The Nullarbor Plains (24th-26th Sept)

We crossed from Whyalla to Esperance in 2days. A distance of nearly 2000km. Day 1, from Whyalla to Ceduna wasn't even the Nullabor, we were just driving across the top of the Eyrie Peninsular. It was like driving into nothingness. Ceduna was the last real town before before the Nullarbor but even before that we were going 100kms between towns, with straight stretches of road up to 50km long. The only thing of real interest was the Big Gullah.


Once on the Nullabor they weren't even real towns anymore. Road stations. They had fuel, a shop, a truckers shower and, because it's Aus, maybe a pub. Imagine living out there...

The drive across the Nullabor is flat and straight. Not boring though. There's not nothing to see. Despite it being a 'treeless plain' there's a fair amount of vegetation and always the hope of spotting wildlife, mainly camels. We didn't, that would come later. We saw eagles though, with wingspans the width of the car. They were always the last to fly away from the road kill. So magnificent the way they just rise up so slowly from the road.

The road kill, that's another thing entirely. It's unbelievable, especially across the Nullarbor. We don't really get much road kill in the U.K, but in Aus, on the Nullarbor you can barely go 100m (I mean meters) without passing another flattened 'roo. Trucks don't stop, slow, or really even notice them.

And believe it or not there really are some interesting stops across the Nullarbor. Well you would hope so on such a long stretch of road. You are actually driving across the Great Australian Bight (or bite). The erosion on the cliffs really does look like teeth marks. Just imagining a colossal giant taking a bite out of Australia...
Anyway the bight really is incredible.

On one side you have a magnificent coast line with beautiful cliffs and blue water, and the other side; desert plains! There are 3 official viewing points along the Bight, though there are 4x4 tracks where people have gone to find their own. The first, travelling East to West is the 'Head of the Bight' where the viewing platform is set out over the cliffs. I'm told it was once free but as it would now set you back a fair price, we settled for the second one, which was suitably spectacular anyway.




Then there was the Nullarbor golf course. Too expensive for us to play but a brilliant idea.




The Nullarbor Links is the worlds longest golf course. 18 holes, each in a different town across the Nullarbor from Ceduna to Kalgoorlie. A 1365km course. Now I'm no golf fan but even I think that's an amazing idea.

Then, of course, there's the 90mile straight. By this point (travelling from the East) you're used to the seemingly endless straight roads so it isn't actually all that bad but cruise control is a god send, that goes for driving in most of Aus actually. And the drivers are all so friendly. You spend so long between seeing another vehicle, you're happy enough to wave at everyone and you rarely ever get stuck behind another vehicle because the road is so quiet and straight you can just overtake (though the limit has come down from 140km/hr to 120km/hr).

And then you reach Western Australia, and have your entire car searched for fruit and veg. Very annoying when you did your shopping 2 days before and have to bin it all. And then there are trees, and hills and twisty roads! The great Western Forest where we camped by a waterhole in the Fraser range- absolutely stunning!






And a word of advice on fuel stopping on the Nullarbor. They seem frequent but can easily be over 100kms apart and over $2/lt. Fill your tank as full as possible when you start and be mindful!

Whyalla (20th-23rd Sept)

" "By Allah, it's hot." "Why Allah? You should blame the Devil." "

We broke down not long after leaving Bordertown. All I am going to say about Murray Bridge is there's very little to do....

Heading West from Bordertown thing start to get very flat very quickly, as in it is so flat and bare (something that became very common afterward, but here it was still a novelty for me). The colours though were quite beautiful.

We stopped a couple of times on the way to Whyalla, in Port Pirie overnight, where we really started making use of the beautiful thing they had in South and Western Aus- overnight lay-by's/campgrounds.
Then we stopped again in Port Aususta to honor another recommendation of 'the book.' The water tower lookout point was actually quite brilliant... and a really good view.

My abiding memories of Whyalla were the red colour of rust and midges. It was beautiful though. We stayed in a quiet carpark on the beach just out of town... yes we really did sleep in the car a lot.



