Sorry it has taken me so long to update. The first few days we were just relaxing and then this week we were back at work and so it’s been quite hectic catching up.

We decided on Monday night to get up early, have breakfast in Kalgoorlie and a look around and then head on home.

So, the alarm went off and up we got to leave Norseman, and we weren’t at all sad to. Claire got us there no problems and I had a tourist map to work out how to get to the Super Pit. This hole in the ground is huge. If BHP get approval to go open cut at Roxby Downs the hole there will be even bigger than this one. Have a look at this photo.

There wasn’t a whole lot else to see, or not that we could see anyway, I’m sure there is when you’re not in a hurry. We had a beautiful big breakfast and then headed home.

It seemed like the longest part of the trip. We were just keen to get home. On the way we picked up the girls from Heather’s. They were very excited to see us, as we were them.

We went home, started unpacking and then got takeaway for dinner. Real takeaway, KFC, which was a nice and less expensive choice than some eating out we had done while we were away. It was so good to be in our own bed again. We slept so well.

I hope to do a round up of the trip in the near future and will list off the highlights and do a bit of a best and worst of for the trip.

Hope you have all enjoyed the blog.

Our next big adventure is going to be the demolition of our house and building the new one and we will keep you all updated as we do that also.

Ciao for now

D & E

Off by 8am this morning and a good start, although it was raining again. Mind you we realised when we crossed the border that with the time difference we had actually left at 6.30am. Dale drove the 146 km straight, which is the longest straight stretch of road in the Southern Hemisphere.

Border Village not surprisingly is on the border. There is a quarantine station here that you must pass through and also the Big Kangaroo. Here is Lion with the Big Kangaroo but more important that the sign has been graffitied “Dale 4 Liv”. I would really like to know who Liv is

Mundrabilla is also on the way across the Nullarbor and there is another car graveyard there. We got permission to head up there and got some more photos.

No other real highlights for today. When we got to Balladonia it was only 2pm (with the time change) so we decided to drive on to Norseman. We found a brochure with some accommodation and booked a hotel from Balladona. Looking back on it, this was probably not the right thing to do. We got here and the hotel is quite a dive and Norseman is overall not much of anything. It really is past its prime. After a drive down the main street (which is not much) we decided to go back and have dinner at the Railway Motel. We had a game of darts and then came back to the room which we think is the safest place to be.

Tomorrow we are up to Kalgoorlie.

Catch you all a bit later.

D & E

PS – even with the time difference, Dale has driven 10 hours today. He is feeling rather tired and will sleep very well tonight.

It was the first day that it hasn’t rained and it was beautiful and warm with the sun shining on our backs as we watched the whales frolicking around. It is a breeding area and there were four whales with calves that we saw and another whale a bit further out playing around and doing dives and stuff. I have put a few photos in and hopefully you can see a little bit of the whales.

We then headed up to the Nullarbor Roadhouse to get some lunch and then check in. We ended up both having a bit of a nana nap before dinner. Dinner was quite expensive but I guess you can expect it if you include all the trucking costs and having to freeze everything. But everything we ate was freshly cooked, both lunch and dinner and my chicken schnitzel was quite yummy.

It was a full moon the night before (Saturday night) and the moon was still quite awesome tonight. The clear moon and the stars were gorgeous and only made more romantic by the hum of the generator and the feint scent of gas.

Tomorrow we are off to Balladonia, our last “roadhouse” accommodation.

Ciao for now.

D & E

When we did leave there was so much fog around. Have a look at these photos to see how much there was. It didn’t end up lifting until about 1045 so it was quite a challenge for Dale to get around the big trucks.

The plan today was to get to Ceduna rather than Streaky Bay. We decided to take an alternate route from the normal one back to Port Augusta and then around to Ceduna and go straight down through the desert (unsealed road) and come straight out on the Eyre Highway reducing the trip by about 500 kms. As it turned out it was it was quite a good road apart from some heavily corrugated areas. We did make a stop to fill up with petrol before heading out on the dirt road and there was a huge road train. See the photo to see the size compared to our car.

We saw some interesting things on the way through the centre. We saw some pretty flowers (I think they were Sturt Desert Pea) and something that I choose to call alien spawn. We have no idea what they are but they look really weird.

