May 21 - June 5 (Day 379-394) - Kununurra to Alice Springs (via the Tanami Rd)

Kununurra

We stayed in Kununurra for a few days. We had one night at the Hidden Valley caravan park. Next morning we found one of the caravan tyres had a slow puncture. The tyres were getting very low anyway and I had been debating changing them in Kununurra (expensive) vs taking a risk and hoping they'd limp us back to Adelaide (cheaper). The puncture tipped the scales in favour of replacing the tyres so we got four new tyres put on at the Bridgestone dealer. They weren't actually too expensive, I think about $210 per tyre compared to $180 or so for a comparable tyre in Perth.

New tyres for the van!

April 11 (Day 339) - Meekatharra to Newman

375km

We checked out Cyclone Seroja's track, which was still showing as moving towards Kalbarri and Geraldton as expected.

Cyclone Seroja's estimated track as at 12pm

Karalundi Caravan Park

As you can see, the morning was calmer than last night, and the clouds were starting to dissipate. It was looking like a much nicer day than the last few have been.

We were nearly out of milk, so Matt cooked pancakes for breakfast while I fiddled around a bit with a couple of new solar blankets. We had a chat to the managers of the park who are Seventh Day Adventists. Their group runs the caravan park and the adjoining Aboriginal school. It's not a big park, maybe 14 berths or something, plus several cabins, but Kez the lady is run off her feet trying to manage the place on her own, do most of the cleaning, run the shop as well as home school her two young kids! But she's very much a people person and loves the caravan park lifestyle. 

Karalundi Caravan Park

Jan 14 - 15 (Day 329-330) - Albany to Esperance

 

620km

Thursday 14 January

 Today was a slow morning getting some work and school work done. 

Lunch at Wellstead

Then we hit the road towards Ravensthorpe. We were hoping to get to a caravan park to be able to do some washing and have a shower but most parks are busy this time of year so we had to think outside the box a little. So I looked on Wikicamps for rest stops that had showers available (like we did when we first arrived in Esperance last November) and spotted one at Wellstead which was on the way to Ravensthorpe.

 On the way up the road was closed and took us on quite a detour before heading back to the main highway but at least we were still heading where we wanted.

We all throughly enjoyed our shower! Oh, warm, clean and smelling like violets and daffodils! :D

One way we get a bit of clothes washing
done while on the road

Washing on the road

I also got Greg to fill a bucket half full of warm water to use in our 'caravan washing machine', which is just a 20L mayonnaise pail. This is a tip we learned from other travellers and gets you by. It's pretty easy to use - put your washing powder in and water, dump your clothes in and then sit it on the front (or rear) of your caravan. In our case it lives in the front tool box. The bumping along the road acts as an agitator, so when you arrive at your next destination the clothes are roughly washed. You then change over the water and rinse a few times an then put back in the tool box for the next bit of the travel to shake around and rinse nicely; then when you get to camp simply wring out and hang up.

Since we had used the showers that were free we thought to help them be able to maintain these free facilites we would buy something from the shop. As we got into the shop the boys spotted this cabinet full of matchbox cars. They were in absolute awe.

An incredible matchbox car collection at the Wellstead roadhouse!

Today seemed to be the day of road works. Actually this part of the highway they seem to be doing a lot of work on. Maybe widening it or something? I'm not sure but we were sitting at this stop for at least 5-10 minutes.

This is the Wheatbelt region of WA, and they've now finished harvest so most fields just have the stubble left.

Sun on the stubble - after harvest in the Wheatbelt, WA

Ravensthorpe

We made it to Ravensthorpe by about 4.45pm where we needed to pick up a parcel at the post office by 5pm, which Mum had sent down from Perth as it had arrived the day after we left for this southern part of our trip. It was a new solar regulator as the other one apparently wasn't working properly. 

We had travelled through Ravensthorpe on the way from Esperance to Perth preparing for our lockdown, so we started to recognise a few spots from here on.

Then we found a lovely little spot just south west of Ravensthorpe for the night. The weather has been so bitterly cold the last little while since getting down towards Albany which is a bit unusual for us as we've been in the warmer parts of the country for ages. Only needed our jumpers a few times here and there but down here we have needed them pretty much every day since about Augusta. But I must say it is nice in the evening when it comes to bedtime and you can snuggle under the quilt because it's cold. Much more bearable than sweltering and not being able to sleep because you are so hot.

Our camp for the night, about 10km south of Ravensthorpe

Friday 15 January

We headed from our rest stop down to Hopetoun to have a bit of a look around and hopefully drive along the coast towards Esperance.

We spotted a bakery on the way through and just had to have a little something. The boys had a quick play on the playground and then we went for a short walk down the street to the bakery and got some goodies to share between us all.

The coastline and beaches look so lovely but because it's so cold we haven't gone for any more swims.

