Friday 4th November 2011

Hi Everyone, we have finally got to a place that I am a bit excited about Coober Pedy, yes lovely OPALS...

The trip so far:
Days 70 & 71 Esperance
Day 72    Kalgoorlie
Day 73   Caiguna
Day 74   Eucla
Day 75  Penong
Day 76  Streaky Bay
Days 77 & 78  Port Lincoln
Day 79 Cape Hardy
Day 80 Lake Hart
Days 81 & 82 Coober Pedy

Well we pulled into Esperance and we have decided to stay as we have been here before and it is a nice sleepy coastal town, even though it is a bit cold at a max 17deg, it is still pleasant. It has a beautiful coastline.

We start driving north to Kalgoorlie and the weather is starting to change with showers, but we are lucky when we want to get out of the car it seems to stop or is that good timing on our behalf?  We had a look at the Super Pit at Kalgoorlie which is a huge gold open pit mine which is 3.2km long, 1.4km wide & 330m deep and is the largest pit in the Southern hemisphere, the huge trucks looked like little tonka toys

We stayed at a free campsite, which was about 15km out of town and it was a bit strange as it was a dirt road, with a clear bit of groud for vans and then in the near distance you had mining pits on both sides of us, strange but different! but we had 2 other vans with us.

Paul started the first hole of the Nullarbor Links which was at the Kalgoorlie Golf Course. As you can imagine, the greens were lovely and he played the first 2 holes and then to the next stop which is Norseman then the roadhouses across the Nullarbor. The "greens" were a bit hit and miss, but it added to the fun of it all.  He made it across in 173 for 18 holes. Please don't laugh until you see the pictures of what he was playing on!!!!

Driving across the Nullarbor took us 4 days and it was a good trip. A part of the road has the longest straightest road in Australia at 146km. It wasn't as boring as people say at the scenary was constantly changing. The day was nice in the morning, then you can see the clouds building up through the day and then we would get the storms at night. They were ok as the rain came down torrential and quick then passed. Both nights we were like 2 little kids looking out of the van window at the lightening happening all around us, sometimes the lightening went sideways!

There are a lot of vans and trucks on the road and we spoke to another couple who had a bad story to tell. They were following a semi trailer in the rain and another semi trailer came up the back of them and hit them in the back right hand corner and forced them off the road! To cut a loing story short, the police got the truck driver and it seems that the was 'pepped' on something. Shame for the couple as they now have to wait for the insurance company to sort it out and give them another car or a lift back to civilisation, I am sure this is not an easy thing to do in the middle of the Nullarbor!

We camped at a Scenic lookout just out from Eucla and it had some lovely views, but I don't think we will do that again as that night with the storm I kept thinking that we were going to be swept off the cliff and the next morning we had all the tourists turning up early while we where having breakfast!

The Nullarbor comes from 'nullus arbor' meaning no trees so I thought that was interesting.

We had to keep an eye on the fuel, even though we had 2 full jerry cans on the roof, we still needed to get some fuel to make it across and we definately didn't want to run out when it cost $2.05 at the Nullarbor Roadhouse. We did have a "burger with the lot" while we were there.

Paul handed his score card into the Ceduna Information centre to collect his certificate and they told him at least he was honest with putting his correct score! It seems that since the 'golf course' has been in place for the last 3 years the amount of road deaths across had reduced dramatically. That is one thing that we have noticed is that we can be driving and having stops every 2 hours and some days the day goes fine, another day, when we stop you can be cranky, tired and you can't make decisions as your brain just goes to mush! So we are taking it nice and slow.

We spend a night at Streaky Bay Caravan Park and it is so busy, it seems that it is the favourite rest stop after the long drive across Western Australia to South Australia. As we are now following the coastline, we are starting off with a lovely prawn & oyster lunch on the beach.

We seem to be struggling with the time difference as the sunset is now around 7.45pm, it seems very strange.

We head down the coastline to Port Lincoln and end up staying at a Farmstay about 15kms out. We felt very spoilt for $20pn and because we were there on our own (for the first night) we had the amenities block to ourselves. The boys loved it being able to run around( after rabbits) and Paul loved it because he could make a fire.

As Paul likes oysters, we had a quick trip to Coffin Bay. There was not much too see except for the oyster beds and of course the mandatory emu crossing the street, holding up the cars! so of course he had to buy another dozen! (all for $10)

Next day we played tourist! We went swimming with Tuna (well Paul did!)  They were a dog friendly business and looked after the boys in the office while we went out in the bay.  We were lucky as there was only another couple with us on the boat, so we felt we had personalised service. I don't like water so I was a bit nervous holding the pilchard out in the water as a 60kg fish took it out of my hand and only did a couple before I got too scared

We were on a floating Tuna Aquaculture pontoon that they kept about 40 tuna, also an underwater observatory and a touch pool.

Paul got in the water and he was quite happy, so one of the crew could see that both of the blokes were quite comfortable with the fish and hand feeding them (while in the water) so he started throwing the pilchards around their heads so that the tuna would come in quick. Paul was on a bit of a 'high'. Can you see the black shadows under the surface!!! They were too quick for me to take photos!

I was quite happy with the touch pool and the underwater observatory

Paul said that he would watch the tuna come straight for him (trying to get the pilchard) and that they are that quick that the fish would grab the pilchard then turn that he didn't even see them, he just felt the force of the water from their tail.

We came back into shore and it was Melbourne Cup Day, it was quite funny as we were walking down the street and we could hear eveyone cheering, then a big awww! but we saved our money!

We drove through Port Augusta and had to have the mandatory look for Paul's cream donuts, well we had success, but they call them Kitcheners. It is very strange to point to what you know and ask for something else, but the end result was the same....a happy husband


Well we are on our way to Coober Pedy, it is about 600ks from Port Augusta and it must be about the most boring drive, look at this landscape.....same same

We stayed for 2 nights to have a bit of a break before we drive the same road back to Port Augusta. It is basically a 1 street town with 3 pizza shops and 20 Opal stores!  We went into a Opal Shop that was built into the back of a hill and showed how a family used to live. Most of the people here live in dugouts (in the sides of hills) as the temperature can get into the high 40degs in Summertime and the air is very dry, but underneath it stays at 22 deg all year around

We took a drive to the Breakaways which is a formation outside of town, it was nice, but because it was overcast it looked like piles of dirt to me, but maybe if it was a sunny day the colours would have come out more

And last but not least, we had to take a photo of the famous dog fence, that runs from QLD to WA