Travel for the Over 30s

Yesterday we drove the longest straight stretch of road in Australia and got as far asCocklebiddy Road house.

But we weren’t staying there! We called for a lift from Eyre Bird Observatory – which is on the coast 50km south of Highway. With a 4wd you can drive the whole way – but with a 2WD you drive about 30km in on a dirt road and park. The 4WD part of the road is a narrow track down the escarpment which is edge of the limestone and then soft sand across the sand dunes.

Just a note on outback driving - your 2WD will be fine driving this road - if you have been told the road is open. This does NOT mean you can drive at 80km/hr or even 50km/hr - you drive to the conditions - which vary a lot. There are lots of fist sized rocks on the road - if you are worried about the rocks hitting your car slow down! If there is a hole in the road - drive around it!

Eyre Bird Observatory is run by Australian Bird Observatory in the original buildings of the overland telegraph station which connected Adelaide with Perth long before there was a road or railway.

The building dates from 1897 – and was the accommodation for the telegraph operators. The house is the original shell – it had been stripped over the years but is has been restored to a comfortable though not luxurious place. They can manage 18 visitors but we were the only ones staying – its a like a remote b&b – except no electric toasters, microwave, hairdryers or jug – too much for the solar power. The beach is magnificent – clothes optional and not life guard patrolled I’d say! And there are several walking tracks some of which have flagged and described plants on them.

The food was good – the dining room is either the back verandah or the dining room depending on the temperature outside. The price includes pickup from the end of the 2WD road, dinner,bed and breakfast.

Eyre is also a weather observatory so you can look up their temperature statistics here but are proud to have recorded the lowest temperature ever in Western Australia  -7C

Well yesterday we are we drove from Perth to Kalgoorlie today we actually reach the Nullarbor Plane!

Mon 22 Dec

Kalgoorlie – Eyre Bird Observatory

6:45am – 3:00pm

+1hr Eyre daylight savings time

Hit rush hour heading south to Kambalda – 3 or 4 cars passed us going to work and knowing the road well.

Norseman – camel town. Just like malls kill off local businesses and traditional shopping areas in town, large modern petrol stations can destroy an entire town’s shopping if the passing motorist doesn’t drive the 6km extra into town.

Some genius in Norseman commissioned the camel sculpture to encourage people into town an it was an excellent idea. Unusually its actually quite evocative. Norseman is tiny and still has the remnants of its past glory days.

Heading up the Beacon Hill lookout, will give you a rare sight in these parts – a view! The most prominent feature are the huge tailings dumps around town but you will also see lakes  in the distance – which generally has lot more salt than water.

Now here’s a hint if you don’t have any water in the car, support the local businesses and buy some. You won’t get it for free anywhere across the Nullarbor – even for the windscreen.

Finally the Nullarbor Plain – it officially starts at Norseman and ends 1209km later in Ceduna South Australia. Its green – well at the moment thanks to record rainfall and low temperatures – global warming doesn’t seem to have caught on here.

There is a 180km of nothing much – then Belladonia Road House - nothing much either but a roadhouse cum restaurant come Skylab museum come caravan park cum motel.

Yes they have a bit of Skylab here – it broke-up over Western Australia – and Belladonia got the publicity coup – Miss America who happened to be visiting Perth at the time also dropped by. Belladonia had its moment of fame and has been living off it ever since. Jimmy Carter rang to apologize and the local shire sent NASA a fine for littering – which they apparently paid.

Just past Belladonia, heading east, the road becomes straight, very straight, straight for 146.6km or as its possibly more charmingly known as the 90 Mile Straight the longest piece of straight road in Australia.

And there are less trees. And its pretty flat. Though not dead flat, that comes later, the limestone, which is what makes the plain is actually quite a broken surface.

Caiguna at the other end of the straight another 180km east of Belladonia is another road house – they don’t have any American space junk – they have to make do with a blow hole – not very unusual as the whole of the Nullarbor is riddled with these things.

