On the Road to Sandstone

11th May 2024

Distance: 436 Km

Fuel: 45 L

Left Laverton fairly early, certainly before 8am, on a warm sunny morning after a shower and having made a cheese, tomato and onion sandwich to eat on the way.

The scenery seemed to change all the time, sometimes thickly wooded, sometimes sparce, sometimes scrub all interrupted by mine workings along the route.

Once again I had to pull off the road to allow a couple of trucks carrying oversized loads to pass

Road trains servicing the mines passed all the time

Arrived in Sandstone just after midday and checked in. After setting up had some tea and washed a T shirt etc before driving off to look at the attractions that Sandstone had to offer. To be honest wasn’t expecting much but in the end had a very interesting afternoon.

After a visit to the museum which also serves as a visitor centre.

Followed one of the Heritage Trails along a winding dirt road.

Had a look at the Contradiction Well, the State Battery, London Bridge and the old Brewery.

All in all it was and interesting afternoon.

On to Laverton

10th May 2024

Distance: 377 Km

Fuel: 47 L

Up just before sunrise for a shower then, after having breakfast, packed up and left the park by about 8.30am. I forgot to return my park pass so posted it to them from Laverton.

Pretty easy drive filled up with fuel in Leanora before turning on to the Laverton road, turned out to have been a mistake, fuel was 19c a litre cheaper in Laverton.

Had to get off the road for a massive mine truck being shipped which was as wide as the road.

Checked into the Laverton Caravan Park, had originally intended to stay two nights but it was clear that there was little here to see over an extra day so shall be moving on in the morning. Had a very nice coffee at their visitor information place while strolling round town.

Exploring Kalgoorlie

9th May 2024

Distance: 24km

It was a windy night for some reason, the door of the camper kept banging in the wind, to stop it happening again this morning I found the bungee cord that I normally use to keep it open but rigid.

Also hand washed all my dirty clothes and got them on the line so that I can start again tomorrow with a full complement of clean clothes. At 9am asked the park office for a map and booklet about Kalgoorlie so I could look around.

The Super Pit

First visit was to the main gold mine called The Super Pit Lookout basically overlooking a big hole in the ground.

Mount Charlotte Reservoir Lookout

On top of a hill used as a water storage reservoir and communication tower location is a lookout with views over the whole town.

Kalgoorlie Town Centre

Quite an interesting town centre, lots of old buildings

Boulder Town Centre

Boulder town centre seems to be suffering a downturn – probably not room for two town centres so close together.

Shopping and Relaxing

After visiting the places mentioned above I found an IGA shopping centre to buy milk, biscuits and replace some of the potatoes I lost to the quarantine service 0n entering the state.

I returned to the caravan park mid afternoon collected my now dry clothes from the line and read my book on a warm sunny afternoon.

After the Goldrush

8th May 2024

Distance: 405 Km

Fuel: 46 L

Balladonia to Kalgoorlie

Woke up to a foggy morning with the air full of mist droplets. Hadn’t intended to leave before 9am but the damp morning (even though it didn’t actually rain) combined with the lack of water made me want to pack up and leave. I did walk to the roadhouse to see what was going on.

Balladonia Roadhouse & Caravan Park

I was on the road by 8am under grey skies but by 8.30 blue sky was starting to dominate.

Had enough fuel to get to Kalgoorlie so didn’t need to stop but did stop at rest areas to stretch my legs a couple of times.

Lake Cowan was as dry as…

The recent bushfires were evident by the number of dead trees along the road.

Arrived in Kalgoorlie at the caravan park just after midday and checked in, set up the camper and decided to look for fuel, it took forever, every place I tried either didn’t exist or was closed down. Eventually found one that did exist and refilled my jerrycan as well as filling up the car.

I was hungry too, opposite the servo was a KFC so I bought a Zinger Burger and chips, $13 which I thought was expensive but as I rarely buy fast food it probably wasn’t.

Back at the caravan park I hand washed a couple of T shirts but probably left it a bit too late because by the time the sun went down they still weren’t quite dry. Not to worry, they will finish off tomorrow with the rest of the clothes I am going to wash.

