Winter

We are going through a bit of cold winter weather at the moment.

Here, in Australia, winter occurs in June, July and August.  We have just passed the shortest day (the winter solstice is the 21st of June). The deciduous trees are losing (or have lost) their leaves, and the hours of daylight are greatly reduced right now.   I get up in the dark in the morning just before 7am, and walk home at 5pm in the fading light just after sunset. I listen to the rain on the roof, and feel thankful for being inside in the warmth.

It is winter, so it's not really surprising that it is cold and wet.  Maybe my perspective has changed because I have loved ones living in the UK at the moment, but I don't seem to be feeling that this weather it is too hard to take. In fact I keep on walking in it and thinking how lucky we are that this is as bad as it gets.

I remember being over in Europe myself this time last year in the summer time, where we stood through a day of bone-chilling rain in Sweden at an orienteering event (when we weren't trying to keep our shoes on our feet as we waded through the bogs on our courses) , and got soaked in torrential rain in Cornwall. And I understand why people migrate from there to Australia for the sunshine. We have just so much of it.

I'm lucky to live close to the coast in South Australia. I'm one of the fortunate majority who live in the temperate weather zone. I used to think it was not very temperate, but these days I appreciate it's nature more somehow. The blue area on the map below is the temperate zone (thanks to the Bureau of Meteorology for the map). If you looked at a coloured map of the population density the blue area would also pretty much reflect the majority of that as well. You would have to extend it up the East coast a bit for the sun-loving Queenslanders who don't mind a bit of humidity.

Some people love the sticky warmth of the north eastern tropical and subtropical areas (pale and dark green) , but personally I can't stand being sweaty without reprieve , let alone the cyclones and dampness.

The inland desert areas (orange) have a special beauty, with the red soil and wide horizons of startling blue sky, but the heat and lack of water makes them a tough place to live for anyone. 

The yellow areas I could compromise on, but it would be nowhere near as comfortable, with times of drought a constant risk, and extremes of temperature so much more, without the soothing weather effect of the sea nearby.

So I'm appreciating the pretty colours of the leaves, the warm fire at night time, and the fact that I have a cosy home to shelter in and a warm husband to cuddle up to. I'm also appreciating that I live in such a wonderful spot in the world. 

Boots

As I was driving home today
Upon the grass some brown boots lay
Where they were from I could not say
... a lonely pair of boots

Did someone treat them really rough
And find that they weren't tough enough
To handle all that hardy stuff?
...a gentle pair of boots

Or did they run away from home
And dream of deserts and frothing foam
And other places they might roam
...Adventurous old boots

I couldn't help but wonder why
They sat outside beneath the sky
And caught my eye as I went by
...That puzzling pair of boots

Day 20 Pt Augusta to home

The weather was pretty bad overnight and we were glad that we had opted for the cabin option again. Our little cabin had been very quiet and cosy.

Since the weather was still rainy and grey, we decided to have a day of scenic driving around the local area, and aimed to be at Pt Pirie in the mid to late afternoon to catch up with Peter, Belinda and the kids. 

As we headed out onwards the lower Flinders Ranges via Horricks Pass the clouds were sitting low over the heads of the ranges and we wondered how much we would see. 

8

Our first diversion was a detour up to Hancock's Lookout, where we admired the view all the way over to Port Bonython across the gulf and Trevor found a cache. The road was a bit hairy in the wet, with quite a bit of slippery mud.

We had never been to Alligator Gorge, and had decided the night before that we would do this, so had paid our online registration for park entry from Pt Augusta. Stupidly they have moved to this system where you can't pay any other way but online. It means that spur of the moment camping or visiting is very difficult, and we think it will discourage visitors to the parks.

The road in had some very steep gradients, but was bitumen all the way to the parking spot at the top. From here we were able to take two short walks (of 15 minutes and 20  minutes) to lookouts. The gorge is very impressive and it would be amazing to walk along down the bottom beneath the towering cliff walls of jagged rock and arrive at Mambray Creek 20km later. Sadly it was either raining or threatening to do so for the entire time that we were here, but at least we didn't get too hot on our walks. 

You can see the other lookout in this picture if you look hard.

This was a wonderful background of the many Emus and roos that we saw. Many of the roo type creatures we think were Euros, with the stocker body and short front legs, and they seemed to have a more dappled, thicker coat.


