Streaky Bay

                                            The views around Streaky Bay.

 We met this friendly white pointer shark at the local Shell servo. It was in the book we brought with us called "Are we there yet?" about a family that travels around Australia so we just had to take photos with it.

 The caravan park was on the foreshore. We had a site right next to my Dad and Daph.

                       Dad and Daphne next to their Eco Tourer caravan.

 We enjoyed our last night at Streaky Bay at the local pub which had nice food and a great view.

 Ben with his girlfriend Ella who was traveling with her 2 brothers and parents for over a year. We met them at Kalgoorlie and kept bumping into them across the Nullarbor, Streaky Bay then Port Lincoln. Her eldest brother, Riley, became good friends with Jake as they were similar ages and her youngest brother, Cooper, who was 4 yrs old wanted Liam to play with him. It was sad for all when they took off on a different route to us.

 When we left SB we headed to Murphy's Haystacks which is on the way to Port Lincoln. It was also in the book so we made sure we went there. They are interesting rock formations which were thought to be a good omen for growing good hay in the fields surrounding it which belonged to Mr Murphy.

We had  a very relaxing week at SB, enjoyed spending time with Dad and Daphne and headed down to Port Lincoln for the final stretch of our trip.
Sue.

Kalgoorlie and the Nullarbor

 We found Kalgoorlie very interesting. The boys loved all the huge diggers and trucks. Below is called the Super Pit which is a massive open cut gold mine.

 We decided this tray from an old dump truck would make a great swimming pool if we dug a hole in the backyard for it. It would take a lot of water to fill. We must have been feeling the heat. It was mid 30's on this day.

       The truck has a dwarfing effect on our kids. Don't they look tiny?

                  Ben isn't even as tall as the width of the tyres used on the trucks.

 Liam and Jake trying their hand at drilling in the underground gold mine. (only pretending) The drillers earn $100 per hour so we considered sending them off to work for the day.

 We watched a gold pouring demonstration and handed around the end result. What a shame we didn't have a pocket big enough to slip this into. I've forgotten how much he said this was worth but he handed around an ounce of gold at the start which was the size of a pile of about 4x 10c coins and that was worth about $1,700. We all tried panning for gold and Liam found a couple of specks.

 We drove from Kalgoorlie WA to Streaky Bay SA in 3 big days of driving. The boys are such seasoned travellers that there were no complaints or "Are we there yet?" On the first day they complained that we had reached our destination as they wanted to watch another DVD. There was a thunderstorm on the last night at Kalgoorlie that followed us all the way across the Nullarbor. When we got to the Bunda Cliffs and the head of bite it was raining so hard and so cloudy that there was no point in pulling over for the views.
The above photo is us at the end of the longest straight stretch of road in Australia-146.6kms. It luckily stopped raining long enough to take the photo.

 We stayed the second night at the Nullarbor Roadhouse which had one of the many golf holes right next to where we camped. We met a few people on our travels who were playing golf across the Nullarbor. There are holes in Esperance, Kalgoorlie and all the way across the Nullarbor. The one above, and I assume the rest would be the same, was dirt with some fake grass for the green.

 Sign at Nullarbor Roadhouse. We didn't see any camels or wombats but we saw many kangaroos. Most of them were the dead variety on the side of the road. One was sitting in the middle of our side of the road watching us driving towards it. I alerted Steve as I was not sure if he had noticed (he was in a trance driving the brain numbingly boring road) and he had to slow down to about 20km/h and beep the horn to get the silly roo to move. Talk about no road sense. No wonder there are so many dead ones on the side of the road.

 The storm front arriving at Nullarbor Roadhouse. One tourist had parked his hired plane next to the camping area and tied it down to the ground which we thought was a good idea. He was on his way from Adelaide to the Pilbara Region WA.

We were very happy to arrive safe and sound to Streaky Bay SA. The caravan park is right on the foreshore and we are camping right next to my Dad and Daph who have joined us for a holiday for a week. We have enjoyed our relaxing week at Streaky and will move onto Port Lincoln tomorrow and Dad and Daph will start their journey back home. More about Streaky Bay in our next blog....
Sue.

Cape Le Grande National Park

 Hello once again, we are currently in Streaky Bay enjoying the sun and the surf as I type this. We have fallen behind on our blog as we have been having much fun and have made it across the Nullarbor.

All these photo's as the title states is of Cape Le Grande National Park. Matthew Flinders features prominately so I guess he discovered this area. We stayed four nights at Lucky Bay camp site. Lucky bay was named by Flinders after he needed to head inland away from strong winds and seas. We certainly could understand the strong winds bit as we expierenced some nasty winds but mostly in the late evenings. We had no power at the camp site and well and truly used ever bit of saved power we could muster between our waeco fridge battery and the cars battery.

We were all blown away by the NP's  beauty the beaches and rocky outlooks were magnificant and rate as one of the top 5 highlights of our trip. There were many little bays that we visited and they all consisted of the whitest sand you have ever seen and light blue clear water.

The picture above was taken from our campsite, what a view. The below pictures are of Lucky bay and we think the most picturesque of them all.

 On low tied you were able to drive along the 3 km return trip beach on Lucky bay. It was for 4 wheel drives only but after walking it the day before we noticed how hard the sand was so we thought we would give it a go. The boys enjoyed climbing and jumping down the sand dunes and adding to a huge sand castle built the day before by another camper.