After only another 66km is Cocklebiddy which is – yes another roadhouse with caravan park and motel attached. They all look pretty clean and tidy and are quite attractive compared to some we’ve seen. Being on Highway 1 has some cache around here

To be continued …

There are a four ways to travel from Perth to Adelaide - a distance of some 4300km (2670 miles):

• you can fly - a cheap airfare will set you back around A$167 or $99 (Tiger and JetStar fly the Perth Adelaide route) if you get lucky and it will take about 2 hours;
• you take a cruise ship from Fremantle to Adelaide which will take three nights at see to Port Lincoln and then another night to Adelaide;
• you can drive from Perth to Adelaide
• you can take the train from Adelaide to Perth

A flight is a flight and the flight path is south of the land anyway you won’t see much.

The cruise is across one of the roughest pieces of water in the world. I went by boat from Fremantle to Adelaide in 1970 - this is not that story!

Instead over the next few days  I will discuss our double crossing of the Nullarbor: driving from Perth to Adelaide and then returning by train from Adelaide to Perth.

OK the Internet is awash with Top Tips to Save Money on Vacation so lets get a bit more specific. This is going to be an occasional series where I look at ways to save money on your next trip.  They are not prescriptive, they won’t all work - they are just some thoughts which may help. Let me know what your favourite money saving tricks on  vacation transportation are in the comments. And yes I found an excuse to use some of my favorite traffic photos from Vietnam and Cambodia!

Travel Off-Season: avoid school holidays, avoid Christmas-January period in Australia, avoid Europe in July . Going off-season avoidthe crowds too.

Book a Middle of the Night Flight. Often flights are cheaper mid-week, they are often even cheaper at middnight -  I wonder why?

Travel by Bus Not Train: Usually a plane is even cheaper, but if you want to see something than usually a bus is cheaper, especially in Australia and UK.

Travel by Public Transit Not by Taxi:  A taxi is easy, relatively safe way, to travel in a strange town. Sometimes there are no other options - Dubai springs to mind, but that’s rare. Many cities have excellent public transit system, in rush hour its often to take the train from Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport of London’s Heathrow.  Of course you will need to have packed light to take advantage of this.

In many developing countries - don’t use public transit - its really not designed for tourists! Instead hire a tuk-tuk, rickshaw or motorbike rider - and yes they do take luggage, and no there are no safety belts or child seats provided!

Delay Collection  Of Your Car : Don’t collect your car from the airport just to pay for it to be parked at your hotel for a few days while you get over jet-lag and find its easier to use the metro or walk to see town. Delay hiring a car until you are ready to start touring - this can work at either the start or the end of your vacation.Hire the Smallest Car Possible. If there is one of you consider a motorbike or scooter rather than a car. Otherwise hire a small car, it will be cheaper to run, easier to park and cheaper to hire! In some countries - you won’t actually want to drive -an hiring a car with a driver for a  daily rate may well be cheaper than tours or a trying to drive yourself.

Drop Off Your Car At The Same City Sometimes you will get a fantastic price on a relocation of a vehicle, but usually its significantly cheaper to drop off a car in the same place as you hired it.

BookYour Flights and On Ground Transport Early  Booking early will sometimes get you good deals - particularly with budget airlines. There can also be savings with major car companies if you book early.

Use a Local Car Hire Company .  There are normally local hire car companies which are a lot bigger than the familiar names. The cars may be older - but who cares - they still work!

Thanks to the comments from yesterday’s post of rain in the desert especially from Retro Yakking

I thought I’d add a few more photos. In fact I have rather a lot of photos from Cameron’s Corner having not had a lot to do for 3 days while we waiting for the road to open - all because of about 2 hour’s of rain.

So to clarify

• yes it does rain in the desert - just not very often - or very predictably - it can rain any time of the year in most of the Australian desert - in fact we got light rain crossing the Nullarbor a few weeks ago!
• rain is not serious if you are driving on sealed roads but if you are on dirt…

The front come at dawn …

a couple of hours later - yes that is a golf course LOL

Stuck At Camerons Corner
Not sure where it is - neither are many Australians:

There is not a lot at Cameron’s Corner but you can camp for a donation which gives you access to the facilities. I spent the next two days glad we had stayed there rather than the National Park where there was no uncover shelter. We “camped” in the dining room while the earth dried out - although it doesn’t look spectacular it was the ground was more slippery than some of the worst ice I have been on. I was risking the camera taking these shots!

So we were marooned - but it wasn’t that bad

we didn’t run out of beer!

