The last installment: Cactus Beach to Adelaide

We arrived at Cactus Beach (or, to be more accurate, the Point Sinclair campground) on the public holiday Monday in the middle of the school holidays, but despite this we found a lovely spot for the caravan close to the beach and the "facilities". It was quite special coming to this place where Andrew had spent so much time before he had a family and "commitments". Andrew was in the water with his surfboard within an hour, while the girls worked out a complicated game in the sand-dunes and I did my usual "chooking" around. As we had run out of water on the Nullarbor, I had to bring buckets of bore water over to the van and heat them in the gas kettle so I could wash the dishes.

The weather was beautiful and there was a lovely clear night for star-gazing by the beach (the best place for star-gazing).

In the morning Andrew had another surf (he was very lucky with the weather conditions) and I ate my breakfast on the "surfers' chair" overlooking the surf beach. I even read my book for a whole five minutes before Tahlia came to join me. We didn't really hang around, although there wasn't the usual 10am deadline imposed in caravan parks, because our caravan batteries had completely died and things in the fridge were starting to warm up a bit. We packed up and drove to Ceduna, where we had lunch sitting on a very windy and cold foreshore. I didn't much take to Ceduna - particularly when the bakery didn't take EFTPOS (everyone on the Nullarbor did, but not the bakery in Ceduna!) but we didn't really give it a fair go. We sped on to Streaky Bay, where we couldn't believe our luck, finding that we had been assigned one of those caravan sites that OTHER people always seem to get - ie right on the foreshore about 5m from the water's edge. After so much rushing around in the previous two weeks (we had had six stops in the previous seven nights) I suddenly felt I just couldn't face any more, and suggested that rather than move on again the next day to spend two nights in Coffin Bay - adding an extra 200km to the homeward journey by going to the bottom of the Eyre Peninsula - we spend two more nights in Streaky Bay instead, enjoying the lovely spot, and then head straight across to Port Augusta and home. The girls were strongly in favour, and Andrew agreeable, so I went to book an extension, only to find that our site was booked from the following day and we would have to move! To cut a long story short, we still decided we would still stay there rather than travel down to Coffin Bay, with no time to do it justice and lousy weather anyway - but it was AWFUL having to pack up the van and move 50m to another site within the park! No more water's edge, either - just the usual dirt site facing the back of a cabin. It was so windy we couldn't even leave the chairs set up.

We didn't do much in the two days we had there, but there still seems to be plenty to write about. We went on a couple of scenic drives around the district, and stopped to look at Murphy's Haystacks (granite rocks mistaken for haystacks by someone who used them to illustrate a point about what hard work could achieve, and they've kept the name ever since) and the sealion colony at Point Labatt, where you can watch the sealions lolling around on the rocks for hours. One of the most striking things about the scenic drives was the number of sleepy lizards we saw on the road. Literally two or more every kilometre - all blithely crossing the road. I'm pleased to report we didn't squash any of them. Andrew became very good at judging how fast they were moving and running our wheels on either side of them. The funny thing was, we never saw any in the bush when we stopped to walk around - only on the road!

We went to great lengths to find the apparently fantastic Yanerbie sand-dunes, so we could sand-board on them. We eventually did find them (not without a few anxious minutes driving on a very narrow and overgrown sandy track) and tried sliding down them on our boogie-boards, but it wasn't terribly successful. It was also freezing cold and blowing a gale!

The best part of our stay at Streaky Bay was the dinner we had at the pub, where the food and the service were just fantastic. Probably the best we'd encountered all trip (not that we ate out all that often). We were very tempted to go back the next night, but didn't on the grounds that (apart from being extravagant) we were likely to end up disappointed and that would spoil the memory of the first night! (How cynical is that?) As you might gather, our spirits (mainly mine) weren't very high - the prospect of the trip being nearly over killing my enthusiasm for the sight-seeing and making it hard to keep up the manic pace of the previous three months. Still, we had our last night in Mambray Creek to look forward to............. ending up where we started 97 nights before.

