Sat 24 Sep 2011 Ceduna to Point Lowly Rest Area

0900 (19060 km) Breakfast of cereal. Left Ceduna.

0915 (19061 km) Filled up.

At Murphy's Hay Stacks

1100 (19218 km) Murphy's Hay Stacks. These are Inselbergs. They are granite that has been weathered and formed into interesting shapes in the middle of the paddock. Apparently the name of Murphy's Hay Stacks was from an Irish agricultural expert who saw this landmark in the distance whilst travelling on a coach. Apparently the learned Irish gentleman was very impressed and informed his fellow passengers that the farmer must have harrowed his land to produce such a great abundance of hay! Well, by now you must have guessed it! The original farmer of the land was a Mr. Murphy and to this day the landmark is known as Murphy's Hay Stacks.

1200 (19258 km) Filled up.

"Ahhh! Don't feed me to the shark, I promise I'll be good"

1215 (19258 km) Streaky Bay. Visited gallery with the replica life size replica of the world's largest white pointer shark caught on a rod and reel. The 1520 kg shark was caught in April 1990 by a young local fisherman after a 5.25 hour struggle. The mature female shark was estimated to be 16 to 18 years old. Had lunch of hot dogs.





Squidding at Pt Lowly

1400 (19405 km) Wudinna. CK had a look at the Australian Farmer's granite sculpture. It looked quite modern. Everyone else was asleep in the car!

1500 (19506 km) Kimba. Saw the Giant Galah and all the tourists taking photos! So we joined them in taking photos. HM was still half asleep.



1700 (19683 km) Point Lowly Rest Area. Quite a nice rest area, right next to a small marina. Flushing toilets were also close by. Went squidding. Suddenly a seal jumped out of the water. We got a fright and thought we better reel in our squid jigs in case it gets caught by the seal. Had dinner of tau yew bak.





Pt Lowly Lighthouse at dusk



Fri 23 Sep 2011 Ceduna

1015 (18969 km) Toast for breakfast.

1045 (19014 km) Smoky Bay. There was a jetty with a shark-proof swimming enclosure adjacent to it at Smoky Bay. Didn't see any sharks. Must be scary swimming metres from a man-eating shark. Had a walk along the jetty and saw people fishing but they weren't catching anything. Lots of cormarants hanging around, and a pelican too.



The boys trying to sneak up to the cormorants



1230 (19060 km) Lunch of crabs and soup. The blue swimmer crabs were better than the other unidentified crab. Novelty of eating crabs has run out for the kids, they had a few nibbles but CK & HM had to eat 6 crabs! It took a while. . .

1700 (19060 km) Went crabbing and squidding again. Kids were keen to take some crabs with us to our next stop where we meet up with friends.

1900 (19060 km) Had yummy homemade burgers for dinner.

Thu 22 Sep 2011 Ceduna

At the jetty again, with the crab net

1000 (18934 km) Had pancakes for breakfast. It was very windy. Put in additional pegs just in case.

1015 (18934 km) Filled up. Ceduna Visitor Centre. Drove around the scenic drive to Thevenard. Stopped at lookout at Pinky Point. From the platform we saw seals in the water. One seal was swimming to another that was perched on a rock. It climbed up and they kissed! From the platform, we could also see the huge salt piles. There was a tractor that was going up and down the salt piles. Drove further along and had a quick look at the fish processors. Nothing was happening so we drove on to Shelley Beach. Nothing spectacular so we went shopping.

1300 (18959 km) Lunch of Indomie.

1415 (18963 km) Ceduna Bureau of Meteorology weather station. He gave us a brief explanation about how all the weather stations around Australia send up the weather balloons at about the same time. The balloons are tracked by radar to make calculations about what the weather is like in the atmosphere. The balloons are filled with hydrogen because it is cheaper. Went to buy some oysters at the Oyster Bar.

1500 (18969 km) Fishing. It was still very windy, not good for fishing. Only caught crabs and small fish. Took back 4 blue swimmer crabs and another crab. Threw everything else back.

Blue Swimmer



Other crab

1700 (18969 km) Had Herring Mornay for dinner. The herrings were the ones we had caught the day before. Also had oysters - mixed reactions from the kids.

Wed 21 Sep 2011 Moonera Tank Rest Area to Ceduna






Nullarbor means 'treeless'



0800 (18174 km) Breakfast of cereal. Left rest area.

1000 (18343 km) Mundrabilla Roadhouse. Filled up.

1045 (18410 km) Eucla. Tiny town in the middle of nowhere, but has police station. Filled up. As we passed Border Village, we added another 45 minutes to our clocks.

1340 (18610 km) Town of Nullarbor. Only one short section of the Nullabor Plain was actually 'treeless'. Most had a fair bit of vegetation.



Southern Right whale with calf

 1410 (18636 km) Head of Bight. It was amazing. We were expecting to have to use binoculars to search for the odd whale or two. However, to our pleasant surprise, there were more than a dozen Southern Right Whales, many with a calf, just in the water. They would swim under at times, and because there were so many, we could never be sure if we had already counted them. There was also a seal that was swimming around. There were some small blowholes that blew water vertically into the air.

