Blogs from Esperance, Western Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 10

Our four days at Kalgoorlie were very busy, we did a 200 km outback pub crawl that took us to some unusual pubs as the pictures show. The circuit took us north towards Laverton and back through Coolgardie mostly on red dirt roads. The Kalgoorlie Super Pit is a huuuge open cut gold mine that operates 24/7. They extracts gold at the rate of 16 ounces per ton of rock. I tried to count the number of trucks that were crawling like ants out of the pit and work out the figures at $900 per ounce. I gave up after a while as there were too many zero’s. We stood at the viewing area over looking a hole in the ground that defies description. While we were there they set of a rock blast that shook ... read more

We have now left the outback and are back on the South coast in Esperance. It was a relatively short drive of 4 hours. We have driven over 2000kms already! Although it is a bit dull at times the roads are very quiet (no chance of getting stuck in a traffic jam around here) and we do have the ipod. The itrip (which lets us play the ipod through the radio) is one of the most useful things we brought with us. We are listening to Tim’s entire music collection of 900 songs on shuffle so we never know what is coming next. Yet again we are in a unit on a caravan site. This one is lovely, probably the best so far. We are really liking the whole unit thing. We like cooking for ourselves ... read more

Travelling across the Nullarbor wasn’t much to write home about. We stopped to look at the start of the bight, and then again closer to the WA border. A lot of the diversions off the main highway to the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight were closed due to cliff erosion. We witnessed this erosion first hand as we found a dirt track to the cliffs to have our last lunch before the WA quarantine point. This full checkpoint is where they inspect your car and camper for all fruits, vegetables and honey products. You can’t bring anything into the state! Once into WA we branched south from Balladonia on a 4wd track and passed by an old homestead built in 1890. It is now only a safe house for travellers with basic supplies and a ... read more

(Excerpted from my book Our Summer in Australia & New Zealand at Amazon.com) John Starr, the owner of Telegraph Farm is a man of great imagination and energy. He uses a portion of his farm less suitable for crops or grazing to raise flowers for export, especially to the Japanese market. He plants perennials, providing thereby a renewable product. The Japanese inspect every delivery and if even one insect is found, the entire shipment is denied delivery. In the fading light of the day we gazed over acres of beautiful commercial flower beds. John cut flowers for all the women on board, each leaving with a bouquet containing the Queen Protea, the star of the plantings. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Gwen finished preparing a meal using Telegraph Farm products, to be served boarding house style; ... read more

We travelled to Esperance where it was still windy and cold but at least the sun was shining. Tuesday was spent doing some school work and catching up on washing etc Wednesday we decided to take a drive out to Le Grande National Park to see some of WA most beautiful beaches and we were not disappointed. Le Grande beach was amazing and had a great camping area on the beach, but Hellfire Bay was a favourite and the colour of the water was amazingly blue with pure white sand. ... read more