Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly I have to say, the weather here is pretty lousy and looks set to stay that way for the next week at least – windy and rainy. There are waves about though and I’ve managed to score some surf and will hopefully get plenty more before we go home next week. Even if I don’t though, I’m more than happy just being in another caravan park in what has been home for five months. I adapted to and embraced life on the road very quickly and have grown to love it. Going back to living in a house again, let alone actually working for a living will take quite a bit of adjusting and I’m not looking forward to it. The temptation to sell the house and to just keep on going is huge. Perhaps we will.
And so now we are back where it all began – Gerringong. This was the first place I went to at the start of my long service leave, way back on 1 July. I thought that the best way to finish off this trip was to plant ourselves in the one spot for a good slab of time, no setting up or packing away, just relax and unwind until we have to pack up for the last time and go home. Gerringong is a beautiful place and is one of the towns we are seriously considering moving to sometime in the near future.
Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly I have to say, the weather here is pretty lousy and looks set to stay that way for the next week at least – windy and rainy. There are waves about though and I’ve managed to score some surf and will hopefully get plenty more before we go home next week. Even if I don’t though, I’m more than happy just being in another caravan park in what has been home for five months. I adapted to and embraced life on the road very quickly and have grown to love it. Going back to living in a house again, let alone actually working for a living will take quite a bit of adjusting and I’m not looking forward to it. The temptation to sell the house and to just keep on going is huge. Perhaps we will. From Wilsons Promontory we headed for another friends house in Nungurner, a tiny hamlet just outside of Lakes Entrance. We spent two nights at their place looking around Lakes and the highlight for me was the mountain bike ride Jen’s friends husband took me on in the nearby Colquhoun State Forest. The forest was full of fun, really technical single track which were full of jumps, deep gulley crossings and tight perfectly bermed switchback descents. I came back from this ride absolutely exhausted and was sore for days afterwards.
From Lakes Entrance our aim was to head to Mimosa Rocks National Park and camp for at least one night at one of my favourite camping grounds, Aragunnu. Unfortunately though, the ever present rain was ever present so we thought that Aragunnu would be too wet and unpleasant and that it would be better to have our overnight stop at a van park with hot showers in Tathra instead. We’ve been through Tathra quite a few times in the past but we’ve never actually stayed there. Which we now want to make up for by going back there again more regularly because its a really nice place. With two nights in Tathra, it became another location that we added to our long list of locations where we only planned to stay overnight but ended up staying for longer. The trip from Lakes Entrance to Tathra was a very strange one and evoked some very mixed feelings. On this leg of our journey we crossed back into NSW and saw the first road sign pointing to Canberra that we’d seen for nearly five months. It was very odd after nearly 20,000km on the road to know that we were now less than a days drive from home. From Barwon Heads we drove over to Queenscliffe and took the ferry across to Sorrento and the Mornington Peninsular. I am a bit of a fan of trains and even more so of boats , so the ferry ride across Port Phillip Bay was another must. Normally, fares are charged per person, then a fixed rate for vehicles and then a per metre amount for caravans and trailers. We found out though that if we caught the 7am or 8am ferry we could get a much cheaper set fair for the Jayco so we left Barwon Heads at the crack of dawn (7am is dawn isn’t it? Nothing gets up earlier than that, surely). We had breakfast in Sorrento, had a bit of a look around the peninsular, Portsea, Portsea Beach and then made our way towards Wilsons Promontory and the friends we were going to stay with at Korumburra. Korumburra basically is a farming community and our friends’ farm was about 5km out of town. Their property and the spot on it where we parked our camper had a view to die for. They looked out over Wilsons Promontory and the surrounding coastline, which was very pleasant to wake up to after a great night catching up over beer and red wine (too much of both). Our friends took us down to their onsite caravan at a beach called Waratah Bay. Waratah Bay looks out across to Wilsons Promontory and was yet another very sleepy beach village where everyone was really friendly and there was quite a community vibe going on. We stayed there overnight in the van park and yet again, this was beach I was reluctant to leave. Good surf and wonderful locals. The only problem we had was that our camp site had a gum tree over it that was absolutely full of scale and sooty mould. That