1815 (18933) Penong.

1830 (18934 km) Ceduna. Ceduna Foreshore Caravan Park. Site P12. Had sang choy pau with rice. Went fishing and brought back two crabs and two herrings. Threw the rest back for another day.

Nullarbor diesel prices

Norseman $1.549

Balladonia $1.872

Mundrabilla $1.780

Eucla $1.780

Nullarbor $2.039

Nundro $1.539

Penong $1.539

 Ceduna $1.499

Tue 20 Sep 2011 Esperance to Rest Area

0930 (17478 km) Breakfast of cereal, leftover Indomie and fried rice. Left Esperance.
1145 (17688 km) Norseman. Filled up. $1.529. Start of Nullabor. There is a really good information brochure on the Nullabor. Lunch of ham sandwiches.
1415 (17882 km) Balladonia. Filled up. $1.872. Start of the "90 mile straight". It is 146 km of straight road, the longest in the world. The road just kept on going into the shimmering distance. We couldn't see the end. Oncoming traffic starts as a tiny speck in the distance and takes forever to loom into a full sized vehicle. At Caiguna, the time zone changed and we added 45 minutes.
1745 (18174 km) Rest area. Traveled 700 km and more to go tomorrow. Starting to get dark, so stopped as we won't have electricity. Set up. Dinner of soft tacos. Kids lit a fire, naturally. We got out the marshmallows and toasted them in the fire. And MJ said 'this is life' with a matching sigh.

Mon 19 Sep 2011 Esperance

1030 (17423 km) Breakfast of toast and cereal. Went to Visitor Centre. Went on the Great Ocean Drive. Had a quick look at West Beach. It was very windy. Walked up the steps to Observatory Point. It was definitely a good view but very windy. We had difficulty walking down the steps. The wind was so strong that it was difficult to breathe! Stopped at Twilight Beach. Just a little offshore was an interesting rock with a large cave in it. If the water was warmer, we could have swam out to it. Had a quick look at 10 mile lagoon. There appeared to be a line of rocks about 20 metres from shore that created what looked like a lagoon. Then the rain started and we ran back to the car. Drove to Pink Lake and found that it wasn't pink. The pink is caused by a combination of an alga that has beta-carotene (same colouring that is found in carrots) and bacterium that is pink.

1245 (17466 km) Lunch of porridge.

1430 (17466 km) Adventureland. Climbed over the whale and ran around the maze. It was a small maze, nothing like some of the other big mazes we had been to.

1445 (17468 km) Tanker Jetty.  Went fishing and caught 3 fish. A Yellowtail Scad and two Herrings. Sammy the sealion, who lives under the jetty, was very excited and came to greet us when we were leaving the jetty. He swam around and poked his head up. Apparently he waits there in the late afternoon when fishermen leave the jetty with their catches. There's a fish cleaning station at the end of the jetty and he waits next to it waiting for fish or fish bits to be thrown to him.

1700 (17472 km) Cooked the fish we caught, some crumbed fish and hash brown for dinner. It was good to have fresh fish but the Herrings were not the yummiest of fish.

2000 (17475 km) Filled up.

2015 (17476 km) Fishing again by night. Caught 8 fish in 30 minutes. MH even caught 2 fish at a time on his 2 hooks. HM tried squidding again but there were still no squids. Fed 3 fish to Sammy the Sea Lion. Sammy was really animated and looked forward to his feed.

2045 (17478 km) Back at caravan park.

Herrings on the BBQ

Sun 18 Sep 2011 Esperance

0845 (17275 km) Had toast and cereal for breakfast.
0900 (17277 km) Filled up.

Lucky Bay sand was amazingly fine!

1000 (17344 km) Cape Le Grand National Park. Lucky Bay was beautiful and had really interesting sand. It was really, really fine sand. With water on it, it was a little like corn flour in water, hard if you stepped on it quickly but if stepped on slowly, you started to sink. It also squeaked so the kids started doing interesting dances & stomps. The colours in the area was beautiful - the white sand led to green sea that changed to deep blue that had white foamy waves crashing on it. The next stop was Thistle Cove. There were some rock formations called Whistling Rock. It looked like a surfing wave. On the beach, there was a huge rock to climb over and the kids started building a dam across a stream that was running on the beach. On the way back, we took some photos of the Frenchman's Peak. It looked just like a french beret.

1345 (17413 km) Back at the caravan park and had bacon, eggs, baked beans and spaghetti.

Thistle Cove

1600 (17418 km) Mermaid Leather. The shop made fish skin leather. Looks like a lot of effort to get the skin off the fish and make it into leather. It's pretty expensive too! It also the the mermaid legend that was quite good reading.
1630 (17423 km) Still raining back at caravan park.
1800 (17423 km) Had fried rice for dinner.