22^nd April, 2021 – Port Neill, Port Lincoln, Coffin Bay to Venus Bay:  A great day’s travelling, what an amazing port is Port Lincoln – the biggest set of grain silos suspended above the port, a modern town, a vast harbour (three times bigger than Sydney Harbour they proudly skite).

but we’re only having coffee here as we’re off to one of Australia’s famous oyster bays, Coffin Bay, where the restaurant is a chic as any in Sydney and the oysters just as good.

Time is of the essence as tonight we taking the recommendation of a fellow traveller – Peterborough and Kimba were unexpected successes after such recommendations, so we’ve been told that Venus Bay is as good as the name.

However, as we approach through salt bush, scrappy desert, then through the falling-down – even abandoned – beach shacks, we begin to wonder. The caravan park that sounded so promising because it was right on the beach is jam-packed. People come here just for the fishing – no pics of this scene. However, there are some bright spots

If you removed all sign of human life this would, indeed, deserve the name Venus. Sunrise is a miracle.

Then we walk to the top of the hill to see our first sight of the Great Australian Bight (we’re just at a back molar) as it faces off the Great Southern Ocean. As we approach the edge of a great cliff we are constantly reminded by signs on the track that people fall to their deaths here. We hang back from the edge, but the sight is staggering anyway. The Southern Ocean lives up to its name, just in the size of the surf. We watch, mesmerised, forgetting the time.

While we’re not in love with Venus Bay and are happy to head for Ceduna, the sight of that fantastic coastline was worth the visit.

On to Ceduna then…

21^st April, 2021, Cowell to Port Neill:  Wheat, wheat, wheat – now not much more than a stubble, but vast cleared hills to the horizon with only the road verges left with the sparse trees which would have covered the hills BWP (before white people).  We’re heading for the coast, and I have images of white sands and lapping shores. So we’re not ready for the hundreds of metres of mangroves between the coast and the sea (Cairns at low tide?) – not a glamorous sight, but no doubt good for the local wildlife.  Never mind, let’s find oysters, for which Eyre Peninsula is famous!

So in Cowell we head for the “Oyster Kiosk”. 

‘Hallo!’ The lone man in the kiosk looks surprised to see anyone. ‘Oysters?  Nah, I’ve been away for a few days.  My fisherman is just going out about now.  Where? Well, you could try…’ – he gives me two names.  The next place is shut.  What is the matter with Cowell? We go to the next place, but it’s shut too. Don’t they want to sell their oysters?  We find the coop – aha, success! ‘Yup $10 a dozen, cash only – Oh shucked! You want shucked?  Nah – now I can explain how to shuck them…oh you don’t want to – yes they can cut your fingers a bit – nah, nobody else will sell shucked oysters around here.’

So we give up, find the local pub and sit down on a pleasant verandah.  Guess what – the most fantastic oysters we have ever tasted.  Is there a feud between the Pub and the rest of town?  For the oyster lovers, these taste like Sydney Rock Oysters, but twice as big and NOT floury at all.  Heaven.

So it’s on to Port Neill, where we head to a free camp site which sounds promising, only to find out it’s a dry bit of ground surrounded by – yes, low swampy mallee scrub, very mangrove like.  After the uplifting Kimba, this is a sad little town, but they try – they love their marshes and have extensive signage about birds and the flora and other fauna of the area.

So, westwards again tomorrow, hopefully we’ll see more of the coastline, as so far, all the roads are inland… wish us luck!

18^th-21^st April, 2021 Kimba: …such a sweet little town that we stay longer than intended.  It’s full of colour – there are murals on many buildings, a huge one on the giant wheat silos and the school children have even painted their front fence with achievements on every picket and graced the playground with ceramic sculptures. There are two or three art houses in Kimba and every single person is super friendly. Apart from the giant gallah (I already knew a few of those) we find the sign that confirms we are already half way across Australia! We ride our bikes around the town, spend too much money on eating and jewellery (we’re in jade territory) and leave a little sadly – but we’re heading into oyster land, the Eyre Peninsula.

