Nearly on the Nullarbor

 

Things are starting to get exciting!  My future travelling companions, Phill and Liz, have arrived today and tomorrow we set off to drive across the Nullarbor.  Yay!  I have no idea what phone service I will have, so I'd better get this blog up to date ... sorry, it will be a bit rushed ...

You know how I said I'd found a Japanese restaurant in Quorn?  BIG mistake!  This delicious looking okonomiyaki (pancake with chicken) made me quite unwell.  Can you have only a little bit of food poisoning?  

Leaving Quorn, I headed onto the Eyre Peninsula where I meandered my way to a great free camp at Yeldulknie Weir.  There was a lovely walk around the small weir, which used to supply water to the surrounding towns, lots of birds and flowering plants and even a flushing toilet!  And I was the only one there!  The only drawback was that the adjacent paddock had 1080 signs up so Maggie got to try out her head-cage for the first time.  

Beautiful metal sculpture in Cleve

Yelduknie Weir

The campsite at the weir

This is the point of the trip that went a little differently than planned.  So, I was driving along a fairly corrugated dirt road when ... suddenly two of my internal lights fell off!  Oops!  I tried to put them back on but they just wouldn't do it.  What to do?  I googled caravan repair people and discovered that I had to go to Port Lincoln.  Grrrr!  To cut a long story short, the lovely Kevin fixed my lights, pointing out that they were only stuck to the walls with double-sided tape!  He checked the rest (yep! tape), fixed them all and charged me $20!  

View at Tumby Bay as I waited for my yiros

Cummins had some amazing mosaics at a small park

Van fixed, it was time to hit the beach ... Sheringa Beach.  Oh, what a delight!  There was a lovely little campground, sheltered amongst the dunes, and a 50 metre walk to a long, sandy beach.  Maggie was in heaven!  I stayed for three nights, walking in the soft sand each morning and generally relaxing.  

The dunes behind the beach were enormous

Van Morrison, the campground, beach and dunes

There were singing honeyeaters everywhere

With a couple more detours along some corrugated dirt roads (the lights are still up, thanks Kevin) I wandered along the coast, finally stopping at Venus Bay.  Maggie got the fright of her life here when a pelican took exception to her being on HIS beach.  Pelicans are rather large and look very scary when they open their wings and beak and run at your quivering border collie.  So we avoided the beach after that and instead had a lovely walk along the cliffs, waving at the dolphins.

I had to revisit Murphy's Haystacks before heading to Wirrulla, to camp overnight.  That will be a good place to go, I thought.  It's got a pub (with meals!) and a shower and a store.  Hmmmm.  The shower was ok, the ferals in the campground were a bit dodgy but ok.  But the pub!  As I walked over to inquire what time they were serving meals, the man behind the bar said "you better not be bringing that f@#%in' dog into this f@#%in' pub."  Oh.  I did go back later (without Maggie) only for him to say to me "why'd you bring a f@#%in' book in here?"  Needless to say, I didn't stay.  Dinner was a packet of chips in the pleasant company of my dog.

Wirrulla has a jetty.  Strangely, it doesn't have any water.  It all began as a joke - with a local saying the only difference between Wirrulla and coastal towns is that they had jetties.  So they built one here.  

The red cap gum - Eucalyptus erythrocorys - these are the vibrant red flower buds ...

... that burst into these beautiful big yellow flowers.

Murphy's Haystacks (a group of inselbergs to the scientifically minded)

The Wirrulla Pub ... a place to f@#%in' avoid

So now I'm in Ceduna.  I've washed my clothes, washed the bed linen, washed the dog and spring-cleaned the van.  And I'm ready to go!  Nullarbor ... here I come!