Mambray Creek is such a beautiful spot - it was a great place to finish our trip. We had a lovely campsite in amongst the amazing massive old gum trees, and we were visited by a particularly friendly kookaburra - my favourite type of bird - which was very special. The campground has hot showers and flushing toilets, but still retains the sense of being "out bush". If it hadn't been for the ridiculously noisy neighbours, it would have been perfect. And that was our 98th night - the last one before we headed back to Adelaide. We arrived home late afternoon with that strange feeling you get when you've been away for some time, and yet nothing seems to have changed. The neighbour waves as you go past, the chooks demand food, you put the kettle on and suddenly that's it: THE END.

Trip summary

We travelled 20,080km in 98 days. We spent $5,800 in fuel and $4,162 in accommodation (ave $42.50 per night). The most expensive caravan park (powered site) was $72/night for the five of us (on a long weekend) and the cheapest was $25. We had one flat tyre (on the caravan) and a chip in the car windscreen. Our Territory was fantastic - although fuel consumption averaged about 19 litres per 100km. We should have bought new batteries for the caravan, which would have given us much more scope for non-caravan park camping. The things I missed most on the trip were: the dishwasher, an ensuite bathroom and carpet, while the most useful "extra" things we took with us were: the wireless broadband "dongle", the electric frypan and the photo printer. I hope you've enjoyed reading our blog and I thoroughly recommend this kind of trip to everyone. What an amazing country we live in!

Captions for photos

- Reflections on the blue lake between Penong and Point Sinclair

- Andrew surfing at Cactus Beach

- Sturt Desert peas in a pot on the main street in Ceduna

- Picnic lunch in Ceduna

- The famous replica Great White Shark in Streaky Bay - at over 5m long the largest ever caught on a rod. Why they want to associate Streaky Bay with a killer shark, I do not know, but the stubby holders all bear its image.

- Two of the many sleepy lizards playing chicken with the traffic on the roads around Streaky Bay

- Murphy's Haystacks. I wonder if Murphy was Irish. I mean - seriously - how do you mistake these for haystacks?

- Sealions living a much more peaceful existence than the lizards

- It was REALLY cold at Point Labatt

- Our campsite at Mambray Creek

- Not a great shot, but it was just so special having the kookaburra come so close

The long and not winding road - crossing the Nullarbor Plain

On the day we started out on the long road back to SA, it rained. And rained. And rained. So we drove, and

drove and drove – travelling further than we had intended, and stopping for the night at the Balladonia “caravan park”, a dirt clearing that had become a sea of wet gravel, mud and puddles. There we encountered two very bedraggled cyclists: a couple in their 60s who have been cycling around Australia for TWO YEARS covering about 50km a day. (Where could possibly be the fun in that?)

Setting up in the rain was an interesting challenge; funnily (and luckily, I suppose) the first time in the whole trip we’d actually had to do it. We discovered that the umbrellas were buried so deeply in the bottom of the car boot that there was no way we could get to them, but I did find the rain jackets at the back of a remote cupboard. We ventured out briefly to see the “museum” in the roadhouse, where they have a piece of Skylab on display, from when the space station crashed in the area in 1979. It was all extremely shabby and poorly presented, however, belying the brochure’s promise of “high-tech interactive technology”.

By morning the rain had stopped and we packed up and launched ourselves onto day two of crossing the Nullarbor Plain, the largest area of “semi-arid limestone karst” (cave) in the world. It sounds fascinating, but is actually extremely dull – flat and featureless for hundreds of kilometres, including the 146.6km world-record longest straight stretch of road, which runs from Balladonia to Cocklebiddy. Despite the name (From Nullus arbor – meaning no trees) it actually has quite a few trees, except for a short stretch near the SA border. We didn’t get that far on day two, stopping early at the Madura Pass roadhouse so we could watch the rerun of the Grand Final. We spent a surprisingly enjoyable afternoon in the desolate bar in the middle of nowhere, chatting to the locals who had a very dry sense of humour. I loved their “commonly asked questions” by tourists pinned on the wall with the no-frills answers. Like “If I just park in your caravan park and sleep there, do I still have to pay?” And “Where can I get my hair cut?” (Answer: Ceduna) Shame about the footy, though!

