We planned to do 2 long days of driving to get as close to Canberra as possible. We mapped out a route and it was going to be about 1300km. We were planning to reach home on Friday 26th October and the kids were keen to go to Covenant College’s Spring Fair on the Saturday so they could see all their friends.

The first day we drove about 640 km from Port Augusta to Robinvale, just past Mildura. So that day we spent time in 3 different states. We started in SA, we crossed over into VIC just east of Renmark, then we passed into NSW about 100km later, just east of Mildura. We stopped for the night at an overnight rest stop about 100km past Mildura. This was a free camping spot. We arrived about 6pm, and had the last frozen meal for dinner that night. Because of daylight savings, the kids had a bit of a play in the trees and a ride of their bike before having to go to bed.

The next day, we worked out we had 700 km to drive to Canberra.

This is an area of SA which is less populated and less visited than other areas. It is renowned for its seafood – there is a seafood trail. Port Lincoln on the SE end of the peninsula is said to have the biggest commercial fishing fleet in Australia. This area is also renowned for marine wildlife experiences, such as swimming with white pointer sharks ( in shark cages of course), swimming with dolphins and sea lions, swimming with tuna fish, and others. Most of the peninsula was first sighted by Matthew Flinders when he made his circumnavigation of Australia in his ship the Tom Thumb. He therefore gave most of the names to places here. Streaky Bay got it’s name from the streaks in the water that Flinders saw when he first sighted the bay. He thought they may have been due to there being a river running into the bay. This turned out to be not the case, but instead they were due to the amount of kelp in the bay.

We were going to have 2 nights and 2 days in this region. We decided not to go to Port Lincoln as this would involve a lot of extra driving. Instead we would stay at Streaky Bay and perhaps do some day tripping from there.

So we found the one and only van park in Streaky Bay and booked in and set up. We were there for lunch. It was a nice van park which was right on the foreshore. Pelicans came and waddled along the foreshore. There was a playground near our van too. The kids had a bit of a play and a bike ride for a while. Then we did a loop drive around Cape Bauer, just north-west of Streaky Bay. On this loop drive was a lookout stop on the cliffs which looked over ‘Whistling Rocks’ on one side and the ‘Blowholes’ on the other side. The blowholes weren’t blowing here either, but the rocks were certainly whistling.

We went back and had our first overnight there.

The next day we planned to see some sights to the south of Streaky Bay. We drove about 40km south, and turned off onto a side road. A little way along here was the farm on which sit Murphy’s Haystacks. This is another place which is mentioned in the ‘Are We There Yet?’ book. I thought they were real haystacks, but they are actually boulders that have been weathered over many years into these shapes. Apparently a well-known pasturalist back a century or so ago, by the name of Murphy, saw them from afar and remarked to his travelling companion that ‘There is a farmer who knows how to form a haystack’. From thence forward they have their current name. They are on privately owned land, but there is an honesty box payment to go and see them. They were fabulous to see up close. As usual, Sam was the first to want to climb them, and as usual, all the girls then wanted to follow suit. So we got some photos of them up on the rocks.

Next stop was another 30km or so west from here out to Point Labatt. Here there is a resident sea lion colony. There is a viewing platform at the top of the cliff and you look down on the rocks below to the sea lions in the wild. There were quite a few there – about 20 or so. Initially most, if not all of them were just sunning themselves on the rocks. Bethany’s comment was “They look as though they are dead”. Another lady standing near us laughed and said “That’s what I think too”. Anyway, some did start to move eventually and we saw some coming in from the water and going out into the water. They were great to watch. We would have stood there for about 15mins.

Eventually it was back in the car and heading back out onto the main highway and then further south again. Because the driving distances were further than we had thought, we skipped Venus Bay and headed towards Elliston. Along the way was the small locality of Colton. About the only house in this locality belonged to a baker. He baked bread each morning and put it in his roadside stall which worked via an honesty system. It was $4 for any loaf, bag of buns etc. They were cooked in a wood fired oven. They smelled good. We bought a loaf of bread and some buns.

