Day 79 - 22/2/14 – The Nullarbor – Fraser Ranges Station SA

To ensure the boys don't slip of the cliffs while going to do a pee in the night they were required to be escorted to the nearest bush last night. Sam woke me around 5 am I was very glad that he did as I managed to be greeted by this as I walked out the door!

We were up early as not only did we have a massive day of driving in front of us we also had to go through a quarantine check point on the SA/WA border that we had heard was pretty exhaustive. All fruit and vegetables and the bags and boxes that they come in had to be gotten rid of as well as the honey and Izzy and Gator had to be swept thoroughly so as not to carry any weed seeds or other little nasties.

We passed through quarantine with flying colours except for some potatoes and onions that somebody had incorrectly told us were OK. The boys and De continued the tradition and pushed the van all the way from SA to WA. 

We past 4 people riding across the Nullarbor.....also a person walking it!!!

Not everyday you get to drive down an airstrip!

Twelve kms down the road in a small town called Eucla the plain broke into two as the Hampton range rose up 30 to 40 meters. My guessing is that this is the same limestone cliff that we were camped a top of last night but the sea had not progressed to the base of it yet! We drove down the pass to the visit the Old telegraph station that appears in ‘Are We There Yet’. We didn’t have sandy sandwiches like in the book, but can see why they may have as the remnants of the station were slowly becoming part of the dune.

We pressed on another 180 kms until we went back to the top of the Hampton Ranges in Madura where the view was again incredible. The difference of viewing the plain at ground level and then getting some elevation was amazing.

And this wasn't the most expensive....we also paid $2.09 in Caiguna!

150kms later we pulled up for a very late lunch in Caiguna, as we were now running on Perth time. 5 kms to the west we stopped at a cave blowhole that was pretty cool. Apparently caves ‘breath’ in and out to equalise the pressure between the cave and the atmosphere outside. All cave entrances are blow holes but you can’t always notice it if they are large but as this one was pretty small you could easily feel and smell the damp wind blowing up from below.

Note the tie on Jack's boardies and Sam's locks blowing in the wind

Caiguna is also the beginning of Australia’s longest straight strectch of road at 145.6kms. I set the video up and have sped it up 64 times so now you can watch an hour and half of dead straight driving on the Nullarbor. If you want to get the full effect feel free to watch it 64 times back to back ;-)

We dog legged to the right and 115kms later we were at out camp for the night Fraser Range Station. It is an old sheep station that they have converted into a van park and also has the 6^th hole of the Nullarbor Links Golf Course, the world’s longest golf course. It starts in Kalgoorlie and ends in Ceduna with holes at each of the road houses along the 1400km stretch. I do not share my mothers love for golf in any way so I left it to others to curse and swear and their small white balls!

Having lived in South East Queensland I have endured the relentless garbles of the lovers of day light saving for many a year. However tonight having dinner outside, looking out over the Fraser Ranges in the gentle soothing twilight instead of trying to find a place to hide from the raging hot sun cemented my viewpoint even further – Sorry Lozza!

We had made it across the Nullarbor and the boys had behaved incredible well. We were in WA and have about 2 ½ months to explore all that it has to offer. Bring it on! 

Day 78 - 22/2/14 – Haslam -> The Nullarbor SA

The eastern end of the Nullarbor seems to hold a couple of things to stop and look at, as opposed to the western end where this is even less than a couple of things, so while we were only going to cover 460ks today we needed to be up and going early.

Our first stop was Ceduna where we picked up a few things (replacement for De's glass pot from last night) from one of my customers Malcolm, got some WA tourism brochures from the visitor information, and filled up with diesel including a jerry can as I was pretty sure I would miscalculate how much I had in my tank and with no reception expected for the next 1000kms calling the RACQ to bring me some fuel might prove a tad difficult!

The beginning of nothing!

