Across the Nullarbor

Fuelling up along the way

A wet morning + a public library = free wifi and reception here in Port Lincoln.  So here's a few more photos, this time from across the Nullarbor.  We had a good trip, took our time, saw what we could and it wasn't difficult or boring.  Of course it's a good bitumen road all the way now, but would have been challenging in years gone by.  And we did the whole trip fuelled by cooking oil:)

The sign says it all

We enjoyed the little museum at Balladonia Roadhouse, which
made international news in 1979 when parts of Skylab scattered
over this part of the Nullarbor

Aaah, gotta love bush toilets.....

 

A typical Nullarbor 'caravan park'

This is the way to do it ... 

It was a bit sad crossing the border out of Western Australia, but of course there's plenty to enjoy in the south too.  In fact the Nullarbor is more interesting on this side of the border with fabulous views of the Great Australian Bight from various cliff tops. We stopped for a look around Eucla and walked down to the remains of the old telegraph station, now partly buried in sand.

Old telegraph station, Eucla

Eucla.  The plains meet the sea here

Bunda Cliffs, seen from the head of the bight and looking west.
This was an amazing experience, standing at the top of the big
chomp on the map of Australia.

Bunda cliffs looking east

The bush camps along the way were really good, among trees with little clearings for campers.  They have no facilities and don't cost anything - you get a great view of the night sky and a real sense of being 'out there'.  The roadhouses along the way supply basics and generally good public showers for a small fee.  Ceduna's the first real civilisation and is a bigger (and nicer) place than we'd imagined, right on the water with a port for wheat export.  It's a big wheat growing area heading east towards Ceduna, all being harvested at the moment.  We enjoyed our time here.  

Fowlers Bay, south of the Nullarbor, was a lovely little place
with sparkling blue ocean, a long jetty, nice buildings and
plenty of sand dunes.

Our next destination was Streaky Bay on the western side of the Eyre Peninsula.  This is a really beautiful area - if I get more internet access I'll post some photos.  We had a couple of nights there, then explored the west coast right down to Port Lincoln where we are now.  All is going well and we'll be home within 2 weeks or thereabouts :)

Return to the Outback ... and loving it

We decided we'd fit Kalgoorie in after all, seeing as we're all the way over here.  What a great decision, we've had a terrific time!  From Esperance we drove north to Norseman and it didn't take long at all for the country to change.  The weather too - finally a return to summer conditions!  We spent a night at Kambalda, just south of Kalgoorlie.

Kambalda - Lake Lefroy is a 500km square salt pan

Another great outback place name

Kalgoorlie's a bigger town than we'd imagined but every bit as interesting as we hoped.  We've had a couple of days of full-on sightseeing including everything from a walking tour to a tour of a brothel.  Yep, the last surviving original Hay Street brothel.  It's still open for business, though as the 'madam' told us, it's the tours that keep the place afloat.  This was actually a really informative tour as the brothels are so closely linked with Kalgoorlie's history.

We would have been the youngest of the 14 people on the this tour

One of the first things we did on arrival in Kalgoorlie was go out to the Super Pit, which is the amalgamation of all the smaller gold mines.  Wow, you can imagine something huge but until you actually see it ...

From the lookout

And again at twilight.  The headlights are on the enormous
tip trucks that travel up and down, up and down, up and down
that haulage road.

There are some gorgeous old buildings here
in Kalgoorlie

We also did a tour of the Royal Flying Doctor Service base and found that very interesting too.  We were able to have a look inside one of their planes which is fitted out just as an intensive care unit in a large hospital would be.  Pretty amazing what they're able to do.

So that's where we are right now.  The weather's in the 30s, clear blue sunny skies and we want to stay here!!  However, we have to head back to Victoria, so tomorrow will 'hit the Nullarbor'.  We've got about another two weeks.  As it's highly unlikely we'll have internet access "out there" this may be our last post.  Certainly our last from beautiful Western Australia.  Once we've been to Streaky Bay, it'll be a fairly direct route home most likely.  See you then!

Esperance

The Southern Coast road follows the coast east from Hopetoun and we got to some pretty good bays along here before rejoining the highway leading into Esperance.  This is a very nice place, with its amazing beaches and easy access to some fabulous national parks.  We spent 3 nights at a yabby farm of all places - the people welcome campers for $10 pp per night which includes hot showers, toilets and shelter.  Lovely friendly people too.  This made a good base for exploring as it was only 5 minutes from 'town'.

Seriously some of the loveliest beaches anywhere,
all within 20 minutes of Esperance.

There's a 20km drive we did which hugs the coastline and we visited these beautiful beaches. Fortunately we had a warm sunny day - it turned very windy and a bit chilly that night.

Cape Le Grand NP was one place we especially wanted to see and we spent a couple of nights down there. We managed two half-days of sunshine and were able to spend much of it at Lucky Bay ("Australia's whitest beach").  The sand's not only extremely white, but also has a really unusual consistency (sort of like icing sugar we think).  It squeaks no matter how hard you try not to squeak it!