About 20km further along was Elliston. We found a park here and had our lunch which was the buns with some peanut butter, honey or jam, which we’d brought along. We had a hit of cricket after lunch and then hopped back in the car. We drove to the information centre to find out about sandboarding. There are some sand dunes at Lake Leeland NP near Elliston and we wanted to find out how to get to them and if you could hire sand boards. The young lady at the information centre was very nice. She gave us a map and information. There was nowhere to hire sandboards, but she said she could get hold of some boogie boards for us to use. A friend of hers had rung last night and offered her some boogie boards for free. She said she would go and pick them up for us. I said we would do the great ocean drive nearby and then come back for them.

So we started off for the 13km great ocean drive (or cliff top drive, as it was also called). This had some spectacular cliff top views and it also had some quirky sculptures along the way – things like a pair of things, some faces sculpted in rock. They were done by artists in the area and they gave further interest to the drive. Of course we had to get some photos.

We then went back to the information centre and picked up the 3 boogie boards (2 were only half size). Then headed for the sand dunes. We drove as close as we could to the big sand dune we could see and then got out and walked. Sam was delighted with the sand dune as it was the biggest slope he had seen on a sand dune. Standing at the top of it, it looked like you were standing on a cliff with a big drop off. The kids tried the boogie boards, but they didn’t work too well. In the end, they had fun just jumping from the top and rolling down the hill. But it was hard work walking back up. And it was a hot afternoon. Luckily I’d taken some drinks. We spent about half an hour there and then started on the drive back to Streaky Bay. Our day outing had been longer than we had anticipated and it was going to be 6pm by the time we got back to the van park.

We had already decided that morning that we were going to buy pizza for dinner that night. The van park actually had a cafe/restaurant at it which did takeaway pizzas. We ordered when we got back and the kids either played at the foreshore or had showers while we waited. Then we went over to the dining room to eat. We would have eaten outside our caravan, except here were lots of flies. Going to the dining room gave us space to spread out at the table but without the flies. Then it was showers for the younger 2 girls and off to bed for everyone.

The next day we were planning to drive to Port Augusta. This was about 360km away, so not too far. However, because we wanted to have a bit of a look around in the afternoon, we wanted to make a start at a reasonable time. However before we left Streaky Bay, we wanted to find the replica shark that was in the ‘Are We There Yet? book. In the book, the children put their heads in the replica of the life-size shark. I saw an advert at the van park saying it was at the Shell service station. So we drove there, thinking it would be a structure outside the service station. But we couldn’t see one. So we went inside. Then we realised it was also the information centre and there was a room of to the side with the replica in it. We also found out the reason for the replica shark. It is actually a replica of the world record shark for the biggest white pointer caught by a hand reel. It was caught in Streaky Bay by a 21 yr old man in 1970 something and there were copies of all the newspaper articles about it.
The kids had their photos taken with their heads in the shark’s mouth. Then there was a little souvenir shop also. Hannah still wanted to buy some presents for the boys in her class and we were still looking for something for the second part of Grandma’s birthday present. So we had a good look around the store and were quite successful at finding some suitable things. We also then bought some donuts for morning tea from the renowned Elliott’s bakery in the main street. After all this, it was about 10.30 before we left Streaky Bay, but that was OK.

It was about a 4 hr drive to Port Augusta. The 2 main points of interest during the drive were Kimba and Iron Knob. Kimba was a small town, but had the honour of being halfway across Australia at this latitude. We took a photo at the sign. The other place of interest was Iron Knob. This town was built up around an iron ore open cut pit. The pit was actually built into a hill. This area was the main producer of iron ore before the Pilbara region opened up. We didn’t drive into the town, but saw the hill with the pit in it as we drove past. As we drove towards Port Augusta, the southern end of the Flinders Ranges came into view. It reminded me a bit of the landscape as we approached Alice Springs – the flat desert with he mountain ranges rising up out of it and surrounding the town.

