21st October 2013 We are home

We finally arrived home last night after spending an extra couple of days avoiding bush fires in NSW. Having free camped basically since leaving Kalgoorlie we were down on computer battery power and conserved it to keep track of road conditions.
As we get ourselves organised (unpacking and cleaning), I will try and upload some photos and bring the blog up to-date.

Kalgoorlie 9th Oct 2013

We have arrived in Kalgoorlie on our way home, stepping out of aircon after several hours driving the blast of hot dry air made us both do a double take, although as it turned out it was only 38C!! Nancy doesn’t like ‘hot dry’ and prefers humidity. Not me, I hate the humidity and find the ‘hot dry’ quite tolerable especially with the blast of wind accompanying it.

Our last blog post was at Coral Bay where we really enjoyed our stay, made particularly so by having Lisa join us.

With Lisa’s departure we commenced our trip south on our homeward journey, stopping only for fuel and water at Carnarvon we free camped at a couple of spots and one small caravan park en-route to Geraldton where we were booked in for a car service and some wiring changes to the caravan fridge (yes we have finally got it sorted out, never been right from new).

Fortunately about two thirds of the way down to Geraldton the boring roadside scenery changes from an uninteresting wall of scrub into rolling hill pastures and grain country and so driving becomes more interesting and the kilometres pass a lot quicker.

We left Geraldton in peak hour traffic (apparently), and drove south for a couple of hours until darkness overtook us. By GPS we found a free camp spot on the coast and set up for the night comfortable in the knowledge a couple more vans were parked 50 metres or so away. In the dark we could see the lights of an oil rig platform out to sea and the distant glow of lights in the sky from townships not so far away.

Morning came with the threat of rain and while preparing to journey on we discovered our neighbours for the night were from Brisbane and had purchased their van (different brand) from the same people as us. It’s amazing the number of people we have met that have sold up their homes and are just travelling. No base? Not for this little black duck.

The Coastal Ocean Drive, once stopping at Jurien Bay now goes basically all the way to Perth which makes for a pleasant trip down this part of the West Coast. Visiting coastal villages, enjoying great views of the ocean, rugged coastline and white, white sand dunes. Often we were amazed to see great dunal sand blows popping up several kilometres inland, so white they looked remarkably like snow fields glistening in the now blue sunny sky.

One more night on the road and we eventually checked into a caravan park on the outskirts of Perth for a couple of days. Originally we hadn’t intended stopping at Perth on our way home as the intention is to spend a substantial amount of time there next year on our return. At Nancy’s suggestion and Lisa’s recommendation having been to the park, we decided (Nancy) to spend at least a day in Kings Park Botanical Gardens while the wild flowers were in season. This turned out to be quite sensational (I’m glad I suggested it) we spent a couple of hours there on Saturday until we got drowned and then tried again Sunday morning in glorious weather. As Kings Park is quite a high hill you have a great view over the city and particularly the CBD area that it overlooks , what a beautiful city. We are certainly looking forward to spending a lot more time in Perth later.

Monday saw us on the road again heading east towards Kalgoorlie, back country roads were the call in preference to a highway and this took us out through the old town of York, the first established inland town in WA. Quaint old buildings and shops with original facades, unfortunately 90% of the interesting places were closed Monday to Wednesday, obviously open all weekend to cater for weekend tourists probably from Perth. Nancy discovered the ‘Original Country Butcher’, so we bought enough meat to last until the next trip over here. We enjoyed the drive through this part of the world, beautiful grazing and grain growing areas. Lush looking country and of course we were seeing at its best, Perth having had its fair share of rain of late.

Eventually we joined the Great Eastern Highway on our journey eastwards and spent a night camped off road about half way to Kalgoorlie.

Both Nancy and I were quite amazed at the countryside on this drive the bulk of the way is through grain growing country and although the farmers here carry out broad acre farming they haven’t turned the countryside into a barren desert devoid of anything but grain. Instead they have left spasmodic copse of trees here and there and broken tree lines, working around them instead of destroying them and creating soil erosion and thereby creating a whole different scene.

The last few hundred kilometres to Kalgoorlie passes through natural scrub very much like coastal dunes the soil is a creamy yellow sandy material similar to the sandy soil in the famous Kalbarri National Park area further up the coast and this is hundreds of kilometres inland. Roadside wild flowers and flowering shrubs were spectacular with shrubs we had studied closely in Kings Park growing wild in profusion along the highway. For a major highway across the state though, the great Eastern Highway leaves a bit to be desired and although sealed and wide enough the surface is very rough, bad enough in a 4WD I would hate to be driving a truck on it all day. Reminiscent of the Bruce Highway up north between Townsville and Cairns.

During the night a cold front came through and cooled things down to a nice temp. Today we have a few things to see and do including, a conducted tour through the grand old town hall, a sight see through the CBD a visit to some old mine workings and although we were unable to do a mine tour of the ‘Super Pit’ due to school holidays, we were able to spend some time viewing the super pit operations from a designated look out. What an unbelievable sight and more on that later.

From the top of the mine lookout hill we could see a storm building up in the distance so we decided to head back to the van and close things down. While Nancy shut windows and hatches I re-stowed the awning and at the same time thinking I was being a bit paranoid as there wasn’t a bit of wind or cloud in the sky. Half an hour later back in town we were amazed to be confronted by a huge dust storm and howling wind and within minutes the temperature had dropped to single figures and eventually started to rain – hell it was it was cold.