On the third day we stopped in Eucla, where there was phone reception for the first time since Kalgoorlie and I carried my computer out to the beer garden of the roadhouse and uploaded the blog I had written in Balladonia. Then we visited the ruins of the old telegraph station, which is slowly being buried by the sand dunes that have nothing to anchor them down since the rabbits destroyed all the vegetation decades ago. Back on the road, we crossed the border back into South Australia (no excitement this time) and soon reached the part where the road runs right next to a spectacular stretch of limestone cliffs – over 200km long and 80m high. Unfortunately, it was bitterly cold and windy, and getting out at the lookouts to admire the view became a challenge! At one place we were rewarded with a mother and baby whale, moving towards us in the clear water right in front of us. But apart from that it was cold and bleak, and we were wondering if we were going to have to abandon our plan to camp in one of these roadside stops. Finally we found a place on the other side of the road, not exactly scenic but at least sheltered, with plenty of trees and places for a campfire.

The next morning we stopped at the whale watching centre at Head of Bight, where long boardwalks and viewing platforms have been built – probably to stop people falling off the cliffs and to protect the cliffs from erosion by tourists. Despite the attendant’s warning that there were hardly any whales around, we were thrilled to see at least four mothers with calves, some of whom were frolicking really close to us – the babies playing together with the mothers keeping watch nearby (Andrew called it the “whale child-care centre”). My only disappointment was that I just couldn’t get that fancy shot of a tail sticking straight up in the air. The whales were really just swimming around, not jumping up or diving.

From the Head of Bight it was a couple of hours’ drive to Penong and then 12km of dirt road to Cactus Beach: world-famous surf beach, playground of Andrew’s youth and our next campsite.

Captions for pictures
- Corny but fun
- Ruins of the Eucla telegraph station. Actually I think it's amazing that they built it in the first place
- Obligatory arty shot
- View of the Plain from above Madura Pass (one of the most scenic places)
- Tree-climbing games as usual in the bush camp on the Nullarbor
- The eastern edge of the beautiful Bunda Cliffs that stretch nearly 300km from Head of Bight into WA
- One of many, many whale shots
- Tahlia took the only "tail shot"!

From super rock to super pit: venturing inland

Hyden is in the middle of nowhere – or very close. The rabbit-proof fence is only about 50km to the east of it, which shows you how remote the country is around there. (The rabbit-proof fence – now officially called the State Barrier Fence – is a continuous fence that runs almost due north-south from Esperance to Port Hedland. Its main role is now to keep emus, rather than rabbits, out of the agricultural areas.) Why would we miss Esperance to go to this god-forsaken place? Wave Rock, of course! And we are not the only ones; apparently it is the most visited tourist attraction in WA, with over 100,000 visitors a year! Surely (I thought) it must be over-rated; and after Uluru and King’s Canyon, a disappointment? But no – I confess to a shock of breath-snatching awe when I first looked at it, particularly because you just come around a corner of the path, two minutes’ walk from the caravan park, and suddenly there it is right in front of – and towering over – you. It is just beautiful; a graceful sweeping curve accentuated by the vertical stripes through it. Sadly, it also has an ugly concrete wall running along the top, which we thought initially was to stop the tourists falling off (bureaucracy definitely gone mad) but in fact was built by early settlers in the area, in order to collect run-off from the rock as a reliable water supply. Funny how attitudes and priorities change. We would consider this a scandalous desecration of an amazing natural phenomenon now!

The tourist brochures try to convince you that it takes two days to fully appreciate all the aspects and elements of the rock, but even they have to throw in a game of golf to get through the second afternoon. We found that we had plenty of time before lunch to do a lovely long walk along the base of the rock and through some of the surrounding countryside, and still fit in a visit to the unlikely combination of a wildlife park, “lace museum” and “toy soldier collection” all within 200m of the rock and the caravan park. Then we set off on the road to Kalgoorlie, via “Mulka’s cave” – another feature of the same rock formation about 16km up the road, where Aboriginal legend has it that Mulka, the unfortunate progeny of star-crossed lovers, who was cursed with crossed eyes so he couldn’t hunt effectively, lived on small children until he was hunted and killed by his tribe. Our children’s lives were vaguely threatened by the presence of a large brown snake (the first one I’ve seen outside of a wildlife park since I’ve been in Australia) but we escaped unscathed.

