Adventure Before Dementia

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DAY 154

It was a clear and very cold night, we awoke this morning with a heavy dew on the tent, and you could see the droplets clearly sitting on the canvas as we were lying in bed. With the shutters open we allowed the sun to stream in and warm our space.

Our “Noisy” neighbours had not surfaced as early as we expected there was no sound from them and neither could we hear their generator. However we could hear a few muffled voices from Mark and the kids in their swags just a short distance from us. Andy looked out the window and chuckled, he said all he could see where four faces poking out of the tops of the swags, and they looked like Caterpillars.

Andy hopped out of bed and on went the kettle, I stayed in the warmth for a short while longer until I heard the kettle whistle, actually it remained whistling, Andy had obviously wandered off, so I hurriedly dressed, then outside I could hear voices, Mark and the children had come over with their mugs, we all sat and drank our morning tea as the sun got stronger and dried out the heavy dew.

Mark told us that when he worked in the outback, he used to round up cattle on horseback, the station that he worked on was in fact larger than Denmark!, and there were 5 people there.
It seems hard to comprehend a farm that size, but with a country 32.8 times larger than England it is no surprise, there are several stations of that size, so remote that sometimes these areas are not visited for months.

Time was ticking and Scott, Tim and Cain were anxious to go to the beach, there was surfing and fishing to be done! Sitting around talking to adults was clearly not the order of the day.

Andy and I wanted to get a move on to; we needed to get packed up and on the road for the final part of our journey to Ceduna and there was a lot to see on the way up.

Another healthy fruit and yoghurt breakfast and we quickly packed away. You can see how caring Mark is toward his children and how much he cares about the fact that Cain’s leg is a fresh injury and does not want him to put any weight on it, so Mark was rigging up a sling on the quad so that his foot could be supported, the only problem being that it was his braking foot, so not sure how he was going manage that, except I heard Mark tell him not to go fast so that he slow down to stop.

Cain has a real big interest in horses and in fact seems to have become a good horseman in terms of being able to round up cattle, sadly his injury prevents him from doing one of his favourite things over Easter. Tim is into cricket, sometimes Mark has to leave home in the dark mornings to take his son to an away cricket match, which can often be over 100kilometres drive. Scott is into motorbikes and surfing and Thomas who is 18 is into women, but so he should be at his age!
Mark always seems to be busy for the kids, but his downtime involves his passion of Bowls which is by far a more sedate pace.

We say our goodbyes as they head off to the beach, but just as we pull away, we move their swags and chairs over to our site to show that it is taken, otherwise by the time they get back someone else will have taken the site that we vacated.

Leaving Walkers Rocks and back on the B100 we drive a short distance up to Venus Bay, we divert for a quick look, another beautiful bay, a small place but you can see is starting to become more of a beach resort for tourists.

From there we now head toward Streaky Bay, but we divert from the B100 to look at Murphy’s Haystacks, I think it was said by a coachman a long time ago that he thought they were haystacks put there by the farmer, but they were far from it, the formations of rock had been carved out by the wind. We paid $2.00 each to go and have a walk around, there was nobody collecting money, there was an honesty box that you put your money in when you went through the gate. There were toilets and a picnic shelter provided, so you cannot grumble about the value for money, it was a very hot day now and the flies were a real nuisance!

We then picked up the dirt track to drive toward the coastline and on to Streaky Bay, there were about 40km of track to follow. We had thought about going to see the Seals at Point Labbatt, but the signs were misleading, one said that it was 9 kilometres and then when we got to another set of signs it said 17 kilometres, so we chose to skip that idea.

We drove up to a set of crossroads at a small place called Calca and saw a deserted house opposite a church and a village hall which both looked as if they were used. The house was in a bad state of repair and had clearly not been lived in for years, there was also rusty old cars in the driveway, and scattered around the land.

A little further up the road, we both saw at the same time a long dark object in the road moving very slowly. We immediately recognised it as a skink, so we both jumped out to look at our find, the skink suddenly remains motionless, however as soon as we move he opens his mouth and hisses at us.

We leave him alone and move on, driving through more conservation areas and salt lagoons, stunning views and yet another skink wanders across the road, so again we jump out and survey our find, this one is a little bit more feisty and is quite angry at our intrusion, so after a couple of photos we leave him in peace and drive on.

