literally a few steps from the beach. Our morning walk the next day was wild and windy and we strode up and down a beach that went on for miles in both directions with a backdrop of dunes and vegetation and the odd “watch out for snakes” sign. It was then a short drive along a very scenic country road to Denmark, WA. We did stop off at the South Coast Woodworks Gallery just outside Denmark to admire the wood sculptures and fell in love with a Sheoak head, beautifully carved and polished. It is now wrapped up and on its way back to Sydney and into storage for a few more months.

We parked next to the Denmark River for lunch and booked into the Denmark Rivermouth Caravan Park, about 1Km along the river to where it flows into Wilson Inlet and eventually out to the sea. We found a spot on the banks of the Inlet and got settled. Then we went off exploring the Wilson Inlet Heritage Trail with the doggies. This walk retraced a section of the Albany-Nornalup railway line which was built in 1929 but discontinued in 1957 due to competition by improved road transport. The trail crossed river flats and along the shore of the Inlet through eucalypt and Banksia bushland. It was delightful with many wildflowers to photograph along the way – Paul and I competing for the title of Best Photographer!

The next morning we decided to continue the walk along another section of the railway trail, so we drove into town and out the other side to join a glorious trek on the Denmark-Nornalup Heritage Rail Trail. The countryside was a mixture of rolling green hills with cattle, sheep and vines. It all looked so rich and lush and reminded us of the English countryside!

We then decided to leave the tired dogs in the van and treat ourselves to lunch at ‘The Lake House’ off Mt Shadforth Tourist Drive about 5Kms from Denmark. This was a cellar door/restaurant surrounded by lovely vineyards and majestic karri trees set in a valley and overlooking a spring fed lake. We chose a platter of anti-pasto with damper and wonderful cheeses, home-made chutneys, frittata, dolmades, and many other dips, salad and nibbles. With a glass of The Lake House Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, it was an ideal lunch for weary travellers!

We spent some time in the afternoon exploring the pretty town of Denmark before it started to drizzle and we called it a day and headed back to the campsite for an evening of soup, computers and TV.

Oh forgot to mention that we visited the “Bert Bolle Barometer”, officially the world’s largest Barometer that was brought from the Netherlands by its creator when he and his wife immigrated to Denmark, WA. It is now housed in a tower in the information centre and stands 12 metres high. At six minute intervals a vacuum pump evacuates the air from the glass pipe, causing the 12 metre tall instrument to fill with 55 litres of water within one minute. We climbed the stairs to follow the water as it rose and amazingly it also boils spontaneously at 20 degrees. There is a reading period of 2 minutes and then air is admitted at the top and the water falls back into the cistern below. Then it starts all over again...

To see some photos, click here (open in new window)

Week Eighteen

2009-10-03T02:33:00.000-07:00

Funnily enough, overall this week has been one of the most stressful we’ve had so far – and we thought it would be one of the easiest after successfully crossing the Nullarbor!

We arrived in Norseman a little worried about our engine warning light that had suddenly come on during the last leg of the Nullarbor crossing, and so we spent some time on the phone to Ford and the KEA service centre to see if it was really a problem. The light went off after another 10Kms and has not come on again. So we decided to take an ‘Ostrich in the Sand’ view and treat it as a strange aberration and do nothing - so far so good.

Norseman was established in 1894 when a prospector called Laurie Sinclair, returning from the Coolgardie goldfields stopped off to see his brother at Dundas. Laurie’s horse ‘Norseman’ pawed the ground and dug up a piece of gold bearing quartz. Laurie then uncovered a rich seam which he called after his horse!

Norseman is a tiny town that has a sad feel about it. It’s one of the many gold mining towns that are slowly dying. Only 10 years ago it was a thriving town of 4,000 resident mine workers and associated services, but the modern mine practice of flying employees and contractors in and out has dealt it a death blow. The population is now around 400 and rapidly decreasing. Many of the houses were up for sale with faded signs and many of the shops were boarded up.

The town has made a valiant attempt to get the tourists to stay longer with a statue of Norseman the horse on the corner, some corrugated iron camels standing on the roundabout and a very nice walk trail and lookout that takes you on a road past the mine to a 360 degree view of the salt lakes and the area and lovely gardens. But it really is simply the first town after the Nullarbor, or if travelling east, the last town for over 1,000Kms.

After a rest there, we drove on west to Esperance along a very uncomfortable bumpy and rutted sealed road for about 200Kms. It was during a gale in 1792 that two French Frigates on a mapping voyage took shelter here. The first ship to enter the bay was L’Esperance and so the bay was named. The archipelago of 105 islands off the coast was named after the second ship Recherche. The town was the principle port for the gold fields until the railway was opened. Then it was mainly fishing and tourists until American investors established large landholdings in the 1960s and introduced very successful farming methods which made Esperance very profitable.

It seemed unseasonably cold on the coast. There was a strong wind and intermittent rain and I immediately felt that I had a sore throat coming on. Muffin was also not well –she was very quiet and shivery and unlike her normal self and had us quite worried. We had arrived on the long weekend of the Queen’s Birthday, so most places were shut including the vet, so we checked into a campsite which was only 100m from a lovely white sandy dog friendly beach and bunkered down.

Even though Muffin and I both felt unwell we did brave a walk/carry along the beach the next day with the others. This walk turned into a disaster as poor little Ian got attacked and bitten on the rump by a bigger Kelpie-like dog that had pulled away from the grasp of three young children – no ‘responsible adult’ in sight. Fortunately Ian wasn’t too badly hurt, and I think we were all more traumatised by his terrible screams.

The children gave us their address and Paul paid a visit to the mother and owner of the dog later that day to tell her what had happened and suggest that she only exercise the dog with a responsible adult there, arrange training and socialisation for the young Kelpie, but the mother just shouted him down and was totally unreasonable. So we sat in the van later that night – it was raining, I had a sore throat, Muffin had some mystery illness, Paul was feeling very upset after his confrontation and poor Ian was shell-shocked and bruised. What a depressed lot we were! Tia was the only one still bouncing on all four legs.

Muffin seemed a little better and was eating well the next day, but we still took her to the vet and thought that perhaps her nerves were just shot to pieces after the long Nullarbor drive and then the very bumpy road to Esperance was the last straw. She has always been a very highly strung little dog and hates thunder and loud noises and the travelling does not go down well with her. The vet checked her and agreed that it was not physical but most likely mental. Oh dear! He gave her an injection to calm and de-stress her and we took the opportunity to get Ian and Tia their annual vaccinations too. My sore throat had also rapidly disappeared and not eventuated into anything worse – hurrah!

We all felt in better spirits after this, and did the magnificent Great Ocean Drive of WA. It is a circular loop from Esperance of only 38kms but includes spectacular beach and ocean scenery, the Wind Farm and the Pink Lake. The beaches have fine white sand and turquoise sea and mostly have no-one on them. Often they are bounded by granite cliffs and of course the Recherche Archipelago islands (all 105 of them) are visible from the coast. All the beaches here (except right in the town) are dog friendly and when the sun came out we all had a wonderful walk and run on possibly one of the most beautiful beaches in Australia!

The next mini problem was that Paul noticed a small chip in the front windscreen that had two cracks radiating out from it - a job for O’Brien Glass. We had a ‘chip repair’ that same afternoon and hope that it will be strong enough for now.

Next stop was Ravensthorpe along the South Coast Highway. Spring flowers along the way were wonderful to see. As part of the Fitzgerald Biosphere Reserve, the region is reputed to have more flowers for its size than any other similar area in the world! Ravensthorpe is 546 Kms south-east of Perth and is encircled by the Ravensthorpe Range and sits among stately Salmon Gum trees. We spent much of the day there looking at the highlights of the historic mining town. Again sadly the Nickel mine here has closed after only a year or so. A lot of the infrastructure built at the time is now falling into disuse. No-one could tell us why it had closed so soon – except to say that the price of Nickel had fallen.

The weather was getting a little brighter and we decided drive down to Hopetoun, a tiny town on the shores of the Southern Ocean about 50Kms south of Ravensthorpe. It is an unspoilt wilderness with pristine white beaches and a hotel, couple of nice restaurants and cafes and an excellent bush campsite on the headland. They had obviously had a huge storm and there was lots of seaweed thrown up on parts of the beach, and the dunes at the back showed recent erosion. We booked in for two nights (which we later extended to four) and the weather turned glorious. We began to feel recovered from our various illnesses and injuries and had a chance to relax.

The first night we went to the only pub in town and cleared out most of the locals with our video juke box choices from the 70’s and 80’s. I don’t think many of the regulars had heard of Meat Loaf or Robert Palmer or Earth, Wind and Fire! We stayed on for a pub dinner of grilled snapper and curry prawns which were very tasty and made a change from home “van” cooking.

The next day we spent at the campsite in the morning doing chores – I got 3 loads of washing done and dried on an enormous washing line, and Paul defrosted the fridge. We spread everything else out in the sun to air, swept and cleaned out the van, and after showers even cut our nails...

Once we were all tidied up we drove off to explore the area. We found the Fitzgerald River National Park to be the most magnificent coastal scenery ever. We drove very slowly in our van with the dogs hiding inside along a dirt road inside the National Park to East Mt Barren lookout and we both did a short walk up the craggy ridge. The sun was shining and the view along the beaches – 12 mile, 4 mile and 2 mile – was amazing, with the huge lagoon behind, wonderful coloured wildflowers all around us and the turquoise ocean as far as you could see.

Later on we had a walk on one of these beaches just outside the National Park with the doggies and we were the only people there as far as we could see. The beach was totally unspoilt, unpolluted and uninhabited – just as nature intended. There were shells in their millions to examine all around and sand dunes behind. What a pristine area indeed. The dogs were in heaven and so were we. It was a very good end to a week that had started out rather badly.

