The return leg...

Tuesday 15 to Sunday 20 February

We'd pre-packed the ute the night before, planning a quick breakfast of Up-n-Go to get a early start on the 910km drive from Esperance to Eucla. We threw the bedrolls and tent into the ute and left around 6:30am, grabbing some extra McDonalds along the way! The drive was pretty uneventful, taking us around 10.5hrs, we arrived in Eucla tired and checked into our basic room, the bed was shocking and sagged in the middle.

Lawrie took the old highway down the scarp to the Eucla National Park, checking out the old telegraph repeater station while dropping tyre pressures. The sand was soft but Silver showed her prowess by not getting bogged...at least there was mobile reception as a backup. While it was quite blowy, the water was clear and cold, with the setting sun providing great lighting.

Looking down the old highway to the Nat Park.

The old telegraph station.

The sand dunes are slowly swallowing up the building.

An old pole, shorter due to moving dunes, looking East to the sandhills.

The track to the beach.

The old Jetty, used to supply the station before the road.

The whale at Eucla roadhouse

Wednesday we drove to Port Augusta (960km) and checked into our motel, which was close to the local pub for dinner. We were advised to keep the door locked during the night as the night before a bushy who just shut the screen door awoke to find a drunk guy passed out on the floor...We went down the pub and Lawrie had a local King George whiting, Kitty a salad, before walking back up the hill past the police (lights blazing) letting someone out of a paddy wagon and hit the hay.

Thursday we took the short (415km) drive to Broken Hill, which, while technically in NSW, runs SA time, news and apparently plays AFL. This is fair enough given NSW didn't want to provide services in the early days, but wanted the royalties! We spent some time in the Pro Hart gallery, made our way to the visitors centre, then headed to our B&B, the Caledonian, which was a pub in the early days! It was a very comfortable place, homely and very old school cool inside.

View across Broken Hill from a spoil pile.

Honey I shrunk the Kitty?

We awoke to a great breakfast on Friday, complete with espresso and home made jams, including a tasty but different lime marmalade. We drove to Dubbo, chosen because of the zoo, which was around 750km away. It turns out we made a great decision with our hotel as it was located near the river & bikepath to the zoo. Dinner was the local bowls club -  Coronas were less than $5 so Lawrie was happy!

Saturday we jumped on our bikes and rode out to the Zoo, around 2.5km away. We arrived as they opened the gates and made it to the counter before most of the hoards could get out of their cars. We got coffees and watched the monkeys, letting the majority of the group get ahead of us. You can drive, 4wd golf buggy, ride bikes or walk around the zoo. The road is one way (for cars at least!) and around 6.5km in length. The majority of people drove the short distances between the exhibits as it was a very hot day!

The view from our coffee table

Black rhino Mum & Bub

They have a massive herd of giraffe

These white rhinos had a little scuffle

Massive, solid but lean and pure muscle

Some people will recognise this view

Mum & Bub

Elephants

Meerkat, censored version

Galapagos Tortoise

After a whole day at the zoo we rode back, collapsed in the air conditioned comfort of our hotel room and chilled out, preparing for Sunday and the final 860km drive. We made it back unscathed, spending the next week catching up with family, friends & planning our first stop, California.

Esperance

Saturday 12 to Tuesday 15 February

We packed up the ute early on Saturday and headed into the Farmers Markets at Albany, they had heaps of nice organic produce so we collected a heap of veggies, including some heirloom carrots, for the nights planned stir fry. On our way out of town we stopped via Camping World, who were having a sale. We looked at sleeping bags but Kitty settled for a self inflating travel pillow...you could spend so much money in that store!

The drive to Esperance was uneventful, taking the scenic route via the Stirling Ranges. We arrived at the caravan park and proceeded to squeeze into our campsite. We were surrounded on both sides by sites with multiple tents and cars, then the trucks came. The park is located adjacent to the port road so all afternoon (and night, so it turns out) we had trucks hitting the compression brakes, diesel locos and trucks accelerating away from the port. Not 100% happy with this we walked to the beach to chill out, picking up some beer and Maccas for dinner on the way back. (So it's close to everything!)

A tanker at the port

Sunday morning we had a sleep in before driving to Cape Le Grand National Park, first stop, Le Grand Beach. The weather forecast was indeed correct (for once on our trip) and we had beautiful clear skies, with a very strong Easterly. This didn't stop this magic beach looking amazing, the water was crystal clear and with the very white fine sand looked spectacular. As this was the start of the day, with walks planned, Lawrie resisted the urge to swim.

Kitty at Le Grand Beach

We headed back to Frenchmans Peak, had Subway for lunch & discussed the climb up, specifically whether it was "windy" or not (climbing when windy not advised). We started the climb up the eastern face but about 3/4 the way up the wind really picked up, gusting to 40+ kts and making the climb very difficult as you were pushed sideways & forwards on a steep rock slope. We took shelter behind a shrub, watched other people descend (one guy sounded like he was parachuting, his jacket was blown about so violently) and headed back down ourselves.

