Kalgoorlie to South Australia

Hi All,

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.

Wild flowers and salt lake on way to Lake Ballard

Lake Ballard 

Lake Ballard and one of the Gormley sculptures

One of the 51 Antony Gromley sculptures 

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.

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.

Very large truck and trailer for moving locomotives

Heading East, on the western end of the 90 mile straight 

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.

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.

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.

Whales at the Head of the Bight

Baby playing with its mother

Whales playing around

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.

Bunda Cliffs at Head of Bight

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".

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.

Resident of Streaky Bay

Walkway to one of the beaches at Streaky Bay

Painted Dragon

Blow hole lookout 

Murphy Haystacks

Ian between 2 pink granite rocks of Murphy Haystacks 

A wild tame Stumpy lizard

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.

100 + year old vines at Sevenhill Winery

St Aloysius' Church built by the Jesuits and completed in 1875

The underground cellar at Sevenhill Winery

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.

Ian at Maggie Beer's enjoying lunch

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.

First service station in Perth, now at the Birdwood Motor Museum

Layland Bros landrover for the West to East crossing

The Mill at the Birdwood Motor Museum

The angles of the Mill's roof line

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