To see some pickies, click on images below (right click and open in new window):

Week Seventeen

2009-09-25T04:35:00.000-07:00

Well the rainy night in Wudinna (just over half way across the SA Eyre Highway) wasn’t quite as restful as we had hoped! We spent a sleepless night with Ian up and down with a tummy upset and then a fairly major leak directly onto the bed from an overhead air vent in the van. We were like zombies the next day, but all was well as Ian made an immediate recovery and another very helpful caravan traveller lent us his ladder and also his ‘all weather’ sealant gun to rectify our leak. We thought that this was from a little gap between the rubber seal and van, and we now have our fingers crossed that it is fixed... In the meantime all the bedding had to be washed and dried and the mattress aired. Domestic duties are not well tolerated now.

Next stop was Ceduna with a couple of tiny wheat towns along the way. Each town seems to follow the same formula and has: a huge wheat silo or two, a hotel (pub), an ‘all things to all people’ village store (post office, supermarket, newsagent, betting shop), a caravan park or rest area, a rural supplies shop AND one major very odd tourist attraction. This might be a giant Galah, an old preserved Humpty, a pier where there’s no water, Gus the wooden chainsaw sculpture... It makes for quite an interesting set of photos and memories.

Ceduna was great and we stayed there for three nights in a caravan park right on the beach front. It was a substantial town of about 3,600 people and had agricultural, seafood, salt and gypsum industries and huge silos where the wheat is stored prior to loading onto ships for export. It’s the last major town on the drive to Perth across the Nullarbor Plain, so it’s the place to stock up on food, water, fuel and check the tires and oil!

The bay at Ceduna is called Murat Bay and we went on a very attractive walk along the grassy foreshore called The Encounter Coastal Trail which the dogs enjoyed and so did we. There were “interpretive” signs all along the way for interesting reading about the area and the Aboriginal culture. The town takes its name from the Aboriginal word Chedoona, meaning ‘resting place’. We have also got quite into the arid garden scene and now take a lot more notice and photographs of the succulents and many and varied dune plants. The ones at Pinky Point, Thevenard, on the other side of the bay were delightful and we decided that our next garden will be an arid native one. At Ceduna there is some ‘fresh off the boat’ seafood to be had, and Paul bought some very tasty King George Whiting Fillets to cook for dinner and another night we ate in the local hotel bistro and had Garfish and Sardines.

There is a long jetty at Ceduna and we walked out to see the sunset. This is one of the rare locations where the sun sets into the sea. It was magnificent to watch the huge red and orange globe sink beneath the surface of Murat Bay. And of course the night stars were fantastic too. Many Aborigines believe that the twinkling stars are the campfires of people who have died, or the spirits chattering away to each other – both are very pleasant ideas.

We had a nightmare of a last night in Ceduna – we had thunder and lightning which Muffin hates and she kept us up a good part of the night, bless her! The good news was that the leak in the roof air vent seems to have been fixed as no water came in this time – hurrah!

We made sure we were well stocked up with food, beer and wine, water, fuel, oil and most importantly had emptied our toilet cassette, before we hit the Eyre Highway which took us round the Great Australian Bight from South Australia all the way into Western Australia. Our journey from Ceduna in SA to Norseman in WA was to be 1,194Kms in total. The scenery gradually changed from agricultural wheat fields to Aboriginal lands with dense trees and bush and finally to just low scrub on a limestone base – hence the name Nullarbor Plain derived from the Latin meaning ‘no trees’.

Our first stop on this part of our journey was a little place called Penong, meaning “waterhole”. It has a hundred windmills to bring up water from bores and the usual wheat silos as well as an old Woolshed Museum. There was a strong, driving wind and scattered rain which rocked the motor home and meant you had to keep both hands firmly on the wheel, especially when passing road trains, but gradually the weather brightened as we progressed.

We planned to stop overnight in a rest area but got attacked by desperate horse flies that knew how to bite as soon as we got out of the van, so we carried on to the Nullarbor Roadhouse and to some semblance of civilization – a total drive of 300Kms that day – a big drive for us. A highlight of the Nullarbor Roadhouse was to discover a well maintained Par-5, 550m, 4th hole of golf out the back. Apparently it is part of the Nullarbor Links -the world’s longest golf course which starts in Kalgoorlie, WA and has its 18thhole 1,365Kms away in Ceduna! The course is advertised as having “outback style natural terrain fairways”, presumably you drive (in a vehicle) between holes...

The weather all the next day was absolutely atrocious and unheard of in this area. We had torrential rain and strong stormy winds and we battled along in the van until we reached the Head of Bight, which is a 12km turn off the Eyre Highway towards the Bunda Cliffs. It is premier Great Southern Whale watching territory and we had the timing right (May to October) to see mother whales and their young calves, so we put on our wet weather gear and rushed down the viewing boardwalks to be rewarded with the spectacular sight of at least 10 whales with calves frolicking in the sea just beneath the cliffs, not at all disturbed by the weather. They were so close that you could see their eyes and v-shaped blow holes and the callosities on their heads that differentiate them from each other. We stayed as long we could until a horrendous storm broke over our heads and we scurried back to the van to dry out. Such a shame about the weather, but what an experience it was!

We spent that night in a rest area and Paul made a vegetable curry and baked apple for dinner to use up our vegetables and fruit as we would be passing through the Quarantine checkpoint at the SA/WA border the next day. Any fruit, vegetables, seeds or honey that we had left, had to be eaten or be thrown away. We also had to remember to put our watches back for WA time.

Amazingly the weather was just beautiful the next day – a complete turnaround, with blue skies, no wind and lovely and warm. We stopped at several magnificent view points along the coast and our cameras were always at the ready. The drive seemed easy and we listened to music and audio books and enjoyed the changing scenery. We swapped driver every 50-80Kms with stops for walks, lunch and sights and the time and kilometres flew by.

The Quarantine checkpoint at the WA border nearly had us in trouble as we had forgotten we had a new jar of honey in one cupboard and an old apple core in our waste bin! Fortunately the Quarantine Officer who came on board and searched the van was very nice and just confiscated them both and gave us a pamphlet on the reasons why!

We passed through Eucla, stopped at the Madura Pass for a look at the view across the plains, and made it to a rest area just outside Cocklebiddy for the night. The next morning we tackled the longest, straightest stretch of road in Australia – the 145Kms between Caiguna and Belladonia, stopping at a blowhole and enjoying the changing scenery and several little walks with the doggies. After a nice hot shower and good sleep at Belladonia, we did the final run into Norseman.

The weather was bright but very cold at night and the strong head wind was making our fuel gauge move towards ‘empty’ at an alarming rate. We stopped at wonderful huge granite plain called Newman Rock which had little puddles of caught rain, lots of animal spores and lichen. The arid desert woodland and little spring flowers were beautiful, as were the Eucalyptus hardwood forests around Fraser Range Sheep Station.

When we were just 10Kms from reaching Norseman the engine warning light suddenly came on in the van! It was as though our poor motor home had just had enough of the long stretch across the Nullarbor and was ready for a rest... and so we carefully drove into town. Englishman Edward John Eyre had led an expedition to open up this route back in 1840 and we had “followed in his footsteps” to complete one of Australia’s greatest road journeys.

To see some photos, click on each image (right click and open in new window..):

Week Sixteen

2009-09-16T03:12:00.000-07:00

Our next stop along the Stuart Highway travelling south was at the Woomera township. We arrived in the middle of a nasty dust storm that made your eyes and nose itch and run and blew dirt everywhere. To compound the effect it was really hot and sultry with the sun hidden in a brown-red haze. Here’s a bit of history about Woomera and why it exists in the middle of nowhere!

At the end of WW2, after experiencing the devastating effects of the German long range missile the V2, Britain decided it urgently needed to develop its own guided missile system - a “super V2”, but didn’t have the land to carry out a test program. It needed a large uninhabited area with low vegetation, road and rail access and mostly fine weather. So in late 1946, the British and Australian governments agreed to establish the Woomera Range in northern South Australia.

The Woomera testing area is still prohibited today and encompasses 127,000 square kilometres and is part of the original testing range. Access to the Woomera Township was restricted until 1982 but is now open to the public. When we visited, the town was absolutely empty, just like a ghost town. We felt like the only people there and it was very,very strange. "Is there a countdown going on for a nuclear test, but no one has told us?", we asked ourselvs. All the houses, living quarters and the community services such as church, school, shops, dentist are still there and well maintained (by the Defence Force, and paid for by the taxpayer of course!!), but apparently only 200 people live in Woomera now. It can host 3,000 so you can imagine how weird the place is when it's empty like this.

We wandered around looking at the aircraft and missiles that are part of an open-air exhibition and we did find the museum open which explained the history of the place and was very interesting. We took a drive around the town and then headed back to the campsite to get the air conditioner on. It was a fascinating place and worth a visit, but obviously not in its prime right now.

The next day the weather had changed completely, the dust storm had gone and we had blue skies and warm sun – beautiful. Suddenly Woomera seemed attractive as well as interesting! We took the doggies for a run and play on the local oval which had lush green grass, much to Tia’s delight. Then after a breakfast of French Toast prepared by chef Paul, we got back on the road towards Port Augusta.

We loved the changing scenery of the next 200kms between Woomera and Post Augusta. We saw huge dry salt lakes with a couple of Emus crossing - looking like two untidy haystacks on legs. At a rest area we spotted a cleverly camouflaged lizard and had a wonderful view of the Flinders Ranges in the distance. Even though we were looking forward to reaching the coast, we both felt we would really miss the unique inland Australian countryside.

