The Great Australian Bight

After Ceduna we headed to the Great Australian Bight, Well What can i say but WOW! WOW! WOW!

We arrived just after opening time, and were the only ones there, while we chatted with the owners and appreciated the A/C away from the flies - how they can annoy you in the gale force wind ????? It was like being in a fan-forced oven on Very High! - now I know what a chip feels like!!

No whales would be seen, as the last one had swum past about 2 months previous.
But  we still had a great time and a LOT of exercise!

Breakfast was lovely - homemade scones with jam and cream or jam and cheese or just plain cheese - depending on whom you asked :) Mummy scored a hot chocolate, while daddy got a coffee. :)

Photo time oh wait first a little FYI,
If you should go to this particular main lookout/stop and you should perhaps take your camera, with VERY low batteries.......... take the path to the right FIRST, because then you will manage to squeeze in a family shot with a much more amazing and dramatic background :) oh yes and tie your hat to your head as it is sooooo very windy, i seriously considered attaching Claire to someone :)

anyway back to the photos

After our daybreak start......

Yes him too, but have just realised
 this is from the day before??
oh well, same difference :)

You want me to walk all the way down there?!?!
WHAT and then ALL the way back..... UPHILL!
with strollers, and wind, and 3yo's  with
" little legs that don't go very fast Mama!'

Oh alright i s'pose it was worth it
(and yes Jamie IS wearing the same shirt as 'yesterday' )

This was further down the road.....
after we'd hiked back to the truck and recuperated,
and changed camera batteries :)

Oh yes.... "the Road"

WELCOME TO THE NULLARBOR dear Family and Friends

Flat and treeless it certainly was!

Can you read the sign properly?? yeah me neither
It says something like 'eastern side of treeless plain'
I wanted the 'western side' sign also, but
A) we didn't see it and B) too hot to stop anyway :)

Finally we arrived at the border and saw our next 'Big thing" at Bordertown.

Introducing "Rooey II"

Apparently he used to have a beer stubbie in his hand, but they changed it to a can of 'solo' so as not to portray the 'wrong' image of the town LOL what does a solo can portray?? "sorry mate, you're on your own out here" (geddit? solo = one/alone) or "yeah we are cheesey doofus' just like the ad" Heh heh - I'd prefer to see the stubbie myself.

Any way The SA/WA border craps all over is far more impressive then the VIC/SA Border and WAYYY more then the QLD/NSW/VIC ones - at least where we passed ;) in my opinion anyway.

We probably should have stopped and done the whole

 "oh look we in SA oh look now we in WA" cheesy photo,

But again....... Trucks...... EVERYWHERE!!!!!

About 50kms in passing AGAIN for about the 5th time, a little old man in his, ever so slow, puffing smoke everywhere, little motor home. I was pulled over by the WA police. "Uh OH" thinks me, as 'Serena' (as we had now discovered was NOT Selena) had told me i was traveling about 115kms+ :o

So they says "oh, um, we arrr, we actually pulled you over because  (in a 110 zone) you were doing 116kms, we thought you were towing a trailor, but we can see now that it's just a big truck" Umm arrr, can i see your licence please?" "sure here it is" Big No No, for car/trailers to go OVER 100kms in WA

"ok that's all good, how about a doing a breath test then?" "sure"  then the lady officer steps up and asks about the kids car seats, whether Kaytie was in a legal seat and all, THEN  they ask "so How long have you had the cracks in the windscreen??" that's when it was our turn to ummmm and ahhhh :) (stay quiet Samuel!!) "oh just the other day i think, Officer???, we plan on fixing at soon as we get to Perth"  "MmmHmmmm"says the officer  :o   "just make sure you get it done as soon as you get there" and off you go" I'ts now nearly 4 weeks later and just at this present moment in time I am on the phone organising a replacement windscreen :) Aren't I clever at multi-tasking ;) and it's turning into a MAMMOTH task :S

Anyway, crossing the border into WA 'added'2.5 hrs to the clock so 'technically' it was still lunchtime  so we pushed on to Norseman and got there just on dark, to a tiny little town, with nothing open - we were in desperate need of food! and not even anything suitable at the big servo! so we were "forced" to stay in a cabin, and 'go out' for dinner. May I add that for such a tiny town it was the BEST dinner i have had 'out' in a long long time - ignoring the frequency of my dinner's out ;P

couple more photos if blogger will let me then i'd better feed some starving children (ahem, whom have been watching Magic School Bus dvd's for about cough cough 3 hrs!! ummmm, there will be a test over dinner on what you learnt :s  )

getting dark, surely after 12hrs driving and however

 many hours stopping for toilet breaks we nearly there?

oh ps i think this was the longest straightest road in oz? the south hemisphere?
OH MY WORD!! Soooooo Boring and Tiring!, could quite happily have left THIS part out!

Jamie asked several times if i wanted to swap, but stubborn as i am i wanted to stick it out :)



Finally Norseman

 cute camel sculptures they had scattered about the town





I'm thinking that maybe camels had something to do with the founding of the town??

any way had best leave it there as the laptop is starting to chuck a na-na and the children are trying to justify watching SpongeBob over playing outside, hmmmmm definitely time to go :) Oh and now i hear pitiful moaning from 'PlaireBear' "look Mum-mahhh, dat from my dooter sniff sniff " (scooter)  :D

5 more sleeps yayy!!

OX(OX)oxoxoxoxox

B(J)slkcs 

had various 'arguments' as to whether these were salt flats or just white sand

Adelaide to Ceduna

After a lovely time at  #53 (that is right? ......right?)  we  really did have  to get going, but before we could leave, oh so casually, as you do at 7am in the morning, it seemed we had one more thing to pack!

