14/3 – 25/3

Finally… it appears that the email problems are sorted. Think I could write a book on that aspect alone, but don’t want to bore you. Suffice to say that the wonderful company Nokia doesn’t have a licence to sell into the retail market within Australia and therefore isn’t bound by consumer law!!! Add that to the might of Telstra and literally hours on the phone to Mobile-Net… Still, every now and again a jewel ‘pops’ out (a pun for the email-literate) and ‘John’ from the Telstra office in Kalgoorlie was a perfect example; even staying back after hours on his own time!

Maddy on top of the world.....Our car at the bottom..........This dune is STEEP!.... (and below - Jess jumping off)

We left Port Lincoln and headed to Coffin Bay. A small and generally sleepy community with oyster farming, a smattering of tourism thanks to the fishing and national park, and not a lot else.

After unhitching the van, the girls and I headed for the national park, Marg stayed back at the van to read and sleep.

It wasn’t too long before we got off the dirt and onto the sand. I immediately stopped the car and got out, sinking ankle deep in the soft sand, to reduce the tyre pressures to 20psi. “That should do it” I thought and attempted to drive off... BOGGED!!!.. The back wheels sunk immediately and rested the bottom of the car on the sand! The intrepid 4WDriver had forgotten to select ‘4WD’! Fortunately, upon selecting that, we were able to drive straight out of the bog and off down to the beach. We drove for about 5km along the beach and had HEAPS of fun in the soft sand. I was a bit concerned about the tide, as it was on its way in and the only way back was past some HUGE dunes (see pic above). This dune in particular finished at the waters edge when the tide was in, so a return that day would have been impossible if we had left our run too late. Apparently there were 14 4WD’s lost to the sea last year! I attempted to drive up this dune, to see how far we could get – needless to say, it wasn’t far. The above pic centre inset is a shot from the top of the dune looking down at the front of the car. The right inset is how far up I managed to get… you can see the damp sand at the bottom behind the car which shows how far the tide comes in. It took hands and feet dug in and crawling on all fours to climb to the top. Jess took a flying leap off the top (see above) expecting to slide to the bottom – only to ‘bog’ ½ a metre from the top! Again, the soft sand had another victim.

The views were outstanding, the bays, absolutely beautiful and the fishing…. well I was TOLD it was really good.

At Ceduna we collected copious amounts of mail from the post office, then met up with an ex work colleague and his wife (Keith and Janina Hiel, for those who know them) and spent a really enjoyable night with a few drinks and the barbie on a 25C night, no wind and not too many mossies!

Diesel, which previously had been up to $1.15 per litre, was $1.37 at the Nullabor roadhouse. Fortunately we had enough range and didn’t need to fill up.

The coastline looking back east was superb, with the plain being about 80m above the sea, and visibility clear

We made it to Eucla about 6:30pm and decided the Telegraph Station ruins would be a good spot for dinner. Again, the sand would have been a bit too soft to drag the van to the actual ruins, so we made do with a short walk to them, and parked on the track!

Last time I was there (only 27 years ago) the ruins were completely exposed. The time before that (2 months earlier) they were similar to the pic. The sand dunes are forever ‘rolling’ in like waves and the

We gave up counting, but there was MORE than 1 carcass per 100m for the next 2½ hours! The carnage looked like a war zone, trucks versus roos (a prelude of things to come in Iraq?). We had great fun spotting them, swerving 1st one way then the other to keep as much distance between us and them as possible. Talking to a truck driver (on the CB) he said he’d never seen so many – perhaps it was the full moon “doesn’t worry me too much mate… I just aim to hit ‘em dead centre… don’t want to hit ‘em on the corner (of the truck) they bend the mud-guard in and it rubs on me tyre!”. I don’t know, but certainly we saw more than I had ever seen before; well over 500 live ones. At one point we came to a full stop with one roo in front and another beside… dazzled by the headlights and oblivious to me frantically tooting the horn and abusing them out the window.

Eventually the inevitable happened. The demise of Skippy was a sad affair – for him at least… A momentary bad decision on his part ( he turned and doubled back) and, well… Skippy became yet another road statistic. Fortunately, the ‘bull-bar’ on the front of the 4WD did the trick and the only damage was a slightly bent number plate.

Next morning, after the company of numerous road trains overnight, we continued on to Norseman and arrived at Kalgoorlie about 8:00pm. We did 680km the first day and 666km the second. We passed a bush fire about 100km before Norseman, and spotted a filter (which I suspected correctly, was the filter from the top of a fire truck tank) lying in the middle of the road. We picked it up and about 20km later passed an SES camp. The road was wide enough to do a u-ie so we called in and presented them with the filter – something they were very grateful to receive, but unaware they’d lost. Seems the fire had been burning for about 3 months but was starting to become a nuisance and they were attempting to get it under control with back-burning. The scale of the land out there, and the inaccessibility of a lot of it, needs to be seen to be appreciated.

A radio receiver and loudspeaker in the viewing area allowed us to hear the proceedings.

“10 minutes to go…”

“5 minutes to go…”

“Permission to blow?”

“Permission granted – Clear to blow”

“Small technical difficulty here – standby” . . . . . . . . . . Five more minutes went by…

“Are we still clear to blow?”

“Still clear – Clear to blow”

We’ve had an exciting time AGAIN in Esperance, but that will have to wait till the next instalment.

Till then, bye for now,

Love from Jim, Marg, Jess and Maddy

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Some people have asked for a map, showing where we’ve been etcetera. Our path so far can be seen on the map below and the triangle (tent shapes) are the places we have stayed. Also, for those interested, there are a few figures too. (Note, for the latest map, use the navigation button to the left which just happens to be labled 'Map')

Distance Travelled to date:

Distance from Moe (As the crow flies):

Fuel used so far:

Average fuel economy:

Fuel cost to date:

Av. cost per Litre:

Diesel
– most expensive purchased:
– least expensive purchased:

No. nights since leaving:

7998km (20469now – 12471start)

2236km

1526 litres

18.1 l/100km
5.6 km/l
16.0mpg

$1504

18.75 cents per Km

122cpl (was $1.37 at Nullabor Roadhouse!)
96.9cpl

71 nights