Blogalog Epilogue.

We reluctantly complete our journey, via port Fairy to catch up with Karen & family. All is well in the port of fairy. Whilst there we receive a call from home to say that Roxy is unwell, initial diagnosis, an obstruction due to eating bone with insufficient chewing. Unfortunately it turned out to be slightly more complicated, with pancreatitis caused by a suspected tumour in her stomach. So we are now back to a family of 4. Roxy was buried on the farm in a Private family service.

Roxy AKA Fluffy (seasonal) was loved by all. RIP.

For the figures we think we covered about 24,000 KM. We were not only amazed by how big this country is but the fact that there are constant changes to the outback. I presumed that we would pass through miles of nothingness, this was far from the case. With mountain ranges constantly appearing, changes in vegetation we were in awe of our surroundings for the entire trip. We did of course have the bonus of rain through the centre prior to our arrival which added colour to areas that may have been barren previously.

As for us, well you could liken the first couple of weeks to a defrag, all of the clutter was put in order & then we set about taking in as much as we could, on foot, by bike, by crawfish or even swimming to the odd location. We worked well as a team, each with our own specialities, there was harmony around our camp. We had no equipment failures, no puncture's, several small birds & some lizards perished on the front of the truck, most unfortunate I would have prefered them to be feral cats that we encountered across the country. Several fish also gave themselves up along the way for our sustenance. Annie has acquired new skills & shows some promise as a hunter gatherer.

So should you find yourself at a loose end, or fortunate enough to have long service leave or just have time on your hands, then simply pack some stuff into the car, get yourself up to highway #1, wait for a break in the caravans, hop on in and go see.

Thank you to all our followers, be you contributing or silent, we have enjoyed your feedback as we moved around the country. As for us it is back to work for now, we have had a taste & we are hungry for more.

See you all soon. (unless we have seen you already).

The fun stops here!

With what should have been a new record for crossing South Aust (dis allowed due to wind assistance) we are back in the state of Victoria. After enduring 2 solid wind events in 4 days we have literally been blown home. The wind did settle for 2 days while we caught up with Trev & Tam  - our Kimberly friends, in Victor Harbour, nothing like been shown around by the locals. The Fleurieu peninsular is in peak condition.

We will miss taunting from afar & we look forward to seeing your pasty faces soon. I have bent my last quality built Chinese tent peg for this trip & Annie has Hay fever, so we must be close to home. There will be an epilogue posted from Cherbourg Ave on our return. We are currently in Nelson. The wind is blowing, it is raining, we remember where home is! For the moment.

I wanted this bloke in the truck, Annie said no! He is happy in his own environment.



We are Melbourne bound.

We noticed some mountains in the distance while in Albany, so it was decided that we should investigate. So it was off to the Stirling range, our choice of hill to climb "Bluff Knol", a 1050 M ascent in 3 KM.

It was a beautiful day, the real challenge though was the 60km north west wind, in a few locations it tried to remove us from the mountain. The view was stunning, back to Albany & out across the plains to the north.

If you look closely you can see the truck & crawfish in the carpark. We slept well that night.
On to Esperance, Eucla, Cactus & now Streaky Bay, the skates are well & truly on. We did a 928km day, we would have done more only Annie purchased sugar free toffee's, so we ran out of energy??? This was the clincher for the Coight Trophy, in my view, what is a toffee with no sugar? A wax wrapper with goo in it.

At this stage we both feel like dropping into Melbourne, say Hi to you all, re fuel & continue on out the other side. We are looking for sponsors????

We best put the skates on!

A look at the map of Australia has revealed that we are a long way from home, with 2 weeks to go, mmmm we may have to start getting up early & Annie may have to forgo coffee in bed, every morning, we may even have to set a new record for distance travelled in a day, not normally more than 300km.

Anyway Albany is a beautiful place. Much to see & do, would love more time here but we must move on.

A bit like the prom with a city in it. "A story", we had been at Whale world which was gruesome but interesting, Annie & I had finished the tour & 3d movie then we wandered up to the top of one of the tanks that not so long ago would have had 21,000 gallons of whale oil in it. We were standing there marveling at the view when we noticed a southern Wright whale, sneaking up on some fishermen. "Jesus Blue is that your breath"? Asks one.

"No it's not my breath", completely oblivious to the 40 tonne fish that they could hook up at any moment. All of this unfolded about 200 meters from where there had been 24,000 whales dragged ashore cut up & cooked.

"Get the net Blue I am on to a big one"!
We had best be off now. See you all soon.

We Turn East.

Augusta is a corner of the country so we have little option other than head East, so we are on our way home. One thing I love about WA is they do not have as many rules as us back in the nanny state, here should you choose to climb a tree, then climb the tree. In Victoria, you will do an induction, wear fluro & talk to your lawyer so that we know who to blame should something go wrong.

