On the final homeward stretch

Avoiding the flooding in some rivers across central western NSW was not really too difficult, although we did have to make a detour when the road between Grong Grong and Matong was cut . . . aren’t they wonderful Australian place names? Our route included Junee, which we have visited before, so we knew exactly where to go – the chocolate and liquorice factory, particularly to stock up on their chocolate-coated raspberry liquorice, and chocolate-coated inca berries.

The ceramic fountain in Narrandera, a

gift to the town from its mayor in 1922, as

a WWI memorial. It is one of only two in

the world made by Royal Doulton, and

a local man restored it in 1971 after

smash damage by vandals.

We spent a happy night in Cootamundra, where the creeks were running well, then made our way to Canberra via the historic town of Harden, where we watched a whole crew of chaps sprucing up the railway station, painting the white line along the edge of the platform. This took four of them, one to push the spray machine, one to direct the nozzle onto the platform edge, and two bringing up the rear with paint rollers. Sadly, it was a very windy day, and the masking tape they’d so carefully laid on the edge of this white stripe obviously didn’t adhere, as it started lifting and then flying around. At that point, we left them to it and sought a nice hot coffee in a suitably warm café.

The country around Canberra is looking fabulous . . . all green pastures, snowy sheep and golden canola. While staying with John’s family there we were taken to see the Cotter Dam, which had had its dam wall raised quite dramatically in recent years. The dam is so full that water was cascading from a huge height over this high wall. Elsewhere the Scrivener Dam, which regulates the water level in Lake Burley Griffin, was also spilling dramatically.

But the rain followed us, as well as windy, cold weather, so even on the day we left Canberra to start driving north, it was not at all pleasant. We turned sharply north at Goulburn . . . after delighting in the sight of Lake George actually filling with water after what the locals say is about 20 years. Whenever I’ve seen it before it is just pasture for sheep and cattle.

Anyway, we drove north to Oberon, detouring briefly to check out the Wombeyan Caves, which have now joined our favourite places in WA and SA as ‘must return’ locations. The wind was howling in from the west, making the rain almost horizontal, and cattle were pressed against fences with

One of the many historic buildings in Ryleston.

their rear ends to the cold wind, and their faces looking most miserable.  Little lambs were huddling with their Mums and even the alpacas in some of the paddocks we passed were looking fairly cheesed-off at the weather.

We kept heading north towards Mudgee, but turned into the Bylong Valley, stopping for the night at Rylstone, where the Apex Club had built a small caravan park. The young local woman who has the management rights from the council came around almost on dark to collect camping fees and told us that as it’s a long weekend she is just about booked out for the next few nights.

While lunching at Muswellbrook, in a

memorial grove to Vietnam War veterans,

we spotted this memorial to the

members of the South Vietnam Army.

Someone had left a fresh fruit offering

(not so fresh when we saw it) as a

traditional tribute

We’ll move on to Scone to visit some of John’s friends, then have our final night on the road at Glencoe, visiting my late sister’s daughter and her family . . . then it’s a final sprint to HOME.

.

We’ve driven more than 21,000 km in three months, seen wonderful sights and met some fabulous new friends, but we are looking forward enormously to returning home. We have done so much our brains have almost gone into information overload, so it will be wonderful to reflect on everything we’ve learnt about this huge and varied country of ours.

And with the effects of rain visible everywhere from the time we started our journey until now, we have never seen the Outback looking so good. And the crops of wheat and canola we’ve seen from WA to NSW really do make it a green and gold nation.

Thank you all for taking the journey with us. I wish all Australians could see what we have: The dust, the gorges and the mining wealth of the Pilbara; the glory of the WA wildflowers; the majesty of mountains in many states from the Flinders Ranges to the Bylong Valley in NSW; and the life-giving blessing of good rain.

Water everywhere as the rivers rise

It’s a wet, wet time in western NSW but so far we’ve managed to stay ahead of the flooding.

We left Adelaide by the back door, heading up the Adelaide Hills through lots of lovely little towns, including Gumeracha, where we visited the big toy factory there, and admired the gia-a-a-nt rocking

horse at its entrance. Further east we crossed the Murray River by ferry at Walker Flat, and drove north along it to Swan Reach where we then headed east to Loxton.  It was all really interesting and a lovely day, and we stopped for the day at Berri, in a caravan park right beside the mighty Murray.

The next day we explored the Renmark area, went on to Mildura and historic Wentworth and eventually stopped yet again beside the Murray, at Robinvale in Victoria. We’ve vowed to return to Robinvale and Berri as those caravan parks were delightful. Keeping the river theme, we planned to spend a night at Darlington Point, beside the Murrumbidgee, after driving east through

The mighty Murray below Swan Reach.

Balranald and Hay.

The immense Hay plains were looking as green as they could be after recent rains and we realised that the Murrumbidgee was oozing into the country outside its banks when we drove around Hay. This proved really true when we approached Darlington Point, with lots of flood water rushing under the bridge over the river. And sure enough, the water was creeping into the riverside caravan park so the road into it was closed.

So on we drove to Narrandera, with lots of water almost lapping the sides of the Sturt

Just some of the many houseboats and a paddle

steamer on the Murray at Berri.