After a night in another roadside camp with too much traffic noise and awful toilets but a nice campfire and a bit more space than the average caravan park, we headed into Kalgoorlie. Here the caravan park was surprisingly pleasant, and the receptionist much more helpful than most. There was a great playground and even some shade (although no grass). We booked ourselves onto the Superpit tour for the next day, did a load of washing and some shopping, and even fitted in a visit to “Ye Olde Lolly Shoppe” – where they sold lots of sweets I remember buying in the UK in the 1970s. Needless to say, the girls were in heaven for at least an hour afterwards!

In the morning we thought we’d have plenty of time to “do” the Mining Hall of Fame before our tour at 1pm, but it turned out to be like Whale World, with a huge range of displays, information and activities, and we ended up having to rush off without doing it justice. Still, we did have an underground tour and insight into how mining used to be before it was turned into “open cut” mining (a lot like opal mining, actually); we also saw some gold being melted and poured into an ingot (about $100,000 worth in one bar the size of a couple of Toblerones), and we climbed up into one of the enormous dump trucks that are used in the mine, which are 10m tall, carry over 200 tonnes of rubble in one load, and have four massive tyres on them, each worth around $30,000 new. And by the way – the amount of gold in one truck-load is likely to be about the size of a golf-ball, and only about one in six truckloads has any gold in it at all. Yet they still turn out about $5 million a day of gold!

On the Superpit tour we sat in a bus again – like at Port Hedland – except that we were allowed to get out at a viewing spot and look down into the great hole, which is about half a kilometre deep and apparently visible from space. And it is going to be about twice the current size before they’ve finished with it. (What will they do with it then, I wonder……..?) It was very impressive, especially when you could see those massive dump trucks toiling up and down the roadways, looking like tiny toy trucks below us.

Despite fervent pleas, we did not return to the lolly shop, but ended our stay in Kalgoorlie with a leisurely “all-you-can-eat” dinner where Tahlia made my day (no – my year) by choosing a fresh pear for dessert!

And that was it for our inland detour. On Friday it was time to start the dreaded crossing of the Nullarbor Plain.

Captions for pictures

- The classic Wave Rock picture. Someone won a competition with a picture like this in 1962, which was published on the cover of National Geographic and that's how everyone found out about the Rock and started visiting it.

- The other classic (corny) shot of surfing the rock. It is actually harder than it looks: it is very difficult to stand up there without slipping down.

- Kirralee's friend Benson at the caravan park

- Kendall about to eat a witchetty grub we found in some firewood at the bush camp site (yeah sure she is!)

- Can we call this a maths exercise?

- An unexpected lovely flower in Kalgoorlie

- A crucible heated to 1000 degrees C in order to melt the gold. There is a thin yellow line in front of the crucible, which is the melted gold pouring into the ingot mould- The super Cat dump truck (this one has been retired and repainted for display purposes)

- The working Cats looking like toys in the Superpit

Saving the best until (nearly) last

On the recommendation of someone in a caravan park somewhere, we had booked the Ocean Beach Caravan Park in Denmark. This turned out to be about 8km outside of Denmark, on the coast (although you couldn't actually see the sea from the park). It also turned out to be the most fantastic caravan park we'd stayed in all trip. The amenities block would not have been out of place in a five-star hotel, the whole park was covered in grass and trees, there was a massive playground and jumpy pillow and the surf beach was just up the road. Best of all, there were families of ducks with lots of ducklings wandering around all day, and at night kangaroos feeding on the lawns. I walked up to the amenities block late at night, literally within a few metres of about 10 kangaroos, who eyed me cautiously but did not move away. It was a beautiful and quite surreal experience!