Who said Grizzly bears can't climb trees? 70 meters up he went, in wind & rain, until he was cozy at the top only to find what he doesn't like about WA - filthy pigs had been before leaving cigarette butts!

So then we walked around Warren Np. then into the crawfish to bag a couple of tasty pearch for dinner.

After 3 days in pemberton, we head back to the coast via Denmark to Albany, where we will reside until the Saints relegate the Swans to pre season training camp.

Hope we are not here too long?

Bunker Bay shark attack

We visited Bunker bay last week, it is a lovely picturesque bay, protected from the prevailing SW wind, but it still receives swell, I would have ventured out in my fur seal grey wet suit had there been a little more swell.

probably the last place I would have expected an attack to happen. A tragedy for all concerned.

 

The South West Corner.

It is god damn freezing- at last I hear you say. We leave Perth & head down to Yallingup, sad to leave the relo's in Perth but we must move on. The features of this area are wine (both types red & white), surf & caves. Wine has been good, surf average, caves brilliant, we have done Jewel Cave & Ngilgi Cave both exceptional.

I forgot to mention Lighthouses, we did both of those as well. The past 3 days have been spent in Augusta. We like Augusta (even though it is freezing), it is a bit like WA's Malacootta, rugged coast with a river full of fish, & lots of exploring. Annie bailed out on me on our latest adventure, apparently I was being childish.

The truck made it through, Annie took a couple of deep breaths, got back in & we moved on to some more subdued activities, like watching the Saints smash Carlton at the pub to book a home final.

Then we sat & watched the Ducks go about their business - a lovely corner of the world.

South to Perth.

We have had an address for 10 days now as we move in with Neil, Shel, Shakira & Callum, brick walls, a tiled roof & a heater! We have been doing junior footy on weekends, pick ups & drop offs just like the olden days. All a distant memory now that I have retired (Annie says "no your not"!).

So now that we have the Crawfish full of paying customers on the Swan river I can kick back. On the way down from Red Bluff, we did Monkey Mia, Kalbari, Dongara & Jurian Bay all lovely locations.

We have spent our time in perth Eating/ drinking with friends new & old. With only 1 month of the trip remaining we had best get back on the road. We will head south now to Margret river, Albany, Esperance region. I have purchased a new wetsuit for cooler southern ocean, it is in fur seal grey, in an effort not to attract unwanted attention from large toothy fish.

Here we all are at Kings park last night, we have had a marvelous time in the remote community of Perth. We are looking forward to hearing how wonderful every ones winter was on our return.

Southward Bound.

We leave Ningaloo & all it's aquatic wonders behind us now, as well as a large brown snake that wanted to call the caboose home (another story for another day). Now it is off to Red Bluff so I can have a surf, at a break that I have wanted to surf for 30 years. It didn't happen, too big & scary for me!

That's the veiw from our camp, nice shallow coral reef just below the wave. We did see in our little bay, whales, sharks, turtles, dolphins & some very good surfers (myself excluded). On the fourth night it rained. We left the next day - the caboose looked like a lamington on wheels.

First rain in 4 months, we will get over it I guess. Here is some of the characters that apepared in our bay.

Then we had hump back mum & young one cruise past each morning.

It's getting cooler.

points update.

Now with Annie dominating the Coight points to date I felt that I should challenge, with a late charge. Annie made the suggestion that we should have lunch at a roadside stop, to which I reply, "we will find a nice place for lunch down the road", which I did, we had a lovely lunch on the bank of a dry river. With another 300km to complete our journey for the day I suggest we get a move on?

The fluffy red sand had other ideas, so a small stick is prepared, stuck into the valves & before you know it we are off down the highway at 22 psi.

So we are now at 4/2 I feel I have the momentum with me, then as some pino grigio is spilt onto the keyboard, we now have to copy & paste the letter "P". 
Now as I Prefer a lager, I am sure we can work out who takes the Points. 6/2 Annie leads.

I am sure I will manufacture some more Coight magic prior to tours end.

Ningaloo, Dugongs safe.

We hit the coast, with a sigh of relief having seen that the country is "moving forward", as long as we are digging holes. All Dugongs were left to go about their business, not even a tag & release by us.

We did launch the Crawfish into Yardie Creek, for some quiet recon work, the wildlife was uninterested.

A stunning cruise, the crew were rewarded with some sights that I should have charged a fee for.

So with that mission complete, we helped a Canadian couple out of a spot & we headed south.

It's getting cooler, a top of only 23 today.

Tom Price. How mining works.

