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Published: March 11th 2007
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I'm way behind at this stage, but I've finally updated my blog! Last time I wrote we were about to take off on our roadtrip to Perth. Here's how we got on...
Friday February 2nd, 550km
Perth -> Coolgardie
We picked up the van the rental company on Friday morning and after lunch we were on the road out of Perth and headed east, windows down and the music blaring!
We drove 550km until dark and ended up in a small mining outpost called Coolgardie a small bit west of Kalgoorlie. Calgoorlie was a has huge wide streets apparently so that the camel trains in the old days could turn around on the main street. We parked up in a campsite and headed to the local hotel/bar. There we met a bunch of locals who spent their time winding up the barmaids. One older guy kept pretending his glass eye had fallen behind the bar and had the girls searching all over the floor for it! Very funny at the time!
Saturday February3rd, 755km
Coolgardie -> Madura Pass
We headed for the huge open cut mine at Kalgoorlie on the advice of the locals from the night
Small Road Train
most had three trailers but this one looked like it had lost one before. It was pretty spectacular to see how deep it was - about 300m now and eventually will be 500m. We got to Madura Pass after driving through some serious heat of about 40 degrees celcius. Madura Pass is right at the beginning of the Nullarbor Plain which is one the few places in the world where you can see the curvature of the earth. It wasn’t really very noticeable but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt
Sunday February4th, 715km
Madura Pass -> Ceduna
We crossed the Nullarbor and also took a detour to Cactus beach famous for its surfing breaks. On the detour we saw some amazing scenery of dried out salt lakes backed by greenery, huge sand hills and blue sky.
We arrived into the town of Ceduna and it will be remembered mainly for the number and ferocity of its mosquitoes. This was the night of the Ireland Wales game but there was nowhere to watch it. However, we had minute by minute SMS updates from Thomas O’Brien back in Ireland - better than the BBC match tracker! We were bitten all over during the night and it took us about three days to
get all the mozzies out of the van.
Monday February 5th, 472km
Ceduna -> Port Augusta
We ended up in Port Augusta, the crossroads of Australia. From here you can head north to Ayers Rock (Uluru) or carry on eastwards. We met a bunch of French who cooked us a great dinner that night.
Tuesday February6th, 699km
Port Augusta -> Robe
In the morning after packing up, we dropped by the Outback Museum and learned a lot about the early explorers of the outback and the building of the railway link to Perth. By this stage of the trip we were getting pretty tired and it felt like we were driving all day. Well, we were driving all the time, usually about 8 hours a day So we extended the rental by 2 days to give us a bit more time to relax.
Wednesday 7th February, 340km
Robe ->Warnambool
We arrived here and booked in to see a laser show at Flagstaff Hill about the sotry of a ship full of immigrants that had sunk here in the 1800s. It was pretty good but only lasted an hour.
Thursday 8th February
Warnambool -> Lorne
This section
Superpit, Kalgoorlie, WA
one of the largest open cut mines in the world was along the Great Ocean Road and definitely had some great scenery. We stopped off at the main sights along the way. The London Arch used to be the London Bridge but in 1990 one of the arches collapsed leaving an island with a single arch. Apparently there were 2 tourists on the island when the arch collapsed. I’d say they got some interesting photos!
Friday 9th February
Lorne -> Ballarat
We visited the surfing museum in Torquay which was great but we didn’t have enough time to see everything. We parked up in Ballarat that night. It’s one of the goldrush towns and produced more gold than almost anywhere else in Austalia. There a family connection because it’s also the town where my great great grandfather on the Meagher side lived and worked with his family during the goldrush.
Saturday 10th February
Ballarat -> Melbourne
We visited Sovereign Hill, the recreation of a mining town in Ballarat. We were expecting it to be very cheesy, but it was actually very well done and a bit of fun. Gordon was delighted with himself because they accepted his expired student card and he got a 20% discount.
We parked
that night at a campsite on the outskirts of Melbourne and had a quiet night.
Sunday 11th February
Melbourne -> Melbourne via Ballarat
I had forgotten my washbag in Ballarat so we drove back to the campsite to get it. Luckily, it was only 100km so I was glad I hadn’t forgotten it on a 700km day!
That night we parked outside the Irish pub so we were perfectly located for the Ireland France game that night. Unfortunately the game was a disaster but at least we hadn’t far to go to get to bed that night!
Monday 12th February
Melbourne -> somewhere near Canberra
Nothing remarkable about this day… just more driving. I can’t even remember the name of the town we stayed in!
Tuesday 13th February
Canberra -> Sydney
Canberra is a remarkable city in its own right. The site of the nation’s capital was selected in 1908 as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne. It’s a completely planned city with the sole industry of government and all the administration that goes with it. The roads form concentric circles around the city centre so it’s hard to get lost.
We visited the War Memorial in
Canberra which is a very extensive museum detailing all the wars Australia have been involved in. We were surprised to learn the extent of Australia’s involvement in WWI and WWII especially but also the Vietnam and Korean wars because it hardly gets a mention in our history books at school. We were at the parliament for question time and got into the public gallery to see PM John Howard under fire for his comments about US Senator Obama (he said that Al Quaeda would be hoping for Obama to win the presidency because of his plans to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan) among other things. That was huge news here but I don’t think it was such a big deal in the US. It was hilarious to see the members heckling and carrying on like rowdy schoolkids. Six or seven of the opposition were thrown out of the chamber while we were there!
In the evening, we drove the final three hours to Sydney and the 5300km roadtrip was over!
Sydney deserves a separate blog and I’ll get to it soon.
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Sounds very interesting about the public gallery ye got into, definitely something to remember!! You've taken some great photos also.... your campervan is pretty rockin'!!