The circle has been completed...
It's been awhile since the last post as we got the news about our landlady, back in Sydney, wanting the flat empty whilst she does extensive renovations. We picked ourselves up and began the race back across the southern end of the continent. A not altogether short drive involving around 6,000+ kilometres.
There were still several places I insisted on stopping at eg the Treetop Walk which takes you 60 metres up into the air. The steel walkway hums and swings gently as you meander amongst the Tingle trees. Down below there's the Ancient Empire Walk which is equally magnificent but, instead, you wend your path around the bases of the trees.
Wave Rock was a bit dissapointing. I had no idea it was so short. Not in height but in length. It's also about a 30 second walk from the campsite so it was all over and done with in a few minutes. It was still impressive but not gobsmacking and certainly not really worth the long drive unless you have time on your hands.
Bartholomew's Meadery was magnificent. 8 tastings of a wonderful variety wherein we purchased 2 and tried to find the queen of the hive. They have a hive encased in glass panels jutting into the cellar room with a tube attaching it to the outside of the building. Fascinating. Then there was the Toffee Factory which also sells their own cider. The Pentland Alpaca Stud farm which doubles as an animal petting zoo. Their eclectic collection is rather remarkable. A bison called Tyson, water buffalo, foxes, donkeys, highland cattle, horse, alpacas, kangaroos, ostrich, emu, camel, koalas, plethora of birds, as well as the usual child friendly ones such as goats (who mobbed me and tried to eat my leather bag), guinea pigs, wabbits, calves etc etc.
We also managed to stop at Esperance to catch up with my gorgeous sister Marina. Beautiful beautiful coastline and I met Sammy the seal who lolls about off the jetty, right beneath the fisherman's cleaning table. Smart seal that!
This was followed by a skip up to Kalgoorlie which we didn't like terribly much. It has very little of it's original colonial buildings about the place now and it's really just another small city in the middle of nowhere. The SuperPit mine was something else to behold though. Descent into Hell is the only thing I can think of to describe the first impression. It's the biggest opencut mine in the southern hemisphere or so I'm led to believe (Zane?) and it looks it. The colours in the late afternoon sun were a beautiful mix of ochres and reds. The plethora of tiny trucks slowly dragging their load up the spiralling roads around the inside turned out to be enormous bohemoths when I espied what I would consider a rather large 4WD Toyota passing by one of the trucks and the true scale could be determined. What was the wierdest sensation turned out to be the incredible din of mechanical noises as you looked over the edge and into the pit. It was just one huge wall of roaring noise.
We left and stayed at Norseman instead. Norseman is the last town before you turn onto the Eyre Highway to cross the Nullarbor. It took us a couple of days to cross and we stayed overnight at Mundrabilla Roadhouse around the back in the deserted campsite. An amazing sky that night. Between the fiery sunset and the mother of pearl sunrise lay an array of the brightest stars I've seen. N, culinary wise, was amazing. We had to eat up all our fruit and veg before we hit quarrantine into SA. The meal at Mundrabilla was to die for as was the enormous stirfry at Penong (just before Ceduna's quarrantine station). I am not getting any thinner!
We drove straight through Port Augusta which completed the first circle on the map (the entire left half of Australia) and headed down to Port Germein for the night. Lovely spot and would've loved to spend a day or so there. The local birdlife had a feed up as we watched them jumping up from the ground, into the radiator and the grill to eat the fried crickets and other bugs. There was a plague of sorts on the Nullarbor and for quite some distance the highway seemed to bob about as we drove through the clouds of crickets (perhaps locusts) that had assembled on the tarmac.
Heading inland we reached Renmark where I became nostalgic and we spent a full day visiting the family history embedded in this town. My great-great grandpa Ferdinand Matulick, built a huge homestead there (for someone else) which is now heritage listed and is called Olivewood. It's surrounded by orange & apricot trees as well as olive groves and they still press their own oil there. It's now a museum with the huge barn he also built, located behind the house. The barn is chockablock with tools. We were in pig heaven. I wondered whether I might have family rights to take it back :)
The Matulicks also build paddle steamers and were well respected shipwrights. They build the local bridge and moved the forge from the nearest town up to Renmark where it proved to be more useful. They bought land and grew fruit of many varieties. So ensconced in Renmark are they that the footpath that runs alongside the mighty Murray river is known as the Matulick River Walk. Dad was also born here.
On we pressed. Breakfast in South Australia, food purchased in Victoria, lunch eaten in New South Wales. We were flying! Stopped at Goulburn for the night and reached Kandos via the Tablelands Way the next day. All in all we've driven over 23,000 kilometres around Australia, or rather Neil has! Glas he loves driving!
A couple of days spent in Kandos (other side of the Blue Mtns) getting the van looked at by our friend Jamie, the mechanic, proved to be a wise move. The seal around the differential was leaking and there was oil everywhere. The wheels had kept moving but who knows how long for!
