What a finish to the day, rain and more rain but I get ahead of myself.

After a good night at Kirkalocka Station, we caught up with one of the owners and chatted about their pending trip to Adelaide before hitting the road.

Today was going to be a long travel day with 675 kms to Newman – shouldn’t be too hard but you have to take in a few stops for geocaches. 🙂 Even managed a First to Find in the middle of Lake Austin (which is starting to fill up).

Our travels took us through a lot of mining areas with Mount Magnet, Cue and Meekatharra. Fuel prices were all over the place from $1.45 to $1.60 a litre. A truckie at Kumarina told me to just get enough fuel to make it to Capricorn where fuel was 23 cents cheaper a litre. In the end the fuel economy was very good on that last leg due to the weather.

For most of the day, it was overcast with some misty rain every now and again but the last leg from Kumarina Roadhouse to Newman – only 175 kms, was a shocker. It was dark and we had been warned that the area was rife with cattle on the roadway at night. No problems tonight with a couple of large sky illuminating lightning flashes and down came the tropical torrential rain.

Visibility was down to zero at times and most of the journey was at 50 kph instead of the usual 100 kph. We managed to get through to Capricorn and finally Newman with rivers forming on roads and the CB radio was alive with truckies talking of the numerous floodways starting to fill. I think we got through in time.

The caravan park at Newman was full but they weren’t going to turn someone away in this weather so they gave us a key to a donga which we could plug into and we were set for the night.

Finally I was about to get my rain bucket to work and start filling the tanks with fresh rainwater.

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Today was the last day of Autumn (Fall) and it was the perfect day for travelling and get to lofty heights. With all the rain we have endured, there was one thing that was guaranteed – the local waterfalls would be flowing.

The Fernhook Falls certainly didn’t disappoint with plenty of water flowing over the granite and into Rowell’s Pool but it didn’t look all that inviting for a swim. We will wait until we get further north for a swim and soak.

Driving through the big Karri trees, we came upon Pemberton with no real plans but the Pemberton Tramway was due to depart in an hour so why not. The tramway ran from Pemberton to Warren River and return, stopping at the Cascades on the way (20 kilometre journey). Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

The other big attraction in Pemberton was the Gloucester Tree. It was originally a fire spotting tower but is now a tourist climb but not for the faint hearted. You climb the tree on 1 metre spikes that spiral up the tree to a platform on the top 53 metres up. The last time I climbed this was around 40 years ago and if I remember right it was windy on that day. No problems with wind today but I still couldn’t convince Jenny to make the climb.

There was a bit of a view from up top but the trees around are growing up blocking the vista but it looks like they have added a number of additional platforms over the years to get you higher.

We managed just to get to a campsite before dark but 100 kilometres short of where we were hoping for. Tonight we are at the Manjimup Central Caravan Park.

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I am not sure the farm dogs were too impressed with us camping in the shed overnight as a couple of times they let loose barking but it probably was some foxes wandering around the yard rather than us snoring in the caravan.

Michael and Marie gave us a morning farm tour of their property before we bid them farewell, promising that it will be a lot sooner than 22 years before visiting again.

Only a short journey back to the coast today, stopping off at the Tree Top Walkway between Denmark and Walpole.

It was some impressive engineering that has gone into the Walkway with the highest point being 40 metres above the ground and 600 metres long. There is some movement as you wander along the walk, however, that is apparently to give you the overall experience of being in the tree tops. I am not sure that Jenny was all that impressed as she was holding on well as she walked.

Today was a first with us arriving at our campsite before it was dark. Tonight we are camped at Rest Point Holiday Village which borders the Walpole-Nornalup National Park on one side overlooks the Walpole and Nornalup Inlet Marine Park with kangaroos coming in from the bush and pelicans floating on the water.

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We weren’t off to a good start this morning with the fuse blowing for the rear camera screen. And being a Sunday morning, Albany is like a ghost town as far as shopping goes. Eventually a Super Cheap Auto was found open and we were on the road again.

A bit of geocaching along the way to the Stirling Ranges, meeting with some local cachers on the way arriving at the Castle Rock carpark around 12:30pm. The weather was overcast but the clouds were high so hopefully the rain holds off. It is a 2.2 km walk up to the Granite Skywalk, 90% of which is uphill, so we got wet on the walk up but from sweat not rain.

The walk up took just over an hour which afforded views off the side of the granite outcrop known as Castle Rock through to Albany and beyond. The walk back down was 15 minutes quicker and a lot easier with a lot less sweat. J

What is the infatuation with Western Australia of building platforms on immovable objects everywhere? Yesterday it was The Gap, today the Granite Skywalk and tomorrow it will be the Tree Top Walkway.