We reached Port Augusta around 4pm and booked in to the Big 4 caravan park as they gave us an extra discount when we rang ahead. However it was not a very nice one as we found out – quite dry and sparse – glad we were only staying one night. They did have a pool though and it was a hot afternoon, so after we’d set up the kids went for a swim. While Michael supervised them, I got everything cut up and ready for Sam to do the dinner tonight (a beef strog from an easy packet). Michael and I still wanted to have a look around the town (it was daylight savings, so still lots of light). The kids showered after their swim and then Michael, Hannah, Beth and I went for a drive while Lauren and Sam stayed at the van and Sam cooked dinner.

The 4 of us went to the old water tower which is now a lookout. We walked up to the top of the water tower and had a 360 degree view over Port Augusta. We were able to see the mountain ranges surrounding the city. We saw the ‘river’ which is actually the top of Spencer Gulf, and we saw the power plants. Then we drove across the river to the southern side of the town where the town centre and the waterfront esplanade are located. Apparently Port Augusta used to be a very industrial town and the riverfront area not very appealing. They have done it up over the last decade and it looks quite nice now. Still not a town that would draw crowds for its aesthetic appeal though.

We drove back to the van park and Sam had dinner ready for us – he’d done well. We ate dinner and settled down for the night.

We got away by 8.30 am as we were planning on doing quite a bit of driving today.

Across the Nullabor

It took us 2 and a bit days to cross the Nullabor. We drove 650 km the first day and got to a free camp spot just past Caiguna and just before Madura. It was called Observatory Turnoff rest area. It was probably the nicest free camp spot we had stayed at – only one other caravan parked quite a distance away. We did a fire and marshmallows again. On this day we had driven along the stretch of road which is marked the longest straight stretch of road – 145km without a bend in it.

The next day, we were hoping to get to Ceduna, which is classified as one end of the Nullabor. It was about 730 km to get there. The problem was, we were going to lose 2 & 1/2 hrs because of crossing the border into SA. Michael had us all waking up at 5.30am (WA time) in order to leave by 6.00am (which was 8.30am new time). We drove about 180km to reach the SA border. We crossed the border at a roadhouse locality called Bordertown. They did have fruit and vegetable quarantine, but not until Ceduna, so we had some extra time to use up the last of ours before disposing of it. It was difficult driving today because there was quite a strong crosswind most of the way. We found out later when Michael looked up the weather on his iPhone, that there was 20-25knots of wind that day. So we racked up our worst fuel consumption that day, and we also fell about 80km short of our destination because Michael was too tired by the end of the end of the day to keep going – he’d had to concentrate hard with the winds. So we ended up staying at another free camping spot that night (we figured it would make up for the extra fuel we used:)). For part of that day, we were virtually driving right beside the ocean – along the Great Australian Bight. We also drove along a 20km stretch called ‘The Treeless Plain’.

The next day, we drove into Ceduna in the morning, all feeling a bit unclean and hanging out for a shower. We did a small grocery shop at Ceduna, and then started driving down the Flinders Hwy to Streaky Bay where we had decided to stay today.

We drove into Esperance the next morning and arrived about 10am. We booked into Shoreview Caravan Park, which, as it’s name suggests, did have a direct view of the town beach. We had a site in the first row looking out to the beach, and also overlooking the playground. This always makes it easier for us, as Hannah and Bethany can play away happily within our view.

We set up and had an early lunch and read up on what to do in Esperance. The main tourist attractions seemed to be the national park about 50km east of Esperance, called Cape Le Grande NP, which had lots of beautiful beaches. We had read about Lucky Bay, which is said to have the whitest sand in Australia (not sure how they measure this). So we decided to go for a drive there after lunch.

