Coffin Bay, Port Lincoln and homeward bound

Happy New Year!

Today we continue our path along the Westall Way Loop Coastal Scenic Drive past the Highcliffs, Granites, Smooth Pool and we checked out Speeds Point and wouldn't you know it we found camping spots every where towards Speeds Point on the edge of the water.

Then it was a stop in at Sceale Bay, (nice public toilet)

and south to Point Labatt where there is a viewing platform over the cliffs of the sea lion colony, the sea lions were basking in the sun and swimming in the water,

we could have watched them for ages but more places to see.  On to Baird Bay, could be a stopping point, even for lunch...but no, hot wind and flies, so we push on and stop at a private property that has a tourist attraction called Murphy's Haystacks.

Baird Bay from the lookout

Murphy's Haystacks
 

It is still hot while we take the walk around and to look at these amazing rock formations in the middle of a paddock for a small entry fee (if your honest).
Back in the aircon and south along the Flinders Hwy through Port Kenny, ducked into Venus Bay for a look and onto the Talia Caves:  Woolshed Cave and The Tub, interesting bit of nature at a work in progress.

Venus Bay-every town has their historical jetty

walk to Woolshed cave

the Woolshed Cave

Unfortunately all this water around and not a safe place to swim.
Our next town was Elliston,  of course nothing much happening in Elliston on New Years Day and it is still hot so Steve wants to find an air con room to sleep in tonight and get some decent hours of sleep.  We find a take away with air con and buy lunch and call the caravan park close by and they have only one budget cabin and we go take a look, yes very budget but it does have air con and a...DOUBLE BED...squishy or some may think cosy, we take it any way and wouldn't you know it...the breeze picks up and the temperature drops.There is no telling what mother nature is going to do next.  The local pub had meals on so seafood was on the menu tonight, Steve got his first half dozen (that was all that was left) oysters...Mmmm as he moaned and groaned in ecstacy.  Steve has been waiting along time for the Coffin Bay oysters.  We make cosy in our little, little room this evening (that turned out to be cool and no need for an air con) and, good call Steve, it starts to rain and showers on and off all night and we forgot how noisy the rain is on a tin roof, we pushed out as many Zzzzzz as we could.
We pushed on the next day did a coastal tour of Elliston where their are some very impressive pieces of artworks on the cliffs

and drove past a little fuel/shop in Sheringa..."Steve, do you want to stop, oysters $6/dozen", I say..."no, probably unshucked" was the reply.    We pulled into Leo Cummings Monument Lookout to see the magnificent cliffs and the biggest osprey nest I have ever seen on top of the rock

and then we drive onto ... "COFFIN BAY".  We drive around town and found Beachcombers where everybody was getting lunch.  Steve got more oysters ($12.50/dozen) for lunch as well as fish and chips and he says, 'even better than last nights oysters'.

Fully oyster satisfied for now we decide to continue on to Port Lincoln and stay in a caravan park till the Christmas holiday traffic are safely back at home and going back to work on Monday and we will head off too.  Our stay in Port Lincoln has been very quiet and the weather has turned on us again with cold, wind and rain and all we have done is toured the town...too cold to swim with the sea lions or the tuna.

The rain is coming...again

seal lion hanging around the fishing boats on the wharf

a few of the fishing boats in the marina

tuna farms we can see from the tvan

Now we start heading north...Bris Vegas here we come.

The End of the Year is Near

After leaving Lucky Bay we took our time in Esperence to do some washing and have lunch and then head to Norseman, about 15km east of Norseman we found a roadside rest area with some tracks through the bush that we ventured along to get further away from the road.  Now we have to wait for the sun to go down and the flies to disappear.  I get sick of these flies but I do love the solitude.  Its 6pm and Steve cracks his first beer and then polishes off a few reds...still plenty of light so I put on my fly net till I can cook dinner.
When the flies died down a few mozzies snuck out of the bushes so it was time to jump in the kitchen and cook steak sandwiches.  More mozzies as the sun was setting...the dinner/wash up marathon begins...

Dinner cooked and eaten, boil water, wash and wipe up, pack up, clean teeth and in the van in 40 minutes...yes!!!
Take that mozzies!!!  ha ha
Sunday 29 December and we are on the road by 8.30am, no brekky (just juice and an apple) the flies are always up before we are.
It's all bitumen from now on and we make our way to Balladonia Roadhouse and then the 90 Mile Straight (or 145.6km for the younger readers)

and onto the Nullarbor.  Stopped to look at the Caiguna Blowhole on the side of the Eyre Hwy...its one of the many cave openings here in the limestone...and standing over the opening we could feel the cool air coming out, like an air con.