We rolled out at 11am started one of the great Australian drives and it wasn’t long before the wheat fields gave way to patchy grass, salt bush shrubs and low standing trees with the occasional patch of trees. Then it was as if somebody had come through with a chain saw, there were no more trees and I mean NO more. We were looking forward to stoping the beginning point of the dog fence and while we did see it, the map had it as being west of Yalata where as it was east of it, so the SA Dept of tourism will be getting a letter about that one! Funnily enough we had only traveled about 10kms past the fence when I saw something cross the shimmering road about 5kms in the distance that turned out to be a dingo! Sorry not the best pic but we were moving and it was a fair way off!

About 275 kms down the road we turned into see ‘Head of Bight’ the northern most point of the large chunk that is missing from the bottom end of Australia. To the east massive white sand dunes stretch hundreds of kilometres to Ceduna and consume 11m of the mainland every year. To the west, the Bunda Cliffs, massive limestone rock faces climb out of the water 50 to 80m and stretch for the next 200kms along the coast.

Head of Bight is famous for its whale viewing as they come right up to the beach....apparently...
they were all on holidays in Antartica!

Sand dunes stretching as far as you could see to the East

The Bunda Cliffs to the West were spectacular

While we were there we caught up with The Hernandez’s who we had camped with at Coffin Bay and we travelled the rest of the way across the plain together. We intended to visit the Murraiijinie Caves but again SA tourism seem to have dropped the ball when they left Ceduna as there wasn’t any signs to show us where it was...so we missed that one as well.

We reached our destination, a free camp called “Great Australian Bight” that must be one of the most spectacular camping spots in the world! A rocky dirt roads leads off the highway for 3 or 400m to a large cleared area for van parking. There was an even bumpier 20m track that took you to a very small clearing right on the edge of the cliffs. There wasn’t even close to enough room to turn the Izzygator around so, determined to wake up looking over the water, I backed down and jackknifed the Gator so that it was parallel to the cliffs and with only 5m of ground between us and the cliffs edge. The view was absolutely priceless! Needless to say I drilled the boys pretty hard about what being careful. After scouting the best photo angle everybody clambered down a rocky valley bracing themselves against the wind, especially the gusts which had incredible force and while I think they are pretty impressive they do not go close to capturing the real magnificence of the view.

Not a bad view!!!

My attempt to capture a different side of the Bight!

De got some nibblies ready while I again tried to get creative with the camera and the boys with their new BFF created a BMX track that included sections such as ‘Death Rock Valley’. Unfortunately we had to move inside the van as the wind was so ferocious and carried with it the finest bits of sand that I am sure I will be scrapping out of every orifice for the next month.

We had and entree of the remaining razor fish with Dave and Laurance and then fed the boys who were now exhausted from going flat out for the last few hours. With WA 2 ½ behind we moved the clock back 1hr so the ‘truck lag’ wouldn’t be so bad. We had a big day crossing the majority of the Nullarbor tomorrow so with the van perched precariously on the cliff top we hit the sack!

When we are in free camps the boys usually just go outside on their own in the middle of the night for a pee, but tonight I insisted that they wake me to take them out. I locked the door securely before going to bed, not to keep people out but to make sure nobody went sleep walking!!

Day 77 - 21/2/14 – Streaky Bay -> Haslam SA

Sam had to go to the toilet at 6am so I got up to go along with him. As I stepped out of the van I was greeted bya beautiful sunrise. It wasn’t the oranges and reds that I have seen before but everything was so still and gentle I had to grab the camera and capture it!

We packed up and headed a kilometre down the road to catch some Razor Fish. Now I have heard of these things a few times since we left Adelaide and had seen plenty of evindence that they are around but was yet to see one in the water. A lady had pointed the area out to me yesterday from the caravan park saying that while it looked like seaweed it was actually razor fish.