Phone coverage was getting dodgy so it was time to go off the grid for 24 hours as we headed to our friends farm on the northern side of the Stirling Ranges. Last time we visited was back in 1994, and things have changed with Michael and Marie taking over the family farm and moving into the main house.

Unbeknown to me, there had been conniving going on in the background and we arrived to a birthday cake for afternoon tea and a lamb roast for dinner. A very nice surprise.

With lambing due to start in the next month, a nightly ritual is to go spot lighting to eradicate foxes before the lambs start to drop. Even with perfect conditions albeit cold, the count for the night was only one fox and one rabbit.

We were a little spoilt for our campsite for the night with being able to reverse the caravan and car into the newest shed and set up on a level surface and protected from the buffeting of the winds (although tonight was calm). Every guy should have a shed this big.

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Well this could have been almost everything today with the wind blowing hard, the rain coming in horizontal, the visit to the various coastal areas including the blowholes or our visit to the last Whaling Station in Australia (no longer working).

After heavy rain all night, the sunshine in the morning was welcome but it was not to last. The wind howled today and eventually the rain came back but it presented some interesting times on our walks.

While enjoying the sunshine, we took in the sights of the Princess Royal Fortress on Mount Adelaide with its very Anzac emphasis, particularly the history of the 1^st and 2^nd Convoys of ships from Australia to World War 1.

Next on the agenda was a drive through town with a visit to the iconic Dog Rock. I can believe that the powers to be wanted to blow it up to expand the road in 1921.

With the weather starting to come back in, why not visit the coast that is closest to Antarctica – what could go wrong.

The Gap and Natural Bridge were going off with the spray making it to the car park. Love the new viewing platform and you soon can pick the squamous ones when someone jumps up and down at the end.

Onto the blowholes and they were also performing well. We could see some heavy rain coming in from the ocean and with an 800 metre walk back to the car, we found a rock ledge to wait it out. It didn’t take long for rivers of water to flow over the granite. Glad we didn’t try to get back to the car. A couple that did decide to try and out run the rain were just finished changing their clothes when we returned to the car park – they must have got drenched.

A couple of other spots with magnificent views both along the coast and back towards Albany, in between the rain storms which also produced some great rainbows.

Last stop for the day was the Old Albany Whaling Station. This was the last active station in Australia before closing in 1978. It was interesting to see what went on here over the years with the amount of hard work it took to process the whales. We are probably a lot better off to let the whales swim but we didn’t spot any off the coast today.

Tomorrow brings some more walks and a farm visit.

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A good day for travelling today – travelling back through time that is. We decided to air our inner paganism and visit Australia’s answer to Stonehenge.

Just out of Esperance in a farmer’s paddock, is an exact replica of what the original Stonehenge would have looked like in 1950 BC with 137 stones quarried from across the road. Apparently it was originally made for someone in Bunbury but they went broke so the farmer across the road from the quarry bought it and set it up in the paddock.

Esperance Stonehenge is an amazing sight and the acoustics inside the ring just echos as well. We were lucky enough to have it for ourselves but it can fill up with cruise ships sending 500 people in a day. Of course if you want to own it, then you are in luck with the property up for sale for the paltry price of $5 million.

The rest of the day was spent doing some geocaching as we motored to our digs for the day at the Big 4 Middleton Beach Holiday Park. As usual, we arrived after dark – still need to work on this grey nomad travel thing.

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A cool start to the day with the cloud cover returning after clear skies through the night and we were up for a quiet 300 kilometre drive to Esperance today.

Took a look through Norseman including going up to the Beacon Hill Lookout. It is interesting to head up a hill with caravan in tow then have to stop to allow big mine trucks to cross the road. A lot of history to be learnt at the lookout but not a lot to see as the trees have all grown.

Out of town, we made the stop at Bromus Dam for lunch. This showed the ingenuity of the early pioneers where they created small stone walls on a granite outcrop which directed the rainfall into a pipe which took it to a dam 1 kilometre away. The water was used for the steam trains of the time.

Passed through towns like Salmon Gums and Grass Patch which would have been booming in the early mining times but are barely alive now.

Jenny was starting to get pains in her chest and left arm and we still had 80 kilometres to the nearest hospital. On top of that, more storms made their way across us with heavy rain and strong winds. On arriving at Esperance, a beeline was made to the hospital where Jenny was connected to machines that go “bing” but nothing was found to be out of order and it is possibly a virus causing the pain.