Port Augusta seemed like a refreshing oasis after inland Australia. It’s known as the “Crossroads of Australia on the northern tip of Spencer Gulf and was one of the major ports for wool, minerals and wheat from 1954 to 1973. Now it is a major tourist, government and commercial centre. The Ghan train stops at Port Augusta on its journey from Adelaide to Darwin.

On our way into town we stopped at the Australian Arid Lands Botanic garden. It’s in a stunning location overlooking Spencer Gulf and the magnificent Flinders Ranges and has beautifully laid out arid zone plants and even sample gardens you could grow yourself. We both did the self-guided walk and learnt how these plants can survive in landscapes ranging from floodplains to gibber plains, sand dunes and ancient rocky ranges.

In all we spent two days in Port Augusta. Our caravan site was right next to the beach area and Tia was so pleased to be able to chase her tennis ball into the sea again. We walked into the town over the bridge and along the foreshore, and visited the Wadlata Outback Centre – an amazing interactive attraction that took us through the history of the natural and cultural wonders of the area from 500 million years ago to the present day. We really needed two days just at the Centre, never mind all the other sights to see!

On our last night we sat with the dogs and a glass of wine listening to a very nice singer/guitar performer at the campsite under the stars. The whole feeling of Port Augusta was very relaxing.

We left Port Augusta and hit the Eyre Highway rather late in the day and stopped at a very lonely and dark “rest area” for the night. We were the only ones there and it seemed a bit eerie. We went to bed early and pulled the covers up over our heads only to be woken by not one but two road trains pulling in at about 9.30pm. We actually felt better with their arrival and slept soundly.

The next day we carried on the Eyre Highway with a stop at Iron Knob - synonymous with the early development of BHP (now OneSteel) and the birth of the Australian steel industry. Paul had a tour of the old mine area which was a working mine for 100 years until June 1998. It was a little sad to see the town so well passed its heyday, and lots of properties were up for sale. I managed to get bitten on the leg by an unidentified spider-like creepy-crawly and survived to tell the tale and two shaggy Emus strutted around the town and lent to the overall unkempt air.

So onwards through Kimba for lunch – a wheat belt town, and on to Wudinna for a night in a very clean, hospitable and spacious caravan park with a lingering smell of a nearby pig farm. And guess what – it started to rain steadily. Wonderful for the wheat farmers and very refreshing for us!

Click on the photos below to see some pickies!:

Week Fifteen

2009-09-11T15:41:00.000-07:00

We safely reached Coober Pedy – and what an amazing and strange place. It was all windy and dusty with piles of dirt mounds all around the outskirts of town from Opal mine shafts. They look a bit like millions of little tents from a distance. Everyone here is hoping for a big find and a quick fortune...all nationalities and lots of eccentrics. There was not one blade of grass anywhere (except on the one and only Oval where we could throw a ball for Tia) and only a few dusty trees and packed red earth. Many dogs were wandering around the streets – looking healthy enough but some with no collars or leads and seemingly no owners. Fortunately they left us and our troop of three well alone. Coober Pedy is really a bigger town than it first appears. It has a Westpac, two supermarkets, restaurants and plenty of Opal stores/museums and underground caves/houses to visit. It reminded us of a Western movie town! We booked into a campsite close to the town centre and had fish and chips in the main “bistro” in town whist we watched the final of “Dancing with the Stars” on a big flat screen TV.

We visited the “Old Timers Mine” – an original opal mine dating back to 1916. It had been filled in – no-one knows why – as there was opal still waiting to be discovered. It wasn’t until 1968 that the hidden mine was accidentally discovered when an underground home extension broke through to it. We were able to see seams of opal still in place, along with all the hand dug caverns and shafts. There was also an underground display home showing how the average Coober Pedy resident lives today. These underground homes (or “dugouts”) are plentiful in and around the town and keep cool and clean in soaring temperatures and dust storms. Apparently they keep an even temperature of 23-25 degrees C. We would have liked to have seen inside more dugouts but didn’t feel able to knock on a stranger’s door for an invitation!

Coober Pedy gets its water pumped from sub-artesian bores North West of the town 26 kilometres away. The raw water needs lots of treatment to remove iron and manganese and degassing. It costs $22.75 per 1,000 gallons. Electricity is via a diesel-fired power station and one lonely wind turbine (that generates 4% of the towns electricity requirement). It must be quite expensive to keep an underground home with lights needed to be on all day!

We also did an excellent tour out to the Breakaways Reserve 33kms north of Coober Pedy. It is a very scenic area of exposed sandstone outcrops and spectacular views over what was once an inland sea. There is also an area called Moon Plain with fossilised shells and dramatic landscapes. These places have featured in many films including Mad Max, Red Planet and other “end of the world” movies.

Our tour guide was called Gunther, a very large jovial man. He was originally from Germany and came to Coober Pedy 40 years ago when he was 19 years old. He had joined forces with a French man who spoke no English and together they mined for Opals on their “claim”. Over the decades he had made some good finds and also learnt how to cut and polish gems. Gunther was quite a character and drove along the dirt roads like a mad man and had us clinging to our seats. He showed us his own ‘claim’ along with the machinery, and the pit. He had really fallen in love with the life of an Opal miner and had never left. He told us that finding Opals was like finding a needle in a haystack, but it was such an amazing high when a good opal seam was uncovered. He had gone 5 years sometimes without a single find but had still kept going...

The tour included a visit to the Serbian Underground Church which has a series of quite moving sculptures completed in a race against time by the terminally ill sculptor. We saw the famous Dog Fence – the longest fence in the world! It stretches 5,300km from Surfers Paradise in QLD to the Great Australian Bight and was meant to keep the Dingos travelling from the northern Cattle country to the southern sheep country. No-one could really tell us if it works... we know for sure that Muffin would have no trouble climbing over or under it!

We also saw the Coober Pedy golf course... apparently on the list of the most difficult courses in the world and not a blade of grass to be seen anywhere! Some Japanese tourists had asked Gunther when the golf course would be finished. Like everything in Coober Pedy it looks at first glance like a building site. There doesn’t seem to be any town planning and every hill is pock-marked with dugouts for miles around like ants. Mines and homes are next to each other and even joined. We wondered about landslides and cave-ins, but it seems that there is so little rain that it’s not a problem or they just keep quiet about it.

Well, after seeing all this lovely Opal, we only came away with a piece of Queensland Boulder Opal for Paul’s mineral collection! I did see a beautiful Opal ring, blue-green with flashes of red for $7,500 but managed to keep calm and walk away...

On our last evening we had a nice Greek meal of Moussaka and marinated prawns –so the food was pretty good really. The next morning we left Coober Pedy in the midst of a dust storm that pummelled and swept us on our way south towards our next stop at Glendambo, 100km north-west of Woomera. We found dust in every nook and cranny, and the van!

The desert scenery along the Stuart Highway on this leg of the journey is red earth and olive/grey green low shrubs. Again the feeling is of a desolate, dusty and windswept landscape. There are endless dirt road tracks off the highway, some with signposts to cattle stations hundreds of kilometres away and others stretching out to the horizon with no sign-posts at all. Where do they end up? A very hard life for anyone living and working on this land.

Update on Muffin: she is getting a little better in the van now as one of us has been sitting in the back with her to provide comfort and reassurance whilst the other drives. It is surprisingly pleasant travelling in the back as you can read and listen to music and audio books or just sleep. The seats are comfortable (our "lounge") and there's seatbelts for safety. We each drive about 50-100 kms and then stop for a break and to swap. Muffin has the luxury of a lap to sit on and the other two doggies love the company as well. Well if it keeps everyone happy and it works, why not!

Click below on the photos to open them:

58 Coober Pedy

Week Fourteen

2009-09-06T20:36:00.000-07:00

The weather was surprisingly much cooler at Uluru, and on the first evening we had a spectacular view of the sunset on Uluru and the Olgas, but with a rainbow. This must be a very rare sight! We had a few showers and then the sun would shine again and this repeated for the next 4-5 days. The Ayres Rock Resort (Yuluru) had everything we needed to satisfy us discerning tourists. There were shops, all types of accommodation and bars and restaurants. We had a fun evening at the Outback Pub where we cooked on the BBQs and listened to live music and generally soaked up the atmosphere and did some people watching!

We weren’t able to take the dogs into the National Park that surrounds Uluru, but we found that there were several good vantage points close to the Resort from which we could all enjoy the sunrise and sunset - with a glass of wine in one hand and a bag of chippies in the other. Uluru is one of the great natural wonders of the world over 500 million years old. It is a sandstone monolith 348 metres high, but with most of its bulk beneath the surface. It is the physical and spiritual heart of Australia and reflects the rays of the sun with a magic red glow.

After we had seen the sunrise and sunset over a couple of days, we travelled from Uluru towards Kings Canyon, a scenic drive of outback landscapes that took us back along the Lasseter Highway for 130kms and then turned off for another 160kms along the Luritja Highway into the Watarrka National Park. We stopped at Kings Creek Station, about 40kms SE of the actual Kings Canyon. This was a working Cattle Station as well as a campsite, and also had horses, camels, quad bikes and helicopter flights on tap. We were very pleasantly surprised by the campsite area which was beautifully laid out with undercover eating areas, fire-places and grassy areas for each camper, yet still with an outback/middle of nowhere atmosphere. We deemed this one to be in the top class of campsites we have loved.