Highway in places. The Newell Highway intersects the Sturt at Narrandera, and there had been road signs further back that it was shut because of flooding.  We’d heard on the radio this morning that Forbes on the Lachlan River was being evacuated, and obviously the water from that river will find its way into the Murrumbidgee, and then the Murray, so we calculate that we’d made our run across western NSW at the right time.

Next stop: Cootamundra, via the Junee liquorice factory, then Canberra.

The Murrumbidgee in full flow at Darlington Point.

Farewell to South Australia

If we arrive home looking utterly round and fat, with rather hard backs, it will be because we have turned into what we’ve been eating . . . oysters!

Our seafood lunch in Ceduna, on a wet and miserable day, started with a dozen oysters each; and they were large and luscious. We then had a great drive south along the west coast of the Eyre

A group of the Elliston clifftop sculptures.

Peninsula, calling at lots of beaches and small towns, and when we drove into Coffin Bay, once again we bought some oysters for an hors d’oeuvre that night. Before we left next morning, we bought two dozen more to have for lunch.

On we went to Port Lincoln, and then north along the east coast of that peninsula a far as Cowell, an historic town with lots of old buildings, and a foreshore caravan park, as well as a fish place near the jetty selling King George whiting, among other fish, which we had for dinner. Before we left, we  stocked up again with oysters for another delicious lunch as we travelled north to Port Augusta.

Apart from the oysters, there have been other marvels in these past few days. The wheat fields are looking fabulous; the canola is in full glorious yellow flowering; and there are some wonderful little

Just some of Murphy's Haystacks.

towns such as Tumby Bay (we’re definitely going back there), Elliston, Port Neill, Coffin Bay, and of course Cowell.

At Elliston, there is a great scenic clifftop drive which features sculptures on headlands. We pulled up on one to have lunch, and wonder of wonders, there was a whale cavorting in the sea below us.

The wheat silos mark the landscape, and judging by the wheat fields stretching to the horizons in all directions, they’ll be filling well by the end of the season.

There are some really strange rock formations known as Murphy’s Haystacks south of Streaky Bay. They are on private land but one is able to walk around them. Some enterprising apiarist has placed tubs of Haystacks Honey in a box at the entrance, so of course, we bought some.

Another of the Elliston clifftop sculptures.

Whyalla and Port Augusta are industrial towns, and apart from re-fuelling, the only stop we made in Port Augusta was to visit the School of the Air there, where my late sister had taught home economics for 10 years before her death in 2002. I was hoping to be able to buy a library book for the far-flung students, with a dedication to her (as I had done at the Longreach School of the Air in 2007) but the receptionist told me all their library books come from a central source in Adelaide.

She then led me down a corridor with photos of students and teachers over many years, and there was my sister Wendy in 1999, so I was very pleased.

On then to Spear Creek Station, just 25km south of Port Augusta, nestled into the base of the Flinders Range. It’s a 7000ha sheep station and its little caravan park is nestled into a glade full of wonderful old red gum trees. That night the rain started so it was a wet old exit the next morning, along a dirt road, and then we travelled over the Horrocks Pass to Wilmington, and headed south

Part of Spear Creek Station's campground.

through a series of nice little towns.

In Clare we stopped for a coffee, and having chosen a coffee shop at random, were delighted and surprised when some new Tasmanian friends we’d last seen at New Norcia came in the door. They’d been wandering in a different direction from us since then and were gradually making their way to Adelaide where Grant was to play masters’ hockey. They were staying the night in Clare but we pressed on to Adelaide to stay with my nephew Michael at Glenelg, where he is a policeman.

It’s an old suburb, full of superb stone houses, large and small, and leafy streets. He wasn’t sure we would be able to enter his back garden through a gate from a back lane (the former night-cart man’s access) but we managed it, and have had a great time with him. While he is at work, we wander the old streets of Glenelg, also checking out newer apartment blocks on the beach and marinas, with attendant rows of restaurants, as well as a glorious chocolate shop on the main street, where the famous Glenelg tram from the city runs regularly.

From Adelaide, we’ll head east again into western NSW, aiming to reach Canberra, and John’s brother and sister-in-law, by September 27, which coincidentally, is J’s birthday.

Across the Nullarbor

I am writing this at Eucla, WA, almost on the South Australian border, and we are most definitely on our way home!

As we turned east at Norseman after a lovely couple of days at Kalgoorlie, we were completely in agreement that we were gorged out, wild flowered out, and mined out. We love Western Australia, but like a pair of horses sniffing the water of home, we have put our heads down, and if not actually bolting for home, we are well on our way.

Kalgoorlie is a great city, and we had a most interesting tour of the Superpit (below) that lasted 2.5 hours. It even took us part way into the pit, and around the intricate machinery of the extraction mill. We polished off the day with a great meal at one of the many big old pubs in the main Hannan Street, named for Paddy Hannan, who had started the gold rush there. The restaurant in the pub was, appropriately, called Paddy’s.

There are some great buildings in the city, not the least of which is the court house, with its dome gilded with 23-carat gold leaf only a few years ago. It really is a golden city and we saw a lot of it, despite a cold wind blowing night and day and some very low temperatures.