At Streaky Bay it is very quiet, but then it is also Good Friday today so very little will be open and there is not a soul around, except for those that you can see bobbing around in the tin boats in the bay fishing. Streaky Bay is a little bit more built up and modern than Venus Bay, some very nice houses overlook the bay.

We move on and drive past Smokey Bay, we both now feel the need to get to our booked campsite at Ceduna so that we can get showered, get the laundry done and get ourselves prepared for tomorrows journey. On the way we see another skink about to set foot out into the road, fortunately they walk so slowly so we missed him, he lives to fight another day (we hope!)

It is with anticipation that we drove in to the town of Ceduna, people had described it to us as a town straight from the wild west, with people fighting out in the street, burnt out cars everywhere and just a total lack of lawlessness, was it people’s descriptions or was it our vivid imaginations mixed with a sense of fear?

We pulled in to the site and found our pitch, nothing fancy, far from it, but we needed a stop over after 2 nights free camping Caroline was starting to smell. Everything needed to be prepared before we again hit the highway for our longest stretch yet.

However a problem arose as soon as we found that we were going to be pitched next to the fish cleaning area and the crab cooker, Caroline was far from impressed and the pungent smell of fish was enough to put me off, so we went over to the office and asked if we could move further up the pitch which was still vacant. They said yes, someone else was coming in, but they will move them to our original pitch (poor them).

We are on what they call an overflow site as they are obviously busy over Easter. We needed a very long cable in order to reach power and we have no water tap, they said that we could use the tap in the car cleaning area.

Once we were pitched we showered and changed, Caroline headed for the laundry with a huge bag, 3 loads needed doing. However she returned promptly saying that all the machines were being used, I guess everyone has the same idea. This may cause us a delay if we cannot get our washing done and dried today.

On the way into town, we stopped at the office to ask if we are able to stay another night if needed, the chap behind the desk said yes that would be ok as we are tucked away in the corner as they actually have another two people booked out on this site.

We hoped that there might be a supermarket open, but being Good Friday that was too hopeful. There was nothing else open except a dine in/take away pizza joint so we ordered what we fancied and sat and looked at the map whilst we were waited. Twenty minutes later they were ready exactly as the lady had advised us. We drove down to the sea front and sat there scoffing our pizza’s in the truck, and when the boxes were empty we drove back to the trailer.

Caroline disappeared to see if any washing machines were now free, she took a while. When she came back she said she had been chatting to Peter and Sandy who were touring South Australia. Not quite Grey Nomads, they are retired, but they chose to do one state at a time so that they could cover everything. Peter and Sandy come from Sydney, their caravan slogan reads, “Adventure before Dementia”. They will not cross the Nullarbor this time, they will travel down the Eyre Peninsula instead as the Nullarbor will be done when they visit Western Australia hopefully later this year.

I had already uploaded my photo’s to our blog page and also typed the blog, all that had to be done was Caroline had to cast her editing eye over it, take all the swear words out and make it sound sensible. I was absolutely knackered and had crawled in to bed at around 8.00pm fully dressed, well in shorts and T-shirt, (and that’s all I remember until 7.00 am in the morning).

As I was making the final edit to the blog and uploading I could hear that Andy had fallen asleep, I was not going to wake him up as there was no point, I was sure that he would sleep through until morning. I wrapped up and decided to get into bed at 9.00, though I was not tired yet I wanted to get warm, so I lay in bed and read until just after 10.00 when it was lights out.

Andy never stirred.

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Photos

The Twins
Cain and Tim, Cain is the tacker on the bike with a broken foot, whilst Tim tries out the crutches

Quad & Trailer
The trailer is loaded up with fishing gear and pulled down the beach by the quad

Mark
Good old Dad,helping the boys out

Final Adjustments
Mark makes final adjustments to the quad

Stirrup
Mark had made a stirrup for Cains brken foot to be supported whilst on the quad

3 Swags
The 3 swags they slept in last night

Skink
These skinks just bask in the middle of the road

Skink
There isn't that much traffic but that's not the point

Skink
We were lucky to see two of these today.

Church at Calica
On the way to Streaky Bay.

Run Down
Sad but we do see a lot of old properties just withering away out here.

Murphy's Haystacks
These are rocks formed by the wind.