Woods Family Holiday: 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