Andrew discovered the surf beach on the first morning, and after he'd had a surf, we all went back down there for boogie-boarding - which turned into a surfing lesson for Kirralee. It was actually drizzling and not exactly warm, but that didn't deter anyone except me (well - someone had to take the pictures!). Kirralee managed to catch a little wave, which was a great thrill. In the afternoon we went out to an animal "petting farm" where the girls could cuddle and pet baby guinea pigs and rabbits to their hearts' content, as well as feeding goats, sheep, ferrets, emus, alpacas, kangaroos........ you name it! This was what Kirralee in particular would consider to be heaven, and we couldn't even get them out of there in time to go to the toffee factory! This had to be saved for the next day - along with the cheese factory, where we bought lots of glorious cheeses as the basis for a gourmet platter supper. We did call in at a place called William Bay, where there is a cove called "Elephant Rocks" and a snorkelling bay called "Green Pool". Both were beautiful, but it was far too cold for swimming or snorkelling.

Before the factories tour on the Saturday, we fitted in another surfing lesson, and this time even yours truly managed to sort of stand up on the board. My first surf in 10 years! Kendall had a shot, and you could hear the squeal from the other side of the beach when Andrew stood her up and pushed the board in front of a wave.

Of course Saturday was also the AFL Grand Final. We had fitted our schedule around it to some extent, making sure we wouldn't be driving or somewhere without TV reception on the day - but in the end we only saw the last quarter, by the time we got back from our gourmet tour and shopping (to buy everything else we needed for the platters). Still - what an exciting quarter! And, just like the election, another draw. It must be us!

On Sunday we went to Albany for the day. It might have made sense to stay there for a couple of nights, but we preferred to commute rather than pack up and move again. Four nights in one spot is just great. The day was cool and rainy again, and we headed first to Whale World, which we'd heard was pretty interesting. It's an old whaling station - the last to close in Australia - that has been converted into a museum and educational facility. I thought it was well done; presenting the gory realities of working on the station without any justification or condemnation. We certainly learned a great deal. However, despite spending three hours, it still didn't seem enough, and we had to rush off at the end, because we had a lunch booking on the other side of Albany. (If we'd realised quite how far out of town it was, we would have sacrificed it, seeing we only had the one day - but hindsight is a wonderful thing!) We visited the "Natural Bridge" on the way, and found it absolutely crawling with tourists, which was a bit of a shock to us. Most of the places we've been to have never had more than one or two others there at the same time as us. Still - it was the Sunday of a long weekend in WA and only about 400km from Perth.

The Albany Marron and Bird Park was a lovely place for lunch (a rare treat to have a sit-down lunch, but I had a craving for marron) and also had another animal petting and bird-feeding park. This was great, because the girls disappeared for an hour or so, and Andrew and I had a lingering, romantic coffee by ourselves for once! By the time we got back to town it was already after 4pm so we just drove around looking at the beach, the port etc and then headed for home. It would have been nice to have had a bit more time to explore, but given that it was still raining and foggy, we probably wouldn't have seen much more anyway. One thing we were sorry to miss was a tour around the replica of the Brig Amity - the first ship to bring settlers to Albany (which was the first place settled in WA and was originally intended to be the state capital) - but this was closed when we arrived. As a unique method of "closing" the ship, they flood the deck with water from the adjacent beach, so people don't climb on-board!

Monday was packing up day. We were all VERY sorry to leave Denmark; Andrew because of the surf beach, the girls because of the playground and the ducks, and me because of the midnight kangaroos. Not to mention the fact (which none of us did) that this was our last "long" stop and we had only two more places to go before we would be going across the Nullarbor and back to SA. I don't know if Denmark was the "best" place of the whole trip, but it was certainly the best caravan park, and it would be up there in the top five overall, despite the weather.

Captions for pictures

- Kirralee and a new love at the Animal Farm

- Tahlia with an emu "necklace"

- Kirralee's first wave!

- The guard at the entrance to William Bay

- Can you see the elephant?

- Green Pool near sunset

- A duck family hanging around the caravan. They have 10 children and both parents look after them full-time. Also note the lovely green park.