on its own wasn’t a big deal but the swarm of the biggest blowflies I’ve ever seen that the sooty mould and the scale were attracting was a problem. The blowies as well as being attracted to the scale were also attracted to the white end flies over our beds so the ends of our van were completely covered in these gross insects. Having gotten to know a couple of the local residents and friends of our friends in the van park we regaled them with some of our travel stories, including tales of our treks across the outback where we’d free camp for days on end away from caravan park amenities. I got the feeling that they started suspecting something other than sooty mould and scale in a gum tree was the reason why a noisy, revolting, dark cloud of flies were hanging around our site and no one else’s. We left Waratah Bay and spent the morning driving into and around Wilsons Promontory. What can I say, another spectacular National Park that I wished we’d had the time to stay and camp for a while. The Prom has very strong echoes of Albany and Esperance with its hills, huge boulders and wild beaches with pristine whitest of white sands. I’m sure it would have been even more impressive had we been there on a sunny day, but it would have been a big ask to divest ourselves of our constant travelling companion, the bank of rain clouds that enjoyed our company so much in Perth its followed us ever since. I’ve tried introducing it to our other constant companion, the howling winds, in the hope that they might get on well enough to be able to entertain each other for just a few days so Jenny and I can head off for some quality time on our own. So far, that hasn’t happened. After Kennett River we made the marathon trek across to Barwon Heads, a gruelling 94km across the rest of the Great Ocean Road. This stretch took us through Lorne, our original planned destination on the day that we stopped at Kennett River, and on to the next location on my must surf itinerary, Bells Beach and Winkipop. This section of the Great Ocean Road is just astounding. It is every bit as spectacular as the Amalfi Coast in Italy. It was hard work driving whilst constantly having my breath taken away around every corner and at seeing all the beautiful little caravan parks tucked away in the bush at creek and river mouths. I’m so glad we didn’t stay at Lorne, which was nice if you like touristy beach towns, but there are so many magnificent camping grounds along this piece of coastline. This is one of the many parts of the country I’ve discovered on this trip that I’ve got to get back to one day. Unfortunately, when we got to Bells Beach and Winkipop I didn’t have the right equipment to take full advantage of the conditions that we encountered. I was all psyched up ready to attempt a session at another premier Australian big wave location, I felt my preparation over at Yalingup and Margaret River would stand me in good stead for whatever was on offer, although I was worried, quite rightly as it turned out, that my board wouldn’t handle these breaks. What I should have had with me was a speed boat and a set of water skis. I was so disappointed. Bells and Winkipop were absolutely dead flat and remained that way for the entire time we were in the area. At the end of the Great Ocean Road, just before Geelong, is a quiet little beach town called Barwon Heads and that’s where we stopped for lunch. This is where the ABC series Seachange was filmed so we thought here rather than Geelong would be a better spot to eat. Such a good spot to eat it was that we decided to stay on and eat there for another 5 days. Yet another place we would love to live and yet another place we can only describe using clichéd superlatives. And the locals were so friendly. When a small swell finally did arrive there were quite a few breaks to choose from and they were all really good. And again, even in the water, the locals were really friendly. Probably the cruisiest, lay back break I’ve ever surfed and so I had a ball. By the end of my surf there, the locals I’d been out with were telling me where their favourite “secret” spots were and even offered to meet me there. Barwon Heads was the exact opposite of Denmark, WA. The good twin to the Denmark evil twin. The Denmark in some fairy dust sprinkled parallel universe. So, in case you hadn’t worked it out yet, I really, really liked Barwon Heads, was very reluctant to leave after our five days there and if I was forced to move to Victoria at gunpoint, I could probably learn to be happy at Barwon Heads. And then the Great Ocean Road. From Port Fairy we drove through Warrnambool and onto the iconic Great Ocean Road. Like Uluru and Kakadu the stretch of this road that we’ve travelled so far is absolutely crawling with tourists from all over the world, mostly German here whereas up north it seemed to be mostly French tourists. This is an iconic tourist route for good reason. It is yet another magnificent piece of coastline. I was reminded of the Amalfi coast in Italy and I think this road is every bit as impressive as its Italian counterpart, for me probably more so because I prefer the native bush down to the water over the Italian towns. We stopped at a number of points along the way, including the Bay of