On our first evening there was a talk about the area by one of the Rangers which was excellent. It gave us an overview of the unique diversity of the Watarrka National Park with some stunning photography. The next day we eagerly embarked on our walks along Kathleen Creek first and then into Kings Canyon Creek. The dogs were allowed to stay in the car park area and vans in the National Park which was a plus for us and we could explore in relays. The Range that includes Kings Canyon is called George Gill Range, named after Ernest Giles’ brother-in-law who assisted with funds for the original expedition to this area in 1872. The George Gill Range is about 75kms long and the highest point is 900m above sea level. The Range is made up of Mereenie and Carmichael sandstone and of course the Canyon itself was formed by water running through a crack and freezing and expanding over millions of years. The mighty chasm cleaves the earth to a depth of 270 metres.

We very much enjoyed the atmosphere and scenery: the Red River Gums, the amazing feathery Desert Oaks that grow straight and tall until their roots reach the water table when they branch out into huge canopies, the Mulga pigeons that look like ridiculous German Soldiers strutting about with a little feather quiff, the fantastic colours of blue sky, the huge red boulders and soaring ranges and every shade of green, lime, olive, grey, teal you can imagine. Apparently there are over 600 species of plants and many native animals, some rare. It was a place well worth visiting.

Our next stop was at a little rest area we had already stayed at on our way to Uluru. Here we sadly parted with our friend Christine and doggie Jack in their ‘mini-mi’ Kea campervan as they were returning to Alice Springs to drop off their van and catch a flight back to Sydney, whilst we were continuing our adventure and heading south down the Stuart Highway to Coober Pedy, still travelling on the ‘Explorers Way’. We had really enjoyed having their company for that part of our journey and will miss them lots.

This part of the Stuart Highway is quite amazing - real desert stunted scrub and desolation and wild cool winds stirring up the dust and pebbles. The scenery is endlessly flat and the ground covered with ‘gibbers’ that have packed together to make the surface as hard as road fill. Impossible to imagine how the roots of any plant can push through this! It was both fascinating and horrific.

Muffin decided to throw a wobbly and was very agitated with the bumps over cattle grates and rough road surfaces. She had clearly had enough and needed a lot of cuddling and reassuring. One of us had to sit in the back of the van with her on this leg of the journey and she gradually calmed down. Poor little mite. The other two doggies take it all in their stride and just seem so relaxed in comparison.

As we got closer to Coober Pedy there suddenly appeared thousands of small mounds of dirt and small areas sectioned off by Opal prospectors. Some little mines are still working but many have been abandoned. In 1913, 14-year old Willie Hutchinson was the first to find a shimmering gemstone known as Opal in Coober Pedy. The name comes from the Aboriginal word “kupa” (white man) and “piti” (hole). Mining claims are limited to one per person and can measure no more than 100m by 50m so it is the preserve of individuals rather than mining companies. Since then miners from more than 50 nations have arrived in Coober Pedy to find their fortune – so we were going to do the same!

Click here to see some photos:

55 Uluru

56 Kings Creek_Canyon

Week Thirteen

2009-08-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

We moved into the Alice Springs Heritage Caravan Park and as the powered sites were completely booked out, we were happy enough to stay on the large camping area which gave us a lot more space. Alice Springs was in full swing with the arrival of the 2009 Variety Bash cars , the Variety Club Concert and the Henley Todd Regatta on that weekend, so everywhere was busy and crowded (Paul: but Miss World was in town, so that made it extra OK!!). All the same it was great to be amongst great cafes and shops and all the mod cons associated with a thriving town! We spent some time at the Todd Mall enjoying the huge ambience of the day. Muffin, Ian and Tia in their day out scarves were also celebrities!

Our friends Christine and Stephen with their doggie Jack arrived at the airport having flown in from Sydney to tour with us for a while, and so we went to meet them and collect their KEA van. It was lovely to see them again after 3 months - we were going to have us a “convoy” for a few weeks! That evening we were lucky enough to get tickets to the outdoor Variety Bash concert and listened to many Australian greats from the music scene, including John Williamson, Leo Sayer (adopted Australian)(Paul had a chat with him in the airport car park), James Blundell, John Paul Young, Russell Morris, Adam Harvey , Frankie J Holden, Wilber Wild, The Screaming Jets. The atmosphere was lovely, the crowd small and we enjoyed ourselves. Terrific venue surrounded by the amazing hill ranges around Alice Springs.

The next day we stood in the Mall and watched some of the 600 cars sponsored to raise money for the Variety Club and disadvantaged children parade by. The cars are each over 30 years old and have major modifications to withstand the thousands of kilometres they travel raising money. Lots have ’fun themes’ too, and they hooted their horns and sprayed the crowd with water and sweets. We walked on the see the Henley-Todd Regatta – a selection of light home-made boats with people standing inside who run races up and down the dry, sandy Todd River bed. It was a real hoot. Then we had a big shop at Woolies and back for a BBQ with our camp next door neighbours Greg and Joan.

23rd August was Stephen’s birthday so after dropping off all the four dogs at the local kennels for four days, we headed off in our two Kea Vans into the West MacDonnell Ranges where dogs are not allowed, and spent the first night at Ellery Creek Big Hole. It was a lovely spot with a fascinating geological history which we explored on a short 3km Dolomite Walk the following day. A swim in the waterhole required courage as the water was extremely cold even though the outdoor temperature was into the 30s. I stayed in for about 15 minutes but the rest of the group chickened out after a quick exhilarating dunk! We did lots of eating, drinking and star gazing to end a great day.

We woke up next morning missing the dogs but ready for a walk and chilly swim before breakfast. The sun came up quickly and we relaxed and read and did any repairs before moving onto our next stop at Orminston Gorge and Pound. We stayed there for two nights. The highlight was a $50 helicopter ride over the gorges and Mount Sonder, taking off from Glen Helen. The helicopter was just a little bubble with open sides and all we had was a lap belt so it was pretty scary as the pilot banked one way and then the other. But the scenery was so magnificent that the ride was over far too soon. It was breath-taking and very memorable. We also did the 7km Orminston Pound walk which is a circular walk across the slopes and onto the floor of the Pound, retuning along the Gorge floor scrambling over the rocks via the main waterhole. Amazingly the weather completely changed from really hot to much cooler and drizzle, but it was a welcome relief. Paul just couldn’t get over the minerals and spent most of the walk bent double gazing at the ground.

The next night we moved back through Alice and out the other side to the East MacDonnell ranges and we camped at Corroboree Rock. This is a sacred Aboriginal site and is a huge rock shaped a bit like a dorsal fin standing up from the ground, with a couple of holes through it. We were the only two vans there and Christine cooked a magnificent Prawn Pasta and we had lots of wine and a fire – a beautiful campsite evening with lovely friends. Sadly Stephen had to return back to Sydney, so Christine dropped him at the airport and we splashed out on a powered site for each van at one of the Top Tourist Park in Alice Springs. It was time for some washing and a spring clean before we collected the doggies.

We had booked our van in for 135,000km service at the Ford garage, so we got up early the next day to drop it in. All was Ok and it just cost $300, cheap by Sydney standards. We visited the old Hospital and Alice Springs jail and a museum about the pioneering woman of Australia – amazing how hard they worked and brought up huge numbers of children in the very hostile environment of the untamed outback. Their personal diaries and accounts were so interesting.

All in all we really liked Alice Springs - a real treat and a surprise - we were expecting a dusty old outback town - wrong!! We can see why so many people come for a visit and end up staying!

Then we collected the van and the 4 dogs from the kennels and headed out of Alice, South on the Stuart Highway, with a turn off to Uluru. We found a great rest area with plenty of space, trees, red sand and wood for a camp fire and had a good night’s sleep. Early the next morning we had to lend a hand to some people who had bogged their car in soft ground and we flagged down another car load of people to help with the pushing. All ended well.

The road to Uluru was peppered with a couple of dead cows and lots of Kangaroos – all “road kill”. But we did see a live Dingo strolling casually around a rest area scavenging for food and a magnificent Eagle feasting on a dead Kangaroo and seemingly unafraid of the traffic going by. Finally we reached the Ayes Rock Resort and found the Camp Ground - a very clean and spacious area, quite empty and with all the facilities we could possibly need. We had a view of Uluru and dogs were allowed...we immediately booked in for two nights!

Click below on photos (open in new window) to see some photos:

Week Twelve

2009-08-19T00:59:00.000-07:00

Just over 100kms from Tenant Creek, NT, travelling due south on the Stuart Highway there is a small turn-off to a place called the Devil’s Marbles. We enjoyed this area immensely as it has majesty and is so photogenic. The Devil’s Marbles are huge granite structures that have been exposed by erosion of the surrounding earth and the corners have been rounded with time. There are many precariously balanced on top of each other, some squashed like marsh mallows and others perfectly spherical. A few have tumbled down and others have split in half because of water seeping between layers over millions of years. All the rocks glow red at sunset and are wonderful to climb, photograph and walk around. They are of great significance to the Aboriginal people, as is Uluru.

We spent two nights at a campsite there with this lovely scene all around us – a great find. The camp fee was a donation of only $3.30 per person per night. Paul was able to have a camp fire and we spotted the glowing eyes of Dingoes on the edge of the camp. The dogs were pleased to be safely in the van at night...

We then did a huge day of travel from the Devil’s Marbles to a very remote campsite about 70kms off the Stuart Highway along a road running east called Plenty Highway. We covered nearly 400kms – a record for us and the doggies. It was very tiring and we were a bit out of sorts. The campsite was called Gem Tree and had been recommended to us by the Ranger at the Devil’s Marbles. We didn’t arrive until 6.30pm and it was nearly dark, but it was a real oasis and worth the trip.