- Skeletons of a pygmy blue whale (20m) and a humpback whale (about 5m) at Whale World

- Natural Bridge (and not so natural human decorations)

- Another picture of Kendall with a bird sitting on her - this time at the Albany Marron and Bird Park

- Local scenery near the caravan park. I think the water must be really salty and the trees are all dying but it looks fantastic.

Treechange!

When we turned east, we also turned inland – away from the coast for the first time since we had arrived in Derby nearly six weeks before. This was to be only a brief detour, though, to see the famous big trees around Pemberton and to do the Tree Top Walk in Walpole. The “big trees” are the massive karri trees (Aboriginal name for the Eucalyptus diversicolor) which only grow in the South West of WA where the rainfall is high enough (or at least, it has traditionally been high enough). Mature trees are over 60m tall, and can reach up to 90m. A few were selected in the 1930s and 1940s as fire lookouts and these have a “ladder” of 60cm nails hammered into them, which can be climbed by the extremely brave (and foolhardy!). Kendall had been looking forward to this particular challenge since before the trip, while Andrew had already made up his mind not to go anywhere near them (he’s not good with heights). We found the Bicentennial Tree – one of the climbing trees – just west of Pemberton and I have to say it looked a lot scarier than I expected. No safety net of any kind, not much in the way of warnings or restrictions – and no specified age limit for climbing, leaving the decision up to the poor parents (more guilt). On this one, there was a platform about 20m up, so the girls and I climbed up that far without too much trouble. It’s not actually that hard to climb, although the nails are fairly far apart for children, but if you had a bit of a panic up there, you could just freeze up. Also, coming down you have to look down through your legs to see where the next step is, and that’s pretty daunting! Kirralee was all for going right to the top, until she actually started coming back down from the platform (I put my foot down and said that this was only our “practice run” and we would save the big climb for the next big tree and the next day.) The picture probably doesn’t really show it, but it was VERY scary – you just felt so exposed out there, and looking up afterwards and realising that the platform we went up to was barely a third of the way up convinced me that there was no way I was taking the girls any further (much to Kendall and Kirralee’s disgust).

The next day we found the Gloucester Tree – and after Andrew and I had agonised over whether we should allow any of the girls to climb and if so, how high etc – it turned out to be much easier than the Bicentennial Tree, having a sort of net joining the nails together on the outside, as well as more branches on the way up. Not that these would have saved you at all, but they made you feel much more secure, and the nails were a bit closer together, which made it easier. The view from the top viewing platform (about 60m up) was a bonus, but the real thrill was definitely the climb itself. Kendall, Kirralee and I reached the top, while Tahlia and Andrew very sensibly stopped at the point where they felt comfortable (Tahlia about half-way up and Andrew on the bench at the bottom!). The forest itself was just beautiful, and it was a shame we scarcely had time to explore and enjoy it (we’d cut the itinerary to the bone in this last section, having chosen to spend most of our time further north where it was warmer and we were less likely to go back). Instead, we jumped back in the car and headed for Walpole, home of the famous “Tree-top walk”, something I had been particularly looking forward to.

It turned out to be even better than expected – a 600m long steel boardwalk 20 – 35m up in the air through the canopy of a Red Tingle forest, another beautiful big tree confined to high rainfall areas near the south coast of WA. There was a lovely ground level walk around the forest, too, which we all enjoyed. Just as we were leaving, I got a call from the caravan park in Denmark: were we still coming? Yes, we replied – just pushing the envelope as usual. Back in the car, and back to the beach.... for the last time in WA.

Captions for pictures

- The Bicentennial Tree......... and we're barely 10m up!
- Andrew taking bird pictures while waiting at the bottom (this is a Western Rosella)
- View of the forest from about half-way up the Gloucester Tree
- The lovely coral vine, which grows prolifically in the Karri forests
- The Tree-top walk - and this is at least 20m up, so you can see how tall the trees are
- The white clematis growing in the Red Tingle forest
- One of the giant Red Tingle trees - this one looks familiar, somehow...............!
- Feeding the friendly "28" parrots at the Pemberton Caravan Park (yes that's their name - it apparently reflects the call they make)