We travelled on through Melrose (Mt Remarkable had his head in the clouds), Murraytown and Wirrabara to Stone Hut, where we made the difficult decision between the marvellous pie and pasty offerings at the Stone Hut bakery(this is where you can find crocodile, venison, buffalo, wild boar, emus,  seafood,  curry chicken and more normal flavours)  they had and sat down to yummy lunch, coffee and tea and also a delicious Vanilla Slice. Trev even sampled the latest in the line of Golden North Giant Twins (toffee and hazelnut flavoured) icecream which is made nearby.

We decided to track back through the Wirrabara forest and stopped to visit the aptly named King Tree. 

Sadly , we had a small altercation with a tree in the car park here, which rather took the enjoyment out of the day, as well as the windscreen out of the back of the Prado.  We headed onwards though the mostly burnt forest (there was a major fire here just over 2 years ago) and felt sad at the loss of so many magnificent trees. The eucalypt are recovering in their usual way, but the pines will not recover and are being harvested. Great rows (or piles) of blackened timber abound.The stand of young burnt pines shown below was sad to see. 

We drove through to Port Germain via the Germain Gorge (rebuilt since the massive fires and the resulting floods which took out great sections of the road)  and then to Port Pirie, stopping in to see our wonderful friends for a quick catch up and some assistance with a more windproof repair job for the trip home.
As we drove towards Pirie we saw a magnificent rainbow so thick and bright that all of the colours could be well identified. It became still thicker and brighter with both ends clearly showing and moving towards us on either side of the road ahead. A second, fainter rainbow flanked this extra bright one. It seemed that we would pass through the rainbow arch, and could have reached out on either side of the car to pick up our gold. As the moment of passing through arrived, suddenly the rainbow evaporated into thin air. This amazing experience of a close quarters rainbow experience moved me to tears. It was truly an extraordinary thing to see.

The start of our rainbow experience

We finally pulled in to our own driveway with pizza in hand at about 8.45 pm after a wonderful 20 days of adventure and 7417 km. Today is a day for cleaning up, repacking and replanning.  We will put Joc on the plane back to Perth tonight after 4 nights of life in a swag (thanks Janette), 3 nights in a bed, and lots of adventures. It was been wonderful to hear her stories as we drove, and to share our lives in a more relaxed fashion, with time just to be together. It was great to have time to see so many places that we have heard of, and some that we just found by accident. Of course we need to go back to many again and spend more time.  

Day 19-Streaky Bay to Pt Augusta

We checked out of our Streaky Bay cabin just before 10 after making use of  the kitchen facilities for our bacon and eggs. First we headed to Dani and Paul's house, but, finding no-one at home, we then moved on to the Evans Oyster Shed,  where we found Paul and his Dad Tom.  We had a nice catch up with them before proceeding on our way.

Our first step was the loop route around Cape Bauer , where we saw the water whistling up through holes in the cliffs and took some chances with the sand tracks, which saw us putting our Max Trax to use (they worked very well, thank heavens) to help us get out of a tricky situation. We also saw a few birds of prey hovering over the cliffs. (White bellied sea eagles?)

Letting the tyres down a little later than we should have

Finally, at about 1230 we headed on our way out of town. The next stop was Tcharkulda Rocks, where we had our lunch in the shelter that we slept under on day 2 of this trip. It saved us from a very windy time.

We stopped to find a cache at Waddikee Rocks (between Kyancutta and Kimba ), finding out about the explorer John Charles Darke who died here after being stabbed by aborigines.

We drove once more past the land newly set aside for the army (whatever they are doing) and this time I took a photo of the signs which so fascinated me on the way over.

The weather forecast was for high winds this afternoon, so we were hoping that we could make it to Pt Augusta before the gale force winds came in again. As we headed in to that city, we enjoyed the reflected sunset on the Flinders Ranges and wondered where the wind and rain were.

We still stuck to our agreed plan to take a cabin again tonight, and are now safely ensconced in our cabin in Pt Augusta as the winds start to pick up and hoping that tomorrow night we can manage just one more night in our swags before the end of this adventure.

Hooray for WA Day 18 Scott Point to Streaky Bay

We took our time packing up this morning after a lovely night being lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves under that wonderful starry sky. I climbed the sandhill nearby and watched the sun rising over the hills and reflecting on the beach further over. The red red sunrise gave a warning of what was to come, but for the moment we enjoyed the lovely blue sky and the white sand as we took a brief drive over the sandhills to the beach beyond.