Greg has been hunting and hunting online to try to find a bull bar for the Pajero. You'd be aware we hit a kangaroo on Cape York Peninsula July last year and we're going to be getting it repaired in Perth before we leave, but we're hoping to install a bull bar instead of just getting a new front bumper. It's been very hard to find something exactly right, and he made a few further unsuccessful phone calls while we were having morning tea.

Beautiful shoreline east of Hopetoun

From Hopetoun there was a road running along the coast for a while before it rejoined the main road further along, but we thought it might be nice to have some scenery of the coast so opted to take that road. We pumped up the tyres at a service station (we'd let them down a little while ago for a dirt road), then carried along the road out east for a while and got some nice views of the coastline, however the road was reasonably skinny and after a while it turned into dirt! Having just pumped up the tyres we weren't inclined to drop them back down for a smoother ride, so after a minute or two's vacillation decided to chicken out and head back to Hopetoun then back up to the main road. Times like these are why we've said how good information centres are, and this is the price you pay for ignoring your own advice!

Along the way we spotted a blue tongue lizard which Matthew went and rescued off the road and we let it road the car for a few minutes and then release back into the bush.

Along the road from Hopetoun back to Ravensthorpe a few farmers have put these large pieces of art around the place. This is just one of them but there were about another 10 pieces of art that were a bit further down other roads which we didn't go down. 

On our way to Esperance I made a few phones calls to caravan parks but every one of them was fully booked out so next best thing is looking on the satellite map and spotting bush tracks and finding somewhere we can squirrel ourselves away in that's free and to ourselves. We found one just 12 kms North West of Esperance and we'll stay here for 2 nights. There's not heaps of phone signal but enough to get some work done.

Our camp near Esperance

-- Mim and Greg

6 Jan (Day 323) - Perth to Herron Point (start of south-west 2 week trip)

 

95km

Wednesday 6 January 2021

Today we started out trip down south. Our original plan when we crossed the border back in November was to go along the south coast and make our way up to Perth but the quarantine time totally changed that plan. We had also hoped to do this part of the state on our last trip but Jude was on crutches after having broken his leg so it would have been too difficult.

The plan for this two week leg of our trip God willing, is to head along the south coast to Albany, along to Esperance and then back inland to Perth via Wave Rock and the Wheatbelt.

We are calling this 'Day 323' of our trip as far as it relates to travelling. Since we've been landed for a couple of weeks we'll just exclude those days in the official 'days of travel' count.

Anyway we headed off after having some morning tea at Dad & Mum's and made our way to fill up with fuel. Our first stop was about 200m away at the Thornlie Library for some essential reading material for the kids!

Dec 19-30 - Around Perth, End of Year Studies

Just a few highlights of the past week and a half.

On a couple of days we've gone down to the local park. There have often been other local kids there. Jude took the whip down the first time, and wow they were stunned when they heard it crack out! They all lined up and wanted a go, and on the three occasions I think we've been down there the same kids have all had a go at cracking the whip! They demonstrated what we had learned ourselves, that it's a lot harder than it looks!

 

Our three (centre, rear), with Josh and Lynette's kids Laila (far left)
and Luc (far right), and Johannes (front centre). Oh, and the whip far left!

Readings at Chris and Kathryn's.

On Friday Dec 21 we went around to Chris and Kathryn C's house to do the readings. Chris has been reading the blog in detail since he found out about it a week or two ago, which led to the curious circumstance where most things we went to mention about our trip he'd already read! He knew our car, he recognised the damage on the front of the car from the kangaroo incident at Coen in July, he'd read about the caravan leaf springs breaking (both times) and our quarantine dramas when we entered WA! There really didn't seem to be much news to tell him!

Dec 10-12 (Day 314-316) - Kalbarri to Billabong

 Thursday 10 December

Today we drove from the free camp into Kalbarri where we found a caravan park that accepted TAWK (Travelling Australia with Kids), which allows us to stay for 2 nights with the kids staying free. It's only a once of fee - when we bought it a couple of years ago it was $25, it's up to $40 now but definitely worth it. Their website has lots of other useful info for travelling Australia with kids.

Some caravan park around the country are quite supportive of this and it's very handy to help us decide where to go with this option as it does get quite expensive if you go to caravan parks a lot. We have tried to free camp around the place as much as possible and then just spend a little in the town we are staying in to save on the cost a little.

Also along the road we saw quite a few wild goats just galloping across the road and in the nearby bushes.

We arrived in Kalbarri around 1pm and needed some bread for lunch so went straight for the IGA and then the information centre for some other 'must see's' while in Kalbarri. We also needed to purchase a pass to go into the National Park to visit so did that while we were there.

We went to the park across the road briefly before heading to the caravan park to set up.

Dec 5 (Day 309) - Guilderton to Lancelin

150km today

After carefully heading back to the main road we drove about 6km down to Guilderton. After finding the main carpark was now a paid ticket carpark, we drove up to a public carpark on the cliffs overlooking the ocean and Moore River.