The next morning we went on a prescribed Nature Walk for a couple of hours, armed with a booklet that pointed out all the varied fauna and flora along the way. Gem Tree is bounded by a dry and dusty creek bed on one side, a landing strip, the Plenty Highway and a fence and covers about 250 acres. The doggies had a race along the landing strip, running between Paul and me, with Tia the winner of course! It would be great to visit here again in the wet season to see the mammoth change that happens to the plants and the creek bed. Apparently the creek goes from nothing to 100 metres across and 4-5 metres deep.

Amazingly we bumped into Paul’s colleague Pat from Townsville again and his friend Ellen, who joined us in our van for a cup of tea and coffee before they carried on further east along the Plenty Highway. It’s a small world really...

We tried a game of Bush Golf on the course at Gem Tree, but got too many prickles in our shoes and on our legs. Tia barked loudly at every hit and Muffin hated the Bindi grass and hopped around, so we gave up after three holes and had a Gin and Tonic instead! On the way out the next day we got close and personal with a Dingo that we spotted in a dip in the road. He circled our van and appeared very confident and interested in us. Paul found a garnet in some stones just outside our van which was a nice surprise. Then it was onwards into Alice Springs and civilization.

Click below (open in new window) to see some pickies:

49 Devils Marbles

50 to GemCreek

51 GemTree

Week Eleven

2009-08-14T01:32:00.000-07:00

Camooweal , QLD had one shop that was the Post Office, grocery, cafe, stationary shop, computer shop, hardware shop all combined, plus two petrol stations and two campsites. It was a very typical tiny country town. We stopped for lunch and to fill up on diesel, then carried on to get some kilometres under our belt. The driving is easy, very little traffic, mostly other campervans and the odd Ute. There are a few, very infrequent road trains, though these can be up to 54 metres long (our van is 6.8 metres so it would be like driving 8 strung together). We have been seeing a group of mad cyclists on and off. They are heading up to Darwin now but we kept overtaking them, then we’d stop and they’d go by etc. It seems a very hot and tiring way to get around this countryside.

Our next drive took us out of QLD and into NT and the countryside looked harsher and drier than ever. The free rest areas are spaced approximately 60-100kms apart so we just pick one to stay in that suits our time “on the road”. Most of the rest areas are a little off the road, with a bore water tank, no toilets, very little shade and red, red dust under foot. There are always several other vans that pull in during the late afternoon and a few washing lines get hung out. Laundry dries in about 30 minutes, no worries about ironing out here! Once it gets cooler and the sun is very low, we give the dogs a little walk and then dinner and we sometimes have a shower in our little cubicle on board. A shower is just a quick wet with water, a good scrub and then a quick rinse, but it’s very refreshing just the same. Then it’s time to get dinner, chat to other travellers and see if there’s any Internet connection, relax in our chairs with a drink and count how many satellites and falling stars we can find. The skies are really wonderful here at night because there are so few town lights, and the Milky Way is very clear. Bed time is around 9.30 to 10.00pm with a bit of reading as well. We never wake up until 7.00am and the doggies are so good and stay quiet until they hear us stirring. Then it’s all systems go and Willie Nelson’s ‘On the Road Again’ played loudly in the van gets us going.

Our next stop was Barkley Homestead. From the name, Paul and I excitedly imagined lush green lawns and sprinklers, tables with white tablecloths and cream teas with china tea pots and cups. Maybe shady verandas and a cool breeze... but no, Barkley Homestead is hot, dry, dusty and has one shop and one petrol station and one campsite and a big rest area of red dust with almost no trees or shade... oh well, we were just dreaming! At least there was Internet connection. Prices for anything here like milk are very expensive, explained by a notice on the store door that says they have no electricity and have to use 500 litres of fuel a day to run everything from a generator, hence the cost.

The dogs are now looking suspiciously like dusty, dirty outback mutts. Like us they are finding the temperature a little too hot during the main part of the day, but they are eating and sleeping well. Exercise is limited to walks along the roads early in the morning or late in the afternoon, so they are bearing up well. They are a magnet for other travellers to come over and chat to us. Most say “aren’t your dogs well behaved” as they sit quietly on their mat outside the van, usually waiting for dinner! Little do they know that they can be demanding trouble-makers at times...well certainly Muffin and sometimes Ian. Tia the Boxer is the best behaved traveller of them all.

At last we rocked into Tennant Creek after a short pit-stop at Three Ways (Petrol Station and Campsite only). We found a pleasant campsite to wash off the dust and primp up the dogs. The town itself looks pretty run down with loads of Aboriginal people just sitting and hanging around the shady doorways. They leave you alone but look really bored. It’s depressing seeing the Aborigine situation – the kids are wonderful, but clearly loose the smile and gleam in their eyes as they get older. The “grog” is a huge problem, especially with the older ones - we chatted to a guy who works with 16-20 year old Aboriginal kids and he has managed to help several to qualify as Conservation Rangers. But there seems to be no support or help from the kids parents, so much so that he now has no connection with the parents and just concerns himself with the children. He loves his job, so more people like him are needed to mentor the kids we think. The cultural gap and understanding is still an enormous chasm...

Paul did some grocery shopping and forgot he didn’t have the van with him and had to struggle back to the campsite in the searing heat loaded with really heavy bags of shopping! He was near collapsing and had me quite worried for a minute.

The next day we walked to the information centre and toured the old gold Battery and Minerals Museum. Paul was wowed by the minerals on display. There was also a great display of the early life of miners there. Tennant Creek was originally just a Telegraph Station for communication until gold was found. It was the last great gold rush of Australia in the 1930’s so the town is quite young. We found it amazing imagining a physical wire that ran from Darwin to the south and under the sea as far as the UK!!

Click on the photos below (open in new window)to see some pickies:

47 Inca Creek_41Bore

48 Tennant Creek

Week Ten

2009-08-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

We were still travelling along the Outlanders Way and the next stop was Julia Creek, a tiny town that felt hot and dusty. But we did find a nice spot to stop by a billabong just out of town where we could have a camp fire and catch up on some computer work. We had a visit from a cane toad which Paul was prepared to put in a bag and freeze to death (meant to be the kindest way)as they were mistakenly introduced to the Australian sugar cane fields to eat the beetles, but instead have become like vermin. But even so I could not let him kill the poor ugly creature...

We drove on towards Cloncurry and met an oncoming swarm of locusts, quite a sight. We had a long chat with a Road Train driver at a rest area who gave us another view on life. He was quite a character and drove cattle between stations and the market. He also bred Labradors and had three Harley Davidson motorbikes!

On we went to Cloncurry and booked into the Top Tourist camp site for 2 nights. I did a great tour of the Ernest Henry open copper mine the next morning and felt like I had entered the Land of the Giants. The mine runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The shifts are 12 hours on and 12 hours off, one week on and then one week off. Even the loaders that carry the rock out for processing cost millions of dollars each and a tyre replacement is $30,000. Amazing. We also visited a minerals museum and discovered that Cloncurry was the home of the first Flying Doctor service and Qantas first route. It also has the dubious honour of having the hottest temperature in Australia – about 54 degrees C, I think. Even though it is midwinter now, the temperature was 30 degrees!

On we went towards Mount Isa, but got a little side-tracked by a mining ghost town called Mary Kathleen. We drove off the main road for about 1.5kms into glorious countryside - full of white ghost gums and a huge assortment of birds and coloured parrots. The town itself has nearly disappeared as it was all auctioned off about 30 years ago. But the streets and foundations are still there. A great place to camp for the night and watch the sun go down.

The next morning we walked to the old Mary Kathleen disused mine. The water in the bottom of the pit was an amazing shade of blue because it had all the minerals leached into it. It was very tempting for a swim but too dangerous.

We reached Mount Isa on the last day of the famous Rodeo show – apparently the second biggest after Calgery! So every campsite and available spot was full of visitors, but we managed to grab a spot in the RSL overflow carpark! We has a steak burger (all that was on offer so we bent our “pescatarian” rules) and a lovely chat with Beth and Ron, a farming couple in the middle of an eight year drought. They were doing it tough on the farm. In general we didn’t like Mount Isa. It has the huge mine right in the town and is very industrial and polluted. It’s an interesting place to see, but not to stay for too long. We took the opportunity to get some jobs done and were happy to leave. One highlight was a visit to the old WW2 underground hospital along with equipment of the era. It was an eerie place and not one I would want to be recouperating in.

We drove on towards Camooweal, still along the Outlanders Way and spent the night just out of town in a rest area. Paul was happy to build a campfire, have a beer and chat to a Canadian traveller while I updated our Blog. Temperature is still very hot in the day, well over 30 degrees, so we look forward to the evenings and cooler night times.

Click below (open in new window) to see some photos:

44 Cloncurry

45 Mary Kathleen

46 Mt isa

Thoughts Along the Way...

2009-08-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

It took a long time to realise that there were no deadlines. We had the underlying feeling that we must keep moving to get somewhere, whereas it is the journey that matters, not the destination, of course!

We keep comparing all the different motor homes, caravans, 4WDs, trailers, tents and fifth wheelers we come across along the road and at every campsite. We discuss and dissect the pros and cons for each type of recreational vehicle...

Choosing to stay in a campsite, rest area or free camp or street park is probably the cause of most ‘animated discussions’ between us – along with which of us makes the best cup of tea or coffee.

We both agree that dogs are discriminated against far too much. There are too many blanket signs that say ‘dogs not permitted’ at campsites, beaches, walkways, shopping areas, outside cafes, parks etc. The point is that the problem lies with irresponsible dog owners, not the dogs themselves. So why not say instead ‘Dogs must be on a leash’ or ‘Dogs must be under effective control at all times’ or remind people ‘Pick up your dog poo’ etc? And then police that properly.