We gently crossed the mountains back into Sydney and thus completed the circle... Stage II...
There were still several places I insisted on stopping at eg the Treetop Walk which takes you 60 metres up into the air. The steel walkway hums and swings gently as you meander amongst the Tingle trees. Down below there's the Ancient Empire Walk which is equally magnificent but, instead, you wend your path around the bases of the trees.
Wave Rock was a bit dissapointing. I had no idea it was so short. Not in height but in length. It's also about a 30 second walk from the campsite so it was all over and done with in a few minutes. It was still impressive but not gobsmacking and certainly not really worth the long drive unless you have time on your hands.
Bartholomew's Meadery was magnificent. 8 tastings of a wonderful variety wherein we purchased 2 and tried to find the queen of the hive. They have a hive encased in glass panels jutting into the cellar room with a tube attaching it to the outside of the building. Fascinating. Then there was the Toffee Factory which also sells their own cider. The Pentland Alpaca Stud farm which doubles as an animal petting zoo. Their eclectic collection is rather remarkable. A bison called Tyson, water buffalo, foxes, donkeys, highland cattle, horse, alpacas, kangaroos, ostrich, emu, camel, koalas, plethora of birds, as well as the usual child friendly ones such as goats (who mobbed me and tried to eat my leather bag), guinea pigs, wabbits, calves etc etc.
We also managed to stop at Esperance to catch up with my gorgeous sister Marina. Beautiful beautiful coastline and I met Sammy the seal who lolls about off the jetty, right beneath the fisherman's cleaning table. Smart seal that!
This was followed by a skip up to Kalgoorlie which we didn't like terribly much. It has very little of it's original colonial buildings about the place now and it's really just another small city in the middle of nowhere. The SuperPit mine was something else to behold though. Descent into Hell is the only thing I can think of to describe the first impression. It's the biggest opencut mine in the southern hemisphere or so I'm led to believe (Zane?) and it looks it. The colours in the late afternoon sun were a beautiful mix of ochres and reds. The plethora of tiny trucks slowly dragging their load up the spiralling roads around the inside turned out to be enormous bohemoths when I espied what I would consider a rather large 4WD Toyota passing by one of the trucks and the true scale could be determined. What was the wierdest sensation turned out to be the incredible din of mechanical noises as you looked over the edge and into the pit. It was just one huge wall of roaring noise.
We left and stayed at Norseman instead. Norseman is the last town before you turn onto the Eyre Highway to cross the Nullarbor. It took us a couple of days to cross and we stayed overnight at Mundrabilla Roadhouse around the back in the deserted campsite. An amazing sky that night. Between the fiery sunset and the mother of pearl sunrise lay an array of the brightest stars I've seen. N, culinary wise, was amazing. We had to eat up all our fruit and veg before we hit quarrantine into SA. The meal at Mundrabilla was to die for as was the enormous stirfry at Penong (just before Ceduna's quarrantine station). I am not getting any thinner!
We drove straight through Port Augusta which completed the first circle on the map (the entire left half of Australia) and headed down to Port Germein for the night. Lovely spot and would've loved to spend a day or so there. The local birdlife had a feed up as we watched them jumping up from the ground, into the radiator and the grill to eat the fried crickets and other bugs. There was a plague of sorts on the Nullarbor and for quite some distance the highway seemed to bob about as we drove through the clouds of crickets (perhaps locusts) that had assembled on the tarmac.
Heading inland we reached Renmark where I became nostalgic and we spent a full day visiting the family history embedded in this town. My great-great grandpa Ferdinand Matulick, built a huge homestead there (for someone else) which is now heritage listed and is called Olivewood. It's surrounded by orange & apricot trees as well as olive groves and they still press their own oil there. It's now a museum with the huge barn he also built, located behind the house. The barn is chockablock with tools. We were in pig heaven. I wondered whether I might have family rights to take it back :)
The Matulicks also build paddle steamers and were well respected shipwrights. They build the local bridge and moved the forge from the nearest town up to Renmark where it proved to be more useful. They bought land and grew fruit of many varieties. So ensconced in Renmark are they that the footpath that runs alongside the mighty Murray river is known as the Matulick River Walk. Dad was also born here.
On we pressed. Breakfast in South Australia, food purchased in Victoria, lunch eaten in New South Wales. We were flying! Stopped at Goulburn for the night and reached Kandos via the Tablelands Way the next day. All in all we've driven over 23,000 kilometres around Australia, or rather Neil has! Glas he loves driving!
A couple of days spent in Kandos (other side of the Blue Mtns) getting the van looked at by our friend Jamie, the mechanic, proved to be a wise move. The seal around the differential was leaking and there was oil everywhere. The wheels had kept moving but who knows how long for!
We gently crossed the mountains back into Sydney and thus completed the circle... Stage II...