How cool is this – driving along blogging. I’ll have internet access again tonight so I can post - woohoo. Isn’t amazing how lost you feel without something that a few years ago you were totally happy without! You might want to grab yourself a coffee as I am bored driving along so this will be a long one!
Can someone call Ashton’s circus for a sign up form – we definitely have a clown in the making with the name of Samuel. Wouldn’t it be funny to play peekaboo over the edge of the porta cot and throw his dummy over the edge while Mum and Dad and Josh are trying to sleep? Wouldn’t it be funny to do it all again at 4.30am as well? Not. Little ratbag – he sleeps all day and plays all night. At the moment he is cacking himself at Josh who is putting Ted E Bear on his head and letting it fall off. They are traveling really well, I am very proud of them being so adaptable.
Now onto yesterday travels. We got up early and left Port Augusta at 6am to drive across the top of the Eyre Peninsulato Ce duna (about 500k). This is a pretty desolate area, just a few tiny towns along the way. Ws stopped at Kimba which is half way across Australia according to the sign, for a coffee and to give Samuel some breaky (he isn’t backward in telling us when it’s time to eat!) .They have a huge Cockatoo (what is it about Australia and big things – big pineapple, big orange, big banana, big cocky and I’m sure there are zillions more) which Josh was impressed with. He was even more impressed with the cocky in the cage, who was talking his head off. I think this is the first time he had seen a cocky talk and he couldn’t believe his ears! ‘Hello mate, how are you’ and ‘Hello Cocky’. I think the isolation might be getting to him though, as he said the most hellos when we walked away from the cage. I guess Goodbye is harder for cocky’s to master. We also had a toilet stop at Poochera, and Josh was pleased to discover a little hut that a man used to live in that he had made out of wood and flattened kerosene cans. Think it would have got very hot in summer!
Onto Ceduna for lunch by the ocean – took some nice pics, but other than that it was a bit of a disaster as it was really hot and the salt water stung Josh’s eczema on his legs. The foreshore area is quite nice, but other than that there is something about this town that we don’t like so we have only ever stayed there once. There was one highlight though (Kathy Smith – you will appreciate my excitement here) – when I was buying lunch, the shop had little signs made out of bazzill (scrapbook product for the non-scrapbooker). Ceduna is the start of the big drive across the Nullabor, but it’s actually quite interesting. The drive across the Eyre Peninsula (Port Augusta to Ceduna) is the most boring part for me.
We left Ceduna about 2ish heading for Eucla (468km away). Passed the Yalata whale watching turnoff – there is a 16km drive to the Great Australian Bight Marine Park where between June and October you can view Southern Great Whales and their calves. We have been there on a previous visit, but the timing was out this trip. I took over driving for a while to give Paul a break. He and Samuel were snoozing, and Josh was chatting away about the gang of bikies we saw drive past (and four police cars in about 5km).
The highlight for me was the lookouts about 100km east of Eucla where you can view the Nullabor cliffs. These are absolutely breathtaking.
We held on tight to Josh and Samuel as it was really windy (would have needed a cycle to blow me over the edgeL)! Got some nice pics and these will definitely make the scrapbook! I have even been thinking about which colour bazzill will match, LOL (I am having withdrawal symptoms from no scrapping for 3 days). Just before Eucla we went through the agricultural check point on the SA/WA border. Josh was very intrigued as to why the man wanted to know if we had any fruit, honey, foam boxes, seeds etc. He was obviously concerned this morning still as when we were driving along he wanted to know how we can eat fruit in WA if we had to give it all to the man. He also suggested that we put plastic on the fruit so the fruit fly doesn’t get in. Smart cookie.
It was lovely and cool when we reached Eucla – in fact it had started to rain. Josh had had his heart set on a swim though, so we bravely took him o the pool in between showers – his ‘swim’ consisted of Paul (who didn’t have his bathers on) standing in the water and holding Josh (who had his bathers on and only got his toes wet! Eucla is like an Oasis in the desert and I would recommend it as the best stop over point across the Nullabor. The motel is old but the rooms are clean and tidy, and there is a nice restaurant where you can get proper meals including veggies which I was craving by now! I had roast lamb and veggies followed by sticky date pudding – yummy! Josh was also very impressed with his huge hotdog that he ate the whole lot of! Josh had a nice time chatting away to the other diners and telling everyone he was going to Perth. He even passed the cook a compliment “Hey lady – this is a yummy hotdog” and earnt himself a free icecream to take back to the room! Josh wasn’t very impressed our ‘house’ last night didn’t have a kitchen (I was very impressed!).
With the help of Samuel we were awake before 5am this morning and on the road before sunrise keeping a keen eye out for kangaroos. It’s a much cooler day today which is nice. Samuel decided pretty early on he needed food, so we stopped and had breaky with the truckies at Mundrabilla. This is a driver change over area for east – west truck drivers, so is really well set up for meals. Josh was very impressed by all the trucks – there was a huge 3 carriage road train which he was particularly impressed with. Drove on through the Madura Pass (nice scenery if I hadn’t been asleep!) and then past Caiguna onto the longest straight stretch of road in Australia between Caiguna and Baladonia where we are still driving along. I took some pics as we were driving along towards some rain, the contrast of the rainclouds and landscape was interesting.
We are only about 15km from the Balladonia roadhouse, This is a good one (with yummy steak sandwiches) so we will be stopping for an early lunch. It was near here that some of the Skylab debris fell to earth, so they even have a little museum (I think I recall a stuffed camel as well which Josh should get some fun out of!).
Will sign off now and do another post of Balladonia to Esperance tonight. Only 193k to Noresman which is the end of the Nullabor part!
Til later,
Claire, Paul and the traveling bandits
xx