Islands, The Grotto, London Bridge and of course The 12 Apostles. We had lunch at Port Campbell, another really quaint little beach village with a similar feel to Port Fairy. Like the beaches over in WA facing the Southern Ocean, the surf rolling in from the Southern Ocean along this coastline was just as ominous and wild. By mid afternoon we’d reached Apollo Bay and had started looking for somewhere to stay the night. There aren’t really too many free campsites in this part of the world and with the weather looking the way it was looking (yes, yet more wind and rain) a van park with hot showers seemed appealing. We were aiming for Lorne but 25km out of Apollo Bay and halfway to Lorne we drove past a van park at a spot called Kennett River which looked so enticing we decided to stop there instead. And three days later, we’re still here. The caravan park is small and along with the flow of overseas tourists passing through, it has a loyal band of Victorians staying here that have been coming here for years. One of the features of the park, in addition to its location and the really lovely young couple who manage the place and who obviously love doing so, is the parks resident population of parrots and koalas. If you make the mistake of coming out of your van with food in your hand as I did with my toast on our first morning, the parrots will mob you. They land on your arms and head and fight over whatever it is you are trying to eat. And the koalas have just blown me away. Having never seen one in the wild before I was just as fascinated by them as the overseas tourists were. And the entertainment they provide is not just visual either. For a creature that looks so fluffy, lovely and cute its nocturnal sounds are a far cry from matching its cute and cuddly looks. They’re very noisy, especially when they’re in the tree right over your bed and the sounds they make range from something that sounds like the rumbling growl of a big cat to the screech of a banshee. Mostly though they sounded something like a cross between a snore and an old mans fart. So, reluctantly we leave Kennett River tomorrow but we’re heading for Bells Beach, Torquay and the Surf Coast and hopefully a few waves at another iconic Australian surf break. Then it’ll be on to Wilsons Promintory. From Adelaide, we’ve headed south and are aiming for the Great Ocean Road. Night one out of Adelaide was spent at a beautiful spot on the shores of Lake Albert in the Coorong called Meningie. Our van site was metres away from the water’s edge and we were surrounded by the birdlife of the waterways – pelicans, ducks, ibis, cormorants. The next night was a free camp at place called Dartmoor in Victoria, so we’d left SA behind again. Dartmoor is situated on the junction of the Glenelg and Crawford Rivers and has several historic sites in the town, including the starting point of an expedition led by Major Mitchell. It also was the home of the bulk of Australia’s mosquitoes. The trek from the van to the less than pleasant drop dunnies was made even less pleasant for having to run the gauntlet of these mosquitoes. It also was another campsite where we got to experience once again the very common phenomenon of lonely camper syndrome. This occurs when you are camped on your own in a very large camping reserve with hundreds of square metres of empty camping space and another camper turns up and feels the need to camp as close to you as they are able to comfortably get. I suppose I should learn to enjoy sharing my intimate camping experiences with these lonely souls. Tonight we’re in Port Fairy, just west of Warrnambool and just before the Great Ocean Road. We liked Port Fairy enough to stay here a second night. It’s yet another very pretty spot on the coast and a great place to chill out again before more travelling. To finish off our long haul across from WA we completed our 15,000km loop with a stay back at Melrose and Mt Remarkable at the southern end of the Flinders Ranges again. I really loved Melrose the first time around on night 6, 7 and 8 of our 4 ½ month. I loved it just as much the second time around. I got the mountain bike out again for my first serious mountain biking since Kununurra two months ago. I rode the same trail that I videoed back in August and the result of the ride was very interesting. It’s amazing what confidence and lack of fear can achieve, even if that confidence and lack of fear is misplaced. This time around despite being nowhere near as fit or as technically competent as I was back in August I rode the trail a good 20 minutes faster and without the crashes and foot-downs I had the first time round. I can only put this down to having survived some of the heaviest surfing conditions I’ve been out in for 20 years. Having scared myself silly and hurt myself in what was for me huge surf, the track around Mt Remarkable that seemed so difficult back in August seemed like a breeze. I even jumped the reasonably sized drop off that I attempted to take three times on my last ride and pulled out of three times due to lack of nerve without the slightest bit of hesitation. I love Melrose, the local pub there and of course the mountain bike trails around Mt Remarkable and would love to go back there again some time.