Oh and that 2 hours rain filled their dam  - enough for the next 5 years - and they can accomdate 30 guests in rooms plus campers -that’s pretty impressive!

The most remote we got on our around Australia trip wasn’t the Gibb River Road or Cape York Peninsular. No it was nearly 600km of track from Camerons Corner (where SA/NSW/Qld meet) to Inmainka. All day we saw no one, not a vehicle, nothing. The road had just re-opened (we’d been stuck at Cameron’s Corner for 3 days waiting for it to dry out) and there was water on the track - well across the country really - for the first 50km - we followed a local’s track and it worked (good reason to drive a Toyota in outback Australia - they all have the same track width) but we never saw anyone or that vehicle all day! We got to Inaminka and filled up and told them we had just come thru with no problem and they - said - you can’t have - the track is closed - well duh- perhaps you guys should talk to each other. I got some good photos though! 

Dingo Fence at Cameron’s Corner - which also marks the state border at this point. 

You’ll read the stand advice which is to always drive through mud - but ask the locals - we were told definitly not - they had had to pull a large American Dodge pickup out of this hole a few days earlier so our smaller vehicle had no chance. Instead we followed the single set of tracks that locals had left who were maintaining the fence. BTW this was the easy one and first - I don’t have the photos of the subsequent one’s because I was too busy getting us not bogged! As it was we would have waited at least a day for anyone to come along to help! 

Inaminka its self is on a river, but otherwise the area is about as desolate as it gets! 

We didn’t want our old but reliable Truckie (1985 model) 

To end up like this! Remember towing fees are pretty bloody high in the bush - certainly worth more than the $5k that truckie is worth! 

Angkor Wat is a city lost in time. One of the biggest archeological sites in SE Asia it was not re-discovered by the west until the 19th century, though the local people always knew it was there.

It was therefore spared the ravaging and reuse which has destroyed so much of our archeological heritage: but believe me you it is very,very well discovered these days!

Be warned that the main site with the famous moat surrounding the huge palace is just the start. The standard tour with the local taxi and tuk-tuks is 3-days - but some sites are as far ways as 50km - which can be along way in a 2-stroke tuk-tuk with top speed of not very much!

Try to go early morning to avoid all the tour groups: sunrise is a lot less crowded than sun set, and a lot cooler too! There is little cover at most of the sites so the extreme heat and humidity can be an issue. Hope you like these photos!

This time last year we were home in New Zealand - and the weather was really,really unusual - it was perfect. There was no wind! It was sunny! There was NO wind! ALL day! There is always wind in Wellington - because we cop the wind tunnel effect between the North and South Island. Wellington is as close to a home that I have and I can assure you on good day its absolutely gorgeous: the compact city is built on the sides of the hills that surround the pretty harbour. The trouble for many tourists that there just aren’t that many good days in Wellington! If its miserable - check out these photos and then find a nice warm coffee shop -we do those rather well too!

I took a whole lot of photos intending to do a piece on the interesting sculptures around town. I never got around to writing the piece but the photos are generally self-explanatory so I thought it was time they got dug off the hard drive and published somewhere!

Melbourne has some absolutely gorgeous public buildings. Built on the back of the 1850’s gold rush the city developed to being in the 1870’s the 4th largest in the British Empire and briefly, before Canberra was built, was the original Australian capital city.

The distinctive trams are always a giveaway that you are looking at Melbourne - probably the only city in the world where the city’s busiest shopping  “mall” has huge trams running down the middle of it! Surprisingly few people seem to die - probably because they aren’t exactly quite!

Built on the muddy Yarra River the CBD is about 15km from the sea: St Kilda is the original bayside suburb and also where the ferry for Tasmania leaves from.

Bell Gorge was somewhere we nearly didn’t get to.   It was about a 20min walk in from the car park,  and it had been a very long day and we were looking at having to raise the tent in the dark.  I’d heard a lot about its beauty, and it had been a long hot drive and I really wanted wanted a swim - the air/con had packed up weeks previously.

It was well worth the effort, and for once the photos came out really well because it was so late in the day. The water was a beautiful temperature, and do I am not being brave with the waterfall - there was practically no waterflow so no I couldn’t have gone over the edge! And yes the tourists were just leaving as we arrived so we almost had to ourselves!