Rest Stop 164k Peg, SA to Eucla, WA

We had a fairly unevental day of driving after a peaceful night. It became more and more windy, but was sunny and bright, which helped. The road is very good, which really helps and, of course, in these wide open spaces it is very easy for other vehicles to pass us.

At Border Village we chucked a couple of items, an onion and lemon that I had picked up at Penong. In the laundry at Penong there is usually a pile of vegetables/fruit discarded by travellers who will be going through the quarantine check for SA. The WA quarantine check is at the border. I’d forgotten about honey – and we had to give them a container that was mostly used and a full, unopened one. Rats! I felt a bit like the King, nobody my darling could call me a fussy woman, but I do like a little bit of creamed honey with my toast! It will have to be marmalade instead.

Eucla is beautiful of course and we have camped in a spot overlooking the ocean. Whereas we normally like to be as level as possible we have accepted quite a slope because it means we have an uninterupted view. So, we go up to the bathroom and bed and down to the living area, it can be a bit disorienting.

On the way here we stopped off at one of the photo opportunities to view the cliffs. It was better actually being there. The featured image shows the coastal heathland and pathway to the viewing spot. I tried to get the horizon level, but it really wants to tilt!

We are still enjoying meals from our last cookup and will have the last one tonight.

 

Head of Bight to Rest Stop 164k Peg, SA

After a peaceful night we headed down to the kiosk to buy our tickets to see whales. There were about 10 or so mums and bubs this time, our best whale watching yet. Unfortunately there was a lot of rain and wind, so eventually we were driven back to the warmth of the cafe. The featured image shows the special whale watching in the rain and wind Recovery Kit, hot chocolate and scones with jam and cream. It works wonders!

We drove to the Nullabour Roadhouse about 14 kms away where we filled up with petrol and water. The water tap has probably always been there, but I found out about it from Wikicamps. It was still raining.

We drove to this Rest Stop which is about 35kms from the roadhouse. After having lunch we had a little rest. It was still raining. Stephen suggested that we move to the next rest area, just to move along a little bit, but I felt that driving through the rain to a RA without any internet at all wasn’t really worth it. We can reach Eucla tomorrow from here and the forecast said the rain would clear.

There was a caravan here when we arrived, but it left. Shortly afterwards a motorhome and caravan came in and parked close to each other to make a windbreak. They have a fire in the middle. Not long after three caravans came in and did a similar thing of parking in a circle. Another caravan drove down the road to find a parking spot out of sight. We are glad to have people near to us and glad that they made that decision, so we can’t be accused of crowding them. We took a walk just before sunset and found the camping area is very large, with lots of roads and campsites, marked by little rings of stones for fireplaces.

It became very windy as the skies cleared, but there is now more of a breeze. We look forward to having a peaceful night here.

 

Penong to Head of Bight

Today has just been a day of travel, arriving here at Head of Bight at about 3.00 p.m. We had a few stops along the way enjoying the green farmland and bush of mallee and smokebush. The Nullabour Roadhouse, just down the road from Head of Bight, likes to paint itself as being very remote, but the bush only stops a few kilometres from here and most people could easily get from Ceduna to here in a day. Anyway, it’s their story.

We have parked here because we want to have another go at visiting the whale watching centre. Stephen rang up this morning and they said they have up to 100 whales in the bay, though they can’t promise us that we will see that many. There is rain forecast tomorrow which could make getting down to the viewing platforms a bit interesting (wet). There was light rain last night at Penong and today has been cloudy with very light rain at times. The temperature is quite mild, however.

We are camped at the place on the road out to the whale watching centre where we camped on our way East. We were the first to arrive, then three other motorhomes came. Later, after this photo was taken, a caravan with a family of two adults and three children arrived. The building in the photo is locked up, there are no facilities here and all vehicles are supposed to be fully self contained. Last time we were here there were people sleeping in a car – perhaps they felt fully self contained!