The pilbara region is full of good stuff, it is a very stunning region but it has the stuff that we all love. So what we do is take a mountain, kick it, if it has a metallic ring to it, then we send it to China. It may look like they have tried to dig there way there.

Now as we load the red dusty slow boats to China on the West coast with Iron ore, on the east coast of oz their loading dusty black slow boats to China full of coal to heat the iron ore to make quality products to send back to us. This is so clever, we have gotten very good at it, all you need is loads of highly paid blokes in fluro, some very, very big trucks & diggers, then put lots of $000,000 behind any number that you think of. Now you are mining,

Now after this process has finished, faster, shinier ships return to our shores with loads of quality product for us to enjoy. So in a symbolic gesture we decide to return some of these quality products to their traditional home-Mount Tom Price.

Anyone else with quality product they have no further use for, send it back home. 

Karijini Np

We leave spot “x” & head south, dangerously close to the tropic of capricorn (the hot/ cold line), if you try to remember the best Melbourne day in Spring, 31-33 degrees, we have had that for 4 months now. Sorry.

Karijini Np is the one that those in the know say you must not miss, it is impresive, with gorges that seem to be deeper than you think possible.

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We did manage to get near the bottom of Hancock Gorge (not sure if it was named after the late great inheritance receiver Lang) but Annie did a magnificent job in getting into some tight locations.

We head now to Tom price mine for a tour, then onto Ningaloo to unleash the HMAS Crawfish on the ocean. (does anyone know what the legal size is for a dugong? & what is the bag limit?)  There will be an up date on Coight points shortly, there has been some jostling as we enter the final 2 months of the tour.

Although these rocks appear metallic & feel metallic they are safe for the moment, in these parts that could have you sent to China. Report to follow.

Spot X

Prior to leaving Melbourne we were given the "heads up" on a beautiful, special camp, a must do. So as we entered the Pilbara region we headed for 'Spot X", not the easiest of places to find, but well worth a few belly outs in the truck to get there.

Subterranean water percolates through the root structures at about 28-30 deg, then flows down amongst the paper barks as a pristine stream for a kilometer or so before it heads off into a series of small rapids. For 2 nights we hunted, gathered, swam & walked. A good call from our informer.

That's me with the wood. Once I had the oven on, then I hunted out a couple of big old crawfish for dinner. In a Steve Irwin type incident one of those big old crawfish did stick his barb into my calf a good inch, unlike Steve I pulled through with quality nursing. So crawfish was stuffed in the camp oven for dinner.

So should you be heading up this way & would like to visit this location, I will happily divulge the coordinates to you, a bottle of 15 year old single malt should do the trick I think, maybe a bottle of Moet for Annie too.

A snapshot from the poop deck of the HMAS Crawfish on patrol.

Children gone, we move on.

It has been a while since the children left us, they were last seen by us at Nackamuras bar, Broome International Airport, we presume they are elsewhere now. Having left them waiting for a delayed plane, we jumped back in the truck, less caboose & headed north toward Cape Laveque. At Middle lagoon we stopped to soak up some of the ambiance of the Kimberly pre the intrusion by mining companies.

We got to the Cape but without a reservation for "a swag", we did not get in (the biggest state in Oz is short on space some times) so we head South again. Like a couple of backpackers we spend the night on Cable beach as we have no prior bookings. Could have been worse I suppose.

We leave Broome with some fond memories of our family unit as one for a short time. So it is back to our other family now, the ones that adopt you along the way, not until one loses oneself on the road do you realise that there are many many folk to share a story with arround a bottle of red (and a camp fire & a camp oven). This is one such group, Phil & Di, Ken & Jan. We settled for beef in the pot this night, but it was nearly suckling pork, I have slowed up in my old age.

This is on the junction of the De Grey River & Bore Line Rd, WA, about 3km upstream, this is where we were 4 nights ago. So many stories, so little inclination to type. For now.
A&A

Finally we get a ride on a Camel.

We had Francesca booked on a Camel ride 5 years previous when we had a family holiday at Uluru, unfortunately Qantas conspired to deny our precious Missy of her ride on a large smelly desert creature. So with 3 different teams of camels marching amongst the over exposed seniors on Cable beach, we chose to fulfill her life long dream, obviously it was going to be the red team for us.

Now with the girls perched high on the back of Moojo the camel, the charge up the beach was on, there was no race caller required as they all came back in the order that they left.

Note the composure of our Camel Jockeys as compared to the rider in white. Hers was a struggle from start to finish, there were moments when we thought she may end up like a star fish on the beach, but she dismounted all be it an exhausted Jockey.

As the field heads home in the last at Cable beach, we as a family can now move forward knowing that the hump has now finally been lifted.