The morning we left, we simply woke, showered, packed up and were out of there early, intending to stop along the way for breakfast. But as we neared the little roadhouse at Widgiemooltha (now there’s a name for you) we decided to let them do the cooking, so had bacon and egg toasted sandwiches with big mugs of tea. That area is all part of the gold history of the region too, as two brothers in 1931 had unearthed what was known as the Golden Eagle nugget, measuring 26 inches long and worth five thousand pounds in those Depression days. The roadhouse has a much enlarged model of the nugget outside as a talking point.

John took the Nullarbor photo used on the back of

the truck in 2006, and it's much the same,

just greener.

Once we had driven south to Norseman, we turned east and were on the Eyre Highway. The first night we pulled into a bush camp area which soon had about a dozen vehicles scattered among the trees and shrubs. This second night, we are at Eucla caravan park, high on an escarpment overlooking the sea.

Ceduna:

Now we are in Ceduna, having crossed the Nullarbor. The highlight of our last leg yesterday from Eucla was the Head of the Bight, where whales come in their dozens to rest and play before heading south into Antarctic waters. We stayed there for quite a while, marvelling in the antics of the females and their calves. One big girl turned on her back, with her flukes in the air, and we thought maybe that was to allow the calf to feed, but an interpretive sign above the superb boardwalk on which visitors can descend the cliff to be close to the water told us it’s the opposite. It’s to keep males away, and also to prevent the calf feeding, so maybe she was in the process of weaning it.

The whale on her back with calf to the left.

As soon as we reached Ceduna, we had to stop at the quarantine station. We discarded some tomatoes we hadn’t managed to finish, but all other fruit and vegetables we’d scoffed beforehand. We had some printed info that also said honey was not allowed in, so we’d forced ourselves to have honey on our lunchtime bread rolls, just to finish a jar off . . . and then the nice quarantine man said that only applied to Kangaroo Island, so we needn’t have bothered!

The day was the warmest we’d had for weeks, with no wind (at last) so we stripped down to shorts and t-shirts once we reached our foreshore caravan park and enjoyed the sunset over the bay. But the forecast rain started around 3am and today is just totally miserable. We are almost in the town’s CBD so have walked to the info centre, which has a book exchange, and then the supermarket. Right next door is a big hotel where we plan a seafood lunch and after that we’ll just hunker down with books and tourism brochures about the rest of the Eyre Peninsula. When we arrived in town yesterday afternoon, the first thing we did was call at the oyster bar on the outskirts to buy some oysters, as the town is famous for them and has an oyster festival early in October. The oysters were fresh and sweet . . . but the person opening them had left lots of shell grit in them, so not the best oyster feast we’ve ever had.

Never mind . . . we move on to Coffin Bay tomorrow, and that’s equally famous for its oysters.

Skylab and Stonehenge

Brrr. It’s been cold, and still is, in the southern parts of Western Australia. But we still enjoyed our time in Esperance, exploring the town and its wonderful beaches, even though it was far too cold to even think about swimming.

One bonus was a late afternoon walk from our caravan park to the nearby port facilities, just in time to see a huge bulk wheat carrier arrive, finally pushed sideways by two sturdy little tugs into its berth on the wharf. There was already an iron ore bulk carrier loading, as well as another vessel

loading nitrate. Trains are coming and going all day and night to the port, hauling iron ore from further north.

The Esperance Museum has many treasures, not the least of which is a special Skylab display. When Skylab crashed through the earth’s atmosphere in 1979 and bits scattered over that southern part of WA, people went out scavenging everywhere. The Esperance council even sent a $400 litter bill to the US Government, and following a campaign by a Nevada radio station, it was finally paid just before the 30th anniversary of the ‘littering’.

There’s also a big display of domestic stuff that’s now seen as historic, but of course people our age recognise most of it from our youth. There were ice-chests, cheese dishes, kitchen implements such as mincers, and other things our mothers all used. Maybe we’re museum pieces too!

At the summer and winter solstice, the sun shines

through those two stones at the front.

This trip has had lots of new experiences, but when we left home, we never imagined we’d leave Australia (as in visiting the ‘foreign’ Hutt River Principality) and certainly had not planned to go even further afield to Stonehenge.

Yes, we have visited Stonehenge . . . but it was just outside Esperance. It was a result of making a new friendship when in Newman. Kim and Jillian Beale were doing what many southerners do in August, escaping the winter by taking their caravan to northern areas. We had a great time together and they told us we must come and stay with them on their 1000-acre property near Esperance, on which they have erected a full-size replica of the UK’s Stonehenge.

The story of how and why was fascinating. This farming couple had no intention of getting into the

John enjoying the calm of the henge.

tourist industry but had watched with fascination as the blocks for this project were being cut at a quarry just across the road. It had been ordered by a Margaret River entrepreneur who had planned a boutique brewery with the henge as the central attraction. Then, of course, he went broke and the quarry management needed to find a new buyer.

Kim, a member of Esperance Rotary, took the idea to that club as a new tourist attraction for the town and planning started. But the idea became very divisive, with some people claiming that it would attract nutters and followers of the Druidic religion.

It was damaging the Rotary image, so Kim and Jillian decided to take on the project themselves . . . at no little expense, as you can imagine.

So now this group of huge pink granite stones sits on a section of their lovely property, all 137 stones, including those weighing between 38 and 50 tonnes, and 18-tonne lintels to a height of 8 metres. They have converted one of the garages in their nearby home to a small entry office and souvenir shop, open from Thursday to Monday, and are suddenly in the tourism business.