We packed up some nibblies and a thermos and headed off. It was an easy half hour drive. We could see where the NP was as we approached it, due to the granite rocks protruding out of the earth. The first one we saw was called ‘Frenchman’s Peak’ and as we could see why from the shape. We visited 3 beaches while there – Thistle Cove, which we walked along and thought was beautiful, Lucky Bay, where we had a picnic for afternoon tea and drove along the sand and ‘splashed’ the car through the water, and then Le Grande Beach, which gave us sunset views back towards Esperance to the west. It was indeed some beautiful scenery.

We drove back to the van park and did the usual evening routine. We didn’t need to check out of this van park until 1pm, so we were going to do some grocery shopping in the morning and have a slow morning before heading to Kalgoorlie.

We had a sleep in next morning and did some clothes washing. Then I headed off for the shops. The town of Esperance itself was fairly uninteresting? Before going to Woolworths, I looked around at some knick-knack shops and second hand book shops – but didn’t find anything to buy. I headed back to the van and helped pack up. We had a quick lunch before heading off.

It was 380km to Kalgoorlie-Boulder. We rang ahead and booked into a van park – to our happy surprise they had a special for October where kids stayed free – this made a big difference in our family – often halving the price. We didn’t arrive until 5.45pm, and were glad we had booked ahead as they were then full. We had one of the frozen meals for dinner and had the usual bedtime routine.

What a mouthful for a town name. We found out they used to be 2 separate towns built close by to each other, but then grew into each other.

We planned to have 2 days here as Michael had read up and felt there was quite a bit to do. We had wanted to do the Superpit Tour (2&1/2hrs) which takes you up close to the trucks that drive into the huge superpit and also takes you into the gold processing plant. However, the tours were booked out until the Saturday ( and we arrived on the Tuesday night). We felt this was too long to wait around for, so had to be content with just looking at he superpit from the public lookout. It was pretty huge.

The first day, I had a break in the morning while Michael took the kids for a looks at the superpit and for a drive around town. We had a rest in the middle of the day, and then in the afternoon, I went to a secondhand book shop (and had some success with a couple of finds) and the kid’s went to a park.

The second day, we went to the museum in the morning. We arrived in time for the free guided tour. We were taken down to the gold vault and shown some of the historic pieces of gold, and a replica of the golden eagle. We saw inside the remains of the narrowest hotel. We saw the boardroom of one of the mining ‘magnates’ at the time (complete with secret door in one of the Jarrah wood panels – kids loved this). We saw a policeman’s rail carriage office, a pioneer house and other interesting things. We went back to the van for lunch and another nap. Then another drive in the afternoon.

That was it for Kalgoorlie- Boulder, and that was also pretty much it for WA. Tomorrow we were heading across the Nullabor. We might still be in WA tomorrow, but not anywhere significant. We made sure all the technology devices were charged up and we put some new audiobooks on Hannah and Bethany’s iPads.

We then had about a day and a half at Esperance. Then drove to Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Then had 2 days at Kalgoorlie-Boulder. I will write some more about these soon. We are then going to spend the next 2 days doing lots of driving to cover the 1300km across the Nullabor. We plan to do a free camp overnight and arrive at Ceduna in SA on the Sat afternoon/evening. We have tried to make sure we are stocked up with some extra books and audiobooks for the car trip. We’ll have a few days in SA and then be back in Canberra by the following weekend. Will try to keep up with the blogging – it’s been quite a chore lately, but I’m determined to continue to the end.