For tea tonight we enjoyed one of our meals cooked yesterday in the electric pressure cooker, with added mushrooms, bacon and green beans, followed by fresh fruit and chocolate. We are being a bit careful with the water, but I’ve been reading on Wikicamps that we can get access to water ($1.00 for 20 litres) at Nullabour Roadhouse and our plan is to fill up on fuel and water there.

The cloud cover meant that we didn’t get much of a display at sunset.

We have phone/internet access here and have our books to read. We went for a short walk down the road.

Streaky Bay – a day of sunshine

We woke up to sunshine this morning. I switched off the alarm last night and we slept in until 7.00 a.m. It was clearly the right day to have a rest and enjoy our surroundings. We read our books, went for walks and explored our caravan park, wondering at the attention to detail and, basically, how much it must have cost to set it up. There are no solar panels, unfortunately, though the airconditioning provided in the buildings is evaporative, which would save on electricity and probably works well enough in summer here.

There has been major investment in the water management. They have their own desalination system and waste water recycling for reticulating all the new trees and bushes. In a few years the caravan sites will have some shade and privacy, hopefully without interrupting the views to the ocean.

We had pancakes for breakfast this morning, our usual cheese sandwiches and fruit for lunch, and leftovers for tea with some lovely fresh bread from Ceduna. The Ceduna bakery delivers the bread to the caravan park, whereas the Streaky Bay Bakery doesn’t deliver, so that is why it comes from 100 kms away.

We often use our own bathroom for having washes when we are travelling, but we can’t resist the beautiful facilities here at the park, so have been going out for our showers. The walks to and from are very chilly. Although it was sunny today the overnight temperature was about 6 degrees and I think it got to about 22 degrees during today.

Broken Hill to Cockburn via Silverton

Yesterday morning was one of those times when we needed to get a lot done. We had the tyres checked at Bridgestone in Broken Hill, and were charged $10, the first time we have been charged for getting our tyres checked. Still, it was worth it for the peace of mind, and they checked all of the tyres, including the spare underneath. It is quite difficult for us to do.

We did some shopping and got petrol nearby. Then we drove out to Silverton, a small town with a big reason to be, it has been used in numerous Australian films, including ‘A Town Like Alice’, and most recently in Mad Max II. So, here is our photo of the Silverton Hotel, which has had so many names in films over the years. The barmaid said that there is a new film yet to come out featuring the hotel.

There were some donkeys hanging around and I’ve used that photo for the featured image.

We drove back along the extremely bumpy bitumen road to Broken Hill, then set off along the Barrier Highway to the little village of Cockburn. The ‘caravan park’ here is fairly informal, but there is power if you want it, flushing toilets and one working hot shower.

We succumbed to the lure of a fireplace and home cooked meals and had our tea at the pub. There we found out some of the history of the place and met the cook, who is about Stephen’s age, but a long term resident and supporter of the community’s wish to keep the village open. It is just over the border in SA, and the government is trying to force people to move to a bigger town by cutting off the water and threatening to cut off the power. Of course, residents could use generators, as they do in a nearby village, but they prefer to keep the campground/caravan park going and have streetlights. Already they have to truck in the water.

We felt quite virtuous about supporting them by having power at our site and the meal and a cider at the pub. The meals were delicious and healthy, though apple crumble is by definition not included in the healthy part.

We had a very good night’s sleep. It was very cold when we got back to the van and we had both heaters (diesel and electric) going for a while until we were toasty warm.

Our site last night doesn’t count as free camping, but at $20 for the night is a lot cheaper than a caravan park.

Time for breakfast.

A day in Broken Hill

Yesterday was a day of art galleries. We started out with the Pro Hart Gallery. Not an artist that I have thought much about, though when reminded of some of his antics (dropping paint powder onto Ayers Rock, putting paint onto carpet and smoothing it out with his belly), I remembered those. But, seeing the artist in context has left a very different impression. His output was prodigious, and when you consider that he was working in the mines from the age of 19 to 40, he must have had incredible energy.