I was amazed as we hit the beach to see this massive area, three or four hundred meters wide going out 100 or 150 meters into the water, covered by these razor fish a very large school indeeed. So what is a razor fish? When I was first told about them I imagined my Gillette Mak 3  hanging on the end of a line with Roger Federer hanging onto it. However it is quite different and by my description I would call it an extremely over sized sea shell. They are kind of shaped like an elongated tear drop with the pointy end cylindrical sitting in the sand and the wide end flattened down sticking up out of the san 10 or 15cm. Now catching these fish is really quite easy if you have the right equipment. Hands, check, a bucket to put them in, check, Gloves, check, wet shoes (the kind made from wetsuit material) errr.....Jack has some and I’ll just try my thongs out and see how I go. 

The “Razor” part of this ‘fish’s’ name comes from the very sharp edge that the fan edge of it has, sharp enough to very easily do some damage. Everybody kept telling me you need the wet shoes and about 30m away from the school my thongs sucked into the mud and became almost impossible to remove. We backed out and we wondered over to a nice old couple who were on a different edge of the school ‘filleting’ their catch. After a quick lesson I tippy toed, as this way I could keep my thongs on mostly, to the edge of the school and simply started pulling them out. Jacko was into it as was I and in about 45 seconds we had about 25 in a bucket. The bag limit per person is 25 so we were doing well until me in my thong laden feet, carrying a bucket, tried to walk the 5m back to where De and Sam were waiting. After about 5 minutes and a couple of falls, luckily none on any razor fish, we had made it and the cleaning process started.

As we were taking the low hanging fruit they were the small ones everybody else had left behind and were only about 20 or 30 cms long. You whack the round end off by using the blunt side of the knife and then insert the blade into the now open end and slice the muscle as close to the shell as possible. The shell spurts its water out and can now easily be opened up. You slice the other side of the muscle off the shell leaving you with a 1.5 – 3cm morsel that resembles a scallop that you then extract from a large blob of very unpalatable goo encasing it. My hat doubled up as a Tupperware container as Sam attempted to keep count of our catch. Now thoroughly covered in sand and guts the boys and I went crabbing until lunch while De cleaned the mess up! We managed to get another 4 crabs that we cooked and froze for the other side of the Nullarbor!

We rolled up the highway to a tiny village Haslam where we set up camp, had a game of cricket where I was peppered by some chin music from Jacko taking one on the cheek and another on my top hand trying to fend it off. All he now is a moe!

To finish off our time in SA I cooked up super surf and turf with oysters, el natural, razor fish in a burnt butter and lemon sauce, blue swimmer crab claws, char grilled steak and exploding potato bake. It was bloody delicious and we had great fun making lollipops out of the crab claws! As for the potato bake, De was cooking it in a glass pyrex dish in the webber. When she opened the lid the dish exploded, we think from temperature shock, into a thousand pieces.

For a change the wind was blowing about 30 knots but I was very happy and wanted it to stay that same as it was coming from the south east and tomorrow we are starting our trip across the Nullarbor and any tail wind is welcomed!

  

Day 76 - 20/2/14 – Steeps Point -> Streaky Bay SA

Caravan park day meant we were up and gone in record time. The only problem is that with about 30ks to Streaky Bay I wasn’t 100% sure we would have enough fuel to get there! With about 10kms to go the fuel gauge moved to the last marker and the fuel light started to flash. My last experience was that we got 17kms before I ran out of fuel, but that was without a fully loaded van, canopy and a boat. De and I were pretty silent for the last 5kms or so but we made it with at least 2 litres to to spare..easy!

We are only a couple of days away from our trip across the Nullarbor so we spent the morning stocking up on food and other essentials, that come in cardboard boxes and cans. In our favourite travel guide, Are We There Yet, they stuck their head in the mouth of a great white shark, so we visited the road house where said shark is located and ticked that one of the list. 

By 10 we were checked in at the caravan park and as we had called ahead to book in, for the first time on the trip, we had managed to get a waterfront site!! Streaky Bay is one of the prettiest towns on the coast and our site was one of the best in town!

