Well I will try to catch up on our travels of late. This is the last part of our WA trip and into SA. When it came to the whales I have restricted the number of photo's as I just wanted to put them all in but alas far to many to do that. We returned to Lake Ballard as it is just a beautiful place, you can free camp here but we left the van in Menzies, on returning to Menzies we had dinner at the pub and returned the next day to Kalgoorlie for 2 nights then we started to head back to Melbourne.
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| Wild flowers and salt lake on way to Lake Ballard |
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| Lake Ballard |
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| Lake Ballard and one of the Gormley sculptures |
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| One of the 51 Antony Gromley sculptures |
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| Ian with a sculpture |
Our first night stay was at Fraser Range Station Stay, where we played the first hole of golf on the way back. We missed 9 on the way over so had to catch up.
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| Fraser Range Station Stay |
We stopped at Balladonia, 2 very large low loaders pulled in. These trucks had been to Perth delivering 2 Locomotives and were returning to QLD for more, total of 12 to deliver.
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| Very large truck and trailer for moving locomotives |
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| Heading East, on the western end of the 90 mile straight |
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| Fairway at Gaiguna |
Off course we have been stopping a lot to play golf, the fairway at Gaiguna was not good, lots of March flies. We stopped again at to over night at Cocklebiddy, next day we play a hole again at Madura, then onto Mundrabilla for fuel and golf then over night at Ceduna with golf at Boarder Village.
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| Ian inspecting an old truck at Madura Roadhouse |
After leaving Boarder Village we stopped at Bunda Cliffs lookout as we missed it on the way over, just spectacular view of the cliffs looking west, we continued on our way to Nullabor for golf again and an overnight stop, it was very windy here we have been just staying ahead of the wind till now.
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| Bunda Cliffs |
Next morning we headed of to the Head of the Bight to see the whales, boy are they big and beautiful gliding east to west with the baby's in tow or playing.
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| Whales at the Head of the Bight |
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| Baby playing with its mother |
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| Whales playing around |
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| Great Australian Bight, Bunda Cliffs |
The views of the Bunda Cliffs here was great, the morning fog had been blown away, we stayed quite a while here just watching the whales.
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| Bunda Cliffs at Head of Bight |
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| Mum and baby whale |
We stopped at Nundroo Roadhouse "what a dump" then at Penong overnight and to cook up any food left before we went into Ceduna "Quarantine Check Point".
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| Streaky Bay beach |
We stayed at Ceduna for 3 days, had a very big storm here on the Sunday night blew the stone Gard on the front window up and did a lot of damage to it, Ian has repaired it for the time being but we will have it replaced in February when the van has it annual service. From Ceduna we went down to Streaky Bay for a couple of days. Did the usual sites here, Murphy's Haystacks, blow hole and the Eyre's Water Hole, we had not seen this last time we were in Streaky Bay.
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| Resident of Streaky Bay |
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| Walkway to one of the beaches at Streaky Bay |
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| Painted Dragon |
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| Blow hole lookout |
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| Murphy Haystacks |
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| Ian between 2 pink granite rocks of Murphy Haystacks |
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| A wild tame Stumpy lizard |
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| Eyre's Water hole |
From Streaky Bay we continued east toward Clare where we stayed 3 nights and did the winery thing, the park was fine but boy was it cold.
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| 100 + year old vines at Sevenhill Winery |
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| St Aloysius' Church built by the Jesuits and completed in 1875 |
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| The underground cellar at Sevenhill Winery |
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| Martindale Hall built in 1879 |
From Clare we then stayed at Nuriootpa, more wineries and Maggie Beer's farm shop. I did enjoy this stop. More rain and cold weather, the air conditioner started to play up here. For Nuriootpa we then stayed at Williamstown as it was closer to Birdwood National Motor Museum, the park was a dump, we had a drive though that we couldn't drive out of.
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| Ian at Maggie Beer's enjoying lunch |
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| The front of Chateau Tanunda in the Barossa Valley |
The Birdwood Motor Museum was very good, lots of interesting cars, cars from my teen years, Ian also enjoyed it to. Such a cute little place, very much a tourist town in the Adelaide Hills. The Aircon really spat the dummy while we stayed at Williamstown, the weather was wet and very cold so the aircon decided that is a good time to stop heating or working altogether.
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| First service station in Perth, now at the Birdwood Motor Museum |
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| Layland Bros landrover for the West to East crossing |
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| The Mill at the Birdwood Motor Museum |
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| The angles of the Mill's roof line |
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| Tom Cruise's Mail Truck (restored) |
From Williamstown we went over to Adelaide to AirCommand to get it fixed, the guys here are good to work with, Graig listened to the problems and we went shopping, when he called he said that the aircon had too many issues with it so AirCommand would replace it with a new one. While in Adelaide we had dinner with my cousin Darren and Rose, then we were of toward Mildura with a short stay in Moorook (nearly free $8.00 pn) we had a quick trip to Loxton for a look nice little town. Then onto Mildura were we stayed 9 days. So more of that next time so till then CHEERS from Marilyn and Ian