15^th April, 2021, Broken Hill to Peterborough: It’s often not the big tourist sites that one later remembers, but things smaller, more subtle.  The desert town of Broken Hill is the same. What I will remember is the corrugated iron. Walls, houses, fences. So many cottages, where you rake the front yard rather than mow it, where the only plants are desert grasses in corners or in pots, or sometimes the whole shebang has been tiled, seemingly in a fit of temper, or even paved with artificial grass, alarmingly green.  For some, a corrugated iron house is apparently not posh enough, so they replace the verandah uprights with Grecian columns or cover the façade in faux Spanish stucco. We smile, we point, we laugh out loud. We love this town, where the cottages might be corrugated iron but the schools and public buildings are fine blue stone or sand stone, grand, imposing, everlasting.

So we leave, equally buoyed by excitement of the west to come yet sad to be leaving, perhaps for the last time ever. So the road runs straight, west heading, in a last minute change of plan, for Peterborough. We’re immediately in desert, salt bush soft green against the red dirt plains, mirages again, trees on the horizon with trunks swallowed by sky, V-triple trucks wavering out of imaginary lakes into monsters, shuddering the air against the van as they roar past.

Peterborough  (changed from Petersburg after WWI along with all the Germanic street names) was first invented as a cross on a map – a suitable place for all three Australian rail gauges to meet. It grew from that small black cross to a thriving railway town, and today seems populated solely with steam train enthusiasts, devoted to an era now all but disappeared.  There are locomotives in the main street, carriages in the alleyways, model railways running in the newsagency.  Then there’s the Steamtown Museum.  We go see the sound and light show with a few dozen others, seated in the middle of the old railway roundhouse, which still houses dozens of old carriages of all guages.  So the trains are great, but don’t go to Peterborough for the food, it’s awful.

18^th April, 2021, Peterborough to Kimba:

But the west is calling.  It’s not long before there are yellow wheat fields all around us, not a tree past the narrow road verge, the vastness all aglow in the morning sun.  This ground must be rich, but only too soon it’s desert again, always desert but always different – stunted trees, yellowing grass, then more red dirt.

 Soon the mountains rise up before us, drawing ever closer and increasing in richness – colours from a Namatjira paint box, sleek and elegant. So we follow up through the winding passes, higher and higher, through the southern Flinders Ranges, seemingly never ending curves.

So it’s a shock when, in a moment, we pass the crest, the ground drops away fast and the vast distant plain around Spencer Gulf is spread before us like a banquet.  Olive greens and blues, slashed with white, mixed with the mist that always hangs around water. Skirting past Port Augusta as fast as we can, we drive through flaxen coloured fields into the town of Kimba – not a white lion but an indigenous word meaning ‘Bush Fire’.

We’re just half way across Australia!

13th April, 2021 – Bindara Station to Broken Hill: Days have been spent beside the curiously clay-coloured Darling River, very low but majestic in its meanderings. We wander through the bush, finding ‘crying trees (each lump on the tree is created to mourn a loved one’, ‘canoe trees (where a canoe is carved from a living tree)’, with their special roles and meanings to the past clans who lived here, as well as wool-washing river zones where the wool waited for the ferries which carried it to the coast. There’s also a Post Box tree where one shearer had his mail dropped by the visiting steamer. At night we join the camp fire with Barb, pet-goat owner as well as station owner /farmer /cook and host of Bindara Station. “We’re waiting for the flood from up north – as long as it doesn’t mysterioualy disappear along the way.” As a water sceptic, she’s a friendly, practical, down-to-earth woman and we enjoy her company, but Broken Hill calls.

We have now arrived in Broken Hill so many times it feels like home. But only long enough this time for Charlie’s vet visit and our Astra Seneca jabs. Next stop Peterborough, in South Australia – at last!

Dear family, friends and our future selves

24th March, 2021: You may notice that the last entry was October last year, when Ted had hurt his back. We headed home then, in time for a new hip, his recovery and renewed enthusiasm to ‘start again.’

But now there was a difference! We could go find the Indian Ocean thanks to the borders opening.