It would have been nice to sit in there but the opening was only half a metre high.  Todays temp is 36C.
Caiguna RH is at the end of the 90 Mile and we stopped for all the essentials:  toilet, lunch and fuel ($2.08/lt) and now its time to advance our clocks 45mins as we head to the WA/SA border.
We contemplated the drive to Baxter Cliffs but 5 hours return, extreme 4WD and no towing and there is no camping in the Nuytsland Reserve so we decide its a no go...on to Cocklebiddy where there is only a roadhouse with a caravan park and hotel.
We came to a lookout called Madura Pass

and the road follows down a hill of the escarpment and it is a lot cooler down here with a breeze and we stopped at the rest area 26km east of Madura at Moodini Bluff.  This is a big rest area with a toilet but we were advised buy Elsie and Rod the toilets are a bit feral along this part of the world, and they were right....yucky yucky, the bush is a better option by far, I'm glad we are carrying a porta loo.  I always let Steve do the toilet tour first, hahaha.
There are not so many flies here, it is cooler with a breeze this arvo and we didn't have to rush dinner.
Our days are starting later now with the add on time, until we get used to it  and we are the last to leave the rest area (not unusual).  Soon we spot our first Wedge tail eagle on some road kill, beautiful bird.
Some of this info is for our friends travelling soon to the east:  Mundabilla roadhouse diesel $1.94/lt...cheap!!!  We did not stop we will start using our jerry cans we filled back in Albany.
Eucla fuel was $1.94/lt too and we have 12km to the border.  Our fruit/vegie check is not until Ceduna so we will keep eating and cooking extra at dinner time to save having to throw food away. We have peeled and cut all our onions up and put them in the freezer and now the whole car smells like onions.
We have a strong head wind crossing the Nullarbor,

there are lots of lookouts on the cliffs and out to sea.  We stopped at a couple to break up the 'Nullarboring' drive.

We had some raindrops on the windscreens but not many about 20, that's how boring the drive is...I'm counting raindrops.

Next stop the Nullarbor RH (forgot to check the fuel price) we refuelled with our jerrys and I bought a couple of drumstick ice creams and inside I see their clock says 4.40pm and my watch says 2.40pm, where has the day gone? Time flies when your having fun.
Do we set up at the roadhouse where it is hot with a hot dry dusty wind, book a room (looks like Alan Bates hotel with a petrol station)

the weather is starting to look like rain???  We decide to drive on and see what we find.  Half an hour along the road the temp gauge has jumped from mid twentys to 32C...when the temp starts to rise again...the only place we want to be is in the car with the air con full blast.  We found a park at Colona Rest area where 2 others campers were, safety in numbers (we are just east of Yalata Community).  Day light saving time now and the day light hours are long and that means ... flies for longer...arghhhhhhh. So I took some pics while I was waiting for the sun to set.

New years eve...(Nundroo RH fuel $1.699/lt) no brekky again, you can probably guess why by now.  10am and it is 34C, passing through grain farms now and we are going to look at Fowlers Bay for a stop over...the road turns to gravel and it is fowl at Fowlers Bay today, hot and windy; we hit that brick wall when we got out of the car. I took some pics and got back in the car.

Can you believe it is more comfortable in the car without the air con on!
Fowlers Bay has lots of old buildings with history and lined on one side with huge sand dunes ready to engulf the town.
'Steve get the car started and lets blow this joint' I say, 'I need air con, and lots of it'.
We hand over some fruit and vege aat the quarantine gate and OMG 2pm in Ceduna and 46C and we decide to get some visitors info and keep driving and head to Streaky Bay.  We poked along pulling off the hwy looking at different parts of the coast line, Smokey Bay and Perlubie Beach and they are all filled with campers.
'Lets stay at Streaky Bay and get an air con room' we decide.
I have no idea why we thought we would get accommodation in Streaky Bay on NYE; the heat is affecting our brains...it is a beach holiday destination with the road closed off for celebrations and fireworks and everyone buying up big in the bottle shop...Oooops...no room at the Inn here.  We run into a family I met at Lucky Bay they are from the Sunny coast and heading in the same direction as we are, they have no where to stay as well.  We decide to just drive the loop road to Cape Bauer and do the tourist thing.  Got out and walked the boardwalk to look at the blowholes and the whistling rock

and OMG it is so hot I pulled my singlet shirt up over my shoulders took pics and got back to the car as fast as I could, drank a gallon of water and kept driving, next to 'Westall Way' another scenic drive and found Tractor Beach and one camp spot left, $5 for the night in the honesty box.  These are all council camps on gravel roads but good roads. We set up and it is still hot, damn hot, everything is hot even the water in the water tanks are hot and I realised Steve had disappeared; I found him on the beach standing in ankle deep water drinking a beer, hahaha.  We go for a walk, pass our neighbours who were fishing and we find the water is cool but inviting so back to camp change and back to the beach to sit in the water ahhhhhhh, finally relief from the heat.  It is 8pm the sun is going down and we are walking up the beach in our swimmers.