While Jenny was getting checked out, I took the caravan to our digs for the night at the Pink Lake Tourist Park and then took in some of the sights grabbing some geocaches as well.

What will tomorrow bring – the adventure continues.

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Given that it rained most of the night, we were not expecting much of travelling today. We awoke to more drizzle, low cloud on the hills and a lot cooler than yesterday. This wasn’t to last though, with the cloud lifting to sunshine and no wind a couple of hours into the day.

Not a lot to see on this part of the trip but the wildlife started to show and we are not just talking the dead roo roadkill that littered the highway. This provided a rich food source for the crows and Wedge Tailed Eagles which were plentiful. There were even a few live roos that played chicken with road trains in front of us.

At one point there was a flock of camels (flock doesn’t sound right but caravan or train don’t sound right either). They hung around to get their photos taken and we were on our way again.

Just after Caiguna, it was time to engage cruise control and kick back for 90 miles or 146.6 kilometres as this section of the Eyre Highway is Australia’s longest straight section of road. The end of the section is near Balladonia and apart for a few stops for geocaches and the camels, all went uneventful.

One of the geocaches was an earthcache (GC2NNJ6 – Caiguna Blowhole) which is a virtual cache that relates to geology. This blowhole is an air blowhole rather than the water ones that are normally found near the coast. Instead of water, air is expelled and as I was carrying a portable weather station (doesn’t everyone), the measured air speed from the blowhole was 10 kph. Very interesting.

At one point, a road train overtook us and struck up a conversation to where we were headed and suggested that instead of Norseman as todays final destination, he suggested Fraser Range Station. It was 100 km short of Norseman and we were headed into dusk so Fraser Range Station it was for the night. Look forward to seeing it in daylight as many friends have raved about this spot.

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Checked the forecast for our travels to the border today and it was to be clear sailing with light winds and sunshine. How wrong that was. The clear skies was right, it was just the winds were closer to 30 kph than light and they moved from a cross wind to a head wind for all of the day.

Fuel economy went out the window. I had been achieving around 20 litres/100 km but today that shot up to 27 litres/100 km. And with increasing fuel prices the closer we got to the border and further from civilisation, I did not need that.

Knowing that fuel price was going to skyrocket to $1.67 at the border and then drop to $1.48 over the border, continual calculations were made to ensure that there would be enough fuel to at least Eucla if not Mundrabilla.

After filling at $1.179 in Ceduna, we topped up at Penong ($1.199) and Nundroo ($1.209) which should be enough to get through to Mundrabilla. We bypassed fuel at Nullabor ($1.619) and Border Village ($1.67) making it into Mundrabilla with 17 litres to spare.

Some of the highlights today included the impressive display of windmills over the ages at Penong and the breathtaking views from the cliff tops of the Great Australian Bight.

Border Control heading into Western Australia was interesting with all those fruit and vegetables that Jenny had bought a day ago were taken to be destroyed. Seemingly WA does not like any produce from any other State. What a great way to sell your home grown produce. We asked if they supply a local restaurant at the Border but the reply was that it is all destroyed – what a waste.

The highlight of Eucla is the Old Telegraph Station and having last seen it when I was a way lot younger, when it was covered with sand, you would have suspected for it to have disappeared by now but it seems to be the same. Do they have a crew that keeps digging it out – I wonder.

It was coming on dusk and the wind had abated so it was an uneventful last 70 kilometres to Mundrabilla where we filled up with fuel and booked into the caravan park.

It wasn’t long when our van must have just been enough to trip the circuit breakers for the power supply at our end of the park. After all they were plugging in 2 vans into a 10 amp socket. To solve issues, we moved our van to the last power box available and then down came the rain.

Met up with some Victorian Geocachers we had been trailing for a couple of days – Maccamob, Alansee and Micaparamedic before going to sleep with the gentle sound of rainfall on the roof.

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An early morning walk to grab a geocache in Mambray Creek afforded views of the local kangaroos and on return to the caravan, I was welcomed back by an emu sniffing around.

It wasn’t long and we were headed north to Port Augusta. Just out of town were the familiar stacks of the now closed Playford Power Station. It is unusual not to see the smoke emanating out of the stacks. Something new next to the power station was an strange looking tower which is part of the Sundrop Farm using seawater and sunlight to grow high value horticultural crops.

My huge mistake was to follow with allowing Jenny to go shopping. An hour later and we were finally on the road again, but I now have some new thongs (given that the puppy had eaten my old ones yesterday).

With a stop for the Big Galah at Kimba and the Big Farmer at Wudinna, we arrived at Ceduna just after dusk.

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