Left Gawler with the plan to drive around 450 kilometres and get past the hump and on a more westerly direction back to WA. I set my sights on getting to Kimba and staying a couple of nights in the free camp in town. There were two to choose from and I chose the Lions/Apex Park in the centre of town. It is only small and could probably handle around 6/8 vans comfortably before becoming a bit close and personal. While I was there the most vans that stayed were three at one time so plenty of room for everyone. The other camp is at the oval on the edge of town and supposedly does get a bit more road noise at night. The one in the centre on town is very quiet and I would definitely stay if passing through again. Its also a very close walk to the centre of town.
Kimba is geographically halfway across Australia and also advertises itself as the eastern gateway to the Gawler Ranges. Also just out of town there is a pretty impressive statue of Edward John Eyre and his indigenous tracker Wylie. These are situated on Whites Knob and offer some great views of the local area. As we all know from our history lessons at school Edward John Eyre was the first man to cross the continent from Sydney to the Swan River. He was also the first man to record the three sides of the peninsula that is named in his honour and also of course the Eyre Highway that we travel on across the Nullarbor. Kimba is also home to the Big Galah which is an 8 metre tall statue of a galah situated out the front of the Halfway Across Australia Gem Shop.
Leaving Kimba was bit of an eventful exercise in the morning. Boiling the kettle I ran out of gas, which is no big deal in itself but means you still need to get a new bottle. So after packing the van I went out and changed the gas bottle then went to the local IGA for some essential supplies, Tim Tams and ice cream. When I went to start the car it was dead. Luckily I was still in town and Kimba being relatively small I was able to walk to the local Toyota service centre and got them to check the batteries. Both were showing low and not holding charge so $500 later I managed to leave town.
From Kimba I travelled a little over 220 kilometres to a free camp called Old Perlubie School Site. Its not a bad little spot not to far from the side of the road with some pretty good clear sites. The traffic noise at night wasn’t to bad with only the odd truck or vehicle after about 11pm.
The next days plan was to drive and stop overnight at a place called Rushy’s Balcony. When I got to what I thought looked like the place on the map it looked a bit close to the road so the executive decision was made to travel on further and look for somewhere a bit better. I travelled about another 50 kilometres and found a place with heaps of room and a little bit further from the road. Not sure of the name of this location but I got a fantastic sunset and would stay again if I could ever remember where it was.
Next morning it was off again and onto the Border Village. I was tossing up between it and Eucla and decided on the Border Village simply because it is literally right on the SA/WA border. The days driving was broken up quite a bit with a couple of tour stops at the Head of The Bight tour centre and one of the viewing points looking back along the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. I still feel that no matter how many times you have seen the cliffs along here they are still spectacular every time. I did think the Border Village was closer to the ocean than what it was though when I got there. The walk down to the ocean from here took me just over an hour each way. The view was nice though when I got there so was kind off worth the effort. It is also the start of the Eucla National Park when you get to the ocean. The view looking west towards WA was of nice white sand beaches near Eucla itself and east was not as nice.
Today was a big drive today was. After a pretty thorough check over for fruit and vegies at the border crossing to come into WA my original plan was to drive to Caiguna and stay the night. Once I started out and got driving and seeing as there isn’t that much I really wanted to see in this part of the Nullarbor I changed my mind and decided to drive and stop a short distance out of Norseman. In the end I found a really good gravel pit about 20 kilometres out of Norseman. The area had been all levelled off with small blue metal rocks surrounded by trees and even with a very small lake or large puddle near the edge full of water. It also started to rain just after I pulled up so being parked on blue metal I wasn’t walking around in the mud. you have got to enjoy these little wins when you can.
After a great nights sleep and I was the only one who stayed at this stop overnight it was off into Norseman to fuel up and do a bit of food shopping. I still didn’t see much change in Norseman from my early years in Kalgoorlie, they have done some improvement works in the main street but I still couldn’t get a feel for the place. The local IGA was pretty ordinary and I only managed to get about half of what I was planning, all the healthy food I was hoping to buy would just have to wait until Esperance. As a result I didn’t hang around Norseman very long and got back on the road and headed towards Salmon Gums. The little caravan park there had got some pretty good reviews so I decided to check it out and catch up on some domestic chores. When Kaye left and flew back to Perth she left the van very dirty so yours truly had some work to do. I would thoroughly recommend a stay at this great little park if your needing a rest stop in this part of WA, very neat and tidy with good amenities.
From Salmon Gums it was down the road to Esperance and some shopping. I was planning on a farm stay 30 kilometres out of town for a couple of days. When I got near the turn off there were road works going on and all the entrances were blocked off. It was also raining quite heavy at this time so I thought maybe muddy paddocks were not the best to be staying in so headed off towards Ravensthorpe. I booked into the Ravensthorpe CP for a couple of nights and thought I would spend the next day driving around towards Hopetoun and looking around. I was surprised how big Hopetoun actually was now as I haven’t been down this was for a long time.
After leaving Ravensthorpe I was a bit undecided how far to travel for the day as I was getting reasonably close to Perth so decided I would drive and see where I was around midday and take it from there. When I got about 5 kilometres out of Newdegate I felt the van give bit of a shut and looked in the rear view mirror and saw the van on bit of a lean. I pulled over and looked underneath and saw I had broken a leaf spring on the caravan. This pretty much decided that my next stop would be in Newdegate. As it was also raining quite a bit all I did was pull up at the caravan park, plug in the power and wait until the rain stopped.
From here it was a bit of mucking around with the van. I took the spring off and drove back to Perth to have it repaired. I also got them to put an extra leaf in the set as well and then was going to modify the three others when I got back to Perth. Up until this point I was having quite a good trip on my own. After the spring was repaired it was a drive back to Newdegate and fit the spring that afternoon. The net day was an easy drive to Perth and the other repair work began.
After getting the van all sorted out we though that we should take the van over a weigh bridge fully loaded for travel and see how we were weight wise. I always suspected that we were overweight but never sure how much. To say we were shocked when the van was weighed is bit of an understatement. We thought we might have been around 100kg’s overweight but it was just over 300kg’s. This meant going home and weighing up what options we had in front of us;
- Reduce the amount of stuff we carried around with us,
- Upgrade our suspension
- Buy a new van
We didn’t really want to reduce what we carried around with us and spending quite a few thousand dollars on a suspension upgrade didn’t really do it for us either. In the end we decided that updating the van was the best option for us so now when we head off it will be in a new van. We ended up looking at a few different models but decided to stick with Traveller Vans. We are very happy with the one we have at the moment and haven’t had any big issues with it and have taken over some ordinary roads over the last two years. We now have to wait for it to be built and delivered which will be around the end of October so we just have to be patient and wait which is very hard to do. It also means I can have a big rest before having to do another blog update which I don’t mind at all……………….