Jillian and Kim Beale on the altar stone.

When we stayed there for a couple of days, there was a fairly steady stream of visitors, paying the small entrance fee to wander in the blissful calm among the stones, which seem to just sit on the green turf. A video Kim showed us had revealed all the preparation work that had gone into the concrete footings that had been made to support the great stones, and it was fascinating to watch a crane and two front-end loaders gently placing each stone in position.

Visitors drive to the house from the front entrance and many stop to photograph the gorgeous Gelbvieh cattle Kim breeds. They are beautifully quiet and very photogenic. Jillian claims all the ‘girls’ do their hair in a different way, and sure enough, when we toured the farm in her 4WD, every mop of rusty-coloured hair atop their bovine faces seemed to grow in a different way.

While at the farm, we ventured further along the road to the Cape Le Grand National Park, reputed to have the most beautiful beaches in Australia . . . or the world. They are glorious, all white sand and turquoise water, but once again, too windy and chilly to really enjoy.

After a couple of laughter-filled days with Kim and Jill, who are now very good friends who promise to visit us in eastern Australia next year, we left them to drive north towards Kalgoorlie. Fairly soon we left the cultivated crops of wheat and canola behind and were back in typical Outback country with turnoffs to mines appearing.

Norseman perpetually paws the ground,

maybe looking for more gold.

Norseman is a quiet little town, home to a well-established goldmine, with gold exploration dating from the late 1800s when a young man’s horse called Norseman had pawed the ground and ended up with a gold-bearing piece of quartz in his hoof.

There’s a bronze statue of Norseman, a group of tin camels made from corrugated iron on a roundabout to commemorate the camel trains that serviced the area, and huge waste dumps from the mining. One of them is very pale, and so terraced and serrated by the weather that it almost looks like a Mayan temple.

Next stop: Kalgoorlie, then we return to Norseman and finally turn our noses east across the Nullarbor.

Magical days in a coastal national park

Our time in lovely Denmark ended on a high, literally.  It was the high note of the reversing alarm on the Isuzu truck on which the motorhome is built. It was stuck in reverse alarm mode, so for the 55km to Albany, we had the constant beeping, no matter what gear was selected. Thank goodness it was not a 550km journey.

As soon as we arrived in Albany we found the local Isuzu dealer, and the girl in charge of the service department couldn’t have been more helpful, taking us inside and serving coffee while a mechanic fitted a new switch.

Then we started exploring, although we had each been to Albany before. That city has the reputation of being cold and wet, and that day it certainly was, so our sightseeing was done mostly in pouring rain from the comfort of the truck cab.

But the next day dawned fine and clear so we left our caravan park early to find bits and pieces at the farmers’ market, then spent all morning at the wonderful National Anzac Centre, opened in

The centre sits high above Albany harbour, the last

sight of Australia for many of those WWI soldiers.

2014. We were each allocated a card with the picture of a soldier on it, one of 32 created, but not all were Aussie or NZ soldiers. Some were port officials in Albany, from where the great convoys for WWI sailed, and I think there’s Turkish and German soldiers as well.

As we went around the displays we could place our card on electronic readers, and up would come that man’s war history. John’s chap died on a hospital ship, but mine, Iven (correct) Mackay, who was born in Grafton, had quite a distinguished career in the two world wars, was knighted and died aged 84.

Albany is built on and around rocks. Dog Rock,

complete with painted collar, is close to the CBD.

By the time we left Albany we had driven around most of it and were still enjoying perfect weather. Just outside the city, on the road to Esperance, we stopped at Montgomery Hill wines. John first visited it 10 years ago and has been ordering wine from there ever since. It looked a bit quiet, and we discovered it really wasn’t open for business, as the new owners were doing massive renovations . . . but we managed to buy some wine.

Then on we went to Bremer Bay, very quiet at this time of year, but a lovely little beach town; and from there we entered the western side of Fitzgerald River National Park. Just inside the park, while we were still gawping at the huge new array of wildflowers either side of the road, this time on trees and shrubs, we detoured to the still privately-owned Quallup Homestead. The German couple who now own it and offer accommodation and camping on their 40ha, also do a coffee and cake deal which we enjoyed sitting on the verandah of the old stone homestead, built in

The heritage-listed 1858 homestead at Quallup.

the 1800s. It was tempting to stay there but we had only just started our day of exploring so on we went to Point Ann.

From a lookout we spotted about 5 whales in the bay, including a mother and calf, and spent a long time watching them cavort around. Then we found the tiny campground just behind the beach, only 13 sites, where we nestled in among trees for a wonderfully quiet night, with only two other sets of campers. Some of the roads into this huge national park are still closed after recent rain, so we had to retrace our steps west to get out and onto the highway, to continue on to the eastern end of the park, reached from the coastal town of Hopetoun.

The sea may have looked wonderful, but it was

FREEEZING!

No dirt roads at that end, all bitumen roads, and wonderfully new camping grounds, with excellent facilities. Once again, only three campsites occupied at Hamersley Inlet campground. The inlet is huge and would be wonderful to boat or kayak around. Whiter than white beaches, turquoise water, and at night, without street or house lights, just a sky full of stars . . . it’s a lovely part of Australia.

