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.
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