I was on long distance lookout while Dale kept his eyes on the road. I spotted a few rogue animals on the way, a kangaroo, an emu and a camel. I managed to get a photo of the camel but that’s all. It was quite a tiring trip though keeping an eye out for stray animals.

We did get to Ceduna though and are staying in the same motel we stayed in before. This time we ate in the restaurant though as last time we discovered it was cheaper to eat here than elsewhere.

Tomorrow we are off to Nullarbor and the whale sanctuary. We won’t be able to update again until Tuesday night so catch you all then.

Ciao

D & E

After we finished there back up to Josh and Petra’s to head out to Andamooka. If we had thought driving in to Roxby Downs was driving through nothing, driving out there was even more desolate and barren. Although we did see some horses and emus running around out there.

Lunch was very yummy. Mina got a little fright while at lunch. One of the men in the restaurant pretend growled at her and she got a bit upset. I have put a picture of her snuggled up into Petra. After lunch we had a look at some of the opals that were for sale.

Tonight we are having a BBQ for dinner and then a relatively early night. Tomorrow we are heading down to Ceduna which is going to take us about 7 hours and about 300 kms is dirt road. Fingers crossed we won’t get lost but that is the way that Claire is taking us.

Catch you all tomorrow, if we have survived.

D & E

It’s not a long way to Roxby Downs from Peterborough but it is a very flat and desolate drive. The road is good but there is nothing to look at along the way. Have a look at the photo to see the view. We also stopped at Woomera briefly to take a photo of lion with the rocket.

Petra made a yummy lasagna and garlic bread for dinner and we all had a few drinks and a catch up. It was very nice.

Mina is adorable. She is gorgeous and a real little person. She was a little shy at first but warmed up pretty quickly. She very much enjoyed her birthday present and has been riding it around the house.

We have both started feeling a little bit tired and so we will only stay two nights with Josh and Petra and get back to Perth a day earlier. We will still be doing the same number of days across the Nullarbor and the Bight and I will still get to see the Whale Conservation Park which is what I really want to see. It will be good to be home and in our own bed though.

Off for now. Tomorrow we are going to do the tour of the mine here and then going out to Andamooka for lunch.

Catch you all later.

D & E
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We had a wonderful sleep in this morning before we had a wander around Broken Hill. We also went up to the Miners Memorial and you can see a couple of photos we took up there. It was sooo cold up there. The wind was blowing a gale and was bitingly cold. We couldn’t stay up there too long cos of the cold. You can see from the photo on the “park bench” how windy it was.

A short drive to Peterborough today where we have booked into the Peterborough Motor Inn. The room here is quite spacious and has an air conditioner so we can warm up. It was very cold when we got here but the breeze has died off and it is not so bad.

Tonight we went for dinner at the Federal Hotel. Now, Dale has had approximately 12 surf and turfs on our trip so far. He has become quite the connoisseur and comments on the variance between them all. He was so impressed with tonight’s meal that he asked the chef for his recipe for the sauce. He still hasn’t stopped raving about the quality of the meat and how tender it was. This one will be a hard one to top.

Tomorrow we will have a sleep in again before heading up to Roxby Downs to see Josh, Petra and Mina. I’m very excited as I haven’t met Mina before and she is now two years old. Hopefully she won’t be too scared of me but we do have a birthday present for her so hopefully that will help.

Catch you all tomorrow night.

D & E

The original plan was to stay in Wilcannia tonight. On Sunday night we saw the 60 Minutes story which wasn’t particularly positive. We had decided that if we didn’t feel comfortable we would drive on to Broken Hill. We didn’t feel comfortable and as it was only 2.30 we drove on through.

It was quite an easy drive today. The one thing of interest was the weather. It went from rainy to sunny, to heavy fog and then back to sunny and clear again. The entry to Cobar was also quite interesting, and historical, and so I have put a photo of that in also.

After arriving at Broken Hill we went to the Tourist Information Centre to find some accommodation. There wasn’t a whole lot available there but we found something and booked in. We have gone slightly over the budget but the bed is huge and it’s nice and warm. And we have a phone line to hook up to to update the blog.

I have put in a photo of the road to Broken Hill. It is very long, very straight and very dry. It actually looks very similar to the road across the Nullarbor.