We sat on the verandah on our last evening before departure. Glass of red in hand, we watched out over Dungog in the distance, the sun setting on a glowing sunset, the kookaburras calling and the sea breeze drifting in from the coast behind us. The swallows were out tonight, zipping over our heads in a crazy gymnastic aerial show, the noisy minors were being noisy and the crickets had just started chirping. Charlie was nosing the air as though he could smell dinner and it felt like we had our own little piece of heaven.

Actually, why were we thinking of leaving at all?

25th March, 2021, Dungog to Gulgong: A couple of nights in Gulgong settle us down into travelling mode.

28th March, 2021, Girilambone (where?): Dungog is only three days ago, and we’re gladly here in Girilambone, red dirt country again – how great to be back. Where? Well, it’s a pub with a few houses around, a Post Office in someone’s front bedroom, a corrugated iron building that used to be a church, and another, now painted with how it used to look, which had once been a grocery store – and that’s it. So we eat in the pub and they are as friendly as all folks in red dirt country seem to be.

30th March, 2021, Meadow Glen Rest Area, west of Cobar to Round Hill, outside Broken Hill: Already, naturally, there’s a van issue. The water pump is not turning off, so Ted Nobbs is spending all his spare time with his head in dark corners looking for leaking pipes. But what’s new… we’re on the road, right so things are bound to go astray… he’ll find it soon. We’ve driven to Meadow Glen Rest Area today, just outside Broken Hill, picturesque, red dirt and red sand and green salt bush. The road is amazing, straight line of road in flat infinity plain, all ending up in a mirage on the horizon – trees without trunks, ranges floating in the air. It’s another world. Goats, plenty of goats, occasional clutches of huge emus, shiny feathered, black and brown, with their babies.

31st March, 2021, Broken Hill to Penrose Park at Silverton: We pass through Broken Hill, a short stay at Silverton and we’ll be on to South Australia the day after tomorrow. We’ve been to Broken Hill before, so a short visit to the Pro Hart Gallery and a short drive through town, then on to Penrose Park for a couple of nights. Can’t wait to go West!

3rd April, Easter Saturday, 2021, not going anywhere much: Oh no, we’re not going anywhere, let alone the Indian Ocean – water pump is working overtime and the water pressure is failing. Of course, it’s Easter, so now we’ll enjoy Penrose Park, the whole 70 acres of it and return, tail between legs (well that’s Charlie) back to Broken Hill to wait until the world wakes up again on Tuesday, then hang around Broken Hill until we have a working water system again.

4th April, Easter Sunday 2021: back to Broken Hill: We’re in the Broken Hill Tourist Park. When travelling we find it’s not the big sights that we love most – it’s the small things… gumnut trees from my childhood story books, historic corrugated iron and mini-orb cottages and concrete telegraph poles (no timber for building), the magnificent ironstone school buildings, courtesy of BHP.

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But never mind the nostalgia, we need some serious plans here. Without a water pump we can’t go anywhere, and Broken Hill is teeming with Sydneyites in brand new vans entertaining their children during the Easter Holidays, taking up all the labour of caravan repairers.

Tuesday 6th April, Broken Hill: Ted contacts the only campervan repairer in the town.

‘Oh well, you know the Easter Break and now the holidays – we a booked up until next week.’

‘Next week’ seems a million years away, so Ted gets out his best negotiating skills.

Finally: ‘Okay, if you bring in the van on Thursday morning at 8.30am, we’ll try to fit it between other jobs on Thursday or Friday – can’t tell you how long it will take until I look at it.’

Thursday or Friday? That means we have to move out of the van. Trying to generate happy vibes, I book a cabin in the caravan park for Wednesday night, Thursday night and Friday night, not knowing when we’ll get it back.

‘What if they still don’t finish it Ted?’

‘Yeah, well we’d better plan to be here Monday just in case.’