We finished dinner a little after 10pm have a rinse off and get into bed about 11pm and 28C in the van, yuk. 2 hours later we are woken by violent gusty winds, lightning and then the rain starts pelting down, bugger jump outside to close the canvas windows and as soon as we are back in bed the rain stops...that would be right...the bad weather stops and we are hot again, double bugger, so we laid in bed with the fan on till we fell asleep.
What a memorable start to 2014 for us!
Happy New Year to you all

Lucky Bay...ho ho ho Merry Chrisstmas

Since we left Albany on the 6th December we have had the best time!!! We stopped and had a look around Bremer Bay but we got pelted with the biggest rain drops so it was a sightseeing visit from inside the car, a free camp for the night with more rain that finally stopped by 11pm.  Next morning we were onto Hopetoun. A lovely beach side town but our arrival was met by the cold, wind and wet so it was just a coffee stop for 'my driver'. The South Coast Rd out of Hopetoun took us to a couple of campsites by the beach but now the holidays and the silly season is starting we were not getting our hopes up for a nice camping spot. The road turns to gravel after a few km and we come to Mason Bay, busy so we move on to a couple more spots until we come to Starvation Boat Harbour that is busy also but we notice from a high spot a toilet block in the bush so we found a track down the road through the bushes that came out onto a huge grass area that we had all to ourselves for 3 whole days. We had our fill of solitude and headed to Esperence and decided to go straight to Lucky Bay, we new the campground will start filling for the holidays.  We met up with Milly who we met at Cape Range NP, she was hosting the campground for the month of December, and we were so excited to see each other. I’m glad she remembered us, we have that affect on people, hahaha.  The host we met at Cape Range, Graeme and Lyn, were also hosting in another campground later in the month in Cape Le Grande National Park and we will catch up with them soon. 

It is just gorgeous here and we have decided to stay till Christmas. We have roos with joeys jumping through the campsites, bucks as well, wanting to do the wild thing.

The water is crystal clear and the sand is the whitest I have ever seen!
Milly has dinner with us the first night...she supplied us with chicken, sausages and fresh squid and we cooked it while she did her running around keeping the campsite in order.  Milly has her work cut out for her with the holidays fast approaching.
Steve and I walked around the other side of the beach (6km return) and had a look at the Mathew Flinders plaques (He named Lucky Bay when he sheltered from a storm in the bay).

We met some beautiful people that were camped around us, Liz and Phil, Maz and Alan, Syd and Helen, Terrie and Judy, Grant and Jules (we met at Shelley Beach), Katie, Bernie and family (we met at Geralton CP), Elsie and Rod, Jess and Adam. We spent every afternoon together at happy hour and even during the days we got together for a swim or a walk.

Milly loves to fish and she and I went down on the rocks to squid.

One night Judy and I went with Milly to fish for squid and Milly pulled in a beauty and Judy and I got to see our first live squid and Milly showed us how to clean it

...mmmmm that will be nice on the BBQ.
We climbed Frenchman’s Peak and got fantastic views at the top,  it was over 200m high but it was a steep climb in parts up a huge granite rock and not for the faint hearted, but it was worth it.  Took us about 1 and a half hours to climb up and down.

going up

going down

views from the top

We went fishing in the arvo with Milly and invited some of the kids to join us, Tess and Lulu; I caught a couple of little fish (parrot and green wrasse) and Lulu was quite happy to see I let them go.  Happy hour again and Katie and Bernie (both music teachers) did a small part of their musical act that they were performing at schools around the country while they were travelling and their two daughters Tess and Lulu sang and played instruments for us.

