Day 78-82...Mount Barker to Horsham

Today we are celebrating Tessa and John's engagement...very happy day...

 with champagne and strawberries!

This week we have been helping a friend put a garden shed together.

We also fenced in the vege garden to keep the young labrador out!

 

Travelling from Mount Barker to Horsham, it was pouring with rain most of the way. Thankfully it eased when we arrived at Horsham  and we were able to put Rosie up.

This is one of the pretty inhabitants of the caravan park.

Day 77...to Mount Barker... Adelaide Hills

We left Whyalla this morning and headed north towards Port Augusta, then headed south towards Adelaide. I love the Flinders Ranges, they're really beautiful.

As we got closer to Adelaide the agriculture started again. The wheat was growing right across to the ranges...very beautiful.

We saw the Indian Pacific a bit further on on its way from Perth to Sydney.

These lakes were really pretty...they look quite pink. It's the salt content and blue-green algae that make it look so pretty.

We arrived at our friend Jane's place about 4:30pm and met her beautiful cross labrador Ebony.

This cute galah was in the backyard along with some rosellas.

Day 76...Whyalla

This was the sky when I was getting brecky ready this morning...it was pouring with rain somewhere...thankfully it didn't reach us when we packed up.

This was the view from a lookout on Dave's early walk this morning.

This is one of the inhabitants he met along the way on hs walk. 

We drove on to Port Lincoln. It's main claim to fame is its tuna fishing, not to mention Dean Lukin, the olympian, who was a tuna fisherman from here.

The countryside changed considerably going up the eastern side of the Eyre Peninsular. It's very green, with lots of grain crops, mainly wheat.

Further north, towards Whyalla, the vegetation became much sparser. You can see the southern Flinders Ranges in the distance.

We decided to stay at Whyalla for the night. This was the view from the caravan. The tide was way out and kids were flying kites. It had been an exceptionally windy day. The next morning the tide was in and it just looked like any other beach. The boat in the distance is waiting to go into the harbout to pick up either iron ore or grain.

Day 75...to Coffin Bay National Park

We left Ceduna this morning and headed down the west coast of the Eyre Peninsular. The scenery was really nice. We stopped at Streaky Bay for morning tea.

While we were having morning tea, Dave could hear a chook crowing, so we went to investigate. There was a huge chook yard at the side of the police station. This was the one making all the fuss.

There were quite a few of these dry rock walls along the west coast...

it's pretty dry and rocky in this area.

The first animal we saw on arrival at our destination today was an emu...we're at Coffin Bay national Park, right down the bottom of the peninsular.

After we'd set up we went for a walk and saw these kangaroos nearby.

 

This is our camp spot, beautiful park all around us...not many people...very peaceful.

Day 74...Ceduna

This is the port at Ceduna. It's nowhere near as big as some we've seen.

 Expots are grain, gypsum, salt, mineral salts and fish.

I love this lighthouse...it has beautiful mosaics on it.

We went around to the fish man to get some fish and oysters.

 When we arrived, the bloke was just cleaning this huge snapper.

I'm not usually that keen on oysters, but these were delicious!

 We cooked them on the BBQ, then put some bacon amd spicy shiraz sauce on them...yumm!

After lunch we went to the meteorology place and watched the weather balloon being sent up.

This afternoon we went to yet another museum!!! This one had lots of collections of all sorts of things. There were bits and pieces of equipment from Maralinga, where they experimented with atomic bombs in the 1950s. This is only a fraction of the radio collection.

Day 73....to Ceduna

Along the Nullabor, from Norseman to Ceduna, there is an 18 hole golf course. It costs $70.00 ot get a card and play, and at the end you get a certificate to say you did it. This is one of the holes...it looks nothing like the picture...it's dirt and fake grass!

We must have seen about seven car wrecks, just left in the scrub alongside the road.

Here are the two cyclists we met last night. They were up early, and left a fair while before us. When we caught up to them, they had gone 49kms in 2 hours...not bad going. They're doing it to raise money for breast cancer research I think.