We saw no whales from the beaches and cliffs at this eastern end of the park, but the Royal Hakea is much in evidence. It’s the weirdest thing we’ve ever seen and in some places there are small forests of them, even though they only stand between 1.5m to 3m high. We’ve put them in the category with the burrowing bees and wreath flowers as something unique to Western Australia.

Royal Hakea

A forecast windy change came through in the early morning at Hamersley Inlet, but any squally rain disappeared, just leaving cold wind. We’d had two days in shorts, t-shirts and thongs, but the temperature meant it was time to rug up again. We had to return through Hopetoun on our way to Esperance, so we had the joy of finally cleaning the Flinders Ranges-Pilbara-Mt Augustus dirt off the truck in huge truck-washing bays. I just kept feeding $2 coins in while John did the hard yakka with low-pressure pre-soak, foaming brush, and high-pressure rinses. 

The Isuzu now is sparkling clean and will probably mostly stay that way as we don’t plan too much dirt-roading on our way home east.

Next post: Esperance and surroundings.

We chase the Tin Horses

When we left Wave Rock I had the maps out, ready to guide us through some back roads, south and then west to a town called Wagin, about 200km away. I started seeing road signs pointing to the east and mentioning the town of Kulin ‘via the Tin Horse Highway’.

Mare Grylls

I’d read about the THH, a wonderful lark by the farming residents of Kulin, who put tin horses on their road boundary fences, so we changed plans midway and followed those signs. We were so glad we did as the good humour and innovation that had gone into those horses was immense. They were mostly made of old oil cans welded together, with other bits and pieces forming legs, ears, etc.

Some were pulling carts or sleds, some took on human attributes, playing tennis or golf, one was on a scooter and my favourite was the PLC Piping Pony, with the ‘horse’ standing upright, wearing a kilt, a shirt bearing the PLC badge, also a straw boater with the school badge, and playing the bagpipes.

PLC Piping Pony

Once we reached Kulin, another prosperous little wheat town, we then turned south, and after wandering for a while through wheat and canola fields, we eventually came to Wagin.

It’s famous for The Big Ram, as it’s a Merino breeding centre. Sure enough, there in a rather nice park, was a huge fibreglass ram. We found out the locals call him Baart; which reminded us of the huge sculpture of ears of wheat which we had seen in a wheat-growing area further north, Mingenew. The locals call it Big Ears.

On our way to Wagin, we passed through a tiny town called Dumbleyung. We didn’t know anything about it and just after leaving it, saw a road sign to Lake Dumbleyung and the Donald Campbell memorial. Intrigued, we went up that road, and found an immense salt lake, now with some water in it but obviously not yet full.

It seems that Donald Campbell, the British speed ace, had in 1964 set a new world land speed record on Lake Eyre. He was trying to set a water speed record in the same year and tried to do so at a lake in South Australia. He didn’t manage the world figure but did set an Australian record before he heard of this lake in WA that might be suitable. So his whole entourage arrived in the tiny town in early December that year. Local divers had been enlisted to clear any snags from the lake; conditions just weren’t right for days or there were too many ducks on the lake; and finally on New Year’s Eve, he managed to make a high-speed run in his Bluebird craft and he set a new world record of 276.3mph. That achievement of setting land and water speed records in the same year has never been bettered, although the individual records have been.

The nice thing is that a local wheat farmer, whose land borders the lake, allowed a memorial to be

Lake Dumbleyung and wheat fields from the

memorial.

built on top of a rise called Pussycat Hill 20 years later in 1984. It has plaques telling Campbell’s  story, including his death almost 3 years later during another speed attempt on an English lake; as well as a lovely memorial. There’s a bronze plaque on the ground, with a granite boulder above it. There’s a small hole in the boulder, set at such an angle that at the time he broke the record on Dec 31 each year, the sun shines through onto the plaque.

We each knew about Lake Eyre and the land speed record but had no idea he’d made history at Lake Dumbleyung.

After a nice night at Wagin, we drove through increasing rain south to Denmark, which was just about as cold as the country by the same name in northern Europe, with wind and lashing rain. However we did some exploring, and found a nice little place to stay high in the hills behind the town, but only about 5km out. There’s one of the many district wineries literally just down the road, in walking distance, with a well-recommended restaurant, so that’s lunch today sorted.

The almost luminous yellow of the canola fields.

The owners now, after it had been shut down for five years, are a young couple. Each site has its own en suite bathroom, not that we really need it, but there’s also a sheltered place to sit, when the sun’s shining. The young wife spoke to us on the phone from their nearby house, and sent her husband down to settle us in. He told us he works at Port Hedland, on Gina Rinehart’s iron ore loaders at the port. He works 10 days on, 10 days off, so while he’s home he’s trying to restore this nice little park to its former glory. There are massive karri trees next to the park on a ridge overlooking the ocean inlet below at Denmark. It would be a magic place in summer.

Had a sad, sad phone call in Denmark telling me that a great friend, Robyn Johnston, had died in Sydney. We’re at that time of life now when such calls will become more common, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Robyn will always live on in my memories, particularly for the fun and laughter we always had together.

Monks, food fests and wavy rocks

The chapel in the former boys' boarding

school.

New Norcia. What a sublime place. I can see why my friend Maureen R. loves to visit it from Perth as we spent two glorious days there, ate several times at the gracious hotel and enjoyed an extensive guided tour, particularly into places not usually seen by people just wandering around.