The caravan next to me had a problem with a water pump, the repairman had a personalised plate.

Am booked in for two nights so will look around town and do some shopping tomorrow.

A Long Straight Road

7th May 2024

Distance: 527 Km

Fuel: 49 L

Eucla Roadhouse to Balladonia Roadhouse

After leaving the caravan park soon found out where the road trains stopped for the night.

For the first part of the trip the sky looked quite dull in the distance but it never did rain and by the time I arrived at Balladonia there were few clouds.

After a while driving I suddenly remembered that WA has a 100kph speed limit on towing vehicles, so slowed down to that speed.

Came across several emergency runways for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS).

After nearly 200Km stopped at a rest area and emptied my 20 litres of fuel into my tank to save on fuel costs. At Caiguna started on a very long straight road.

Basically an uneventful drive, filled up with enough fuel to get me to Norseman and booked a powered site in the roadhouse caravan park ($50!)

BTW Balladonia is the area where Skylab crashed back to Earth, the local council sent NASA a fine for littering.

On to The Nullarbor

6th May 2024

Distance:429 km

Fuel: 43 L

The times they are a’changing

Left at 8am this morning thinking of the long journey taking 5 hours forgetting that once again I was changing time zones. In actual fact it took me ages to find the correct time in Eucla – even my phone got it wrong taking it to Perth time – Eucla is 45 minutes ahead of Perth.

Penong to Eucla

Easy driving on a good road had to overtake a few caravans crawling along but the long straight stretches of road made that easy. The scenery varied at first.

There were a surprising number of cyclists.

The road skirts the Nullarbor Plain hugging the coastline and offering spectacular views of the Great Australian Bight.

Sometimes the highway is very close to the cliffs

Arrived at the WA border and at the quarantine inspection checkpoint they took my potato and onion again!

It was only 12 km to the Eucla Roadhouse, Motel and Caravan Park where I checked in and filled up with fuel ($2.52 a litre!)

Discovered that the caravan park didn’t have water except for showers ($1) and washing. I think if I had known I would have driven on further. Anyway after setting up walked around looking at some of the sights that Eucla has to offer.

A fella I had been chatting to earlier knocked on my camper just as it was getting dark – he was going back to SA so he gave me some carrots and onions to stop them being confiscated. So win some. lose some.

A Map

Just to give you an idea of the trip around Australia as a whole here is a rough map of the journey. It doesn’t show where I actually stayed – just the centre of the town – nor does it show any of the side trips.

The idea is that it gives you an overall view.

3rd June 2017–Kununurra to Timber Creek

Distance: 281 km
Fuel: 27.93 L

After 20 minutes driving from Kununurra crossed into the NT and lost 1.5 hours of my life.

Note the sign telling you that the maximum speed limit in the Northern Territory is 110kph – about 200 metres down the road was a 130kph speed limit sign (someone must have forgotten to remove the first sign when the NT went back to its old limits).

Driving was easy on a fairly good road through undulating bush. I made a few stops at things that interested me.

Was undecided whether to stop at Timber Creek or push on another 90km to Victoria River. I stopped for a few sights along the way and it was after 1pm by the time I arrived at Timber Creek so I booked a night.

While I waited to book in I enjoyed a bloke going rabid about paying $1.70 for a two day old copy of the NT News (paper) the girl behind the counter was trying to explain that this was a remote location and the newspapers were always a couple of days old. He only wanted to pay $1.40 for it – how he arrived at that figure I don’t know but he was very insistent. He eventually flounced out but rather spoilt the flounce by having to come back to get his money back.

Unhooked my trailer in a nice shady spot and went to see the local sights having seen a couple of signs indicating lookouts as I drove in.

The road in the last picture is the highway from Timber Creek to Katherine (only 290km away).

In the creek and bush at the bottom of the caravan park were some freshwater crocs, turtles, kites and bats. Actually there was a two metre croc (as big as the males get) on the bank when I first walked down but I thought it was a fibreglass garden ornament and walked within a metre of it, it didn’t move. It was only later when I went back and found it gone that I realised it was the real thing.

Power for this town is generated locally at a small diesel power station.

