Kites on the Eyre, The Nullabor, Fruit Nazis, Glowing Frisbe, Edge of the world, Crazy Climate.


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Oceania » Australia » Western Australia » Esperance
February 27th 2006
Published: March 8th 2006
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After Broken Hill we head south towards the Eyre Peninsula, we had planned to miss this out save about 700ks on our trip, but the lack of ocean in the last 2 weeks and a gentel sea breeze encouraged us to head to Coffin Bay. The grueling 800k slogg was worth ariveing to a swim on a white beach and then rolling down sand dunes, one night here and then north again towards Ceduna.
We stop for a walk on some vast salt lakes, brown on the edge fadeing to sunbleached white and finaly pink in the middle, facinateing. Another stopp sees us at Streaky Bay not far from the famous surf location known as 'Cactus', the bay is shelterd from the Antarticb swell by an island but not shelter from the 20kts fresh breeze. We talk to a couple of local fishermen, who in a fishermanly way tut and suck their teeth, 'Ahh boys, ya wana watch out, thers a eight foot White Pointer out there, and Death Adders on the island' Jim and i look at eachother, at the shallow blue water, at these haggers weather old fish men and grinn. Kites out and we zip about on the glass flat water that is only waist deep, we see Stingrays skimming beneath us keeping pace with our boards, checking us out.

Sandy and Salty we check into the worst campsight yet in Ceduna the Eastern edge of the Massive chunk of flat limestone that is the Nullabor. We pitch tents on gravel amoung a plague of Silver Surfers, Winabago engins and Bingo machines idle late into the night.

The horizon streaches impossibly far, the black top a shimmer of refraction shooting directly up as we roll it, cricky! Out here the sky is realy big, as are the RoadTrains that hurtle past us on inane missions of commerse, the SSurfers and jother civy roadusers wave at us as we go by, maybe its the Jack still on our Airial, but i think its a subconsious desire to have some kind of human conection in this totaly lonley and in hospitable enviroment, i pity anybody dooing this trip alone.

We stop a couple of times to look of the edge, 100ft of cliff streight down to deep cold dark blue and thundering sea. This is where the storms from the south pole hit the chunk of limestone. This is where a few people each year go 'missing'. This is where Earth and Water meet, this is The Edge Of The World.

We cross two time zones in a day and enter WA, leaving SA in a blast of exhaust and dust, at the border were forced to eat our fruit, peel our potatos, wash our letuice and surender our honey. The thought of a $1000 fine per offending item smugled is enough for us to conform to this rigrous fruit facism!

We make camp deep into the Nullabor, driving a little into the bush to find a depression hiden from the road, we make fire, cook. We give the night truckers a chance to talk about UFO's as we play with our glowing frisbe in the darkness. The stars come out and we are treated to the kind of sky our medievil ancestors use to wonder at and think up religon. Im sure somewhare up there the gods of Keat's Hyperion poem are still at war.

From the Nullabor we drive on overtaking big mining equipment, we take a left and head south, 200k's later and we arive at our first realy destination, Esperance. On arival we hit the bech, small kites and full wetsuits in this cold southerly, Esperance is a big destination for Australians in the summer, the Antartic weather keeps the temperature and water cool, while the sun beats down. The difference between sun and shade here is very strange, almost like being in the mountains. The cold water here atracts the larger fish, the Baramundi and Tuna, wich in turn atract the toothy fish, but with the wind having no obstructions between the Antartic ice shelf and here, i will be on the water no in it!

The crazy climate here will encourage us to stay a few days before slowly following the coast on.

Much love to all, take care.



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28th February 2006

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Tot: 0.104s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 11; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0608s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb