On our way to the Yorke

Our aim this week was to reach the Yorke Peninsula - Moonta, and hopefully spend some time on the Boot sightseeing, fishing, crabbing and squidding. The weather has been so windy, averaging about 35km with gusts over 40km. The days have been sunny, but cool.

Smoky Bay oysters near Haslam are the best.... we bought them shucked, but only $10 for 13 if you shuck them yourself. For.Derek I did them Kilpatrick, and I had them with Brie, and Natural.  Two dozen went down well

We by-passed the crowds on Perlubie Beach, but bumped into friends we met in WA (that’s their van in the foreground) who had just spent 3 weeks here fishing, high tide had just caught many out during the night and were still bogged...the seaweed is a good indication of the tide mark

This is why you don’t stand on cliff edges...Venus Bay. Nothing holding this edge up

We took the Birdseye Highway across the Eyre Peninsula through lovely green grazing country side

Par Avion... what a mail box!

Beautiful huge tree just popped out of nowhere

Locke, it’s great to take a walk around the small country towns, they all have something unique to offer

Overnight at Cleve Weir free camp, the wheel house was open

The Aussie Book Exchange, a godsend to Nomads

Whyalla was the greenest I have ever seen it, it is normally grey salt bush and red dirt. Mt Laura Whyalla in the distance

Finally got to see my old house ...... it had been hidden behind a huge fence on my previous visits, sadly it wasn’t very tidy and now it’s all concrete, but still I have some great memories 

The new Whyalla circular jetty was finally completed, but only the crazy braved the winds

We have to do the washing sometime, so visited windy Port Germain, and soon got the washing dry whilst we had lunch, can’t beat the view.  Too windy to hang it under our awning, so tied it to the brick wall...

and a walk along the 1 mile jetty, that’s how far the tide goes out. We walked straight into the wind. 

We wondered what this was about we have never come across this before.... it use to stand off shore in the middle of Spencer Gulf, and was used to indicate to ships how high the tide was

Moonta is the top end and start of 11 nights on the Yorke Peninsula

Farewell WA

We have had a huge week covering lots and lots of kilometres, and finally after 8 months we say goodbye to Western Australia.

The timing is good, we have had our third covid jab, the border to the rest of Australia and overseas came down on the 3rd March, the Omicron wave is on the decline in the eastern states.

We left Albany, did the Stirling Ranges, had the fridge fixed (finally) in Metricup, Margaret River, drove inland through the Wheat Belt for a final visit to York, the weekend in the edge of the Goldfields at Westonia, and then headed for the Nullabor.

Fridge part that was replaced - see the tip of the Thermstat, evidently this part never needs replacing ????

Goodbye Peaceful Park, a 5 minute fix, overnight to make sure it worked then we were off

We headed for Kulin town free camp, and the Tin Horse Highway

Farmers east and west of Kulin have a great sense of humour - 15 km of fun, here are just a few

I remembered this waterslide from our teenage days visiting the Sunshine Coast, the country kids love it

Quirky Kulin

It’s been a while since the last train travelled along here - Kulin town centre.


Welcome to Kulin...miniature 

Kulin was a great base to leave the van and do a day trip east to Hyden to visit Wave Rock, very quiet, and almost had the place to ourselves

These type of signs generally warn about wearing thongs.........but High Heels....seriously!

 360° view from top




Any opportunity to build a Cairn can’t be missed

Yawning Hippo Rock

Next onto York. The town closes on Mondays and Tuesdays (our last visit was a Monday) so returned on Friday, stayed in their free camp on the Avon River, only ones there... we are finding there are very few of us around with the borders still closed. In November we struggled to get a parking spot.

Derek visited the Car Museum, whilst I caught up with the washing,

The Sweet Shop...so many memories from our childhood

A visit to the old Court House, Holding Cells, Stables, Day yard

Not my lucky day

York gave us a lovely sunset

We moved onto Wistonia, a small goldmining town for the weekend. We walked the 2km out to the mine site. The town originally serviced the underground mine founded in 1910, it had a few reopenings over the years and the current mine site is opencut and started in 2010. We stayed in the small caravan park, and there is a free swimming pool in town, and plenty of mine camp accommodation and sporting facilities in town for the mine workers.

I sensed something strange about the town, it was still of the 1910 era, pristine, and like walking through a movie lot  ie Movie World, wait, the general store, cafe and pub were real, but....

We knew it was a strange town. Just facades, even the fire station wasn’t real, better than leaving empty blocks of land in the high street I suppose






Westonias answer to silo art,  these stood at only 2 metres high.  


Okay, we were now ready for the long journey across the Nullabor. Technically the Nullabor Plains are in South Australia, but all travellers treat Norseman as the start and Ceduna as the end of the trek, and call the whole distance “The Nullabor”, some “Nullaboring”. It really isn’t boring, the scenery does change over the 3 days.  The worst thing about this trip was 2 days of driving in 40° temp, before a cool change came just as we reached Ceduna

Our first stop after leaving Westonia was Newmans Rocks, just after Norseman, okay these cows came to check us out, only one other couple in a roof top tent overnight

Then we crossed the border into SA and stayed at 10km Peg, 10km east of the Border, this was the day before the borders opened, there was not the convoy of travellers waiting to enter WA that we expected, we passed just the odd van now and then, the next night was just before Ceduna at Cohen Old School Site with 2 others.

See the scenery can be breath taking, loving the Bunda Cliffs, 90 metre drop off


Just before the Nullabor Roadhouse the trees just vanish....really quite desolate, the whole trip across we did not see a camel, kangaroo, dingo, emu or wombat, not like our return journey 2020 after our 8 weeks lockdown in WA






Woke up to these little blighters (ring neck parotts) all over our roof of the van, at the Old School Site

Farewell WA, it is not Goodbye, we had such an awesome time, spectacular scenery from north to south, inland and coastal, great memories, made some lovely new friends, we had an awesome adventure and thankyou for being covid free which gave us the freedom to travel unrestricted.