We took another turn into Fowlers Bay (via a road across the slippery mudflats) to read the information there, admire their jetty, and be blown around. Initially we had thought to try to get a shower there, but when we learned that they still struggle for water we decided to wait a little longer.

We stopped briefly at Penong for Joc to see the growing windmill collection (the official grand opening will be on September 10th).

Then on to Ceduna to have a brief shower at the highway one service station, (on the run on the west side of town) for free!!,fill with considerably cheaper diesel, shop for provisions, and eat fish and chips at the pub for lunch. By the time we left it was after 3 pm, so we decided to stop between Smoky Bay and Streaky Bay at the Acroman Conservation Park. Finally we arrived at a campsite in really good time, and after starting our fire and setting up a shelter (it was starting to rain) we settled in to do a crossword, and have a cup of tea. An hour or so later the rain was steadily falling, puddles were forming and the wind was picking up. The mosquitos were also having an absolute ball. The decision was made to abandon ship due to a good chance of a very unsatisfactory night ahead. We broke the record for putting out a fire (lots of water now available as it bucketed off of the tarp), stuffing the swags all inside the vehicle as best we could, and drove through now very wet roads to Streaky Bay, where we took a cabin for the night.

We are sitting in our cosy cabin, listening to the wind howling outside and the rain tapping on the roof, and thanking our lucky stars for Joc, who suggested the change of plans, and for all of us having the good sense to be willing to change before it was too late. By now we might well have been floating on a large puddle in our cosy little camping basin between hills, and we might have been feeling extremely miserable. Who knows what damage the wind also might have done??
87km/hr winds have been recorded at Thevenard tonight (that is not too far away) and tomorrow might be worse, with gale force winds expected.  We are currently debating whether to move at all tomorrow.

We have enjoyed butter chicken and rice for tea, followed by pancakes and maple syrup with cream cooked in the luxury of the cabin kitchen, instead of over the fire in the pouring rain. We also had some lovely wine to go with it. What a treat! Now to top it off with another hot cuppa without having to boil a billy :)

Hooray for WA Day 17 Start of the Old Eyre Highway in from Border Village to Scott Point

We had a later start due to the time change.

We travelled the length of the the Old Eyre Highway between our campsite just past Border Village to Nullarbor.

We stopped for morning tea at Koonalda Homestead (flavored tuna and lettuce on vita weets) and had a look around with Joc, then continued on and had our lunch by the old tank where we camped on the way over.

Just a short distance on from Nullarbor we turned in towards the head of the bight and were excited to see that the sign on the entrance showed 10 whales had been seen today! We were happy to pay our entrance fee to access the viewing platforms so that we could see the view along the cliffs to the west and the sand hills and white beaches to the east as well as the whales. It's hard to know how many whales we saw - maybe half a dozen- but we definitely saw large and small together (we assumed mother and calf) as well as other large whales. Mostly they were under the water, but sometimes they seemed to lay on the surface of the water and just cruise along.

Eventually we thought we had better get on our way. We headed for Fowlers Bay, finding a bush beach campsite indicated close to there in our campsite book. unfortunately all we knew was that the turn off was off of the Coorabie to Fowlers Bay road, but there was no signage, so we made it all the way in to Fowlers Bay in the darkening gloom, not finding the campsite. Luckily when we got there we found public toilets for a comfort stop and also a enough phone coverage to use our camped app, and find some coordinates for the campsite. Then we backtracked 13 km to the correct turnoff and guessed the track in from there, enduring the worst corrugations of the holiday in the process. Eventually we found a small bush camping site with already one an and one tent already setup in a sandy basin between sandhills.

The sliver of moon was already going down so we had a magnificent starry night sleeping to the sound of the waves on the beach on the other side of the hills.... Just about perfect.

Hooray for WA Day 15 Forrestania Plots to somewhere past Norseman

Hooray for WA

Day 15

Forrestania Plots to somewhere past Norseman

The rain had fallen lightly overnight, but came down more as we finished off our eggs and bacon and realised that our gas bottle was pretty much empty.

By the time we were trying to get swags on top and ready to go it was harder, and poor Trev ended up tying them on really well so we had no flapping, but also getting quite damp.

The road between Hyden and Norseman is a special "Granite and Woodlands discovery trail "due to the many species along the road, and it was actually a great treat to drive along, noticing the differences in vegetation due to differing soil types as we went. This would be fantastic in wildflower season particularly.