Most of the way along the Nullabor, there is a ridge running along beside the road to your north...when travelling east that is.

 It didn't peter out until Eucla, just before the South Australian border.

There were several of these signs along the way.

 We never saw a camel, a wombat or a live kangaroo....just occasional road kill!

A few kms east of Eucla there was a viewing point to see the Great Australian Bight. You run along parallel to the Bight for hundreds of kms, but this is the only place you see it, unless you drive out along a dirt road to see it...and there weren't many places you could do that.

Things have become civilized again now...mainly wheat and sheep farms.

 This is near Penong, not long before Ceduna. We rather liked the windmill collection.

Ceduna at last!

Day 72...to Moodini, near Madura

Last night we set up behind the information centre in Norseman. We had been planning on setting up in a bush camp, but didn't find one we liked....this one was in the budget camps book, so we headed for it. When we arrived, almost on dark, there was a sign that said NO CAMPING. We went to the pub down the road for a drink, and asked the barmaid about the spot. She just happened to live next door to the site, and said people camped there all the time, and there wouldn't be a problem. So we set up., Luckily we did, because it rained during the night...it could have been a bit messy in the bush!

These camels are on the roundabout on the main street of Norseman. We saw a lots of signs saying to be aware of camels on the road....these were the only ones we saw!

Norseman is the beginning of the Nullabor, so we expected a big change in vegetation...

or lack of it...however, it was pretty much woodland for much of the way...

similar to going from Kalgoorlie to Norseman.

Tonight we camped at a roadside camp stop. It was pretty dusty, but a rather nice spot. When you drove off the road, there were lots of tracks going into the bush, and you just set up where you liked. By nightfall ther were quite a lot of vans pulled up in there.

We met a couple of blokes from England who are cycling from Perth to Sydney, and another couple who come from Tabulam, just near Grafton.

Day 71...to Norseman

After packing up in Kalgoorlie, or as the locals say, in Kal, we drove out via Coolgardie. It was the original town where gold was found, but when the larger amounts were found in Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie almost became a ghost town. It had a huge population in the early days. Some of the beautiful old buildings are still there, but there's hardly anyone there. This photo was taken just after our picnic lunch on a Monday. Trucks pass through on their way from Perth, but not much else.

We met this fellow in the park at lunch-time. He lives in Germany, but comes out to WA prospecting every year. He leaves his vehicle over in Perth somewhere, then picks it up when he arrives and off he goes. He just does it  for the fun of it.

The scenery is really nice.

 This is pretty typical of the bush driving from Coolgardie down to Norseman.

Day 70...Kalgoorlie

We went to a market at the racecourse this morning. Didn't buy anything, but it's interesting to watch the people. Country races are a bit different from the big smoke...very much a family day.

 After we'd had a look around, we went off to the museum. As we were leaving there, we heard the races ahd been called off because the track was too wet and dangerous...

someone said the sprinklers had been left on overnight??

Being a gold mining town, the main focus at the museum was the history of gold mining in Kalgoorlie. These chunks of gold were on display in the vault downstairs.

These cute little baskets were made by aborigines in the missions. It's a prayer/promise basket. Each little scroll of paper has a bible verse on it...you pick one out with a small piece of sandalwood.

People in the early days of gold mining were pretty ingenious...they made some pretty quirky furniture and bits and pieces of necessary items...this one was rather unique! It's bits of timber, branches, bits of tin and wire, put together to make a bike!

This is a very small part of the Super Pit. It was late in the afternoon when we went for a look. The road you can see had about four trucks going up full, and another four going down empty for a load. They look so small in the distance, but they're huge. There was an info area, so I photographed one of the trucks with its statistics. That's only one of about a dozen different, huge, very expensive vehicles used for mining. This huge pit was originally a whole lot of small mine leases bought up by the big boys...started by Alan Bond. It seems amazing, that to begin with, there were blokes digging out their gold in their own little mines with buckets and shovels.