So the plan was to do one crazy 24 hours. Get as far as we could, and then relax.
Luckily we are pretty flexible when it comes to plans! Kids have a way to destroy many things, and one of these is well thought through plans (and maybe not well thought through plans. haha!). One of the things we didn’t consider was the time difference once we crossed into South Australia and beyond. That was the first half hour we lost. (At the time I thought this was a good thing as it gave extra driving time) Then there was day light saving that changed on the first night. That was the next hour we (lost?). Then there was the crossing into Western Australia that brought us another one and a half hours different to home. Lets just add these up. .5+1+1.5=3hrs
So what did this really mean? Well I think that in Mayas head, she thought that waking up at 4am (7am a few mornings earlier!) was ok. No amount of reasoning, convincing, encouragement or grumpiness could convince a 1 year old that the time was now 4am, not 7am as her body clock was telling her. (I need to remember that she cant do sums yet!! But on a lighter note she can now count to 11. She make us proud that girl….sometimes!!)
Noah and Ava did a “little” better and Bec and I were dog tired and just wanted to SLEEP!!
So I guess what I am getting at is that we were up early each morning, so the logical thing to do was to start driving.
After our first night at Iron Knob in SA, we drove into Ceduna at about 4pm. With great plans of free camping a lot of the way, and using our new highly recommended app “Wikicamps” and the free campers handbook “Camps 7”, we pulled into a 5 star rated campsite that was just perfect. Calm water, turquoise in colour and all by ourselves. Oh, and did I mention 3-5 metre cliffs into that prefect water? Bec thought it wasn’t really safe for 3 kids so we figured we could just go to the caravan parks in Ceduna for the night. Another plan gone down the gurgler and a new plan formulated. As I mentioned earlier, we are pretty happy to be flexible with plans, so it was into the town we went. We found all the caravan parks had no vacancy and were full. Another plan up in flames. Next plan was to fuel up and get some food for the hungry, tired, over it, grumpy kids in the back seat. Normally our kids enjoy some hot chips and unhealthy treats, but things on the Nullabour can be diferent. The food and coffee is not quite the same as at home. Even the kids turned their noses up at the fatty, oily feast in front of them!! But I do have to give credit to the hearts of the staff in the roadhouse. They took pity on us and turned the news off and put on ABC kids for our kids. Our kids loved this little treat and lay sprawled out on the ground in dining room watching tv. Small things are the best sometimes.
After a regroup and a slight spring in our step we hit the road with the kids stuffing their faces with dry salada biscuits! Our new plan was to stop in the first free camp we found and sleep, but on arrival to this new destination, we discovered it too was almost as full as a caravan park and we thought it best that we find somewhere a bit more private, as we imagined the kids would be up early the next morning and we didn’t expect the kids to have the most settled night, so it was back onto the road again! Much to Bec’s dismay we found a dodgy little track off into the scrub and set up a quick camp a kilometre or so off the main road. We had a little fire and the kids cooked marshmallows and this more than made up for all the little things that had not gone to plan for the day. Bec was convinced we were going to get kicked off our little campsite in the middle of the night, and that it was highly likely that dingoes would surround us or a herd of wild animals would run though the caravan on the way to their watering hole in the middle of the night, but it was all ok. In fact, it was quite the opposite, eerily quiet all night.
The next day was an early start as expected, so we gave the kids a kick of the soccerball as soon as there was some resemblance of daylight and a morning jog had by all (200metres anyway up the track!). Then off to Fowlers Bay for breakfast. It was perfect eating our breakfast overlooking the bay and the kids gave a little park a good workout before we tackled the massive sand dunes that were starting to encroach on the town. We all had a great time jumping and running up and down the hills. We got to see amazing scenery of the Great Australian Bight today as well.
We had made new plans to get to a campsite earlier in the day and give the kids time to let off some steam, so after a good days drive we pulled in at the last free camp before the Western Australian border and the kids rode and rode and rode their bikes.
After another early start we arrived at the Western Australian border at about 6.30am. They searched every nook and cranny for fruit and vegetables and honey. We had used most of this stuff up so only had to hand in a little fruit and honey. (My personal highlight of this search was Bec offering to hand in a container of “fresh dates”. The guy doing the search just laughed at us and told us that our “fresh dates were definitely not fresh!) They even washed the caravan for us which I thought was very nice, as it had been covered in mud from the drive to Fowlers Bay. We stopped just past the border for breakfast at Eucla. A little settlement with an old telegraph station near the beach. The kids enjoyed exploring this while eating our breakfast here. We drove on the straightest stretch of road in Australia. 146.6km without a bend!
We had our first breakdown today. With the extra mirror attached to the drivers mirror to see past the caravan, it created extra wind drag. Enough that when ever we passed an oncoming truck, the mirror would swing into the side window and I would have to wind down the window to push it back into its normal position. Not a terribly big breakdown, but quite annoying as there are lots of oncoming trucks! On top of that we discovered as unwritten law something along the lines of “You must wave to EVERY oncoming caravan driver, and the front seat passengers MUST wave to each other every time as well”. Some of the waves become quite animated due to a lack of other things to do. If you think about it, I didn’t need to steer for 1.5 hours, cruise control was on, so no accelerating either. So looking back, between waving to every third vehicle and winding down my window to fix the mirror every 52 seconds was probably a blessing and kept me from watching dvds in the back seat as I drove! Another early stop in a free camp and lots of riding bikes.
Our next and last day of driving was and even earlier start. (Thanks again to the big change in times!) We had driven over 200 kms before 8am, but this meant we arrived soon after lunch at Kalgoorlie in desperate need of washing, water and “fresh” food, we were able to set up and have a relax on the first small patch of green grass we had seen since leaving home.
2840kms so far.
We also felt like we got the caravan sorted out and Noah got into some school work which was good, so this travlling thing with kids might be getting better. Steve also enjoyed driving in the sand dunes here and even had to tow a guy in a car out of the sand! There were awesome sand dunes for the kids to run and jump on, and beautiful views from the top.
Ronalds on the road 