After our one day at Melrose, we then headed into Adelaide and spent 4 nights relaxing and recovering from the long stint across from WA. We also used the time back in Adelaide to make a number of repairs to the van, the main one being the replacement of the electrics lead that I’d managed to crush and temporarily fix back in Kununurra. I noticed on leaving Cape Le Grand that our indicators on the van were playing up, so my temporary wiring obviously needed a proper repair job. Which we had done at an auto electrician near the van park we were staying at. Unfortunately, this repair led to the need for another repair which thankfully we were able to get done and for a lot less expense than might have been required had we not been so lucky. Now, my next sentence explaining the repairs I needed will immediately chill the spines of any cyclists out there as they will know straight away what happened. Roofbar mounted bike rack and a carport. I’ve heard many horror stories over the years about roof mounted bikes and low clearances and have always been so vigilant, even on this trip and checking before driving through petrol stations and under any bridges. It just took one tiny lapse of concentration, having to move the car at the auto electricians to allow another car to get past I went to drive into a parking space under a carport at the side of the workshop. We weren’t moving very fast and as soon as I heard the sound I realised immediately what I’d done and stopped and reversed. As I’ve said though, we were really lucky. I broke the leg of one of the roof bars and put a very minor scratch on the roof and the total cost to fix the roof bars was $41. After Esperance, we headed north to Norseman for a night before starting the trek across the Nullarbor. The crossing took us three and a half days with stop overs at three free campsites: Moodini Bluff (near a town called Madura, WA), Colona Rest Area (near Yalata, SA) and a Lions Club picnic area in the middle of a tiny town called Kimba, SA. The free campsites we’ve stayed in throughout this trip have all been really great places to stay with some of them being way better than the paid for caravan parks. We’ve also learnt quite a few tips from fellow campers for free camping during the course of this trip. My favourite has to be one that many of the grey nomads have adopted. This involves buying a tap head from a hardware store. With a tap head in your toolbox, whenever you need to top up your water tank before your next free camp all you have to do is take yourself to a cemetery in a nearby town. Take your tap head and put it onto the tap headless taps that the cemetery workers use to water the garden, hook up your hose and fill your tank. Such a grey nomad thing to do. I must say, crossing the Nullarbor was a bit of a disappointment. Growing up you hear all these stories about the Nullarbor Plain and how desolate it is and how long and straight the road is. It does have the longest straight stretch of road in the world, the 90 Mile Straight, but even that is fairly nondescript. It may be the longest straight but because the road is undulating and through some well treed areas you never really get the sense of very long straight. There are sections of the road in the middle that do feel like you’re miles from anywhere in the desert but even so, for my money the Hay Plain in NSW is much more impressive. The weather probably didn’t help us appreciate the Nullarbor much either. It was windy and wet, as it has been since we hit Perth just over a month ago. In fact, I don’t think we’ve actually had more than two days in a row without rain since Perth. We’re certainly getting well practised at putting the Jayco up and down in the rain without getting too much wet inside. We haven’t had to sleep in wet bedding yet. Mind you, that day could still come. If we ever get really heavy rain with strong winds the challenge may prove too much. Also, hitting the cold weather with the rain and wind has dampened our spirits at times. Spending so much time up north with hot weather and beautiful balmy nights, we’d forgotten that the rest of the country actually has a winter to which we needed to re-acclimatise. Our last night at the end of the Nullarbor in Kimba was the coldest we’d had since Alice Springs way back in August and we felt frozen to the bone. Being a free campsite, the only electricity we had was from our battery and a 300 watt inverter. The inverter gives us enough power to run our telly, the powered aerial and to charge phones and laptops but not to run an electric heater. To make matters worse, that was the night that our gas ran out so we couldn’t even boil a billy for a hot drink and get some warmth from the gas flames. It’s funny what you get used to. Back in August, our nights were getting down to 2 and 3 degrees. They were cold nights but I do remember that we coped with them just fine. Our night at Kimba only got as low as 9 degrees and yet we were so cold that we couldn’t sleep. The other thing about the weather during our Nullarbor crossing is how heavily influenced it seemed to be by the roadhouses and the price of petrol along the way. I was expecting a nice cheap run through to Adelaide given that the winds should have been tail winds. We only got tail