We always seem to end up with our heads pointing downwards in bed. It means we wake up with a slight hangover feeling! We must use the levelling chocks more often.

Why does the carpet in the van always creep towards the door and not the other way?

Why do we always have to stop after the first 50 yards driving to close whatever it is we’ve forgotten to close inside the van? No matter how many times we do a check, we always drive off leaving a cupboard open...

The worst joke we’ve heard is “Where’s Yeppoon? It’s next to your knife and fork”!

Why does Ian have to wee against every tree? Is it so he can find his way back to Sydney one day? He has certainly made sure of that.

Our driving theme song to get us going in the morning is “On the Road Again” by Willie Nelson – great to sing along to.

How come we use so much water? We notice every drop because we have a 150 litre tank on the van that we have to fill up more often than you would expect. But when you think about it, an average day of washing-up consists of 6 x dog bowls (3 dogs fed twice a day), 2 x breakfast bowls, 2 x saucepans, 8 x teas and coffees cups, 2 x lunch plates, 1 x salad bowl, 4 x chopping board, 12 x knives, forks spoons, 1 x frying pan, 1 x grater, 2 x fruit/pudding bowls, 2 x wine glasses etc. Then there’s tooth brushing x 4 (twice a day each). And washing/shower x 2 per day. Drinking water continuously and dogs drinking water. So all in all we have quite a tally.

Why do we always arrive in town to find we’ve missed the festival – either 2 weeks too early or two weeks too late?

Know we know why some people stay on the road for 6 years. There's too much to see and too little time.

Endless supply of great sunsets, blue skies, tiny one street towns, cheap land, hotels (pubs), dust and wide open plains...

Week Nine

2009-08-04T18:46:00.000-07:00

We decided to stay on the coast for another day and so Paul had a chance to visit the Coral Reef Aquarium in Townsville, then we drove off to the Northern beaches. We got to the free campsite at Saunders Beach to find it very full indeed. We managed to squeeze in, pleased we weren’t trailing a great long caravan. The beach was stormy and windy and the village just a few houses. Lots of fishermen at the estuary end and the dogs had a good run around.

We met a lovely man called Peter and his wife, originally from Portsmouth. They were well travelled and had lived in Australia for 30 years. Peter was an original hippy child with a long grey beard and hair and lots of beaded bracelets and baggy coloured pants with tie-dye T-shirt. He gave us some great advice about where to stay and fill up with diesel when we get past Mount Isa.

Part of the fun of the journey is all the different people you meet. We are now able to classify the travellers into groups: Grey Nomads (stay in Paid Campsites with their large caravan and have all the gear and gadgets and often a small dog), Mature Hippies (have old modified campervans, free camp and very knowledgeable about best places to stay), young backpacker types (from overseas and travelling in brightly painted rented combi vans) and people like us who are a cross between the Grey Nomads and the Mature Hippies! There are also few travelling families with children and those who are not really travelling but live semi-permanently in campsites for various reasons...

We had a laugh that night: we were woken up by a loud hissing sort of noise and couldn’t think what it was...maybe a slow tire leak, a possum or something larger? It was just a giant sprinkler on a timer right alongside our van that started up at 4.00am, spraying our van and everyone around in a 180 degree water spray. Fortunately our windows on that side were closed!

We came back down from the Northern Beaches to Townsville for a final tighten up of the van wheel nuts at Big Wheels and spent a couple of hours swimming at a beautiful Lagoon Pool that was free just on the outskirts of the town. After a few stops for provisions and some jazzy blue and white covers from Spotlight for our van seats we drove onto Charters Towers on a good fairly empty road, occasionally overtaken by huge road trains. That night we stayed at a free campsite outside Charters Towers along the Burdekin River and had tasty Ravioli and listened to Elgar’s Nimrod while the sun went down. Up early and into Charters Towers – a beautiful and very historic town. Lots of old buildings have been preserved and we spent a good time just walking, photographing and looking.

We had a real treat that evening as we drove the van along with dogs to a “drive-in cinema” and sat very comfortably to see Ice Age 3 and Night at the Museum 2. We even cooked our dinner in the interval! Fortunately there was lots of space, so on-one had to park behind us! We spent that night and the next day at the local Top Tourist campsite, all plugged in, showered and watered – very good.

A highlight at Charters Towers was a trip up Tower Hill for a beautiful sunset and film about the area. We also visited the Pioneer Cemetery and the Venus Battery. The latter was where the rock was crushed and processed to eventually reveal the gold within! It was a working Battery until 1974 or so and all the original machinery from the late 1800s is still there. In the early days they used mercury and cyanide in the process, which took a terrible health toll on the poor workers and also the miners who had to attend and follow the process through to make sure they weren’t being cheated of their rightful gold.

Next stop along the “Overlanders Way” was Hughenden with a quick overnight at Prairie – a one horse, one hotel stop. The big Flinders River was just a trickle in a large sandy river bed at Hughenden, but we enjoyed a walk in the river bed with the dogs. Of course it would be completely full in the rainy summer season. We visited a Dinosaur exhibition as the area is on the edge of the original inland sea of 500 Million years ago, so there have been many marine fossils discovered in the river banks and on rural stations around there.

On the road again and the scenery is quite spectacular flat plains as far as you can see in all directions. The grass is dry and yellow with a few lonely trees dotted about.
The next town of Richmond is known as the “fossil capital of Australia”. The Richmond Pliosaur is the most complete dinosaur in Australia and over 100 million years old, discovered in the banks of the river. It is on display in Kronosaurus Korner museum in Richmond. We took it in turns to visit the museum and Paul forgot about time altogether as he was so fascinated by the exhibits!

Richmond is a pretty town with a man-made lake and parklands, giving it a lush, green feel. We stayed in the campsite by the lake and had a nice walk around the lake, but the water was too cold for a swim. The days feel very hot but the temperature drops at night, so you know it’s still winter.

Click below (nb open in new window) to see slides:

Week Eight

2009-07-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

Onwards towards Airlie Beach, just south of Townsville and gateway to the Whitsunday islands. We stopped off at a Sapphire cutting and gem place (sadly Paul was not inclined to purchase any) opposite an historic Hotel called The Leap Hotel where we downed a lunchtime cider and a larger. We had time for a walk round to the marina with the dogs before settling for the night at our campsite at Airlie Beach. Beautiful sunsets here. Next day we visited the local market, toured around the coastline and looked out at the 75 or so Whitsunday islands. Had a very tasty Chilli Mud Crab for dinner that we made a real mess of, but was a lot of fun.

We decided to get to grips with off loading some weight from the van and started to remove items that we had not yet used in the 7 weeks we’ve been away. This weight mainly consists of an excess of books (Paul’s), clothes (Paul’s), DIY / tools (Paul’s), other miscellaneous items (Paul’s). My offering will be one pair of heavy denim jeans and the dogs will sacrifice some toys and chews....

We were sorry to leave Airlie Beach and headed off towards Townsville, getting waylaid in Bowen. This town was the centre for the making of the film Australia and there’s a huge billboard on the way in that says “Nicole, Hugh and Baz loved Bowen, and so will you!” Well we got all excited, but have to say we didn’t love Bowen too much.

We had a race to reach Townsville before it was too dark and stopped at a designated free Rest Area on the outskirts. It was OK and actually quite interesting having a close look at the huge trucks that rumbled in and out until late into the evening. Don’t know how those truckies manoeuvre these huge vehicles... hats off to them all.

Next morning we got to the Big Wheels service centre early and got our van suspension sorted and then explored Townsville. It has a nice feel and a very nicely developed sea front promenade called The Strand. There are lots of gardens and play areas and little beaches, notices everywhere to watch out for the dreaded stinging jellyfish – especially between Oct-May. There are stinger protective nets and suits and bottles of Vinegar at every beach location. So it’s obviously a serious problem. Fortunately we’re here at the right time to avoid them.

We drove up to the top of Castle Hill (only 18 metres short of being designated a mountain), somewhat embarrassed to have to squeeze by all the fit people jogging and walking up. Our excuse was that we had been walking around the town and beaches ALL day and the dogs were as exhausted as were we. The view from the top was absolutely spectacular and took our breath away. We had to have a Campari and orange to celebrate the sunset.

We managed a visit to Palmer Street where all the restaurants are now located and had Mango Prawns and Seafood Risotto – yum! Tomorrow we will start to head inland (West) and say goodbye to the coastal areas, so we’re making the most of it for now.

Click on the images below to see some of our photos - right click and "open in new window":

37 Airlie Beach

38 Townsville

Week Seven

2009-07-22T02:48:00.000-07:00

This week we moved a very short distance from Yeppoon to Kinka Beach. We booked into the Cool Water Holiday Village which turned out to be a very good place indeed. They said they were full on the board outside but I sent Paul into Reception anyway - just in case. And we got lucky with a powered site. It’s always a chance to catch up on washing, hot showers, water, dump points and use the electricity. There is a spectacular beach and river estuary at Kinka Beach which we enjoyed and the dogs had a wonderful run there. Big wide flats of sandy mud with millions of little crab holes like tiny volcanoes - huge fun for the doggies!

The next night we had to move to a non-powered site at the same camp, but there were no complaints as we were on the edge of the estuary under a huge old fig tree, so relaxing. We slept in until 8.30am and then rushed off to catch the Emu Park Sunday morning market. Breakfast consisted of several delicious home-made vegetable Samosas whilst we wandered around all the stalls. Tia met her first ever camel and her eyes were like saucers.