The history of the place is wonderful and we loved prowling around the museum which shows just how hard those early monks worked when it was first established as a mission in the 1840s. The buildings are wonderful, particularly the former boarding colleges for girls and boys, with glorious, almost Renaissance-style chapels.

Even the hotel, gracious and with a Gone With The Wind staircase, was built as a hostel for the visiting parents of the boarding school students. It serves interesting meals, is

The lovely hotel at New Norcia.

obviously the local watering hole for the farm families around, and we sampled the Abbey ale and wines bearing the New Norcia imprint.

While there we saw a poster at the visitors’ centre advertising the Taste of Chittering. So when we had found Chittering on the map just a bit south of New Norcia, and then discovered Toodyay (pronounced Two-jay) had a lovely little bushland caravan park, we had an enormous journey of about 98km from New Norcia. The caravan park was a joy, set outside Toodyay, with ringneck parrots everywhere, ducks on a couple of dams, a tame peacock called Henry, and a couple of emus kept behind a high fence.

Toodyay is a prosperous, historic town set in the wheatbelt, very pretty, and a short drive through bushland and farmland from the Lower Chittering Hall where the food fest was held on our second day there. It was delightful, not nearly as big as the one we attended in Felton, south of Toowoomba, in April. We found local honey, jams, asparagus, bakery goods, coffees and even paella for lunch. There was a stall covered in wildflowers from one of the local commercial plantations, which sells its flowers direct to Holland and Japan, and even our guide from New Norcia turned up with a colleague as they manned a stall with the New Norcia wines, oils, breads and cakes.

After that, we actually headed east for a while to Wave Rock, just outside a little town called Hyden. We arrived in the early afternoon, so climbed the rock (helped by a few stairs and a chain which one can use to help make the ascent). It wasn’t difficult and the surprise was that, apart from the famous ‘wave’ in the rock, caused by millions of years of water action, there is a dam formed by part of the rock and a dam wall built in 1928 so that the town would have water.

To get here we drove through several wheatbelt towns, all very old, and our favourite probably was York, settled in the 1830s and still full of some glorious old buildings. No centres are very far apart now that we’ve in southern WA. It is very different from the hundreds of kilometres we’ve had to travel in the real Outback just to reach the next town.

Tomorrow we head south, aiming to reach Denmark and then Albany, sometime in the next few days. That will make it nine weeks on the road, and almost 14,000km since we left home.

Sorry . . .Having computer/internet access troubles and can't upload any more pix.

Next post: The South Coast of WA

From princes to wreaths

We’ve been from the sublime delights of Kalbarri to the somewhat eccentric, and rather dilapidated, surroundings of the Principality of Hutt River.

Many of us will remember the wheat farmer, Leonard Casley, seceding from Australia over what he considered unfair wheat quotas in 1970. At first he called his land the province of Hutt River, but later made it a principality, and he termed himself HRH Prince Leonard and his wife was HRH Princess Shirley. We’d heard about it, and as it had celebrated its 46^th anniversary this year, and is supposed to be a tourist drawcard, decided we’d visit, particularly as it has recently opened a campground.

A sculpture of HRH Prince Leonard near the entrance

to the Principality of Hutt River.

So south we drove from Kalbarri, first having a wonderful visit to the Rainbow Jungle, which specialises in parrots from Australia and overseas. Not very long after that we were in rolling wheat fields. When we entered the 75sq km that is the principality, there was no great fanfare or massive gateway, just an entrance from a dirt road, with welcoming words on a stone fence. The township established there is called Nain, and has what are called the government offices and post office (a simple brick building); a chapel which has become a sort of shrine to Princess Shirley; what is termed a tea-room but it now just has a DIY urn, plus a mementoes room; as well as an educational shrine to Shirley which contains not only some Chinese figures and writings (from Leonard’s great friend Martin Louey) but also Leonard’s mathematical formulae for what he calls the ‘spirit code’ which allows him to assign a number value to every living thing. He has also devised his own Fibonacci series.

It was all a bit tired looking, with several clapped-out caravans, vehicles and farm machinery cast aside near buildings that didn’t seem to be used any more. Graeme, the youngest of the couple’s four sons (there’re also 3 daughters married and living in Perth), mans the post office, stamping visas, putting Principality of Hutt River (PHR) stamps in passports . . . John has his with him, mine is still at home . . .selling their special stamps and generally providing info. We could see his father sitting in a chair in the tea-room, talking to other visitors but by the time we got there, after settling in the campground, he had obviously gone to a 90-year-old’s afternoon nap in the modest little house nearby that he shares with Graeme.

Prince Graeme told us the other brothers look after the farming side of the enterprise, and with the eldest almost 70, they are all hoping to retire and that some of the grandchildren will take over. But whether they want to keep growing wheat, lupins, and dorper-damara cross meat sheep . . . and reinvigorate the tourist side of the business . . . is another matter.

One suspects the other brothers might keep their distance from the HQ of the principality, as they have homesteads in far-flung parts of the property. It will be interesting to see what happens when Leonard dies, despite Graeme’s optimistic assertion that there was a succession plan in place.