It was quite a detour to go to Hyden, the home of Wave Rock, instead of straight to Esperance. However the kids were keen to see it (it was in the book ‘Are we there yet?’), and Michael and I wanted to see it too. So we made the nearly 350km trek north east to Hyden. We’re getting used to long drives, so it didn’t seem too bad. We drove through some nice scenery when passing through the Stirling Ranges NP. We passed through some wheatbelt country too. We arrived at Hyden around 4pm. Because it was a Sunday, virtually everything was shut. We made our way 6km out of town to where the caravan park was situated right at the base of the rock. We checked in and were setup by 5pm. Since it was only 200m to the base of the rock, I asked if any of the children wanted to walk there that afternoon. All except Lauren did. Lauren and Michael were tired and said they would wait until tomorrow to see it. So I took the others – it was even closer than I had expected, and we were the only ones looking at it at that time – Sam remarked on how different this was to our Uluru experience.

The next day, we packed up the van and drove out of the van park and parked in the carpark area nearby. Then we walked to wave rock again and all had fun doing the usual surfing poses on the rock. We then did the walk up above the rock. Then we did the 600m walk to another rock formation called Hippo’s Yawn. When you see the rock, you can understand the name. The kids had fun here too, pretending to climb into the Hippo’s mouth, and Sam climbed up on top of his nostril! As well as seeing these rock formations, we saw lots of ‘dragons’ – of the lizard variety. They seemed to be everywhere and had such a funny way of scurrying along. We had fun spotting them.

We then returned to the van and had hotdogs for lunch (using the generator to heat them up in the microwave). It was about 12.30 then when we started driving again, heading south-east towards Esperance, back on the coast. Esperance was about 400km away, and we weren’t planning to try to get there tonight, but planned to drive as far as we felt comfortable to and then stop at a free camping spot overnight.

We drove nonstop until about 3.30 when we reached Ravensthorpe. We stopped here for some afternoon tea and a play at the playground. We decided to drive a further 80km to a free camping spot at Monjingup. This was a nice enough spot. The kids had a bike ride and a play while I got some dinner. Then it was off to bed.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by Albany. It is not a place I have heard much about previously (in fact, apart from the Margaret River, I have heard very little about any of the south of WA). Yet I found Albany to be a very interesting and picturesque city. It is the 6th largest city in WA, and as I found out, the first one to be continuously settled by Europeans. It was settled in 1826 when the British Government gave instructions for it to be established as a military post. Several other European ships, such as Dutch and French, had visited the shores of what was then called ‘King George Sound’ in the preceding decades, but they had never established a settlement. By sending an establishment over to western Australia, the British were wanting to claim the whole of the continent for themselves.

Some of the things that struck me about Albany were:
– the history – I didn’t know much about Western Australian history, so this was interesting. Also there were some lovely older suburbs closer in to town with well established trees and quite pretty.
– the geographic location – with a ‘sound’ and 2 very closed harbours, it was a great place to establish a military post for defence. These aspects also made the scenery very dramatic.
– the beaches and parks – there were many picturesque areas around Albany. There was a drive along the cliff from the beach area to the Princess Royal Sound and it had great views.
– the town centre – had some historic buildings. It also was set on a hill overlooking the harbour. From where we were staying at Emu Point, we drove towards town and came over a crest and the harbour came into view – it was quite impressive.

Our first day in Albany was a lazy day (for us parents anyway). We slept in a bit, then got up and did some jobs. The caravan park had a playground, a jumping pillow and a good area for bike riding, so the younger 3 kids were happy doing this (Lauren prefers to do more resting these days too). I was feeling very tired again, so Michael took the kids for a walk along the beach just near the van park, and I had another sleep. Then they came back for lunch, and then everyone had to have rest time after lunch. (Michael had a bit of a sleep then). Around 3pm, we were planning to head off to the shops – we needed to do some grocery shopping, and also needed to but Bethany some new runner shoes as she had holes in the others. Lauren and Sam asked if they could stay back at the van – so we said they could if they were just reading books or having a bit of a bike ride. It felt strange for Michael and I to be going off with just 2 children after having 4 around us in most of the things we do. Anyway, that pretty much took up the rest of the afternoon, but I had wanted to have a bit of a drive around the town centre and go up to the lookout on Mt Clarence, near the town centre. We rang Lauren and Sam to say we would be a bit longer and did these things. The views were great. We decided we’d have to come back with L&S tomorrow. We went back to the van and Lauren cooked dinner for us tonight.