The beach there was incredible. The water was crystal clear and really shallow. At low tide it created sand banks you could walk through the shallows to. And the sunsets were beautiful. The colouring of the area was I think due to the iron industry and made any sunset photo even more spectacular!




The midges were less pleasant. Mozzie spray was purchased soon after. I was covered in bites.

All in all, despite the bites, it was a very cool place to chill out for a couple of days before hitting the Nullarbor!

South Australia! (August 9th- Sept 16th)

So we spent nearly 6weeks based around Bordertown and Viclor Harbour in SA. For Casey it was the full 6weeks (working). I went off to New Zealand for the weeks in the middle of that.

Victor Harbour was lovely, so much so that Casey is now living there. We arrived on the 9th, spent a few days exploring and had found work by the 13th. Our exploring took us all over the peninsular south of Adelaide, above the Coorong wilderness which was beautiful in itself and without any modern amenities- it was not only where I saw my first wild emu but also my introduction to long drop toilets... pleasant, I think not.

We wandered right down to the Southern tip of the peninsula from where you can see Kangaroo Island, I do regret not going out there but you really can't do everything; spent many an evening enjoying the beach at Port Elliot; walked out to Victor Harbour's small Granite Island.
This island has a horse drawn tram to transport visitors over it's causeway, or you can walk.








The island is small enough to walk around in a couple of hours, and has it's own little penguins, though they're not there during the day and access to the island is not allowed during the night.


Still a pretty little island, though I think Casey preferred the fishing he did after... and actually caught a squid... the calamari was a disaster and the ink got everywhere while preparing it.

Wandered up as far as the suburbs of Adelaide where we stopped at Brighton, yes Brighton (they like their British place names) and spent the afternoon on the beach, again before heading to Mt Barker and cooking dinner in the wetlands and sleeping on the summit of the Mount(ain).










There really was not much in Bordertown, just a few white kangaroos and sheep, and as Casey was working in the shearing sheds, I spent a lot of the time I was there sweeping in the sheds too.

Main piece of advice from this rather mundane post is to be aware of the time differences as you cross from state to state. I thought I had missed my bus into Adelaide... turns out I hadn't changed the time on my phone to South Aus time and I was early... oops.
Also it's often a good idea to ask where hostels are. On arriving to Adelaide I wandered around until I found one just down the road from the main bus station. The people there were great... they cooked pancakes for breakfast and gave me a lift to the airport, but the bed was the most uncomfortable I slept in on the whole trip. Not the best experience.

(skeletal fish in Adelaide)

Mount Gambier (6th-8th August)

Mount Gambier. A place we loved so much we actually stayed in the area for 3 whole days! There was a fair bit to do around and about, and really it was the first time we had left the coast for quite a while! We actually stayed in a camp site here as well, a shower being an attractive feature of said campsite. I'll take a moment here to tell you of our camping set up because somehow we hadn't actually thought to bring a tent with us, we did purchase one at a later date. So for our camping set up we had a swag, which is kind of like a sleeping bag, in the fact that it's a bag you sleep in but it's made from a thick waterproof canvas and has absolutely no warmth factor to it. But it does have a mattress. So in addition to the swag we had a sleeping bag and a doona (that's a duvet to you British folks) for warmth, and we had a tarpaulin that we tied from the car to two trees for a shelter/ wind break. It wasn't actually as bad as it sounds, though the tent was a welcome addition when we got it.

Anyway, our first night in Mount Gambier we went, in good Aussie fashion, to the pub where we met a nice bloke called Shannon (had to share that) who gave us a few ideas on places to check out. The first I wandered off to there and then, was a sink hole, which had also appeared in the book. Mount Gambier has really made a feature of it's sink holes. This one was an incredible and incredibly eerie experience. The sink hole had a path leading down it with trees and vines growing all the way up the side, running water falling down one side with ivy-like creepers and, this being in the dark of night, had been back lit, silhouetting all the features with changing colour lights. There was Aboriginal music playing, mist rising from the water at the bottom and too dark to actually see where you were going, overall a somewhat creepy experience, and nowhere near as impressive by day.

