Feb 2018

After 2 ½ months spent with family and friends in Tilba Tilba NSW, Benalla and Shepparton Vic its time we got back on the road and headed west for are volunteer positions.

We will take a month to get across to our first position in Cape Le Grande NP, we could do it a little faster but why when we do not have to travel to far each day. A couple hundred kilometres aday is enough.

As usual its hard to leave all the family but because of the age of the grandchildren even if we were still in Benalla on the property I doubt we would see much more of them. They all have their own lives to live with school , university, work, friends , sport and thats how it should be. They are all growing up and enjoying their own lives.

If we still had the property and living in Benalla what would we be doing each day-, I do not know, so our volunteering in WA and soon NT keeps us active and hopefully doing something worth while and a purpose to our lives. So this is our life for now until we are unable to be active enough.

This is our itinerary that we know.

April in Cape Le Grande at Lucky Bay.

May at Stokes NP at Stokes inlet.

21 June to 14 July at Driandra Woodland and Barra Mia sanctuary.

August at Cape Range NP Ningaloo- Mesa camp

September and October at Francois Peron NP, Shark Bay world heritage area at Big Lagoon camp.

Then hopefully Turtle tagging off the coast close to Karratha. November into December.

We will zig zag our way across to Wa , trying to see some places we have not visited before but of course we have to go through places we have been before.

Our first night of our trip is spent on the Murray river between Echuca and Swan hill at Cohuna.

This is a free camp area in town for self contained vehicles for up to 72 hours stays. Its on the banks of the Gunbower creek . We walked along the river and creek , a pretty nice area. All town is clean and tidy and businesses are pleased with the extra business they get from the travellers here.

We have not stayed here before.

Our next night is at Nyah behind the trotting track , yes we have stayed here before. This time there are more people here. Its on the murray river so we walk along the river bank

We only stay the night and head through Mildura ,only stopping for fuel , and across the border into South Australia. Stopping in a rest area not far into SA.

We push on not stopping in Renmark and ended up at Lowbank landing on the Murray river bank. Not much happening there just a couple of pelicans and some fishermen out on the river.

We decided we would go into Redbanks Conservation Park. We had stopped here before and found an echidna not far from the caravan.

Larry had hurt his back when we were leaving Shepparton and was slowly getting worse , finding it very hard to stand up having to hang on to something solid for support . Walking was also getting hard as was most movement. He had tried to walk it off but this did not work.

So he stayed sitting while I walked around the park. I did not find any echidnas or tracks, nor did I find any lizards , roos , or much of anything. I did find a few rainbow bee eaters .

I was going to walk the long walk around on the old landscape were fossil giant wombats were found but only got half way and returned the 5 klm I had walked instead of another 10 all the way round. I saw nothing and there was no water any where even along the creek bed, so not much wildlife still here.

We were going to stay a few days so Larry could rest and I would have something to do but it was too dry for much life.

We moved to Murrytown Park where they only charge $15 a night for power and a hot shower.

We have to cross the Murray river at Cadel.

 Larry was getting a bit better but still not walking far, so we went to Port Augusta into a caravan park. Here we could stock up on food, water, fuel and find someone to look at Larry's back.

We were having trouble with our Wi-fi and tried a phone call to Telstra , which was to overseas somewhere. They checked it said could not find anything wrong and it still had credit and months of use to go. It was very hard to understand him and complete the things he asked me to do . But lucky for us there is a Telstra office in Port Augusta and the young man there was very helpful. He checked everything and apparently Telstra have changed the way things appear on the account and money credit means nothing its all about data these days . He put us on another plan which gave us more data for less money than we were on and still have 12 months to use and recharge as I have done for past 4 years with both wi-fi and phones on internet account. Its the best way for us as for a lot of time we are not in a reception area and have to use the National parks satellite for communications.

Larry's back much better , he walking and moving much better so we leave heading across the Eyre Peninsular to Ceduna.

We have crossed before on the Eyre hwy across the top of peninsular and also have been down the peninsular and around. We snorkelled with giant cuttle fish in Whyalla. Snorkelled looking for sea dragons in Tumby bay, dived with Great white sharks, and tuna and seals in Port Lincoln. So this time we took the only other road across the Birdseye hwy.

The fist part is to drive down past Whyalla to Cowell.

We stopped at Cowell RV park its close to the ocean. We walked to the ocean but it has no beech on this bit of coast as we are on the outskirts of town. There is a mangrove swamp and a walk into town and along behind the caravan park to the jetty.

There was a lot of people staying there and by the look of it for more than one day. Mostly all fishermen of some sort as most towns on this coast has lots of fishing , crabbing etc.

This is not what we like to do so we start are drive across the middle to Cleve and Yelduknie Weir and reservoir. This is an historic weir built in 1912 to supply water to the surrounding farming area and back to Arno Bay close to Cowell. It relied on gravity to feed water to the area so flowed east but not west into Cleve. In 1928 the weir was connected to Tod Reservoir but by 1954 even this could not meet the water demands so the whole area was connected to another more predictable water scheme.

The Yeldulknie weir and reservoir still some water into the scheme but its seasonal, we were there in march and there was very little water. When full it has a capacity of 740 megalitre.

There is a walk around the reservoir so we did this and as we started we saw a young fox but did not get a photo . Further around we found grey kangaroos and Larry found birds. I gave up because I was been bittern by sand flies and had ants crawling over my feet onto my legs every time I stopped to look at something. I did go back out latter to get sunset photos.

We got to the west coast the next day and found you could park next to the golf course carpark where its windy or go a few kilometres north to Walker's rocks on the beach. You guessed were we went for a couple of days at $10 a night but with only a toilet no shower but who cares I went snorkelling each day while Larry sat on the rocks . We did also walk along to the next beach. This area is part of Lake Newland conservation park. And is the longest beach on the west coast of SA.

It is home to a fossil weevil cocoon that has been around for 100,000 years and is still alive today.

It was a good couple of days but we must keep going so next was Streaky Bay with a stop at Eyres waterhole on the way. Thinking this was a big waterhole we stopped and walked in to find an old well used by explorers.

We had been to Streaky bay before for snorkelling but now they allow you to park the night in an area next to the golf club and bowling greens. So we unhook the van and go exploring around Cape Bauer and the blowholes and Hallys beach. Whistling rocks and blowholes were not working as the sea is too calm, but we get exercise go across and down the cliff side on the made boardwalk, and of course back up which is the exercise.

Back in town we went snorkelling off the jetty in and enclosed swimming area. Larry came in to as last time we found crabs and fish. It was a little bit rougher here but still good fun but we found nothing in the deep water or under the jetty , just cormorants sitting on the sea security fence .

We were going for another drive loop to some rocks and other beaches and snorkelling at Smooth pool but it was getting late so we thought we could do this in the morning before leaving.

We slept in and were both too stiff so moved on to Haslem a small fishing town we had stopped at before. Here we walked the rocky beach full of seaweed and along the jetty and relaxed.

It was the long weekend in SA for cup day so lots of people camping.

We moved into Ceduna and a caravan park on Monday 12 March the holiday. We used the day to top up water, fuel , defrost the freezer and all the other little jobs as we were about to cross the Nullarbor. Tuesday the shops were open so we did last bit of shopping .

We had ,well Larry had fish and chips I had chips for dinner .Its crab season until April here and there is a competition that runs from New Years day until April on largest Blue swimmer crab or something like that. The park full of people fishing and looking for crabs .