I’m beginning to get the impression that SA is mostly a big wheat farm! That might be a slight exaggeration though…..and an indication we haven’t seen enough of it yet!

We arrived at the Yorke Peninsuala Wed arvo (12/11/14) for a quick trip – leaving Fri for Adelaide. We began by heading across the top to Wallaroo, and down the west coast. There was something weird about the town of Wallaroo, and it didn’t take long to work out what it was. A high percentage of houses have these tall towers beside them, about 2 – 3 houses in height, with TV aerials at the top! I didn’t take any photos, but the gave the suburb a very industrial look!

We stopped Wed night in the town of Maitland, and didn’t leave till late Thurs morning. Not because it is an exciting place, nor did we have vehicle troubles, but we figured it would be a good location to sort out my drivers license stuff. No, I’m not loosing it or anything like that…. it is up for renewal at the end of November. Unfortunately my current one is from an older era, so they can’t just send a replacement. Instead I had to go through this rigmarole of printing and filling in forms, declarations as to why I wasn’t in QLD, get proper photos done, and then get it all witnessed and signed by a JP and send it all off with a money order to QLD! I originally planned on doing this in Adelaide, but walking down the main street of Maitland Thurs morning, we realised I could probably do it all here a lot easier – the township, and everything I needed, is within a 200m stretch of road! Ended up having to shop around a little for a JP, but found one without too much difficulty (council office). So that’s that task all done and dusted! Nicole wasn’t keen on doing all the driving back to QLD!!

A quick stop and look at Port Victoria on the way down the west coast.

Port Victoria

Innes National Park was our goal, though we only spent one night there – at Pondalowie Campground. Another nice national park, not dissimilar to Port Lincoln NP, which is only one peninsula across (to the west). We did a number of walks and had a good look around.

heading into Innes NP

Having left the Flinders Range National Park, I really enjoyed the drive from Quorn, through Wilmington to Melrose. The scenery was incredibly beautiful, but not in a natural/wilderness kind of way. We were driving through fields and fields of gold – of the wheat kind – but also grass and other crops. The wheat, having turned golden in colour, blended in nicely with the golden brown grass on the hills in the distance. The paddocks, some harvested, some not, formed a beautiful golden mosaic, punctuated only by ribbons of trees between them. We observed lots of harvesters in motion, easily spotted by the small cloud of chaff blowing out the back.

something other than wheat…

We pulled into a nice large free campsite on the edge of Melrose, surrounded by fields of wheat on one side and grass on the other. A little further to the west, Mount Remarkable towered over the plains, just waiting to be included in photos of one of the most spectacular sunsets we’ve seen so far. Continue reading →

Heading north from Whyalla (following our tour of the steelworks factory), a large mountain range begins to dominate the distant horizon. It has been quite some time since we’ve come across such a range – all the way back to the Pilbara I think! Sure, there are hills and the like in southern areas of WA, and they are probably classified as a mountain range, but they don’t have that same impact of tallish mountains rising up starkly from the surrounding plains.

Initially, I wasn’t sure what this range was, thinking that the Flinders Range is 100km’s or more to the north. Well, the national park part of it is up there, but the range is a lot bigger than the NP and it was indeed the Flinders Range we were approaching. It’s a pity I didn’t take any pics at this stage, as all later pics showing the mountains are from an already elevated height. Following a stop in Port Augusta for some info, a quick look around, and a bit of shopping, it was time to head off to Quorn – the first town on the range.

The road up to Quorn is quite pretty – its a windy scenic road that weaves it’s way up the mountain. As per most of SA at this time of year, the country side is dry and brown, but nonetheless scenic. A nearby train track followed a similar route up the hill, being rather steeper than most tracks I’m not sure if it is still used.

Quorn itself is a little old town with old buildings. Nice enough, but we didn’t stay long, heading off to the next town Hawker. Having climbed up onto the range, there are a lot of flat plains up here to drive along. However the range still protrudes out from this plain, along the left edge as we head north.

Flinders Ranges (from atop the range already)

Hawker is another little country town on the plains, the final one before the National Park and the tiny Wilpena Resort that is at its southern end. The terrain becomes hillier as you get close to, then enter, the NP. Continue reading →

It’s a relatively short trip from Coffin Bay to Port Lincoln, which is a nice regional town. If you’ve read the previous post on Coffin Bay, you won’t be surprised to hear that Port Lincoln is also very sea industry orientated, with Tuna farming adding a twist previously not observed.

Port Lincoln foreshore

Tuna farms. The rings further out in the deep are surrounded with yellow markers, presumably so boats don’t drive through them!

We chanced upon a very helpful lady at the info centre, who provided us with lots of info and thoughts on different areas in SA in general, which we’d been lacking till then. We purchased a 2 month SA wide National Park Pass. I like SA’s arrangement for NP passes – how does $80 sound, for a 2 month pass that not only covers vehicle entry, but also all camping fees? Bargain I reckon! I haven’t read the fine print, but on face value it seems you could live in SA’s National Parks for just $40 per month (or less if you buy an annual pass)!