Their other sink hole they had turned into a beautiful sunken garden, which to my endless amusement has it's lawns mowed by a population of guinea pigs.

Not only is Mount Gambier the proud owner of a few sink holes but also to a few extinct volcanoes, most of whom the craters are now (or have been in the past) lakes. Some have dried up now. Their most famous is the blue lake, which is a bright blue in the Summer. This however was the middle of winter and it was a dull grey/blue. But we did drive over the rim of an extinct volcano and down into the crater which was definitely quite cool.

We also drove out to Mount Shank, about half an hour out of Mount Gambier










and walked up the extinct volcano and all the way around the rim, and in my case right down into the bottom of the crater! That was 335 steps up the volcano, 190 into the crater and back out, all the way around the top and back down again! Enough exercise for the week. We made a point of counting steps as Shannon had told us he carved the number on the steps... You meet some interesting people.

Mt Shank seemed a good and popular place to stop the night... in the middle of nowhere, and in fact a lot of people seemed to, including the next person we met, a guy writing a book of free things to to and places to stay along the coastal areas of South East Aus. Could have done with that book! Instead it was morning coffee over a crater =)

The Great Ocean Road! (4th-6th August)

So we skipped around Melbourne in a storm. Really the weather was horrendous, stopping only to surprise some relatives of mine, and went on to Torquay, by which time the weather had improved vastly. The drive there had been horrific and not just because of the weather. The weather had been horrible, particularly on the motorway west of Melbourne; about as little visibility through the rain as it's safe to drive in, the rain was so bad. And then, bypassing Melbourne the navman (that's sat nav to you Brits) decided to send us up and down the same bit of motorway about 4 times, through the toll-road each time.

Anyway we made it to Torquay for the night and actually managed to find a caravan stopping area to camp in for the night... and a nice pub/club for a few drinks and a chat with a Kiwi racehorse breeder. Then, in the morning, after a necessary laundry stop, we were on to the Great Ocean Road.

Despite the fact this bit of the drive only took us 2 days, we really were taking it nice and easy. Our first stop was in Anglsea, to let Casey have a bit of fun... playing golf. I have to admit even I found the course incredible, it was covered in kangaroos! 

Even saw a little Joey in it's pouch...

I never really got into golf, as I'm sure you can tell...

Next stop, Aireys Inlet, where thanks once again to the book, we stopped at the lighthouse from Round the Twist, and sea stacks similar to the Twelve Apostles, which will appear later in this post.


And at the end of our first day, a stop in Lorne, where I, in the morning, enjoyed yet another coffee on the beach, from my grumpy mug =)

By day 2 of the Great Ocean Road (which was actually day 7 of the road trip), Casey had really got into the swing of stopping at all the brown signs; touristy stops.

Today it seemed to be waterfalls. First off was Erskine Falls in the Otaway Forest which were really beautiful, probably to do with the deluge of rain in the previous week.

The second falls we decided to go to, we didn't actually make it to. The path to Sheoak Falls was very flooded, though Casey did design an interesting way to cross the flooded path.

So we went to Teddy's Lookout instead. Now plenty of people have beautiful pictures of the Great Ocean Road, but how many people have pictures of rainbows over the Great Ocean Road. The views of the road were amazing.




And later on the Twelve Apostles, beautiful sea stacks.

And London Bridge, which used to have one more arch which collapsed in 1990, leaving two people stranded out on the bridge.

And my favourite, the Bay of Isles, at sunset.

We reached the end of the Great Ocean Road in Warrnambool that night, 2 days later, 252km from Torquay. The most incredible place we found at Warrnambool was Logan Beach.

The seabed drops away straight off the beach creating a deep channel which humpback whales use as a nursery. Despite the closeness to the beach, my camera wasn't quite good enough to take brilliant pictures, but I'm pretty sure these were killer whales.


I'll just continue now as far as Yambuk, a stop we made half an hour after leaving Warrnambool on the 6th.











We stopped for the sole purpose of the 30m slide listed in 'The Book.' and ended up staying most of the afternoon. Casey managed to catch his first tiny fish and I sat on the beach watching the waves roll in straight from the Antarctic, beautiful!