The 2nd day at Albany was filled with more sight-seeing:-
– We went back to Mt Clarence. This had interest for a few reasons the views, the ANZAC history and the downhill bike track.
The lookout right at the top of the hill had great views over Princess Royal Harbour and King George Sound.
The ANZAC link to Albany was something I had not known about and found interesting. For the 1st and 2nd ANZAC convoys, Albany was their last place of departure from Australian shores, before sailing to Gallipoli. There is an Avenue of Honour on the road at the base of the hill, with plaques along lines of trees. At the top of the hill is a monument to the Desert Mounted Corps (the Light Horsemen). Michael loves the story of the light horsemen, so there was a lengthy retelling and a good history lesson here. Apparently Albany held the first dawn service in the nation (in 1923) and it is going to be the place for the major centenary dawn service in 2014/15.
The downhill bike track was of interest to Sam, so he had put his bike on the back of the car that morning and he rode his bike down the hill and met us at a predetermined place at the bottom.

– We went to the historic precinct at Albany on the foreshores of Princess Royal Harbour and visited the Amity Brig. This is a full scale replica of the ship that brought the first group of settlers, led by MajorEdmund Lockyer, to Albany in 1826. Being on board the ship and seeing the size of the sleeping areas and so on, gave some insight into the hardships that would have been faced by having 45 people plus animals on board for 6 weeks. It was only $10 for our family to tour the ship and it was a very well done replica. It had information stations located throughout the ship with audio information (using the audio wands that you were given at the payment desk). Once we had been through this information, the kids were allowed to pretend they were sailors and so on – they had a great time with this.

– We had lunch at the park near the Amity Brig

– We then took the drive around to Torndirrup NP which is on the southern peninsula of Princess Royal Harbour. There are a few places of interest around here.
There is the blowholes. We did this walk first. It is a 900m walk to the blowholes and there is no guarantee they will be ‘blowing’. When we were there, the swell was not right for the spray to be coming up through the gap in the rocks, but we could certainly hear the sound – it made us all jump the first time we heard it as we got close. It was pretty dramatic just seeing the coastline.
Further along the coastline is ‘The Gap’ and ‘Natural Bridge’, 2 natural features carved in granite rock by the wind and waves. It was much shorter walks to see these (which was good as Hannah and Beth were getting tired by now).
The last thing we saw around here was ‘Whaleworld’ – a former whaling station which is now a museum on the history of whaling. We didn’t go in to the museum, but we saw the whaling boat (which was the last one used at this station) and found out that Albany was the last whaling station in the world to cease operations in 1978.

– We then returned to the van park for some down time.

It was a nice drive to Albany, through some nice forest and pretty towns. We came to ? Around lunchtime where there was a tourist attraction called the Treetops Walks. It was a steel boardwalk built within a tingle forest, with the highest platform being about 40m above the ground. We had our lunch at the caravan before we went to buy our ticket to do the walk. It was a good walk. As we walked along the boardwalk, there was an occasional gust of wind. The narrow trees swayed quite a lot, whereas the ones with thicker trunks didn’t. It was amazing to see how much those thinner did sway. After the boardwalk, there was also a walk along the ground called the Ancient Giants Walk, where there were a few very old tingle trees still standing.

We got back to the van and continued our drive to Albany – about another 1 and a half hours away. We found the van park we were staying at at Emu Point and set up. We decided we would have fish and chips for dinner that night, so I looked up where there was a fish and chips shop in Albany. I found out that there was a well-loved one just around the corner at Emu Point Marina. It was called The Squid Shack. We decided to drive there and eat dinner there, as I read there were tables there. We did that and enjoyed a very nice meal of fish and chips and salt and vinegar squid. Then it was back to the van for the usual bedtime routine.