He remained living in Broken Hill and joined a group of other local artists in promoting the local landscape and people. He was a devoted family man (and I think this also swayed me), and when he became famous and had exhibitions and was meeting important people he always took his wife and five kids with him. We watched a video on various documentaries that gave us insight into his life. The gallery is full of his artwork which the family wants to keep. Understanding his work as social and spiritual commentary made a difference to how I viewed it. Although he did not want to be thought of as a landscape artist, the landscape elements of his paintings also appeal to me.

Our next stop was back in town.  We parked the Winnie near to the Cinema, had lunch at the ‘Silly Goat’ cafe, then walked to the gallery housing ‘The Big Picture” by another local artist, Peter Anderson. It is a huge diorama style painting in bright colours of all the local area in the round. Quite breathtaking. There was quite a lot of other artwork on sale in the gallery.

Stephen was then ready for a third gallery, but I chose to have a rest in the van.

At about 5.00 p.m. we went to the Cinema to see ‘Dunkirk’. We wanted to see the film on the big screen, and thought it would probably be off by the time we get back to Perth. It was definitely worth seeing, although I am not sure we saw it in its full glory of 77mm. They had downloaded it via satellite. There were quite a few other people there, so I hope they were able to make a profit.

I only took a few photos today. The town has attractive old style buildings, and some newer public buildings with a great deal of style, and ‘next time’ it would be worthwhile to walk around town capturing these elements. There are a lot of older style homes as well, including many corrugated iron houses that people still live in.

Today we are leaving this caravan park, but not leaving the area as we want to explore Silverton and also see some outdoor sculptures which are out of town.

Menindee to Broken Hill

This morning we drove back to Broken Hill, and called in at ‘Sunset Strip’ on the way, where there is a view of the largest lake at Menindee.

We have checked into one of the caravan parks in town. Annoyingly, we had the best sunset here where there wasn’t really a good place to take a photo with all the vans around us. We did our grocery shopping on our way here so that we have all of tomorrow for sightseeing. We also had our Facetime session with Matt this evening as tomorrow night we plan to go to a movie.

A Day in Minendee

The reason to visit Minendee was to see the place where the Burke and Wills expedition launched into the unknown. We were also interested in seeing the lakes, but all of the access roads are gravel and after the rain yesterday we did not feel confident of taking the Winnie. Our ‘home’ lake at the caravan park will have to do.

We drove 13 kms into the town today, doing a little shopping, visiting the Tourist Information Centre and then having lunch at the pub where Burke and Wills stayed. We also walked down to a bridge on the Darling River.

Although it hasn’t rained today it has been quite cold and windy. We went for a walk in the evening around sunset and I was able to get lots of photos. There are more people staying here tonight, but no one is close to us and we still have a sense of space.

Little Topar Roadhouse to Menindee via Broken Hill

We enjoyed the morning drive to Broken Hill and went straight to the Visitors Centre, which has a Gloria Jeans Cafe. We were going to use their dump point, but after booking our caravan park at Minindee and confirming that it has a dump point we settled in to enjoy our morning tea at the cafe. I wrote yesterday’s blog using my iPad, just to make sure it got done whilst we were on good internet.

Then we drove down to Menindee, going directly to our caravan park without going into the town. Our plan is to drive there tomorrow to explore around. Today is very cold and wet – we arrived here just as a storm came in, and have been dodging showers to plug in and put on some washing. Our ‘lake’ is actually an artificial reservoir, although it is called a lake. We can see lots of bird life, they don’t mind the wind and rain. The pelican we saw looked particularly calm and happy.

We can order fish and chips from the caretakers, and they deliver it to our van, so will do that for tonight’s dinner. It feels rather strange to have 240v electricity. We have water connected as well, but it’s lake water and not suitable for drinking and can only be used for washing up, etc. There is drinking water available from rain water tanks, but we are also carrying a fair bit of drinking water and may not need to fill up here. We have booked for two nights, but could stay for three. We will also stay one night in Broken Hill to give us time to look around and perhaps see the movie Dunkirk Sunday night.

Apart from doing the washing we are relaxing and enjoying being snug in the van whilst it storms outside. The featured photo shows the Winnie – our villa by the lake.