‘Okay, so let’s make a positive of it, Charlie is licking his leg too much, we’ll take him to the vet, and why not phone to see if we can get an Astra Zeneca Jab? Hey! What about Menindee Lakes for the weekend’

So ten minutes later, dog is to go to the vet on Thursday, and amazingly the Astra Zeneca jab is booked for next Wednesday. (So what’s an extra couple of days in Broken Hill?). So I book Menindee Lakes for the weekend until Tuesday and book the caravan park for Wednesday night and Thursday. That’s eight nights into the future! Such master planning…

So everything goes to plan until Ted takes the van in on Thursday morning, phones half an hour later to say that the water pump is working (don’t ask). So we’ve booked nine nights accommodation for nothing – we could have gone to South Australia today. Shall we try to cancel? Nah…. let’s us do it all.

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Saturday 10th April, 2021, via Menindee to Bindara Station: We wind our way through the Menindee Lakes – not a drop of water, sad, wide spaces, very beautiful, goats galore, emus and ‘roos. Red dirt alternating with clay pans. We stop at the Maidens Hotel in Menindee for lunch then 80km over a wide dirt road to find Bindara Station, first settled in 1849, with only half a dozen owners since. We wind our way down the river away, find a spot. There’s one other South African family a good hundred metres away, and not another sign of human life except the owner, Barb, who runs this 60,000 acre property alone since her husband died seven years ago.

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‘Since the drought, we just harvest the goats, there’s good money in that,’ she tells us as she drives us through the old stage coach route, pretty hard to find these days in the arid stunted tree and saltbush red sand desert.’ We find the old woolshed, falling down but still magnificent, and the air strip which still brings occasional visitors. She grins, but it must be a hard lonely life, 80km to the nearest town, and that’s the single street Menindee.

It was so sudden – this morning we were in neverending plains of red dirt or yellow grass, the vastness of a big sky, so big it dominated everything in our tiny scrap of flat world. As we drove away from Hughenden towards the Atherton Tableland, we hardly noticed the rise – a slight increase in revs was the only indication our altitude was increasing, our attention taken by the poor quality of the starving cattle, bones showing, huddled around depressions that looked as though they were meant to be dams.

Then the surroundings miraculously changed, the trees were green, there was undergrowth, also green, the undulations in the road started to be noticeable – there were crests and hollows – we’d forgotten in the many weeks in the plains, that such things existed, so came as a surprise – oh look, there’s a hill coming… we’re approaching the Atherton Tableland, from the west and the cattle are looking fat and well-fed.

With the undergrowth still increasing, mile after mile, we are transiting through tiny Mt Morgan, just when there’s a garage sale in the main street and an aboriginal band playing around the corner – must stop for coffee!

Now we go on to Ravenshoe, finding a park with green grass down to a flowing river – who would have thought?… a river with water in it, called the Millstream. So the wheel which used to turn the mill is now preserved in the Rotary-maintained park.

Ravenshoe has been a supply town for the western areas of Far North Queensland for over a hundred years, and this hotel has been there for a hundred of them – still operating. But we’re still only at six hundred metres – on we go, with growing excitement.

Now there are misty vistas on every side, the air is softer, fresher, we reach 900 metres and it’s all happened in one morning’s drive.

So here we are in Millaa Millaa, after ten years, and heading for Cooktown, if we can ever bear to leave this marvellous, cool but tropical climate.

The only thing marring our journey is the damage Ted did to his back when he tried to lift the generator, sideways, several weeks ago. Maybe here, in this long ago home of chiropractic-like treatment culture, we shall find a magician to cure him immediately.

Fingers crossed.

We’re amazed by the richer country that we pass through, with healthy looking cattle and sheep – they are apparently very proud of their ‘droughtmaster’ cattle, as we approach Winton. Here’s another town where we see everywhere the unflappable (pardon the pun) brolgas making their stately way through the streets.

Tattersall’s Hotel seems to be the centre of town, so we camp beside it.

We’re in search of dinosaurs though and it seems the best way to do it is in a three-hour in-depth tour. Going out to dinner, it’s okay to leave Charlie in the van and he settles down quite happily. But this is a daytime experience and it’s too long and definitely too hot. So for the first time on our travels we find a marvellous babysitter. She lives in a run-down house with her own pack of dogs and Charlie is immediately happy, sits on her foot nonchalantly as we wave good-bye.

