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26th Jan – Australia Day!

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Following an early night we were up by 5am, and pulled onto the road to Kalgoorlie by 530 heading west, the temp was 19 degrees and the sun was behind us which was a nice change compared to yesterday afternoon, we had 420km to travel to our final campsite at Boulder...... which has a pool! Arriving 11am we quickly set up and made our way to Hannan’s North Tourist Mine which used to be an original working mine. By now it was 35 degrees and getting hotter by the minute while checking out the mine trucks, old original buildings, gold pouring and first aid room. At the end of the tour we even did some gold panning, the boys each found a little fleck of gold. While panning the water it attracted 3 huge wasps collecting water (see photo). After an hour in the sun we were melting and hungry (now 12.45pm), so we went through Chicken Treat drive through for lunch. Now we haven’t had takeaway on this trip with the exception of today, our excuse was we didn’t have much to choose from as most ...
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25th Jan – Change of plans

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We have decided to do a u-turn! Only joking it’s been a big day today, we awoke to a lovely cool morning at Laura Bay with not a breath of wind, hitting the road at 8am back on the Eyre Hwy we stopped at Ceduna to pick up some fuel. Passed Penong with all its windmills, remembered our stay at Fowlers Bay on the way over as we drove pass the turn off, waved at Wombat Hole as we were now on the Nullarbor, 472km from our first planned destination we stopped for lunch with a view of the Great Australian Bight. We all jumped into the Kangaroos pouch at the border crossing and before we knew it we were back in WA, even had a light sprinkle of rain from Eucla to Madura. With only 27 km to our scheduled campsite we had a change of plans, we had heard about the Cocklebiddy caves so decided to have a look. Since crossing the border and winding back our clocks we have an extra 2.5 hours up our sleeve, it was 35 degrees outside so we decided to keep going as setting up and sitting in 35 degrees ...
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24th Jan – Leaving Adelaide for the dash home

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We awoke with ringing ears and miming Foo Fighters songs at around 6.45am, the boys were in the car and we were on the road by 7.30am heading to Laura Bay (via Streaky Bay on Flinders Hwy) being our first camp for the return trip to Perth. Today was Foo Fighters day being this was the only band we were going to listen too during our trip! We are now heading across to Perth over 4 days. We have had planned to head for the ferry across the Spencer Gulf from Woolaroo to Lucky Bay but unfortunately the terminal was being upgraded and therefore out of action, so we had to do the haul up and around via Port Augusta. The upside was we got to see the $650 million thermal power plant experiment, using solar energy reflected to a central tower it heats molten salt....yes.. salt @ 650 degree celsius, which is then pumped to a storage tank and heat exchangers to power a steam turbine, it produces a constant 135mwatt of power and up to 150mwatt if required. Following a stop for lunch we said ou...
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23rd Jan - Adelaide and The Foos

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The Morning started with us dropping the car in for a service then catching the bus into the city centre to have a look around. We roamed the Randal Mall shopping area, checked out the delights of the Central Markets and admired the many churches scattered in amongst the modern buildings within the city centre. After a stop for lunch we headed back to pick up the car before returning to the camp to relax and catching up on paperwork before the evening concert, the boys even managed to played on the outdoor chess set under the sprinklers! Now for the Foo Fighters........At 5pm we were all showered and dressed ready to hit the concert, we parked at the Entertainment Centre and headed to the Indian Restaurant just around the corner from the Coopers Stadium, dinner was great and the boys were stuffed by the time we had left! We arrived at the stadium and picked up some merchandise just outside the gate, unfortunately they had run out of hats (for Aiden) so we headed inside ...
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22nd Jan - Onto Adelaide

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Today’s trip was only short, 240km, so we all had a sleep-in and a short morning walk now the weather had cooled somewhat, there were a few spots of rain and some cloud cover to keep the temperature under 34 degrees. Another surprise was a phone call from the Broulee caravan park informing us Bels ipad had been recovered, it was discovered dumped in a bush near the surf club, Yahoo J . Following a quick catch up with Mel and Simon we checked out at 10.15am, with only 3 hours to travel we weren’t too fussed. Arriving in Adelaide we stayed at a lovely little inner city property converted to a caravan park. In 1856   Philip Levi obtained the property   and in 1947 it was sold for 5000 pounds to the Town of Walkerville as a public park. Walkerville is one of Adelaide’s earliest settled villages outside the city of Adelaide and Philip Levi was well renowned for his lavish garden parties back in the day. With the temp hovering at 35 degrees we took a drive to Glenelg, to tak...
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21st Jan – Onto Renmark SA

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We awoke to the sound of the Bush Alarm clock (sulphur crested cockatoos’) at 6am, we were up, fed, hitched and gone by 7am (25 degrees) for our 700km run to Renmark South Australia, in total a 8.5hr trip which is one of four 700km plus trips we complete on this journey! We passed thru some diverse agricultural areas including wheat crops, corn fields then grape vines, as the north wester kicked in we watched tumble weeds rolling across the road and fold up the wing mirror every now and then as the trucks passed by, the Sturt Hwy is not the smoothest ride but letting the tyres down to 35psi made the ride far smoother! 3km outside of Hay at 11am ish the temp had hit 37 degrees, we spotted a grass fire on the side of the road, we did a quick U-turn, grabbed our 20L water drum and put it out. Looking like it could flare up again we called the fire brigade and let them know the details so they could douse the area. With 300km left we passed through the tiny little town Balranald, we...
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20th Jan – Bugger, Wagga Wagga and 1 week to go!

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20 th Jan – Bugger, Wagga Wagga and 1 week to go! We awoke this morning to discover our car had been broken into during the night, our wallets, spare cameras, ipad, sunglasses, dash-cam were gone. A good chunk of the caravan park had been hit. After calling the bank to cancel credit cards, reporting to police and chatting with neighbours we found out that the dog next door had barked and was growling out the window at about 2am and the neighbour thought nothing of it! But hay all the gear missing was old and we didn’t have much cash in our wallets so all good, we have our laptops with our photos and everything else is replaceable so we got off pretty lightly. So with this slight delay we hit the road at 9am for a 450km run to Wagga Wagga, as we left the NSW coast winding through the National Park we realised this would be the last   we would see of the green forests until we hit the outskirts of Adelaide and the hills, in all the Hume Highway was a pleasant run and an easy ...
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