I could do without the power I suppose except I like a cup of tea and some toast, videos and my music (am listening to Captain Beefheart as I type).

2nd June 2017–The Bungle Bungles

Distance: 1.5 km

Another brilliant day… Was standing outside the caravan park at 8.10pm when the little bus picked me up to go to Kununurra airport. At the airport we were briefed on where we would be flying and the day’s schedule. The flight was due to leave at 9am so we didn’t have long to wait before we board.

The flight to the Bungle Bungles airstrip at Bellburn took about one hour and flew down the western side of Lake Argyle (the lake is far more impressive from the air than from a boat), over a couple of cattle station homesteads before reaching the Bungle Bungles.

Those rectangles (above) are the tailings dams from an abandoned alluvial diamond mine. It took this mine a year to produce the amount of diamond that the Argyle Diamond Mine produces in a week.

At the airstrip we were met by a 4 wheel drive truck to take us the 10km drive to Piccaninny Creek Carpark and the start of the walk into Cathedral Gorge.

The beehive shaped mountains have red and black stripes where the blonde coloured sandstone has either reacted with algae to form the dark colour or the iron has oxidised to form the red. When you find a flake of the surface rock the colour is only as thick as a fingernail over the underlying yellow sandstone. This coating protects the rock and slows down erosion.

Millions of years ago these northern ranges were as high as the Himalayas, in 30 million more years they will be gone and northern Australia will be a coastal plain.

The guide took us on a slight detour to see where the Qantas ad was filmed in Piccaninny Creek.

The walk is only about 1.5km to get to the gorge but the path is very uneven and is often just soft, dry sand (it was hard to walk on).

The Cathedral Gorge is immense and the acoustics are unbelievable. It was so cool and an incredible place to sit, relax and have the packed lunch provided for us.

After hiking back to the carpark we were driven to the company’s Savannah Lodge for afternoon tea.

After cake, biscuits and tea it was time to return to the airstrip for the flight back to Kununurra which included passing over the massive Argyle Diamond Mine.

The plane landed at about 5pm so it was a pretty full day.

BTW I remembered to count the seats on this plane – there are 12 plus the seat beside the pilot.

1st June 2017–Kununurra Day One

Distance: 4 km
Fuel: 33 L

Up before 6am presumably because, being on the edge of a time zone, the sun rises unreasonably early. Anyway I showered, washed yesterday’s clothes, had brekkie etc while most people were still asleep.

At a far more reasonable hour drove into town to the Visitor’s Centre where a helpful lady booked me on a flight to the Bungle Bungles with a walking tour of Cathedral Gorge. Pretty pleased with that, there is also a chance of a helicopter ride when I get there (hoping and clutching my credit card). Actually I thought it was another seaplane ride but reading the brochure it is a normal plane and we land on a dirt airstrip in the National Park.

While I was in the shopping centre I also bought, wrote and sent postcards to all the usual suspects as I had a coffee and a vanilla slice (haven’t had a vanilla slice for years).

As I will be away all day tomorrow filled the car up with fuel too.

The main event today was a cruise on Lake Argyle; the bus picked me up at 1pm and drove half a dozen of us to the lake. On the way it stopped for 15 minutes at the Argyle Downs homestead. This was the original house built by the Durack family when they first started grazing in the region in the mid 1800s. It was dismantled when the property was to be flooded by the dam and rebuilt on higher ground.

The cruise itself was so so. Everybody else seemed to enjoy it but personally I thought it was a bit dull, no dolphins just a few freshwater crocs, some short eared wallabies, the odd wallaroo and lots of water. The dam wall itself is made of locally quarried rocks and clay there is no concrete except in the pump towers.

Just before sunset some of the passengers went swimming in the lake, the water temperature is 26’C.

There was one redeeming feature – two cans of free beer. Yes, I know it is me but cruises and water don’t excite me much.

Statistics

It has been six weeks since I started on this trip so time for some statistics (you know… those things made up on the spur of the moment) rounded to the nearest whole number.

Total Distance travelled: 10995 km
Fuel Used: 1099 litres
Fuel Cost: $1510
Accommodation Cost: $1384