Frenchmans Peak

View from 3/4 the way up.

After that exciting experience we stopped off at Thistle Cove, a very beautiful beach with a 1.5km walk to Lucky Bay (apparently the whitest beach in Australia) to the east. This walk took in some great views but we were continually punching head long into 20-30kt winds so it wasn't the most fun! We walked along the beach at Lucky Bay, dodging squishy seaweed clumps (not shown in any of the tourist photos!) before turning back as sand was getting everywhere!

Whistling Rock looking across Thistle Cove

The beach at Thistle Cove

View from the walk to Lucky Bay

Islands off the coast

Kitty walking into the headwind

Cairn and the islands

One of the rock formations along the walk

Lucky Bay

Once back at Thistle Cove Lawrie got his swim, the water was very cool but refreshing and nice after the walks.

Monday morning was spent planning the return journey to Brisbane, organising hotels and discussing whether a track marked as "4WD only" would really be the best option, even if it did save us a few hundred kilometres. We jumped on our bikes and headed around town, firstly stopping at Tanker Jetty, to see the resident sea lion, Sammy. We had a bite to eat at a local cafe, picked up some red bulls in preparation for Tuesdays early start then started our ride to Twilight Beach, around 7km away.

Looking back to port, tanker docked.

Tanker Jetty

Sammy the sea lion

 The ride started with a big climb up Dempster Head, past West Beach, Fourth Beach then finally to Twilight Beach, where we stopped for a soft serve and water. Great beaches and views!

A view from the ride

The beaches over here are very beautiful

Rocks located out from Twilight Beach

Lawrie heading offroad along a headland

 We arrived back at camp very tired from the riding and relaxed by reading books and surfing the net. With an early start and 900km drive to the WA border planned for Tuesday, we should really make a start packing up... This is the last camping night of our Australia trip. It'll be nice to sleep in a real bed for a while but we'll miss Tenty - she's been pretty good to us.

Albany

Wednesday 9 - Saturday 12 February

We left Denmark around 10am on Wednesday and made our way to Albany. Kitty wanted to stop by the Bush Food Factory on the way but it was full with a coach of oldies so we just kept going. We got into Albany and went to the visitor information centre where Lawrie saw a marron farm brochure. He'd been wanting to eat marron the whole time we were on the south coast so we went there for lunch.

Lawrie and his marron

Seeing as we were so close, after lunch we made our way to Two Peoples Bay Nature Reserve. Talk about amazing scenery - white as white sand and crystal clear water. We split up at Little Beach - Kitty went for a walk and Lawrie went swimming. This may not have been the best idea as Lawrie got hit by a few unexpected waves and got dumped (a lot). He made it out ok though and we went back to Albany to claim our spot at the Middleton Beach Caravan Park

Two Peoples Bay

Little Beach

Lawrie at Little Beach before he nearly died

Kitty at Little Beach

View from the walk trail

Rockpools next to Little Beach

View of the big rocks at Two Peoples from the other side

Just Perfect (except the water is freezing)

It was the first nice day we'd had in ages so we decided to make the most of it by cycling along the beach to Emu Point. We got icecreams there and Lawrie went for a swim. We set up our tent when we got back and had a pretty quiet night.

Beach on our ride

Emu Point

By Thursday the weather had turned bad again so instead of walking we did a driving tour of the area south-west of town. Our first stop was the Great Southern Distilling Company where we got an awesome platter for  only $25, did a tour and Lawrie sampled whiskey, gin, whisky liqueur, plum liqueur, meen vodka (a bit too peppery) and absinthe (nice, but low on alch, some WA rule). The whiskeys are all small batch (big bucks) and the gin is in the top 10 in the world. Needless to say - it was Kitty's turn to drive after lunch.

Whiskey (Vodkas to rear)

Lawrie drinking his M29

Lunch - all this for $25!

Heading further south we reached the Albany wind farm. It sits on the hills above the ocean and produces 22MW or half of the town's energy needs. It was blowing a gale and it was a pretty calm day so they chose a good spot.

Wind Turbines

Kitty at the top of hill

View from under the turbines - it was pretty freaky watching
those big blades from this angle

View down to the Southern Ocean

Our last major stop for the day was the Gap and Natural Bridge. They're basically just cool rock formations.

The Gap

Kitty at the Gap

Lawrie holding up a section above the natural bridge

Natural Bridge

View to the West

Friday we awoke to howling wind and rain lashing sideways, we'd planned to head  Porongurup National Park for a walk to Castle Hill, complete with ladders etc but decided the weather would get the best of us. We settled for more trip planning, lunch in town & a movie (The Kings Speech). On our way back we stopped off at Wignalls Winery, there were no MAME cabinets or redheads in sight! They made some very nice wines so we added a Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Tawny Port to our collection.