Are We There Yet?

Day 48 – Home

Our last day of holidays on the road. We had mixed feelings as we packed up today; it’s been an amazing trip and we’ve enjoyed it immensely, but we’re also missing our home (especially the dogs!). We packed up with a little less care than usual, then set out. We drove with a pretty single-minded purpose – it was a long stretch, and we’d already visited some of the sights on this road.

We did stop in Merredin for coffee, and in Bakers Hill for the traditional end-of-road-trip pie.

Also stopped at Sculpture Park in Mundaring to let the kids blow off steam, and also because it’s an awesome park.

Then onward, to the final destination. There’s no place like home.

11,258 kilometres on the road. A hell of a trip, and one that we hope the kids will remember fondly. I certainly shall.

Day 47 – Boondi Rock

At Fraser Range, we sent the kids up one of the nearby hills one last time, for luck, then followed them. A fine view, indeed.

We saddled up, and got on the road. Second last day of holiday as it turns out; we’ll get somewhere between Kalgoorlie and Perth today. That somewhere turned out to be Boondi Rock, within the Goldfields Woodlands National Park.

This is a lovely little free campsite, next to one of the dams that were constructed to facilitate the early gold rush in Kalgoorlie. Runoff rainwater is collected on the Rock, then collected in the dam.

That description doesn’t really give a sense of the scale of the thing, though. The Rock is a low granite monolith covering dozens of hectares.

Stone slabs were quarried from the rock to form a large gutter around the entire base to channel the runoff. Each slab will easily weigh hundreds of kilograms. The effort involved to cut, haul and install the kilometres of slabs by hand in those days just boggles my mind.

I, naturally, attempted to climb in the quarry.

This was to be our last holiday dinner, so we had a special “everything left in the fridge” menu. Jamie assisted ably.

Home tomorrow, is the plan.

Day 46 – Fraser Range Station 2: The Return

After we woke and breakfasted, we decided to hike up the nearby bluff. The usual image of the Nullabor is a flat near-desert, but the Eyre Highway actually shadows a sizable escarpment between Eucla and Madura. We climbed up, and were rewarded with a pretty nice view of the “treeless plain”.

Thereafter, more driving. A long way, in a straight line. A veritable graveyard for the local wildlife (we stopped counting at around 50 kangaroos).

We stopped briefly at the Caiguna Blowhole, an opening to a limestone cave system out of which cool air blows steadily:

We also passed (in no particular order): the underpants tree, the bra tree, the teddy bear tree, the tea cup tree, the air freshener tree, and several others that I forget. No photos, because we kept passing them at high speed. It must be boring out there in the central Nullabor or something.

We were headed back to Fraser Range Station, which has the distinction of being the only return site for us on this trip. Partly because it’s really nice, and partly because it was in a logical place to call it quits for the day. Lamb chops and instant mashed potatoes for dinner, then roasted marshmallows around the fire for dessert. Even a random other guest providing after-dinner entertainment via guitar and song.

Tomorrow: who knows? We’re not totally decided where to stop yet. It’ll be somewhere between here and home.

Day 45 – The Great Australian Bight

Packed and left our camp. Drove through heavy fog. Felt sad about this and our prospects of spotting a whale, but we stopped at the Great Australian Bight anyway.

Magically, the fog lifted and we saw a whale! At first we thought it was a small reef, until it blew a bunch of water out of its spout.

I promise that there is a whale at the centre of this picture. Most likely a pregnant Southern Right whale. Regardless, we were pretty excited about it.

Then we drove and drove. Back across the Nullabor! It is enormous, basically an area the size of Victoria with hardly a plant taller than your waist. Australia is too damn big.

Got coffee and petrol right before the WA border quarantine stop. The petrol was expensive and the coffee was bad, so I now don’t like SA any more. Sorry, SA, you let us down there right at the end. Then we surrendered the couple of bits of fruit and veg that are proscribed, cut the tops off all our carrots, and drove on into WA. The weather was immediately 200% better, colours were brighter, and food tasted nicer.

We lunched at Eucla, then pushed on a fair way to a free camp site near Madura called Moodini Bluff. Fair but of rubbish about – bloody humans! – but a nice place all the same. A long, 500+ km day on the road. Tomorrow, we might stroll up to the nearby bluff to look at the view.

Day 44 – Somewhere near Coorabie

It’s Mother’s Day! Woke, and we gave Fiona a couple of small gifts. She then kindly shared those chocolate-flavoured gifts with the rest of us. We cooked up a delicious breakfast, then prepped to move on again.