After some detailed questioning from Uncle John, he sprung a surprise on the children (and Jamie and I) The children  were presented with an X-Box!!, (more payback i s'pose you'd call it??) So now we are a household with, a PS2, a DS, a Wii and now a X-box + we also have 1 desktop PC and 5 (yes 5!) Laptops, though one is broken and one is technically a netbook. throw 2 TV's and 2 ipod's into the mix and, is that 'global warming' i hear outside?? thank heavens they aren't all used at once!!

Anyway thank you for having us again, hopefully i can stretch the love a bit more and  'duck' over again in March hmmm?? just for a night, watcha reckon Jamie i could do it for less then $200, could you hold the fort for the night??

Anyway this is supposed to be about our trip west from Adelaide, so as i said, it was a 7am start, and we were off on the homeward stretch.

I was just refreshing my memory in regards to the route we took, and  Google Map tells me we could have taken a ferry!! why are we just finding that out now? i would have loved to have gone on a ferry!!
Anyway, Oh Gosh It's raining! first rain we've had, about time you easterners shared some, from what i hear you've got enough!! 


So i think we got to Ceduna the first night?, but on the way, we saw our 2nd wind farm, and i actually had a chance to get a photo this time considering i now had a driver.

I quite like them, but can understand why most people don't.

we also saw this land/rock formation

Oh my GOODNESS!!! Samuel almost exploded out of his body, he was SO excited that we were going to NT to see Uluru!! hmmmm, me thinks a few more lessons on Australian geography is in order for next year?

It was still mighty impressive though, it had me thinking for a minute, only because of the hill nearby was i certain it wasn't! :o We got out the map to double check though ;P

We then headed into Kimba for lunch, where the children tasted 'plastic' cheese for the first time, and were suitably unimpressed - and can't understand why Mummy has a secret love for it - neither can Mummy :)
Kimba's claim to fame, is the Big Galah, oh yes and the fact(?) that it is halfway across Australia.

Everybody has their Adventure bears still.

As you can see they are so impressed i made them point to, where we've been; where we were; and where we were going, We probably could have taken some time to read the history of Kimba, but the wind was blowing a gale, the flies were sticky and we'd already seen one of the big rigs that we'd passed come through, so we got going quick smart.

Next up was, on Mum and Steve's insistance a detour via Streaky Bay, Well aren't we glad we did! Was as beautiful as they said it would be, sweet little town, not sure i'd like to live there though, not after we 'met' some of the native wildlife.

This is the LIFESIZE replica of a shark caught near Streaky Bay, on a hand line! after like 5 hours or something?  Must be nuclear run off in the water or something there, as the crabs and crayfish on the walls are massive also!!
We stayed there for a good hour or so, debating on whether to keep driving or camp early,

awww, nice to see some sibling love going on :)

mmmm, munching out on Aunty Pam's yummy bikkies

After Streaky bay we headed to Ceduna, telling all the little shingle backs to stay off the road, as it seems i forgot to tell you that i, the mother of 5 and lover of husband and library, am a murderer :( It was deeply traumatic for us so i think i blocked it from my mind, but on our way to Adelaide we were quite jovial about the fact that we had only hit one thing on our whole journey (locusts DON'T count!) and that it was only a bird, way back in QLD,  we aren't 'bird' people, so it wasn't too upsetting ( birds are a bit stoo-pid in the head in my opinion)  but it seems we were to add to our tally. We were driving down the highway somewhere in outback NSW carefully avoiding all the lizards basking on the road, when..... Oh the horror, it replays in slow-motion in my mind, i can just imagine the last few thoughts of this poor little monogamous creature :(  trying to be safe with a passing road train i pulled into the shoulder/bike lane and far too late i saw this little guy and far too late for me to pull back in to the lane when... da-doomp! no. more. lizard. :_ (  Can you just imagine his little head turning towards my big truck tyre, and what he would have thought? His poor life partner waiting. waiting. waiting for him to come home? The truck was very quiet for a long time after that :(

but you can't dwell in the past, thankfully no more lives have been ended since, and we had to get to Ceduna,

The girls spent alot of their time doing this after Adelaide, even Samuel did occasionally also. Sophie WAS sleeping until the camera started shooting :)

We made it to Ceduna, where the children FINALLY got their swim at a C'van Park, Claire and Sophie were the clever ones and pretty much got straight back out - It. was. FREEZING!! The locals were a bit weird, not sure if they were friendly or just drunk?? one of them shouted something like "you can't go swimming, you'll drown" not sure if it was a warning about the pool, or a bad joke or something completely different?? they also shouted something across the bar to me when i asked at reception about something, but i had one of those ''heh heh you're insane, i'll just nod and get outta there" type smiles and backed away ASAP! The 3 big children did end up with some weird funky rash by the time we got to Perth, but i think it was REALLY dry skin, as i lathered them all up with Sorbolene cream, and they were good as gold the next day.

The next morning as we left we were greeted with this

Oh yes and the sunrise was pretty special too HAHA :) - Diesel had been up to $1.45 in some places. so that was a welcome to the back pocket :)


I had better leave it at that as i think i have a sinus infection/inflamation - a really sore head/face, and as it's now Sunday i better get to sleep, though the sunrises here are pretty darn special too. :)
Nope, not today Missy. Get thee to bed i say!!

OX(OX)oxoxoxoxox
B(J)slkcs