Then we did our longest drive yet –about 200kms towards Mackay with the company of an Audio Book. We had decided to stay on the coast road for a bit longer before turning inland as the beaches and weather are so perfect now. We spent the night in a free rest area in a tiny place called Clareville. It has beach and mud flats on one side and the railway line and freeway on the other. But it’s actually quite popular with other travellers so we were not alone. The doggies all had a walk after dinner along the beach, but Tia managed to get 4 black ‘socks’ from standing in the mangrove swampy area.

Fortunately there were plenty of rock pools to get them washed before jumping aboard the van for the night.

Next morning we drove on towards Mackay but got sidetracked by all the sugar cane fields and the Sugar Cane plant at Sarina. There was a tour of the whole process to create the raw sugar that was very interesting with a ‘tasting’ at the end.

By then it was well into the afternoon so we stopped at a small campsite at Alligator Creek opposite a Pineapple farm. So fresh, sweet wonderful Pineapple was on the desert menu that evening! But the caravan park was "weird" to say the least. Not one happy person there, with everone scowling when you said hello- we've called it 'Camp Glum". We'd stumbled on a "permanent residence park" - low socio economic people on hard times - many sad stories we are sure. We need to 'look before we book" we learned.

Close to Alligator Creek is the main road out to the HUGE Dalrymple coal terminal. Massive trains 2 kms long trundle vast amounts of coal out to this huge site that sorts the caol into different types and loads them along huge piers going out to sea 3 kms onto massive coal ships that then take the coal to a number of overseas markets. At least 30 ships all in line on the horizon - you can easily see that they juts can't get the coal onto the tankers fast enough. If anyone is in doubt about the size and power of the coal industry - take a trip out to this terminal.

We reached Mackay the next day, stopping for a map at the information centre and taking in a little of the Botanical Gardens there - well laid out and a nice place to take a morning stroll. We explored the newish Mackay Harbour & Marina and had a nice Italian meal on the harbourside.

We've really enjoyed travelling through all the lovely sugar cane growing lands, stretching for miles and miles north of Rockhampton up to Mackay and beyond, with the hill ranges in the background. It seems to us that anywhere they grow sugar is really beautiful country to drive through. Criss crossed with miles of rail lines and sugar cane transporters. Very interesting watching it all happenning as now is cutting season. It's very tall grass!

The suspension on the Van had been making an increasingly unsettling creaking noises (No! not what you are thinking!)....so we decided to stay another day to get it checked out. It was a chance for a haircut and getting the dog beds washed at the public laundromat – BUT it's a job that is not usually allowed at regular campsites for “health” reasons. So...... smelly, pooey baby nappies and stinky pants are OK in the campsite washing machines, but not dog beds? Crazy eh! We know of lots of people getting sick from their children, but none from their dogs ;-)

To see some of our photos, right click on the images below and "open in new window":

Week Six

2009-07-17T01:02:00.000-07:00

Our last night at Agnes Water was at a lovely beach campsite for $5.50 the night. The camp was in a park at the edge of Workman’s beach. The ‘long-drop’ toilets were not toooo bad and the beach was great for scrambling around and watching the sun go down.

Next move was a stop at Mount Larcom. Not much in the tiny town except that it was close to the rail line where the huge trains of coal pass by with a million carriages (it seemed). We met some chatty camp neighbours and heard their life stories x 3. (This man on the road permanently - stopping 2 or 3 weeks where he wants to go..)The little weatherboard church had a tiny matching weatherboard dunny outside – very sweet. Nice "old timer" little town left in a timewarp.

Quick stop in Gladstone - what can we say but "move on very quickly" - couldnt find any redeeming features - a yeauchy dirty beach in a bay dominated by a massive coal terminal. Beach covered in "don't do this" and "don't do that notices" or we'll fine your pants off. We had fun "breaking the law", as you'll see in the photo below!

So on we went into Rockhampton and spent the day there alongside the river. It seemed very hot and we bought long sleeved cotton shirts on sale to avoid sunburn. It was a pretty enough town and best of all I got all our Medicare receipts that we had somehow collected and never had time to sort out for over 6 months, “cashed in” at the Medicare office. Lovely historic buildings along the main street.

We took a little coastal detour to Yeppoon and really liked the place. There is an amazing beach at Farnborough just north of the town that is absolutely HUGE. Deep and long and empty. You could land a Jumbo on it! Great for all the dogs to play and a nice walk. Huge military training area to the north, so we saw a number of big RAAF transporters flying low over the coast. There wil be a big Aussi/USA joint military excercise there in a month or two and the local towns are all preparing big "we don't need this" demonstrations to celebrate the event.

We decided to go over to Great Keppel Island on the ferry and managed to get the dogs into the local Yeppoon Boarding Kennels for TWO nights. So for the first night we went into the Red Rock Bush Camp in the Byfield Conservation park. It was lovely there, full of very green fir trees which was a change from the usual bush.

We visited a pottery shop deep in a rain forest garden and Paul splurged on three pots which we had posted back to Frenchs Forest! The next day we caught the boat to Great Keppel Island where we walked for miles and swam in the turquoise water and generally felt we were in Paradise. The second night wasn’t so good as we hadn’t booked anywhere to stay in Yeppoon after our day trip and ended up “free camped” in the street after a big row (Paul - Kath threw a Gale 8 wobbly!!) about where was the best place to stop. Oh well - I think we were missing the doggies really. So the next morning we rushed back to the kennels to pick them up and were relieved to see that they had survived OK and had missed us too! All was well :-)

To see some of our photos, right click on the images below and "open in new window":

29 Byfield Nature conservation Park

30 Great Keppel Island

What the Doggies Think...

2009-07-17T00:32:00.000-07:00

Thought a little break from a week by week, blow by blow account of our travels was needed. So this posting is about the life of a travelling dog (x 3). We asked each of our doggies for their personal comments on the trip so far, highlights and lowlights etc...

Tia (Female Boxer 8 years)
Well I am enjoying the travelling more than I expected actually. The van is like a great big kennel but better as the view changes all the time. I can sit on the seats at the back and look at all the cows, horses and other dogs as we fly by. Then best of all I have actually got to meet some of them face to face when we stop to camp. Sooooo exciting. Oh I forgot to mention the Bush Turkeys too. The other great thing is the beaches, I can chase my tennis balls for miles and jump in the water and even swim. I can exhaust myself and then have a big dinner and sleep in the giant kennel with the humans all together. Wonderful! And then it starts all over again the next day....

Ian (Male Minature Pinscher cross)
I’m a very relaxed chappie and take all this travelling in my stride. My main interest is finding any left-overs of food, anywhere, anytime. And this adventure gives me lots of opportunity to sniff out tasty morsels all the time. I like the fact that I wake up in a new place nearly every day. As long as my mummy and daddy are close by I’m a very contented boy. A little light exercise and few cuddles are good for me, and food of course!

Muffin (Female terrier cross)
Oh dear, it’s all a little bit scary for me. I’m a very sensitive doggie - so all the bumps and rattles in the van are quite distressing at times. I can’t help it but my ears are so big that I hear everything much more than the others. I’m also desperate to meet and sniff any new little dogs I come across and that’s not always easy in a campsite where everyone has to be on a lead. So I’m not finding this travelling in a van that easy. But I think I’m making progress and one day I’ll be a confident doggie like Ian...

Click on the image below to see some of our photos - right click and "open in new window"

What the doggies think

Week Five

2009-07-10T02:49:00.000-07:00

This week started off in Hervey Bay, where we must have been the last ones into a good campsite 10 minutes walk from the centre of the Bay at Scarness. Hervey Bay is made up of several small connected areas around the Bay: Point Vernon, Pialba, Scarness, Torquay, Urangan and Boat Harbour. We had a HUGE walk but couldn’t go out along the 1km pier as dogs were not allowed! We did a bit of shopping and each bought a good pair of “bags” (loose trousers) to wear. Easy to pull on in the van... We also discovered that PL Travers, author of Mary Poppins was born near here. We continued and finished our walk the next day at the Marina and then drove off to Burrum Heads........

This was a very charming fishing town. We spoke to a man who had been coming to the beach campsite at Burrum Heads for 19 years and was the 3rd generation to do so. Reminded me of the film “The Castle”. Obviously a very Australian holiday place to be. We just “street camped” to avoid the sardine effect of the campsites. Everywhere is pretty busy as it’s still school holidays. But we’re hoping for quieter times next week.

Next stop was a long and winding drive to the Town of 1770. So named because this was the year that Lieutenant James Cook went ashore at Round Hill with Joseph Banks to examine the country. This town is referred to as ’the birthplace of Queensland’. It was actually Lt. James Cook’s second landing in Australia. We don't think he actually said "oh, here is a new Continent and we'll call it 'Queensland' (it was actually Queen Victoria years later who insisted on the name). Note: Queenslanders clearly like to think that they have their own little or mnot so little country / repbublic here.

The REAL story about Captain Cook's arrival, was that having discovered Botany Bay, he had the idea to go up the coast to start Australia's very first Pizza delivery service for the Natives. He built the very first Pizza oven on a hilltop at what is now called "town of 1770", but the enterprise went sour almost immediately when he discovered that the Aboriginals hadn't invented money yet. Obviously marketing research in Oz hadn't yet arrived. The pizza oven still exists on the Discovery Way above 1770 - you can see it in the photo! Captain Cook left after that to "discover" other new beaches and so on..

Our first night in another crowded campsite at 1770 was very disaster prone. We thought it was pet friendly but discovered that this was not so during school holidays, so we were under pressure to make the three dogs invisible. ( Paul - we needed Harry Potter's invisibility cloak....) Not easy with Muffin when Bush Turkeys are surrounding the van! Then Paul decided to put out the awning and the awning arm broke. A job for the trusty superglue – yes, and he managed to glue his thumb and forefinger together as well! So major surgery was required using a sharp vegetable knife. Ouch!!