winds though when fuel prices dropped below $1.60 per litre. Anything above that price and the winds would swing around to become roaring south easterly headwinds and which would eat into our fuel at an amazing rate. Heading towards the Nullarbor Roadhouse in the middle of the crossing I was starting to think that we wouldn’t make the fuel station before our tank ran dry. I had a full jerry can to see us through if we had run dry but if we had that would have meant that our 60 litre tank got us less than 300km from the previous fuel stop. Head winds when towing a van does more damage to fuel economy than anything but the steepest of hill climbs. The Nullarbor crossing marked the end of our time in Western Australia and we were really sad to see that part of the trip over. Everywhere we’ve been has been fabulous, but for me WA has been my favourite part of the trip so far – probably in large part because of the surf, I guess. The other milestone marked by our Nullarbor crossing was our return to South Australia. It was not long after hitting SA again that my initial impression of this State was confirmed. South Australia is a State that’s a little bit different to the rest of the country. It’s the eccentric, weird uncle of the Australian States. The one you only see every now and then, usually at family gatherings, and he’s the one mumbling unintelligibly to himself in the corner or shouting random words at passersby or talking to you to closely about some obscure irrelevant issue in far too much detail. Highway distance markers are a perfect example of the sort of thing I’m talking about. Occasionally they display the distances to the next town on the zero or five kilometre mark, as in 20 or 25. But mostly these markers were in random increments. I saw twos and sevens, threes and eights, fours and nines. And then there was the label used for the next town. Everywhere else in the country uses a single letter; ie. D for Darwin, P for Perth. Not SA. Usually the markers used two letter labels and the letters chosen didn’t seem to have any logic to them. Mn for a town called Millicent for example. Reinforcing my impression of SA as the weird state was the elderly lady who accosted me at our first SA fuel stop at Streaky Bay. As I was filling the tank at the servo, this woman came up to me at the pump and started raving about something. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying but I tried to nod politely and continue filling the car. The nods only seemed to encourage her and so she kept going for the whole time I was at the pump. I think the topic of her rant was something to do with asbestos removal from buildings. What triggered this tirade and why I was the privileged recipient is still a mystery to me. I put it down to a very South Australian experience. Don’t get me wrong. SA is a lovely place to visit and I did enjoy it but despite Jenny’s constant suggestions that we do, I could never live there. I don’t feel that I’m eccentric enough yet to fit in. The beautiful beaches at Cape Le Grand were enough to entice Barbie away from her bingeing and man chasing to give the surf a go. The water was cold but the conditions were perfect and there wasn't another surfer in the water for 50km.
Our plan from Albany was to head on over to Esperance and spend a few days camped there as a base while we checked out the surrounding area. But in Albany, we met up with the friends that we’d met up at Cape Range/Ningaloo Reef again and they put us onto the Cape Le Grand National Park, 50km east of Esperance. So, we spent one night in Esperance and then followed our friends over to the National Park, and are we glad that we did. The National Park campground at Cape Le Grand was the best NP campground I’ve ever been in. Situated right on one of the many picture postcard perfect beaches this campsite, at $18 a night was better than many of the caravan parks we’ve stayed in for $40+ a night. It had a camp kitchen with barbeques and gas stoves, flush toilets and solar hot water for hot showers and backed right onto the beach. Cape Le Grand, and the Esperance area in general, we’ve decided, has the most magnificent beaches anywhere in the world. The sand is the whitest white and the water at these beaches is crystal clear and multiple shades of blue, aqua and turquoise. Ningaloo Reef was spectacular but believe it or not the beaches there pale in comparison. In the dunes, scrub and mountains behind the beaches, wildflowers were blooming everywhere and as spectacular here as anywhere else we’ve seen. The result of this though was the one downside to this stay: the flowers attracted flies. They were horrendous whenever the ever present gale force winds eased up briefly. We reluctantly left Cape Le Grand this morning and after driving along the Great Ocean Drive, Esperance’s equivalent of Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, headed north and inland for Norseman and the start of our trek across the Nullabor. The next time we see the ocean it should be in the middle of the Great Australian Bight. |
Greg ShawGreg Shaw - spouse of Jenny, layabout, documentary film maker (most noted for working exclusively with his star subject, Barbie) Archives
November 2011
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