 There were many friendly kangaroos especially around anytime they smelt food. They were extremely patient around young children who sometimes over stepped the mark, not our boys. Mind you if you left any food around or rubbish bins within their reach they would help themselves. We are too wise for that as seasoned campers but it was nice to see the roos around and many were mums and joeys which the boys loved to see.

 The castle was so tall that the boys had to stand up on a bank to be shown in this shot. Unfortunately the sand castle only lasted a couple of days when the tide washed it away

 Amongst all the walking along lovely beaches we also walked up Frenchmans Peak. This was a very steep walk(said to take 2 hours return) mainly on rock which after all our other walks posed no probs for us. It took us 30 minutes to climb with Jake our usual leader and Sue and Benjamin at the tale. It was very windy at the top but the views were fantastic. We spent 30 minutes on top enjoying the 360 degree views. The photo of Sue and I, a rare one was taken by one of the boys who have all become very keen to take photos with the camera.

 Seeing the boys are used to getting their picture taken a couple of times a day it is rare to get one with one of them not pulling a funny face. So as a result this one is blog worthy, although I see that Liam may have been warming up for a silly face.

 I think this photo may have been from Esperance Twilight Beach, a great sheltered beach which was voted Australia's best beach in 2006. It's still a great beach.

 Sue and the boys setting off for a walk, ride along Lucky bay after we set up the camper trailer

 The boys and I sitting on the rocks which in the next couple of days we spent a few hours fishing from.

 Another view of Lucky bay from the rocks.

 Benjamin with his walking stick about to climb Frenchmans Peak

 Any lizard got the boys into action they loved them but not enough to touch them. They could watch them for hours. This one was far to big for any handling.

Fishing cape Le Grande, well Liam was the only one to catch fish, I think he caught 3 herring (tommy rufes for us eastern  staters) and a garfish which were all filleted and cooked up. As it got light at about 4 a.m each morning I started going fishing at about five. I fished off the beach at Lucky Bay, it did not live up to its name. The first morning I was fishing for sammon when I hooked a fish, watched it jump out of the water a couple of times and excitedly reeled it in. As it came through the shellows it made one last ditch effort to get of the hook and darted left and right quickly, probably saw me,  wide eye, when I saw the fish coming closer and closer. It was a pretty big fish somewhere between 50 and 80 cm, yeah I know no one was with me and the water does make them look bigger but it's fair to say I have done a bit of fishing this trip and I know the difference between and big and small fish just by the feel of it on your line.

Anyway you probably know were this story is going with no pictures to accompany it. The fish broke of the line probably from my always trusty reef knot. needless to say I have learn't to tie a new and improved fishing knot and haven't suffered the same humiliation again, Im glad to say.

Enough about me, the next blog will cover our trip to Kalgoorlie- Boulder and crossing the Nullarbor.

We have also been excited to find out that we are able to return to Melbourne into our house on the 20th December. We are then able to celebrate christmas at home and the boys,Liam and Jake are keen to spend the last 2 days of the school term at school. I would never have believed it, but in all seriousness they are missing their mates at school. All the boys have grown up heaps and the only time they or we fight/argue is when one of us is tied. The boys are still doing their daily journals and both Liam and Jake have completed their maths book which is what the school users as well. Benjamin knows his ABC, the sounds of each letter and words that start with each letter, can count up to 20 and backwards from 10. A little bit of school work everyday can achieve a lot, that's not to say that the boys want to do it everyday

Bye for now

Wave Rock and Esperance

 We weren't going to visit Wave Rock in our plan but we wanted to see it and decided to travel the 195kms out of our way (each way) to see it. We were suitably impressed and took many pictures of us surfing the rocky wave (very original I know).

 The above photo was of "Hippos Yawn" which you can tell by the name what this looks like. The boys enjoyed pretending to tickle the hippos tonsils. Our campsite was next to Wave Rock and the flies were so bad that we would have become insane if we had stayed longer than 1 night. Many people we saw had either the corks dangling from their hats or a mesh screen hanging from their hats. Bring out food and the flies decide to party on your food.

 We went on a coastal drive around Esperance and saw many beautiful beaches and admired the crystal blue water.

                   Liam, Ben and I on the beach. Liam writing his name in the sand.

           Benjamin wanted to pretend surf on all the rocks he found after our wave rock visit.

 Ben took the above photo which I thought was a very good job for a 5 yr old. It was the 2nd photo he'd ever taken.

                                                    More rock surfing!

 This is the resident Sea Lion which hangs around the Tanker Jetty in Esperance near our caravan park. We call him Samy the seal as there is a bronze statue on the jetty of a seal by this name. He was on the sand under the jetty but a tourist scared him into the water and he put on a great show for us in the water. He waits for people to cut up their fish on the jetty and throw him the off cuts. The boys want to watch him for hours!

 Today we visited a bird and animal park and the boys enjoyed feeding some lambs a bottle of milk and feeding kangeroos, alpacas, ponies, and sheep. They also had the chance to hold guinea pigs and rabbits. The GP's were too fast to catch and tended to bite but the 2 small brown rabbits were much more friendly and the boys wanted to take them with us. They have put them on their Christmas wish list.

                                          Jake and I holding a baby wallaby.

Well we are finally up to date for our travel blog. On Monday we are heading to Cape Le Grand National Park and will camp there for 4 nights. We will have no power and I assume no internet and phone reception. We are looking forward to some even more pristine white sandy beaches and the boys are all hoping for some good fishing. The weather forecast is for some warm to hot weather next week so we are hoping this comes true.
Bye for now.
Sue.