It was beautifully peaceful in the campground, with only about 6 other travelling rigs there. The next

The lake really is pink.

morning we drove on south through this northern part of the WA wheatbelt, and on the coast came to the extraordinary Pink Lake. This is coloured by some microalgae that is actually harvested for food colouring and Vitamin A.

Fairly soon we came to Geraldton, where John had to collect a new tail light he’d ordered; but we avoided the CBD and headed south to Dongara where we managed to get a spot in a lovely little caravan park. It has a lot of cabins and permanent residents, but its sites each have an en suite bathroom. There was a surprise when we opened the door, as not only did it have a spacious shower, and separate toilet, but also a washing machine!

When we sought advice from the local visitors’ centre, we were issued with a wildflower kit with info and maps and one of the employees assured us she’d made a run east into wildflower country only the weekend before so gave us great advice.

Beside a pathway in the conservation park.

The next morning we set off for an eight-hour journey among small towns in the wheatbelt, just about overdosing on wildflowers. The landscape was impressive . . . green wheat to the horizon in all directions; contrasted often with great paddocks of yellow-flowering canola. On the side of the roads and edges of the cultivations, wildflowers were growing, and some fallow fields also were bright yellow at ground level with wildflowers.

We went through the Coalseam Conservation Park, where coal was first mined in WA and where one can still see it exposed, and it was  knee-deep in yellow pompom everlastings.

Further north we followed directions to a tiny village of Pindar, and then a dirt road for 10km to see the famous wreath flowers. These grow in the shape of a wreath in the sandy soil beside the road, and are so famous that there were cars and caravans pulled up everywhere with people trying to capture the spectacle on camera.

By the time we returned to Dongara we had driven a round trip of around 400km, been through several small towns; helped the economy of one by spending up big at the bakery; and then just outside Dongara we called to see the son of one of John’s friends back east. John and Danny had last seen each other in 2006.

Next post: Further south to New Norcia.

From jetty tram to Apollo space flight

We returned to Carnarvon after our few days in the bush, once again glad to see its green landscape and ready to explore it. A ‘must’ was the Coffee Pot tram that takes visitors out along the mile-long jetty that has been there since the late 1800s.

The driver, a glorious little lady called Sas, who told us she and her twin sister were among 23 in their family, takes the little tram with its two passenger cars almost to the end of the jetty, waits until her passengers have explored as far as they can go (there’s a barrier stopping access to the very end as there are several unsafe pylons) then trundles everyone back to shore. We lunched at the restaurant there, then discovered its historical display, including one of the lifeboats from the Kormoran, which had come ashore nearby after its battle with HMAS Sydney II in WWII. Both ships went down, along with the Sydney’s entire 645 personnel. There was an interesting film we saw, dealing with the search for the Sydney in 2008, its discovery, and the fact that its bow came off as it tried to limp away from the battle scene, sending it straight down with no chance of anyone surviving.

The next day we went north of Carnarvon to the Quobba blowholes, camping area, memorial to HMAS Sydney II and pastoral station. One blowhole in particular was really ‘working’ when we were there; we put some wildflowers on the Sydney memorial; checked out the camping sites among the most glorious fishing shacks made of whatever was to hand; and visited Quobba station.

The view of the space museum and dishes from our

caravan park. Disregard the two smaller dishes.

They are for the NBN.

When we returned to town, we completed an interesting day by visiting the Space Museum. This has been established on the site of the old space tracking station which took part in many NASA space missions, including the Apollo Eleven moon landing. A highlight was being able to spend time in a replica Apollo capsule, lying down, legs elevated, lights flashing, rockets roaring as we experienced lift-off and the view of Earth from space.

From high technology we went back to the 1800s again when we left Carnarvon and travelled south to Shark Bay, staying at Hamelin Pool. The campground features one of the old overland telegraph stations and campers can do a tour each night, where they not only learn about the old telegraph line to Broome but also the stromatolites (rocky growths) which are a feature of that hypersaline sea. The pool is part of Shark Bay but seagrass and sand have formed a barrier which keeps it super-saline, perfect for the primitive little organisms that build the stromatolites. They are supposed to be the first oxygen-producing things on earth so are billions of years old.

The bright white of Shell Beach, Shark Bay, literally

made of tiny shells. At the end of the beach is a 'shell

mine', making shell grit for Australia's budgies.

One day while there we drove on into the World Heritage area of Shark Bay, visiting the small (windy) town of Denham and Monkey Mia, where people go to feed dolphins each morning. It was after midday when we arrived there and we hadn’t really been interested in feeding the dolphins, just intending to have lunch at the resort. We laughed when we saw a couple of dolphins only about 30cm from the shoreline, obviously a bit late, but hoping there might be something for them. Each was attended by a pelican hoping that if some fish was on the menu for the dolphin, then he might be able to get to it first. But there was no more feeding, so all four were disappointed.

The tiny shells from dead Fragum cockles that make up the beach.

That afternoon the campground was pretty busy, particularly when in chugged four tractors towing caravans, as well as some supporters in 4WDs and vans. It was a Chamberlain tractor club from WA, though they do have some eastern Australian members, and they are having their annual expedition.

This one, lasting most of August, is within WA but in previous years they have travelled up Cape York, the Canning Stock Route, to Birdsville and even to Byron Bay. We had a good old chat to one of the drivers and we laughed when later we saw some of the tractor party having a hard look at a rather derelict tractor beside a shed at the campground, taking photos and no doubt working out how to restore it.

