Woods Family Holiday: 2013

Thursday 28 November 2013

At Home for over a month now.....here is what I should have posted when we arrived home.

Well we arrived home Wednesday afternoon (2nd oct). It was a weird feeling driving into Kapunda for the first time in over four months. We did likes the new stone wall and miniature mine chimney that welcomed us just outside town. When we pulled up and opened the back gate the boy’s ran around the yard calling out in excitement about seeing their green lawn, chooks and especially Tiger, their cat. After a quick bounce on the trampoline they all went to look at their rooms and them back outside for another look and run around the yard. I was expecting them to ask if they could all sleep in the same room together after doing this for so long.

By the numbers

Kilometers traveled 18780

Days on the road 132

Fuel used 2350L (highest $2.99/l at Kalumburu)

National parks visited 14

set up/packed up camp 60 - my guess was 30, that's a good thing

Campsites with waterviews 9 – not enough

Flat tyres 1 – on trailer (slow leak)

Powered campsites 5 – 16 nights (paid for 4 we did not need in Broome!!!

Shoes lost 4 pairs (Samuel 2, Lachlan 2)

Shoes found 1 pair of thongs for Samuel

Occy straps found on the road 2

Boardshorts found 1 pair

Sunglasses down the waterfall 1 – Susan at Mataranka

Shoes down the waterfall 1 –(woodsy)– but saved by jumping in with clothes on

Fish caught and eaten 0

Fish eaten, supplied by others 3

Well what a great experience we had. WA surprised us with it's fantastic scenery and changing landscapes with the rugged Kimberly area and Cockburn Ranges to the beautiful beaches of the damper peninsular and deep gorges of the Pilbara. Not to mention the Coral coast and shark bay area. I could go on. Anyway we did leave some places to go back to and some we will definitely want to see again. Most of all we made it home safely all together without injuries and no car trouble.....thanks SsangYong

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Back in SA

The end of the trip is looming fast and just to slow it down a little (and of course cause it was convieniently the right time of day) we stopped the night at Fowlers Bay. A great last stop, huge sand dunes loom over the little town. The boys had great fun trying to sandboard down them. The next morning we headed off with another family who we have crisscrossed the last few weeks with, the Francis’, over the sand dunes in 4wd, top views and great fun as we explored the peninsula and found Australian sealions and New Zealand furseals. We then headed for Ceduna and caught up with friends, Greg and Sonya just south of there at Perlubie. It was fantastic to catch up with them, we stayed the night so had time to visit the beach and enjoy the views over Streaky bay as well as catch up. The boys were very impressed by Sonya’s snake especially when she fed it a rat (defrosted and warmed up).

The next day we headed straight for Pt Pirie and arrived in the afternoon had a big catch up with Woodsys sister - Chub, Gil, Patrick and Ellen…………..so we are right back where we started nearly as this was our first stop on the start of our big adventure. We are just heading down to Kadina to catch up with Woodsy’s parents and then we are home………………

On the way to Fowlers Bay

Coastal python at Greg and Sonya's

Perlubie beach

Greg and me

Greg Sonya and to boys

Across the Nullabor

We left Kalgoorlie, stopped into Kambalda and looked over the massive salt lakes from the lookout. Next stop was Norseman for lunch and then we headed east across the Nullabor. Unsurprisingly we found the longest straight stretch of road in Australia. We stopped in at Eucla and had a walk around the old telegraph station that the sand dunes are slowly reclaiming. We finally crossed back into SA…….”we’re back in our own land” Lachlan said. We loved the views of the Bunda cliffs of the Great Australian Bight and spent some time watching the Southern right whales Mums and bubs club at the Head of the Bight, there were about 16 mother’s and calves there, really close in to the cliffs so we had a great view of them. One of the calves even put on a little display, breaching and slapping its tail around.

GPS advising the next turn in 1197km!!! 1928 km from home

Random camp on the Nullabor

Telegraph station

Great Australian Bight

Whales at the head of the bight

Interesting camp on the Nullabor

Wave Rock to Kalgoorlie

Unfortunately the sun did not shine on us at Wave Rock so we had a quick walk in the wind and light rain around Hyden rocks which includes Wave Rock, actually really impressive. Hyden rocks itself was really nice, a big granite formation, we went over to another even bigger granite formation called the Humps, would have been great to have a big walk around there but the weather was not looking good and we wanted to make it to Kalgoorlie.

Kalgoorlie was great, the sun finally came out and it was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me as my family lived there for about 7 years when I was young. We went and checked out the HUGE!! Superpit, and watched the tonka trucks in action, boys all loved it. We went to the superpit shop and museum, we got to climb up on one of the huge dump trucks, pan for gold (even found a couple of specks – turns out they put a few in there for the tourists), checked out the gold nuggets in the vault of the local WA museum, looked at all the rocks in the School of mines museum as well as having a bit of a drive around to look at some of the old places I remember. Kalgoorlie has lots of beautiful old buildings as well as some great history but the boys really liked the historical old lolly shop the best.

We have left quite a lot to do here for the next trip