Posted Monday 25th March
10klms from WA cooking the last of the veggies lol. What a week! last time I wrote we were still in Broken Hill, since then we have traveled up to Lake Eyre and across the state of SA. The trip was pretty uneventful from Broken Hill to Port Augusta, we had to hand over our cucumber at the fruit station just outside of Peterbough. The night before we drove to within 1klm of the checking station, camped and cooked up the last of the veggies, made a yummy pumping soup. When we got to Port Augusta we started up the Stuart Hwy and found a good camp about 20k from town. We had to share with a young couple but there was plenty of room. Got so great pix of the Flinders Ranges at sunset. Next day we headed off to Roxby Downs where we had decided to leave the trailer for the run to Lake Eyre. We passed Woomera without getting ourselves into trouble (there is lots of secret stuff happening there) and arrived at the caravan park. $50 per night for a powered site!!! We hummed and hared but decided to bight the bullet and pay the $100, I got a $10 discount for being in the AANT. The park was very nice, no swimming pool but a great camp kitchen and games room with Austar TV. For the rest of the day I cooked up a roast for dinner & cold meat for lunches and watched 3 movies. We both had very long showers (i think I had 2) and left the next morning with the power still plugged into the freezer. We drove all the way to Lake Eyre, lots of rabbit holes along the way but all the rabbits have been dead for at least 6 months. That virus that 'accidentally' escaped is certainly potent. There was no water in the lake but still pretty impressive. Did I mention the SA government charges $150 per vehicle to visit their parks? Needless to say we didn't go to the paying bit but had a look at Lake Eyre South for free. After traveling across SA Ive come to the conclusion they don't want people to visit their parks. The viewing place had no shelter, not a picnic table or anything just a sign. Had a walk on the lake it's covered with salt. We headed back to Roxby Downs and watched some more TV and did some more cooking in their lovely kitchen. I saw most of a movie called Battleship looked great but had to go home before it ended because they close the kitchen at 9pm. Next day we headed back to Port Authur and camped at the same place as last time. After fueling up at Port Authur we drove on to Ceduna, we found a nice little camp just out of town. S frightened away some tourists when they caught him having a shower loll.
That takes us up to last night. After traveling along the most boring road we finally made it to the Great Australian Bight. I was looking on the map & could see we were less than a 1km from the water but couldn't see the sea. We couldn't find the lookout and after about 10kms or so we took one of the unmarked side roads. Wow the best view in Australia! over 70mtrs of vertical cliff dropping down to the ocean. This time we decided to forego a shady spot and camped right there, about 5 mtrs from the edge. What a great spot. So today we went looking for the caves, we've finally found one but you can't go in unless you have climbing gear, we thought there would be guided tours like the other caves. Still we've had an adventure going on the back-roads, none of them are signposted so half the time I have to navigate using the compass (the road we're on now looks like someone's driveway. So we've stopped just short the the boarder to cook the last of the veggies, looks like the only thing we'll have to chuck is a bit of lettuce. Will be in WA tomorrow on the way to Esperance.
Posted Sunday 31st March
Hi again, we are now camped about 280kms south of Perth. We tried to find a camp near the beach but forgot it was Easter weekend and every man and his dog has gone away camping so no campsites available. :o( No matter we found a camp near a creek and today we are stopped at Dumbleyung Lake. You're not allowed to camp here, but we will stop for a long while just for a rest. Cooking dinner now. It took a bit longer to get to Experance than i thought. We arrived on Saturday & it was packed, people everywhere. The weather was cool so everyone was at the shops, we didn't stay for too long too busy for us. The journey across the Nullabor too a few days, from last Monday's campsite we went inland to see the caves was a great drive out in the middle of nowhere on dirt roads that are rarely traveled. We found the caves but they are only holes in the ground so you can't go exploring unless you have the right gear. We found an old homestead with a grave stone from 1889 so much work in those days… The bloke had dug out a well by hand, he was miles from anyone else the old fences are made of bits of timer with holes drilled in them & the wire strung through, it must of taken days to put up just a kilometre of fence. We had a day camp at one of the caves great place but the flies started to swarm about 6:30 so we left, never seen anything like it, the flies were chasing the car, actually hanging on to the side to keep up with us, they kept flying back into the window, I tried to drive faster but as we were on a dirt track heading into the sun I couldn't do more than 40klms -- talk about attack of the killer flies!!! It was too hard to see driving into the sun so we had to stop for 20mins while the sun went down, I walked round and around the car to try and keep them from getting into my eyes. Was so glad when we could take off again but took ages before they finally settled down to sleep. Saw heaps of bunnies near the border, we crossed over the WA border and didn't even see a sign. We camped that night on the beach, we were gonna go for a swim but the next morning the flies found us again and along with the march flies chased us out of the area!
Posted Monday 1st April
Back again, had to stop writing last night due to cooking dinner. Where was I up to… Oh yea the beach in WA so we left the beach, was gonna have a swim but flies really too bad, we've been camping on side of the road till today, last night we spent at lake Dumbleyung where that land and water speed guy made his world record in 1964. Tonight we are at a caravan park in a suburb called Success in Perth, it was a very nice spot in it's day but it is being closed on the 28th of this month and has fallen to disarray since then. There was no-one in charge when we arrived but one of the permanent people said we should camp and pay tomorrow, I think will be about $25 but we shall see. Tomorrow we will visit Perth then off to see my sister before we go to Cervantes to taste the lobster. Looking forward to getting home but still enjoying the holiday. That's all for now (gonna wash my hair for the first time in about a week) cheers :)
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