Travelling East

It is time for another update, but today with the news of the fires in Victoria, I am not feeling that we should be so happy about our adventures, so I will be keeping this update relatively short.

Having left Esperance, we made our way through Norseman to Kalgoorlie. We stayed there for three nights and I found it to be a facinating place - one we will revisit. The wonderful old buildings, wide verandahs that you no longer see and the most amazing size of the super pit! This is an open cut gold mine right in the town, we did not go on a tour but viewed it from a platform. Apparently the trucks take 1 hour to travel to the surface once filled with their load of 240 tons - the photo above this will give you some idea of the massive size of the trucks. In the photo above you can see an ordinary size large grader next to one of the massive trucks.

While in Kalgoorlie we managed to meet up with Leanne Bilham (nee Taylor - left) who originates from Jerilderie. Thanks to her and her partner Rebecca and son Jimmy for their hospitality - good to have a good catchup on all news.

We spent the next two and a half days crossing the Nullabor - something I have always wanted to do with the longest stretch of straight road, 90 miles. I was so surprised by the landscape - the first part was fairly heavily vegetated, and then we had an escarpment, then coming to the treeless plain and then having the most magnificent views of the ocean from the Great Australian Bight - the Bunda Cliffs. Contrary to popular opinion the plain does not have an aboriginal name, it was named by a european botanist Nul (nil) abor (trees).

Of interest was the signage - slightly different animal crossings - camels, wombats etc Plus the road is used for the RFDS as a runway when required for emergencies.

Except for the massive head wind on the second day the trip was uneventful and at times boring (those are Peters words - he hates flat country), and we were lucky in one sense that it was overcast and not too hot. While it was a little cloudy we have at least had a sunrise on the Nullabor. I think next time we travel across we will take a few extra days to really appreciate this magnificent part of the country.

We arrived in Streaky Bay SA- 46 degs, pleasantly surprised that the park was right on the water - lovely to sit under the awning, have a drink with a great view. Then the wind came! and it has blown ever since, so we have decided that tomorrow we will continue onto Port Lincoln. We will at some stage return to Streaky Bay as it really is a beautiful little town.

The only thing to happen to lighten the mood of the current time was when we went into the Streaky Bay Township still attached to the van by an electrical extension lead we forgot to unplug. Needless to say the 10m lead was not long enough. Luckily it pulled straight out of the van socket with no damage and is now a little worse for ware (but still working) from its drag around town. The penny did not drop until we were sitting in town having lunch and neither of us could recall unplugging the Engel fridge in the back of the car. When we got back to the car someone had drapt it over the side mirror - at least we were able to get a laugh out of this.

There you go - short and sweet, we getting realtively close to home and the end of our adventure so we will only have a few more reports to make. The next stage will take us to Adelaide and then on into Victoria (if anything is left!).