Guilderton / Moore River

The town of Guilderton is about 90km north of Perth, and sits at the mouth of Moore River. Moore River is unusual in that it normally doesn't flow through out to the Indian Ocean! There's a sandbar between the end of the river and the ocean, and over time the river fills up more and more until a combination of its rising level and the ocean crashing over the sand bar causes the river to break through the bar and all flow out to sea. The bar then closes back over and the process starts again.

Looking east from the cliffs to the broad swimming area in Moore River

Looking south to the mouth of Moore River (left) -
nearly joined up with the Indian Ocean (right)

Sep 8-11 (Day 220 - 223) - Burketown (Qld) to Mataranka (NT)

Tuesday 8 September

Burketown is a fairly small town, however it’s also the headquarters of Burke Shire which covers a large part of the north western Carpentaria region, so it’s a little better appointed than some of the other smaller towns in the region, like Gregory.  It has two shops, one of which is part of the post office we’d been to a few days ago, one fuel station with pretty expensive diesel ($1.85/L), as well as the main reason for our visit - the library.  Rural Libraries Queensland has been a great service for us – we first used them at the library in Mossman where we set up our account, not really expecting to be going anywhere else, yet we have since been to member libraries in Cooktown, Weipa, Normanton, and now Burketown, borrowing books from one and then returning them at the next.  Being able to source books from all over the state and have them transferred between libraries while you travel has been really good too, and we’d collected another full load of books in Normanton.  But Burketown is the western-most public library in Queensland, so we had to clear out our account and return all the remaining books we had on loan in anticipation of leaving Queensland later today. Special thanks to the lovely lady at Weipa library who organised for some books to be sent to Normanton especially for our kids so they could finish the sequel of the Rosewood Chronicles. She certainly went above and beyond to help!

 

This cute setup was at Burketown Caravan Park.

 

No that little aqua 4WD isn't an old LandCruiser -
believe it or not, this is an old Nissan Patrol!

 

 

July 30-31 (Day 181-182) - Laura to Coen

July 30

Although we'd only been at Laura for a couple of days we'd grown quite fond of it. As mentioned it is quite basic, but it's cheap, reasonably quiet, has lovely cool evenings, and plenty of sun for charging the van's batteries. Nonetheless we wanted to continue on our journey, particularly as Mim had only bought about a week's worth of food, on the assumption we'd be up and back in about a week (ho ho...!)

I made some adjustments to the voltage and current meter I'd installed - it had been supplied with an oversized current shunt, which meant the current gauge read far too low. Fortunately it was just a matter of hacking away enough metal from the shunt to increase resistance to the correct point so it read accurately. This done, we quickly calibrated it, us three boys had a haircut, and we were off. I guess it would have been about 12pm by the time we left.

July 16 (Day 167) - Cairns to Mossman

After leaving the caravan park we refuelled at what was shown as the cheapest station in town for diesel, but it also turned out to be a full service station! What I mean by that is that, it was a true 'service' station, where the attendant came out to pump the fuel for you (well he was busy when we fuelled up so we did it ourselves), but they also had a mechanical workshop attached, which was full of vehicles being worked on!

It was very much something 'out of the past', but was still working very well and obviously making a dollar too, so we were very glad to have given them our business!

June 29 (Day 150) - Townsville part 3

Monday 29 June

On this lovely morning we enjoyed pancakes altogether and then Greg and Jonathan changed the transfer case fluid in the car while the kids climbed trees, read books, played board games and rode around on bikes and made up other games together.  I enjoyed lots of cuddles with Chloe while chatting to Maxanne.

Later in the day Greg went with Jonathan and Joshua to a rental place they help to manage to help install a new kitchen

 

Pajero

The morning transfer case fluid change was a pretty easy job - just unscrew the drain plug, let the old stuff run out, and then refill with a hand pump.

Even though the old fluid looked pretty good when it came out, it was still considerably darker than the new stuff, so it was worth changing.

Transfer case fluid. New on left, old on right.

After they came back from doing the kitchen, they changed the fluid in the front and rear differentials. Greg had checked this before we left Adelaide and they still looked OK, but again once it was drained out you could see the difference! 

Differential fluid. New (bottom left), front diff (top centre), rear diff (bottom right)

 It looked like the rear diff fluid had been changed, possibly at the 180,000km service when it was due, but they may have not bothered with the front diff. Anyway they're all clean now.

They then went onto the fuel filter, which was pretty grotty as well!

Eww! Lots of sediment floating in the fuel filter. And the ends of the filter element
(through the holes) is supposed to be white!

All the contaminants on the fuel tank side of the filter. Lucky there IS a fuel filter!

They went very late, not finishing until after 12 as they had a good old chat afterwards!

-- Mim