Before long the boys and I had Rufus in the water and we were throwing our drop nets out of the boat. The wind was blowing about 25 knots but I was determined to catch something significantly edible! We had been told to head ‘in that direction’ and with no greater knowledge that that we put the nets out and 10 minutes later they all came back in empty!!! Ahhhh! We moved a bit further along and tried our luck again. 15 minutes later we had managed to get one, a blue swimmer crab. The claws, while virtually useless on land, are bloooody long making them resemble something from an Edward Scissor Hands movie! There were a couple of boats moving about nearby so we threw them out again a bit closer to them and managed to get two more in our final run before lunch. With a reasonable catch in the boat, at least enough for an entree, we headed back across the bay for lunch.

I had wanted to have my Coffin Bay oysters last night but didn’t have a cold beer so left them for today and while they were bloody good I honestly thought that the Cowell oysters were bigger, fatter, saltier and easier to shuck as the shells were thicker.

The breeze has blown up a bit but we headed back out and after another hour and a half the swell was starting to make it difficult to pick the pots up so we headed back in, with 7 more tasty morsels in our possession, making 10 in total. While I love playing the hunter gatherer, four hours later after cooking and cleaning the crab and then cooking the spaghetti and sauce to go along with them I was ready to call it quits!

We had a great meal and the company was even better looking out over the bay. I had to pinch myself!

Day 75 - 19/2/14 – Coffin Bay National Park – Speeds Point SA

I slept the sleep of the dead and was amazed that the boys were both still asleep at 8am. A bit dusty after last nights conviviality we packed up and headed off making a brief stop at one of the oyster sheds in Coffin Bay to get a dozen oysters. Talk about fresh I got them off the boat as they were being unloaded and they were only $7 for the dozen!

We pulled into Ellistone for lunch and found out about some of the local attractions that included a cliff top drive where a local artist had had some fun doing sculptures and placing them along the way. I again tried to have a bit of fun with the pics and hope you enjoy them as well. Doing the one of Sambo with the face was almost impossible as the wind was blowing so hard he could hardly stand let-a-lone stay still!

About 8kms off the highway we visited two pretty cool cave formations, The Wool Shed and The Tub. The Wool Shed is a massive cave that has been worn away by the water and wind over hundreds of years. The surf was pounding against the rocks making the crevasse that leads to the cave even more spectacular. The Tub which is only 1km down the road is a huge crater that has eroded through rain from the top and the surf at the bottom. There is a tunnel 10m wide and tall enough to stand up in at the bottom that ends down in the water. It was only on a gentle slope but I felt very nervous walking down there as one slip and I could see myself in the waves that were smashing against the other end of the tunnel.

We moved on to Murphy’s has stacks, that is a very bizarre stack of rocks in the middle of a few wheat fields. If the whole area was covered in the same lichen covered granite rocks they would never be noticed but they are the only ones in an area where the soil is quite sandy and there are no other rocks bigger than a basketball let-a-lone outcrops as far as the eye can see. The rocks stand upright in a few bunches about 200m apart and it look as if somebody has plonked them there as a bit of a joke or as some form of modern art.

We headed down the road towards Point Labat where there is a large sea lion (not seal) colony that you can easily see, the only problem be is that about half way there I realised that we wouldn’t have enough diesel to drive down the peninsula to see them and then make it to the next service station in Streaky Bay. Oh well....maybe next time. The free camp that we were going to stay at was closed so we found another one at Speeds Point right on the water. It was about 8ks in so I will have to keep my fingers crossed that we make it to the servo tomorrow. 

While it was still blowing about 30 knots the view was awesome and after dinner we walked out to the end of the point which gave us awesome views along the incredibly rugged coastline as well as across the bay to our camp.

Not a bad view for $5/night! 

It was way too cold to sit outside (yes it’s the middle of summer and we are wearing jumpers) so we all bundled into the van and after dinner I caught up on some much needed blogging and now that today is done I am going to finish my book and catch a few zzzs before waking up and heading into Streaky Bay. Fingers and toes crossed that the wind disappears tonight and we can get a great days fishing and crabbing in....