Along the trail we could pull off and read the notes about that spot. These gave great insight in to the area, which contains a large amount of land which has never been farmed due to lack of ready water. There were more amazing rocks, the breakaways, rare eucalypyts, heath lands, salmon gums, salt lakes, and an agate gem deposit where you could fossick if you wished.

We all particularly enjoyed a walk on McDermid Rock, a granite formation with lots of interesting rock pools, cracks, colours, suspended boulders and other features which were explained in a really entertaining fashion on the 18 information boards dotted along the walk path. This would have been a fantastic place to camp.

These puddles had tadpoles swimming in them.

The breakaways were interesting to see with the many colours in the rock and the overhangs and formations which have formed here, but it looked like it is a bit too popular as a campsite for us, with about half a dozen campers still there when we arrived mid morning.

Lake Johnston was quite scenic, and there was a walk we didn't have time for. Great Vista with Salmon gums stand on the eastern side.

Disappointment rock had some great flowering trees around and offered another 2km walk on the rock which would have offered similar insights to McDermid, but we didn't have time for that, so we admired and went on. This would also be a great place to camp.

Lake Cohen was near the end of the drive, (with Norseman in sight) and is a huge salt lake. Very impressive.

We stopped to fuel up and fill with gas in Norseman and headed on, but decided about an hour down the road to call it a night, pulling in to a parking area, and following a track back in off of the road to find a nice spot. We planned to have a fire and put up a tarp to protect us from the expected rain tonight. This gave us a chance to erect shelters and collect some wood while it was still light and before rain arrived. The fire also gave us a chance to use our "Suchy"-the wonderful blacksmith's special peg puller and billy lifter that our friend John Such made for us.

By the time we went to bed the grey sky had cleared and the stars were visible.

Hooray for WA Day 16 Just past Norseman to the start of the Old Eyre Highway in from Border Village (680km)

Hooray for WA

Day 16

Just past Norseman to the start of the Old Eyre Highway in from Border Village (680km)

We were lucky overnight, with no rain falling, but another grey day dawned with the sun trying to peek out through the clouds. We were on the road by 8.30am

One of the attractions of this stretch of road was the rock sculptures on the side of the road. Someone (or ones) have spent time building rock piles and dressing them or decorating them with clothing. We had spotted some of these on the way over, and agreed to try and get some photos on the way back. Luckily, the road was not too busy, so it wasn't too difficult to safely back up or do a quick U turn to capture the shots. Luckily we had a very patient driver.

Trevor performed some first aid-replacing the head!

At one stage, as we drove along we saw a dark shape on the road ahead and slowed. As we came closer it became apparent that there was a big brown cow on the road! She was sitting down on the road and had 3 traffic cones placed around her. As we went past she rolled her eyes dolefully at us, and we could see her legs stuck out in strange directions and bloody injuries. Clearly she was not going to be moving under her own steam. We figured that she had probably been hit by a truck, and hoped that the truckie had gone to get some help for the poor cow, who must have been in a lot of pain. There is no photo of this as we all hope to be forgetting this as soon as possible.

5 km out of Caiguna we pulled in to have a quick look at the Blowhole. This is just one of many caves on the Nullarbor which form in the limestone rock. Air travels between the caves as pressures change, and has been measured coming out of one entrance at 72km/hr!

We ate lunch at Cocklebiddy before heading on to enjoy the view of Madura from the lookout (and find a cache) before we continued east along the plains below the escarpment.

We visited the old telegraph station at Eucla, now blanketed in sandhill halfway up the walls, standing quietly as a relic of times gone by.

 We were hoping that this might be a potential camping spot, as it was close to sunset by now, and we prefer to make camp before dark. Unfortunately there was no opportunity to camp here, so we continued on, crossed the border and drove past Border Village. As the dirt track which is actually the Old Eyre Highway left the main highway we followed it.Its hard to believe that this single track used to be the main access between east and west.

A few km on we spotted a small track in the light of our headlights, and followed it into the bush. It opened up into a wide open space. This was our lovely overnight spot. We sat around a warm fire and ate the last of our fresh dinner veggies tossed with left over cooked pasta and sausages with a little spice. Tomorrow we should cross the quarantine checkpoint (just outside Ceduna) , so most of the fresh fruit and veggie will need to be eaten by then.