We stopped in the nearby town of Streaky Bay to view it properly, having only skirted the edge yesterday. The pier and beach were very pretty.

Then it was time to hit the road again. The region to the west of Ceduna is pretty featureless, and reminds me of the WA Wheatbelt area. After some hundreds of kilometres of that, we stopped at a roadside rest stop. Unremarkable to us, the kids climbed a tree and then declared it the best place yet.

Go figure. We finished the day with a family movie night, which was nice. About long day of driving tomorrow, across the middle of the Nullabor.

Day 43 – Streaky Bay

Started out in Port Augusta today. This town wasn’t anything but a stopover on our trip, but it has some nice corners. We may stop in again when we come back to visit the Flinders Range properly.

Thereafter, it was driving for most of the day. We headed west toward Streaky Bay, with only short stops along to way to refresh ourselves.

A granite monument to the “Australian Farmer” in the town of Wudinna. We also enjoyed the bouncy pillow at their playground.

We finally arrived at our destination fairly late and a little tired and cranky. To make up for this, Mother Nature put on a pretty nice sunset for us.

Some tiny marine critters on a piece of driftwood:

Happy faces again.

Day 42 – The Whispering Wall

Today was another case of covering the distance with no particular exciting destination at the end, a theme which is likely to feature for the rest of this holiday. We’re down to the last week, with seven days to cover the distance between here and home.

The stay at Williamstown was brief. It was nice, but the kid’s favourite part? “The football oval”. Go figure.

Not far from this camp was the Whispering Wall. Actually named the Barossa Reservoir, this is an arch dam that was built in 1902. A quirk of the shape of the dam wall and the surrounding location means that quiet speech will carry to the other side of the 144-metre span as clearly as if people on the other side were standing beside each other.

It was a totally fascinating trick, kind of like a sleight of hand illusion that doesn’t seem as though it should be possible. It’s a highly recommended short stopover if anyone is ever in the area.

Thereafter it was a case of driving across the Barossa Valley. A brief stop at the Clare Valley Brewery for some local produce, and we pushed on to the town of Melrose. We had previously visited this town while exploring Mount Remarkable NP, so we knew the best place for coffee already. The food was good, too.

Following lunch, we once again crossed a portion of the Flinders Range and drove to Port Augusta. We set up at a caravan park with a decent view of the mountains, but we’ll be moving on again tomorrow.

Destination: Streaky Bay.

Day 41 – Heading north

Today, we got into the necessary business of getting some distance covered. We packed and headed north in the general direction of Adelaide, with the idea of stopping somewhere when we got tired of it. With no particular plans, we still saw some sights.

This​ park in the town of Keith won the prize for the best kid’s ride: a mini-rollercoaster. Impossible to tell in the photo, but they’re actually moving pretty fast. And cackling like lunatics.

In the small town of Coonalpyn, the grain silos are painted with images of local children. The intent was to “make the town somewhere worth stopping in”. Worked!

The same place also features some murals done by the local community in the tunnel beneath the train tracks.

Our resting place today ended up being Williamstown, at a nice little park.

More miles to cover tomorrow. Destination is probably Port Augusta. We’ll see.

Day 40 – Naracoorte Caves

Naracoorte Caves National Park is one of those places with dozens or hundreds of cave formations in a relatively small area. The underlying limestone has been prone to dissolving with changes in climate, leaving behind an extensive cave network. It’s a very nice place to stay and camp.

What makes several of the caves in this park special is the sheer number and quality of fossil skeletons of large fauna. Through some quirk of fate, they’re acted as pit traps for large mammals for hundreds of thousands of years. Today we visited the Victoria Fossil Cave, site of the largest of these fossil “beds”.

A photo doesn’t really capture the scale of the fossil bed. It is a descending trough between 5 and 15 metres wide and 150 metres long. Starting at one metre deep, it gets to four metres deep at the bottom end. It’s estimated at around 5,000 tonnes, 80% of which is bone matter.

Some areas have been excavated by scientists, but most of it is still in-situ. It’s a graveyard for countless animals over more than half a million years.

Our group was small and our guide was great. We happily geeked out over the caves and fossils for ages.

Later on, we took the shorter self-guided tour through Wet Cave, a quite different type of cave. It consists of large spaces and massive columns.

Fun fact – these roof formations are called “avens”:

A fantastic day, all around. Even of you’re not interested in paleontology or speleology, this park is a highly recommended place to visit. Make a day of it.