Making sure we didn’t waste our $80’s, we headed off to Port Lincoln National Park, around 15km’s south of the township. The terrain and vegetation is not dissimilar to Coffin Bay NP, but there is a wider range of campsites to choose from and because of this we found it a nicer place to stay. We ended up in a quiet spot with a beautiful view overlooking the bay.

Engine Point

Engine Point at low tide

Initially we detoured over to Wanna, for our first sightseeing stop in Lincoln NP, before heading up the Peninsula to Cape Donington. Continue reading →

We headed down the scenic coastal route of the Eyre Peninsula Thursday arvo (30/10), having spent Wed night out in the sticks (the Nullarbor). That evening, for our return to sleeping in civilisation, we stopped in at Smoky Bay. This is a small, pretty, but not stunning place – perhaps somewhat overshadowed by the cloudy inclement weather. The main feature here is the Jetty!

Looking back to Smoky Bay from the Jetty

swimming enclosure. Not sure why its needed?

Continue reading →

It was a bit of a detour, about 190km’s each way, to go north and visit Kalgoorlie-Boulder before heading east across the Nullabour. We weren’t really sure what there was to see, and the drive up did little to inspire! Aside from quite a few turn-offs to mines (gold mines), there was pretty well nothing but rather boring bush.

Arriving in town early Sunday arvo, the place was quiet and closed up. We’d wondered if we should have bothered as there wasn’t anything immediately obvious to do, but don’t worry, we ended up having a good time. Sun arvo we had a look around Kalgoorlie township, with lots of old historic buildings. We found the Mount Charlotte Reservoir nearby and had a look at the info there. This was interesting, as the whole Kalgoorlie-Boulder township wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for a bold plan, back in late 1800’s, to install a large water pipeline from near Perth to this area. It began operation in 1903, was an engineering feat in its day, and still now the town and surrounding gold mines are dependent on this 560km long pipeline that rises 390m (up to 45 million litres per day!). This is a dry arid area, and prior to this pipeline, water was more valuable than whiskey!

looking out over Kalgoorlie

We went to the public lookout for the KCGM Super Pit. This huge hole in the ground is right next to the town, in what is known as the magic mile (because of all the gold found there). It is pretty cool, being the biggest Gold pit in Australia! You get a good view looking out over the whole pit (though you can’t quite see the bottom), but the sheer size of it means you have difficulty seeing what is going on so far away. The huge haulage dump trucks look like little ants, and a standard ute is almost too small to see!

the Super Pit!

Might start with the following links – before they disappear into ‘old’ news. Guess which boy made the TV and online news…?

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/latest/a/25341312/second-snake-bite-victim-treated/
https://www.facebook.com/newsroom605

More on that later… 😉 After heading east out of Albany, away from the Karri forests found in the bottom west, we stopped overnight (Wed 22/10) in rather different country – amongst the huge wheat growing farms near Ravensthorpe. Lots of cropping in this area, though it doesn’t seem to be the best soil.

We’d heard nice things about the beaches along here, between Albany and Esperance, though most of them are a long detour off the highway (eg. up to 70km’s). However, as you get closer to Esperance the hwy gets closer to the ocean, so we headed in to Quagi beach to have a look. Yep, can see why they say they are beautiful!

just beautiful!

We walked around the headland, and down the beach. To top it off we watched a pod of dolphins playing around in the waves for ages! Catching them, jumping back through them…. Continue reading →

Gateway to the Southern Ocean, and the oldest permanently settled town in WA! Albany is of course on the coastline, right at the bottom of WA, and has a well protected bay/harbour. This makes it rather pretty, if it weren’t for the overcast weather…

Monday (20/10/14) we had a look around Albany itself, through and between the passing showers. First, the view from Mount Clarence (where the Anzac memorial is):

Overlooking Albany

Overlooking Middleton bay

Middleton beach is a nice area, with some decent surf despite being in the bay (waves coming through the inlet must aim here!).

Middleton beach

Despite the overcast weather it was a beautiful drive heading east into Pemberton, from our Thurs night camp at Alexandra Bridge. Instead of taking the most direct route, we did some of the scenic roads on the way. The main ‘feature’ of these scenic routes are the Karri forests – the huge eucalyptus trees with tall straight trunks really are an impressive sight. A lot of it has been logged (hence the lovely green fields and the like), but there are large areas of protected national park, and also a lot under new plantation. I must be getting a bit slack with my photography – could of got some lovely shots of quiet remote dirt roads overshadowed by these huge forests had we stopped the vehicle and taken some photos – but we didn’t… Here is one from later on in the day though, to give you some idea.

Karri forest

We stopped in at Beedelup National Park for a quick look at Beedelup Falls. Nice but nothing spectacular. Didn’t feel it was worth paying the $12 NP day entry fee, though we ended up buying one later in the day for the Gloucester tree anyway….

Beedelup Falls

Then on the way into Permberton we side tripped to The Cascades, where we did a circuit walk. A pretty enough creek again, but I get the impression that WA doesn’t have the same level of spectacular creeks and waterfalls down here as what you might find in rainforests in various areas of QLD (or NSW).

Lower part of The Cascades