I’ve also put in a photo of a sign we saw along the way “Dale reckons it’s too bad I didn’t have some black jeans, uggies and a pack off smokes up my sleeve”. Ha ha.

We are going to have a sleep in tomorrow and do a few touristy things around Broken Hill before heading across to Peterborough. It’s only a short drive which is why we will leave a bit later.

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Interesting road sign. It would be quick to go to Darwin than home, but we are still going home.

And one just for Emma.

Catch you all tomorrow.

D & E

Let me put this into context for you. I’m sure depending on your age that you all have a particular event that has happened in your life that you will always remember where and what you were doing when you heard about it. For example, for those of you that are older than me, I’m sure that you recall watching or listening to the moon landing or maybe when you heard that JFK had been assassinated. For me there has been three events that I will always remember where I was and when I heard.

The first was when I heard that Elvis had died; I was getting ready for school when it was announced on the morning news.

The second was when I heard that Diana was dead; Sandi and I were in our way to the City to Surf (Sandi did it not me) and we heard that Diana had been in an accident. When we got back in the car after the City to Surf we heard the news that Diana was dead.

The most recent, and most significant for me, was the day that Peter Brock was killed competing in Rally West in 2006. Boris Stebbing phoned me at work to say that he had just heard a news flash that Brocky had been killed ; but it was unconfirmed. I had to drive to Leeuwin soon after and on the way Brocky’s death was announced as confirmed on the radio; I don’t mind saying that I had to pull over and that there was more than one tear in my eye. Brocky I have to say was an absolute legend to me, and I’m privileged to have met him on three occasions; although I’m sure than it was no big event for him.

I’m sure that some of you reading this will be saying “so what, he was just a racing car driver” and to those people that’s fair enough. But I know that there will be people reading this that will have an understanding of what I was feeling.

Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to visiting Mt Panorama to in my own way pay my respects to Brocky’s memory. I haven’t been to Mt Panorama since 1986 when I and the group of people that I went to the race with were inadvertently caught up in the riots on top of the mountain that year.

We did two laps of “The Mountain”, and whilst the Sorento is no race car it felt great, and we were only doing the 60kmh speed limit. Enid was amazed at how steep and narrow many (most) sections of the race track is, and could not believe that cars fly around the track at speeds up to 300kmh. For me it was the first time around the track since the inclusion of the kink at the end of Conrod and I was even amazed that the cars go around that corner at over 100kmh+++ ! it is a 45kmh corner for the normal road car.

We stopped at one of the wineries that is located within the confines of the track which has produced a one off special Peter Brock Vintage (two reds and a white), the production of which has been endorsed by Brocky’s family and with the profits going to the Peter Brock Foundation. We purchased one of each which will take pride of place in the display cabinet with my collection of his race cars (1/18th scale models) in the home theatre room of the new house.

The rest of the day and today’s travel’s was pretty relaxed and easy going. We decided a few days ago to stop at Dubbo instead of Nyngan as originally planned. We made this decision as we were unsure as to how long it was going to take to get out of Sydney and how long we would spend in Bathurst. It turned out to be a good choice as we didn’t end up getting to Dubbo until 4.30pm and it was already starting to get dark.

We are off to Wilcannia tomorrow. You may know the name as 60 Minutes did a story on the population on Sunday night. We still plan to stay there anyway, but if we find that we don’t feel comfortable doing so when we arrive, we will keep going and stop at Broken Hill.

Cheers

Dale

From Enid

Just wanted to put in a comment about our meal in Dubbo. We got advice from the staff at the motel we are staying at and went to the bar and bistro across the road. It was called the Pastoral Hotel and it was a great meal. Dale again had a surf and turf but I think it was one of the best he has had all trip. Apparently the piece of meat was beautiful and the only complaint was that there wasn’t enough sauce. I had chicken breast with prawns and a creamy garlic sauce. It was delicious as well.Â

EnidÂ

No photos again today.

We had another sleep in today. It is going to be so hard to go back to work.

We didn’t do too much today. A nice relaxing day. Dale stayed at home and watched his V8’s and Robyn and I went shopping.

It was a good day though.

Tomorrow we are off to Dubbo via Bathurst. I promise we will have some photos for you then.

Ciao for now.

D & E