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Travels with the Winnie: Day 10

Head of Bight Whalewatching

Enjoying a Jack Daniels and coke, will it improve my writing or ruin it.

We are now waking up about half an hour before sunrise. We were keen to get to the whale watching centre when it opened at 8.30 a.m. Fortunately we had a really good night’s sleep and were ready in good time.

We saw whales, only one at a time, so it could have been the same whale in different places. She didn’t do any of the interesting whale behaviours, but it was so lovely that she was there that we enjoyed ourselves anyway.

It was a beautiful morning, quite cold, but we rugged up.

Head of Bight cliffs (1 of 1)
A view of the bluff
Stephen whale spotting (1 of 1)
Stephen had some binoculors borrowed from the kiosk
whale crop (1 of 1)
The whale was a fair way away, and this is a crop of the image I took with my long lens
whale watch kiosk (1 of 1)
Whale watching kiosk, it was lovely going back into the warmth
whale context photo (1 of 1)
This shows the context, the whale was a long way away from where we were standing

We are finding one of the great things about this van is the diesel heater. It makes all the difference for free camping. There is one outlet into the main area and one in the bathroom. We feel very spoilt to have such a warm bathroom, better than at home.

There is also the ease of set up when we free camp. I wasn’t sure that Stephen was really into this, but he chose to free camp tonight, and the only problem is having enough water if we want to free camp for a third night in a row tomorrow night. We are about 70 kms from Ceduna and will check out the possibilities there. We have extra water bottles for drinking water as I am wary of drinking from the van’s tank.

We have 4G internet, but no TV here. Even though we have a 40gig per month internet plan, with an additional 15gig on my phone, we can’t really watch TV via the internet – unless we want to use of a lot of our bandwidth. Apart from using gas for cooking and the fridge, we have two house batteries and solar power. I’ve bought a 150 watt pure sine wave inverter that powers a lamp (we have 12volt lighting, but the lamp makes prettier light) and charges all of our devices.

We can also run the TV with the inverter. Our TV is new, I did not buy a 12volt TV because they are expensive for what you are getting and tend to include a DVD player which we don’t use. Far more important is the HDMI port which allows me to attach the iPad. The old TV that came with the van had two HDMI ports which weren’t working reliably.

So, here is our camp site for tonight at the Cohen Rest Area just west of Penong, SA. We seemed to hit normal bushland fairly quickly after we left Head of Bight, and then were in farming country for the rest of the journey today.

Cohen Rest Area
Cohen Rest Area
Posted on by photographyperthwa · 2 Comments

In the footsteps of Bill Bryson

Today we visited Avebury, site of one of the English henges. It is quite impressive. The standing stones are mostly the result of excavation and setting in place again. We were prompted to visit by what Bill Bryson wrote in The Road to Little Dribbling although we didn’t feel, as he did, that the National Trust information was unhelpful. Maybe he didn’t concentrate when he was being told where to begin the walk. Maybe the fact that we came by train, then bus, made us more observant. We could see the stones immediately as the bus was arriving at the village.

And, we were given a little map. There was a museum showing the excavation and another showing some of the artefacts that have been recovered.

Of course, they don’t really know who built the henge or why. It dates from about 4,200 years ago. The stone used for the henge is local to the area and has been used for paving and building houses in the area. Apparently many of the standing stones were broken up and destroyed by local people. What is left is still substantial.

After we had looked in the museums and had lunch, Stephen decided to really follow Bill Bryson’s lead and walk to Silbury Hill. It is also part of the mystery – an artificial hill that has apparently been built up over a long period of time.

We bought one picnic lunch at the hostel and ate it in the cafe, alone with a lovely big pot of tea, with spare hot water.

Stephen off to Silbury Hill
Stephen sets off for Silbury Hill

In fact, he gave up after awhile. It had become very rainy and wet, and was very muddy underfoot. I had experienced it myself doing a walk partway around the circle of stones. We met up at the church. I had already been in, so he had a look, then went back to the museum for a while, whilst I retreated to the cafe.

The following are some photos from my walk in an Apple Photos slideshow. It tells a story of a rainy day, with a short burst of sun and blue sky, just before we set off on our walks.