The north west of Queensland, where dinosaur bones have been found is flat, dry, kept alive by Artesian waters. But it wasn’t always so – when the dinosaurs lived in this part of Australia, it was lush and green, covered in swamps and beaches, at about the latitude of Melbourne and joined to Antarctica. It, in fact, looked more like this:

To find the home of dinosaurs, we travel to Jump-Up country, great mesas left high and dry by the receding plains now far below them. The terrain is magic.

Left-over palm trees from a previous era – our cameras never stopped clicking…

Below is a reproduction of a great stampede, where ‘Banjo’, recreated here and one of the most complete dinosaurs ever found, chased a host of other, smaller animals and left their footprints behind – which is all there is to show of this great stampede. (I’m paraphrasing)

We had the great good fortune, then, to watch qualified volunteers painstakingly carve away the stone to find the dinosaur bones underneath

… and this is ‘Banjo’, pictured above and, as I said, the most complete skeleton ever found in this area:

Winton is also the ‘home’ of Waltzing Matilda, and a magnificent museum in the middle of town pays tribute to that:

Next is Hughenden, then we start climbing the Great Dividing Range from the western side, heading for the Atherton Tableland…

If we thought that Camden Park was desert…

… we were heartbroken to arrive in Longreach and hear about their eight year drought. The only signs of activity in Longreach are the Stockman’s Hall of Fame and the Qantas Museum, which has just introduced a new Light and Sound Show on the bellies of their largest aircraft, telling the history of Qantas. The compere thanked us over and over for bringing a little money into the town.

The Stockman’s Hall of Fame is not only a splendid static museum, but they have completed a new film telling Australia’s story of the stockman and their relationship with their land and their horses across the centuries. Very moving. It’s worth a flight to Longreach just to see it.

The building itself is wonderful, set in a harsh environment, the result of an architectural competition. What a shame they didn’t consult the architect before hiding part of the marvellous swooping lines of the roof behind a vast sheet of solar panels!

Your heart can’t help but be gladdened, though, by a town full of brolgas

Sadly, the cafes and restaurants seem to be closed and the streets are pretty deserted. With a feeling of sadness and helplessness, it’s time to leave Longreach and go searching for dinosaurs…

Surprisingly, the countryside improves as we approach Winton and we find a chirpy town full of crowds come to see dinosaurs and – yes, more Brolgas, in the main street no less. The centre of life in town is Tattersalls Hotel, but we’re heading out dinosaur hunting tomorrow…

So great to see Lainie and Terry after a long time, catching up on what our mutual sailing friends are – or are not – doing. We camp beside them for a few days in the CMCA bush camp.

Charleville is a kooky little town with a Hotel charismatically called the ‘The Corones.’ It also has a penchant for oddball signs

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The town of Charleville is charming however, which only makes it worse when it becomes Ted’s turn to crick his back (well, why couldn’t you lift a 25kilo generator with a twist?) – visits to the physio made it possible to get to know the town.

After a week Ted is still walking like an eighty year old, so we’re off to Emerald and spend a week there with a chiropractor. Less said the better

Barcaldine is on our way to North Queensland, and, back half fixed, this is our next stop:

Driving between these remote towns it is getting drier and drier, with more and more ant-hills. They must have had a competition, as hundreds of them are now donning party hats. (no, didn’t get a photo).

We reach Lara Wetlands, a large Artesian pond, four kilometres in circumference, fed by spouting Artesian waters. The waters, full of dead trees, have provided homes for thousands of birds and it has become a drawcard for bird watchers. The pond where the almost boiling water spouts provides a hot spa bath, great for recovering backs. We go there twice a day and can hardly drag ourselves away.

We do finally drag ourselves away to another ‘cattle’ station (no cattle, fences fallen down)outside Longreach – the drought has really not gone away here and we camp in a desert – fantastic experience – there’s nothing to stop the wind, so the middle of the night sees us up taking in the awning – just like being on the boat again!

So now we’re off to Longreach, Windton, Richmond and Hughendon, before making for the Atherton Tableland. We’re a couple of week’s late, but what’s new?

Watch this space – who knows if the plan will happen as planned? None have so far…