We walked across to Thistle Cove and had this lovely view
back to Lucky Bay

A bit of overcast weather didn't stop the sand sculptor!  Another
life-size dolphin in the making

The family that was camping at Tozers Bush Camp during the really heavy rain was camped here at Lucky Bay too, so we got together for 'happy hour' and some time on the beach.  There's another bay down here which was just as nice as Lucky Bay; it's called Hellfire Bay and we walked the length of the beach and up over the rocks.  This overlooks the Recherche Archipelago, part of the Southern Ocean which contains about 125 islands.  It's a great area!  Once again though, the wind and rain intruded on our beach time :)  Maybe we'll be lucky enough to return some time.

Rain, road closures and really good places

Some photos to catch up a bit from when I last wrote.  We haven't had much internet access to keep this up to date; oh, and there's too much sightseeing to do too :)

Overlooking one of the beautiful beaches on Bremer Bay, on the
edge of the Fitzgerald River NP

After the heavy rain we couldn't enter the national park we came
here to see.  The main reason they close the roads is because of "dieback",
a fungus which spreads in wet soil and kills off native vegetation.

We were still able to see lots of great countryside around here and
found a great little camping spot near a canola field ... this photo is another morning view through our window.

It's not really the wheatbelt but this area was full of wheat crops as far as the eye could see in every direction.  Ravensthorpe seemed to be the main centre, where the businesses were predominantly machinery/farming related.  It still amazes us that within half an hour (or less) we can be on the beach and seemingly in another world.

Skirting the Fitzgerald River NP we came across a
particular river ...

There's an eastern entrance to the Fitzgeral River national park, so we continued to Hopetoun and were able to get in via the bitumen road.  That was great, as we could access some really lovely beaches.  By this stage we'd all but given up hope of seeing the park so were glad to see what we did.

From Barrens Lookout where we could view the meeting of the
inlet and the ocean.  There were gorgeous wildflowers up here too.

  

We loved West Beach for its fantastic rock formations, the
result of erosion.  There was a lot of sparkling mica in there.

              

There's a huge lake (inlet) where we had lunch with a goanna,
some wildflowers, some sunshine and great views.

Porongurups

South of the Stirling Range is a smaller park known as the Porongorups and this time we did walk to the peak.  It wasn't too hard despite being all uphill.  My back's been pretty unstable the past week or so and I was thrilled to be able to do this walk.  We had the most beautiful weather after a few grey days and the views from the top were fantastic.  It's a little like Mt Buffalo with all the granite rocks.  There's a section where you climb through and over some rocks to reach a ladder which ascends straight to the 'skywalk' ... the pictures can tell the story:

 

No, not one of us!

On the 'granite skywalk'.  Only two other people were up here. 

There are some beautiful areas east of Albany and we decided to explore Two Peoples Bay and then Waychinicup National Park (they have some great names over here!)  The campground at Waychinicup Inlet is small, quiet, in a gorgeous bush setting and there was nobody else there.  It rained overnight and was pretty heavy the next morning so we're glad we had a good look around when we arrived.

    

Little Beach at Two Peoples Bay park

  
Near our camp at Waychinicup Inlet.




There was some pretty heavy weather in the south west around this time.  Fortunately for us, we weren't too badly affected as we found a camp which had a huge camp kitchen/shed/shelter.  It was on the way to Bremer Bay, from where we planned to visit the Fitzgerald River NP.   The bloke's only had it running for about 10 months but has built the amenities according to feedback he's been gathering from campers for years, so it really is well done.

We slept in the troopy but spent the evening in the shelter by the wood heater, along with a family travelling a similar route to ours.  There was even tv!  Next day the weather was foul - no raincoats and hats could make bushwalking or anything else enjoyable and so the day was spent indoors, reading and chatting by a wood fire.

A taste of luxury for campers - wood fire, hot showers, microwave,
stove, running water, electric lights ...

Stirling Range

We headed north from Albany to the amazing Stirling Range and spent a couple of nights in the national park here (where we came across two couples we'd got to know back in the Geraldton area).  It was good to catch up in the evening - they're older, two retired brothers and their wives who are on the road indefinitely.

This is a wonderful area for wildflowers and bushwalking so we combined the two.  We also followed the drive that traverses the whole range, stopping plenty of times for views and flowers.  It was great!

Orchid

There are quite a few peaks that can be climbed ... by others :)  We did go partway up some and enjoyed the views.  The best part's the walk itself though, as the tracks are cut through the natural bush and this bush is like a huge native garden with so much in flower right now.  We loved this place!

Stirling Range

Everlasting daisies

Tiptoe through the daisies

A "southern cross"

Albany

A few photos from around Albany:

Overlooking the Southern Ocean at Albany's Torndirrup National Park

The "Natural Bridge"

Partway up Isthmus Hill overlooking one of the amazing bays

On the replica of the brig "Amity"

View of the port from Mt Clarence (weather was lovely the
second day we were there)

Part of the Anzac Memorial, top of Mt Clarence.  Huge
celebrations in about 10 days, as this is the Australian port
from where the Anzacs departed

We had a couple of days looking around Albany, mainly the national park which boasts some really diverse coastal scenery.  The town is gearing up for the big Anzac centenary on 1st November and there's been a lot of work going on.  As a town Albany's nice enough, but it's the location that really makes it.