The Town of 1770 and the next door little town called Agnes Water, are nestled between two National Parks and the scenery is really stunning - golden beaches, turquoise Coral Sea, islands and clear starry nights. This more than made up for the 'stress' of our arrival. We spent the next day exploring the area and enjoying the Nomad Life.

To see some of our photos, right click on the images below and "open in a new window":

Week Four

2009-07-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

Week Four and time is flying by. We have stayed in about 17 different places in 26 days, so now we headed to our friends Stephen and Christine’s (and doggie Jack), holiday house at Noosa North Shore where we could have a rest from our travels for a while. Yes, a holiday from our holiday – if that makes sense! We took the van across the Noosa River on the ferry and parked on their front verge and there we stayed for a whole 9 days! Bliss to just not think about the next stop! And of course we were properly spoilt in every way possible - hot showers, washing machine and drier, wonderful dinners and meals out, a boat trip up and down the river with the three doggies and lots of country walks. Had a visit to Eumundi market and caught up on our shopping in Tewantin. Dinner and show at the RSL too.

The doggies enjoyed their long beach walks, beautiful scenery and we saw the huge catch of Mullet that takes place at the river mouth this time of year. Would you believe that one of the vehicles carrying the Mullet hauls off the beach bounced over a sand dune and two mullet fell literally into our arms especially for our dinner that night? They were very nicely prepared, stuffed and baked by Paul, chef extraordinaire! We were very sorry to leave, but fear we have already delayed too long...off to Hervey Bay we go!!!!

Big thanks to Christine and Steve!

Click on photo below and "open in new window":

20 Noosa

Week Three

2009-07-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

Stops for Week 3 have been Helensvale, Tallai, Tweed Heads,Labrador, Helidon, Pittsworth, Dalby and Kilkivan.

We camped first at Helensvale campsite in pouring rain (again) and the next day met up with a lovely lady, Joy Verrinder. She's the development manager with the Australian Welfare League (QLD Branch). We spent a very informative time at the AWL premises learning how well they manage animal welfare there. It was a breath of fresh air compared to some of the other hopeless animal welfare situations we have seen elsewhere!

After asking permission, we spent the night in the car park of the Tallai Country Club after a very pleasant dinner with Joy and her husband. We were woken by the early morning Sunday golfers, so off we went to Labrador to meet our friend Carol and her new man Phil, for brunch and had a nice stroll with the doggies along the beach front there.

Next stop was a ‘rest area’ at Helidon where we chatted to two men both travelling alone in their campervans after their wives had died. One had been on the road for 4 years...

Our next big trip highlight was to call in on our Zenith neighbour Frank’s two farming brothers, Bill and Terry at Pittsworth. They were so kind to us. We camped on their front paddock and really enjoyed our visit with them. The farm countryside was marvellous. We woke up to mist in the valleys and blue, blue skies. We had a tour of the farm and leant a little about cattle and oats and how to look after the land properly. It was an eye-opener for us “city slickers”. Tia discovered cows at close quarters and decided that growling at them from 20 yards is preferable to bing up close and personal! Not so brave!

We reached a campsite in Dalby which was memorable only for being the most crowded we had stayed at so far. We felt we were camped in a parking lot.(Paul - we were camped in a parking lot....) Oh well, the next stop made up for that...Kilkivan Bush Camp.

What a wonderful place to stay! A real gem. Really rural with wildlife galore and we were able to have a camp fire and cook our supper of fish and baked vegetables on it. The owner was from Cornwall and recited Pam Ayres poetry in that wonderful Cornish accent so well. There was a gold mine to visit and the little town of Kilkivan about 6 Kms away was quaint. Apparently it was named after a Scottish Farm by the Scottish land owner. Rumour says that the first big gold find was there but the land owner kept it a secret so not to spoil the area. But of course eventually the fossickers came anyway. We spent a couple of nights here and could have stayed longer, but there’s so much to see!

Right click on the photos below and "open in new window":

Week Two

2009-06-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

It’s week 2 and already getting behind on the “Blog”!!

This week, we have been to Tamworth, Armidale, Glen Innes , Tenterfield, Lismore and then Byron Bay – where we are currently ( no wer are not - we are now on the Gold Coast at Helensvale - think Movie World and Wet & Wild - where it is STILL raining on us!). The north of NSW was ...freezing. We camped in a street overnight in Tamworth – minus 3 degrees. Had to loan one of the sleeping bags to the doggies.So then we decided to head north for warmer climes.

I have to say we particularly liked the Nundle region – historical gold mining and fossicking appealed to the geologist in me. We wanted to do the complete “Fossickers Way”, but we’ll come back when its warmer!

First 3 days in Byron, were fine, but the rain has set in so we’ll move on up to the Gold Coast now.

In Lismore we caught up with the people who run the Animal Rights and Rescue Group – they really struggle with lack of funds and a constant fight against the council and government who do little for the dogs and cats......

Glen Innes was cool – did you know about the Australian Standing Stones? Our very own “Stonehenge” – look it up on the web – well worth a visit, especially for the Celts amongst you!

We thought we would have stacks of time to relax, read books, study Italian (Roberto!!), study Spanish, do mindexcercises, listen to music etc...... but it’s not working out that way! A typical day looks, like this:

· Get up at 7.00 am, kettle on, dogs out for their morning sniffs and wee’s
· Shower or wash
· Out for 40 min walk with the doggies ( just great travelling with the doggies – makes us get exercise each day – Tia has discovered cows and horses – she goes ballistic and you have to hold on with 2 hands)
· Back to the van for breakfast
· Tidy up, put everything away, stock up water etc, and get ready to leave- By this time its 10.30 or 11.00
· Then look around the place we are visiting – sights and shops etc etc
· Then set off and stop for lunch somewhere for half hour
· If we want to pitch camp before 4.30 so we are not in the dark, we only have 2-3 hours driving time!!!
· Which explains our SLOOOOWWW progress so far!
· Then there are still 50 emails a day each .......

We think we know how it feels to be one of the astronauts in the space shuttle – Kath and I and the 3 pooches have to float around each other as we go about whatever in the van!!

The dogs have been just brilliant, except for Muffin who is frightened of every bump and creak – of which there are plenty as we drive along. To be honest their days are so full of new and different smells and sights and noises that they are pretty exhausted by day’s end. Once they have their dinner at 5.00 pm, they put their heads down and we don’t hear boo till we wake up next morning. Usually 3 excited faces looking up at us in the bunk room, waiting for us to show.

When we drive along, they are great – often sitting on the back ledge in the sun and making faces at the cars behind. Must be funny from outside – 3 nodding dogs on the back ledge!

No problems at all in camp sites. There is usually one caravan park that takes animals – often the owners have dogs themselves, so lots of understanding there. We were apprehensive at first, but so far it’s working out fine. Met a couple the other day who are travelling with their 8 year old African Grey parrot! All sorts on the road.

Really like Byron!!! Terrific town! We were lucky enough to go on up to Federal in the hinterland to visit Alison and her partner Dale on the their wonderful 40 acre plot in the hills! Not to mention crazy Lola the golden retriever!! Tia met fresh layed eggs for the first time – strange reaction – she looked as if she thought they were going to explode any second. The Byron hinterland is just amazing – reminded me a lot of Natal in South Africa – lush rolling hills and sub tropical vegetation. Thanks Alison and Dale for a great afternoon!

And on we go!

To see some of our photos, click on the photos below to go to our Picasa Web album. Remember, right click and open in a NEW screen.

Week One

2009-06-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends & Family

Welcome to our Blog. In case you haven't heard yet, the Archers and dogs are on a round Australia trip for approximately 6 months.

We have decided to chase the weather and head anti-clockwise, but have no set itinerary. We will stop when we find an interesting spot and move on when we've seen enough.

Well we have just completed our first week 'on the road' in our KEA 5 berth Motorhome. It has been surprisingly easy with our 3 doggies on board. We are in a giant kennel really, very cosy.

We have travelled very slowly from Sydney to Norah Head, Redhead Beach, Scone and now we are in very pretty Nundle, about 60 kms from Tamworth.

Our biggest drama was a couple of sick dogs (probably scavanged something on the beach) which resulted in a 'deposit' being made inside the van (culprit was Ian...). Our fault for not getting the door open fast enough. (Paul's note: actually I couldn't get down the ladder fast enough. Must install fireman's pole...)

Our other concern is that, at our current rate and given it's about 36,000 kms round Australia, we will need 10 years on the road to complete the journey!

We'll write a little bit of news on a regular basis and look forward to your comments!

Travel notes:

Norah Head Caravan Park - really excellent facilites and only just over an hour from Sydney. Lots of nice cabins and wonderful beaches. Highly recomendable.

Redhead beach - another terrific beach - watch the tankers line up to to drop off / pick up their loads in Newcastle - counted about 20 on run in! Fantastic beach! A gem. Don't tell everyone! Oops.Thanks to Davey family for their kind hospitality and their front garden!

Scone - huge playing fields for the dogs to play on - that's about it!

Nundle - about 60ks SE of Tamworth- a real find. Wonderful historic gold mining village in a stunning hilly setting. Visit if you havn't. On the end of the Fossiker Way which we wanted to do, but it's too cold at this time of year. Back another time. Lots of fossiking to do here!!

PS let us know ofany other "gems" you think we should visit on our travels!!

To see some pickies from our travel album, just click on the photos below and you'll be taken to a nifty slide viewer! But, remember to RIGHT click on each album and OPEN in a new window:

4 First Fleet Memorial Wallabadah

5 Nundle NSW