Wildflower update: The drifts of colour have become carpets either side of the road, and as well as ground covers, the bushes and shrubs are also bursting into flower, with lots of wattle in various shades of yellow, as well as red, pink and white-flowering plants.

We then gave ourselves three days to just veg out in Kalbarri, a pretty coastal town at the mouth of the Murchison River, eating out, reading, walking, and not bothering to look at maps or plot our next movements.

Next post: Kalbarri to Geraldton, including the Principality of Hutt River (all hail Prince Leonard of Hutt who seceded from Australia 46 years ago!).

Wildflower drifts and burrowing bees

We reached Exmouth just in time for the Census, with someone delivering a form to us in the caravan park. We decided to fill it in and post it, rather than do it online, which was lucky, considering what happened to the website.

Anyway, we enjoyed our time there, spending the best part of a day exploring the western side of the cape, which is Ningaloo World Heritage area. The sea was the most glorious turquoise, the sand was white . . . but a screamingly cold southerly was blowing so we didn’t venture into the water.

When we drove south to Carnarvon, we found that some of the tentative bursts of wildflower colour we’d been seeing for weeks had intensified into drifts of white, yellow, mauve, acid pink and even deep purple under the shrubby bush growth. These were tiny individual plants and looked like groundcovers, and there are also larger bushes laden with pink or purple blooms, blue or yellow as well.

But the real surprise on coming close to Carnarvon was the sight of plantations of bananas, mangoes, tomatoes and zucchini. It was such a joy to see green growing plants after weeks of pretty arid countryside, even though the recent rains have brought on short grass and the wildflowers.

We had just one night in town, then headed east to Mt Augustus, a monolith or inselberg (island mountain) that rears out of a fairly arid plain around 400km north-east of Carnarvon. The first 180km were on bitumen, to the tiny town of Gascoyne Junction, then we just went about 60km on a dirt road to spend a night at Kennedy Range National Park.

It was absolutely glorious! The little campground nestles in under part of a wonderful rocky range that is 75km long and 25km deep in places, full of great walks in the gorges. We did one the afternoon we arrived, then awoke at the crack of dawn, packed up and drove a short distance away

Heading up Temple Gorge, so-called

because of the large rock slightly

like a Mayan temple.

to another part of the park where we did a short walk to what is called Honeycomb Gorge, so called because a natural waterfall and general weathering has created a honeycombed effect on the cliff face.

Then we drove for 260km on relatively decent dirt roads to reach Mt Augustus National Park and a pretty little campground, where caravans, campervans, camper trailers and motorhomes ring a sort of village green (“No wheels on the grass!”, said the woman in the office). Great flocks of corellas and galahs made a soaring, raucous farewell to the day, then settled in trees well away, thank goodness. On our way there, driving through endless arid vistas, John remarked, “We’re in a great heap of nothingness, in the middle of bugger all”. That said it all.

Bright and early the next morning we set off to drive around the great rock that is Mt Augustus, stopping every so often to do short walks into gorges, climbing a little way to the top. We didn’t do the 8-9 hour walks which would have taken us to the summit . . . too much respect for our ageing knees. But we thoroughly enjoyed what we did, which often were not so much walks as

Mt Augustus

scrambles along rocky gullies, so our hiking sticks were well used. These walks brought us close to the extraordinary variety of flowering bushes that are starting to come to life on the rocky mountainside.

A highlight of the morning was finding a whole group of burrowing bees on the road. They had been noticed by the National Parks volunteers in the camp the day before and they’d marked the spot with witches’ hats and rope so vehicles would not drive over the bees as they burrowed deep into the clay, making little chambers where they placed pollen and nectar, laying one egg in each. When these

The extraordinary 'burrows' of the bees.

The stingless native burrowing

bees are among the largest in

Australia.

females have completed their task, and had several eggs safely tucked away, they come to the surface, filling in behind them, and usually then drop dead of exhaustion. The eggs hatch into pupae, which consume the nectar and pollen, then nod off for about a year, during which they transform into the next generation of bees which come to the surface, are fertilised by the waiting males . . . and on the story goes. These are some of the biggest native bees in Australia, only found on the northern plains of WA.

One of the 'easy' walks at Mt Augustus.

By midday, when it was almost too hot to do any more walks, we went to the last spot on our map, a large permanent waterhole on the Lyons River, which runs behind the campground. There we had lunch, contemplated a swim, but ended coming back to camp, adding our sweaty walking clothes to a pile of washing, which then dried in the afternoon sun.

On our way back to Carnarvon we stayed at Gascoyne Junction, a tiny town almost wiped out by the flooded Gascoyne River in 2010. Since then the local council had obtained a Royalties for Regions grant (one of the best things the WA Govt has ever done, in that we’ve seen so many great projects funded by those mining royalties).

The 100-year-old pub close to the river was destroyed in the flood, so for the past two years there has been what is called a ‘tourist precinct’ . . . a brand new service station/café/bar/restaurant with a caravan park attached featuring cabins, a pool, and a flock of backpackers, including a French chef, who staff the roadhouse. Naturally, we ate at the restaurant that night, had a great time with a couple travelling from Bundaberg, and then set off the next morning to return to Carnarvon for a few days.

Next post: Carnarvon, then Shark Bay.