Our days are warm and we spend out time socializing with other campers, we have a great bunch of people on our level.  Steve and I laugh all day long with them and Milly, she tells us such funny stories.  We are parked next to Milly and none of us get anything done.  Just banter back and forth and laugh and laugh and laugh...you wouldn't think we only met 4 months ago and spent only 5 days together.  We had the best time, Milly showed me how to fish for squid and even though I didn’t land one I did catch one that got away but Steve caught a couple and we had a few meals of squid on the BBQ together. We did a little fishing, but didn't catch any keepers except for the night Milly caught a 48cm flathead with her squid jig (the silly fish swallowed it).
Milly organized for us to have a ‘How to Host a Murder’ Dinner, we bought props from the $2 shop in Esperence, Steve was a Banker and I was his wife, heiress to my parents fortune, such fun with everyone dressing up. We all contributed something for dinner and we ate out at our happy hour place.

We had to finish by 9pm, that was quiet time and we had a really fun night.  Everyone heads off to their homes on wheels...but not me...Milly and I go squidding again and Milly takes an Italian couple with us, Simona and Elana, but we had no luck.
Tuesday 17 December:  a hot day, the mercury rose to 45, we sat in the shade most of the day with a bucket of water to splash ourselves and have some of us go and brave the freezing cold water to cool down. We got through the day with a sea breeze in the arvo gave us some relief.  The next 3 days were windy and 14, 15 and 16 degrees and back in the woollies and ugg boots.  Milly and I still go and squid with no luck again.  We were all a bit tired after another late dinner these late nights are catching up to us, squidding everynight for a week now.
We drove over to Le Grande campground when we heard Lyn and Graeme had arrived and it was lovely to see them again.  Both campgrounds are filling up fast for the Christmas holidays, there are some families here with some kids that come up to us for show and tell...the first time was a container with red back spiders and big ants and Kiki shows us her trick with a beetle she found...no fear these kids.

We did do some touring in the area...into Esperence, not good weather but did the Coast Road drive out to the Pink Lake (not pink on a cloudy day) and spent about 2hours in the museum and got back to camp just in time for happy hour.
We joined Liz, Phil, Maz and Alan for a drive to Condingup Tavern for lunch and a drive around to Duke of Orleans Bay and Wharton Beach...beautiful beaches...picture postcard stuff.

Another night squidding and we met another guy, Clint, and while we quietly fish something causes a wave to wash up the rock and come out of the water and take a breath right in front of Clint...freaked us abit and we figure it was a seal...no use sqidding any longer with a seal in the water. Glad it wasn't in front of me I think I would have poo pooed my pants.
Final day of shopping before Christmas, everyone goes around to check if anyone wants anything in town before we go and we take the shopping lists with us.
Christmas Eve and it is hot but we have a cool change this arvo for the Lucky Bay Choir to sing Christmas Carols...that would be some of the adults and the kids, then we had a fellow fill in time playing his piano accordion and then (our friend Graeme from Le Grande camp)  Santa arrived on the fire truck for the kids.  The kids were so excited and Santa gave out lollies and we took lots of pics, a very fun afternoon.

The Lucky Bay choir



we even had an audience but it wasn't for us...

Milly, Lyn, Santa (Graeme), Steve and I

HO HO HO!!!
Christmas Day was brekky cooked at Milly's  bacon, eggs, tomatoes and toasted Turkish bread for 11 of us and then we had ‘krappy kringle’ (wrapped gifts from our vans that we didn’t want any more).

It was quite warm again and Steve and I were walking around the camp with umbrella hats on...we were getting the funniest looks, I don't know why!  We had 7 of us for lunch

and as usual we all ate too much and the food came out again at dinner.  9pm the gennys go off and Steve and I went to bed.
Boxing Day  a group of us walked to Thistle Cove and had a swim (1hr one way), we needed to walk off some of the Christmas cheer.  More beautiful views and lots of photos taken.

We get through another day and Milly, Steve and I go to squid again but it is pretty warm tonight... there was a group of young people from Perth/Sweden sitting at our happy hour table smoking apple flavoured tobacco through a 'hooker' so I had a taste and so did Milly... I hope it was only apple flavoured???
Milly used one of our rods and we didn't have any luck and Milly broke the rod she was using, I would have liked to say it was from a big squid but it wasn't.
Friday we squeased Milly in the back of our car (no back seat), behind the cargo barrier (it was like she was locked in a cage...and we went to see Graeme and Lyn before we left.  We chatted together, had some yummy scones and sausages rolls that Lyn made and headed back after a couple of hours and Milly had me in tears on the way home as she was barking out the window at the passing cars...I guess you had to be there.  It was hilarious, trust me.
We had morning tea with everyone before we left.

We had the best 2 and a half weeks at Lucky Bay!!! Thanks for the good times everyone and thanks Milly for all the laughs and the clean toilets and showers hahaha, we will not forget our stay in Lucky Bay.