30 April 2021
It seems strange to think that just a little over 12 months ago we were stepping off a plane from Europe a little bemused by the level of fuss being caused by the latest pandemic candidate being spruiked by the doomsayers. We had heard it all before surely. AIDS was going to consume us, the swine flu was looking nasty and SARS was almost certainly going to explode. This COVID thing was surely just another storm in a teacup, and certainly did not warrant the great toilet paper kerfuffle we had returned to. It causes me shame 12 months down the track to reflect upon my sadly Trumpish attitudes. COVID was of course the real deal and mankind has suffered immensely on so many levels. And whilst the suffering in our little corner of the world has, when all I said and done, been relatively trivial, it has deprived Beth and I of one of our very favourite pastimes, namely travel. But some freedoms have been restored, and we have taken the opportunity to dust off the camper and head for the top end. Our plan is to spend three months revisiting some of the places we travelled to during our 2014 gap year, particularly the Kimberley and the WA coast. The big difference is that this time we are going with friends. Two couples, C&S and J&M, who Beth has known forever.
31 April 2021 - Dimboola
After a few false starts we finally hit the road. We leave from Geelong after farewelling Beth’s father, C&S leave from Woodend where their camper is stored and J&M are already well advanced on their journey having travelled earlier to Maryborough QLD to spend time with M’s father. The plan is for Beth and I to meet with C&S somewhere in northern Victoria on day one and to then travel with them on a cannonball run up the Stuart Hwy to the Devils Marbles in NT to meet with J&M on day 8.
Dimboola, some 300 kilometres from our start point is determined (in transit) to be good fishing for our first day of driving.
Just for fun we decided to slavishly obey google in directing us to our destination, which means that we saw some of Victoria which we had never seen before, adding interest to our journey. A short stop in Ararat for lunch and a bit of a stroll was very pleasant. Being about half way, this was also a good point for Beth to hand over driving to me, which she does somewhat reluctantly. She seems quite happy being at the throttle of our little cannonball express.
Dimboola is a nice little Wimmera township with no great claim to fame other than being the gateway to the little desert national park and having a 1970s play and movie named for it. I haven’t seen the movie, but I suspect it may be uncomplimentary to the town, because there seems to be no reference at all to it hereabouts. One other thing Dimboola is famous for is Clive. We know this is true, because Clive himself told us so. Whilst sitting quietly enjoying our breakfast in the free camp at the Dimboola Recreation Reserve a very dilapidated looking ute coughed its way across the paddock and stopped abruptly metres from our breakfast, wheezed and spat out a very dilapidated looking old man who, as he stumbled toward us, commenced to deliver, as if by rote, a potted history of Dimboola, complete with his immense part in that history. It seems that everything worthwhile in Dimboola was thanks to him, and anything not quite so worthwhile was down to various ‘idiots’ in town, public servants and politicians. Once the message was delivered, he then disappeared in a puff of smoke (once the ute started). The Dimboola Lorax I think.
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| Dimboola recreation reserve |
1 May 2021 - Mount Pleasant
Our aim today is to position ourselves somewhere within cooee of Clare, where S has booked a table the following day for lunch at a swish winery to celebrate C’s birthday.
It may come as no surprise that when we set out on this little adventure, there were two things which we determined to be essential daily activities. Coffee and a walk, in that order (unless you ask Beth). I thought that the trek to the toilet at the Dimboola Recreation Reserve probably qualified as a good walk, but Beth thought otherwise, so to help build the steps up we stopped at Kaniva for a bit of a wander and to admire some of their street and silo art. Evidently Hawthorn coach Alistair Clarkson hails from here, which I presume provided inspiration for the hawk mural on their wheat silos.
We also decided to try the only cafe in town (The Windmill), for our coffee fix. Passionfruit sponge and vanilla slice proved too difficult to resist as well. I try to catch up with my dear old Mum for coffee each week, and of late when asked what she would like with her coffee, the answer has typically been, “a piece of sponge would be nice”. Unfortunately a piece of sponge appears to be off the menu in Melbourne cafes. It looks like next time we go out for coffee, it will have to be to Kaniva.
Our decision to stay at Mount Pleasant was made fairly late in the day. This left us just 100km or so from our lunch date the next day.
Mount pleasant is a nice little town in the Adelaide hills on the fringes of the Barossa Valley wine growing area, and its council run caravan park forms part of the town’s sporting complex. We were told by the nice attendant that there were no more powered sites, but we could choose anywhere on the adjacent paddock as unpowered sites, and he would be along later, once we had set up to collect fees. No big deal, our campers are well equipped to be off grid for weeks at a time.
We chose sites in the farthest flung corner of the aforementioned paddock (a ploy I think to ensure that toilet visits contribute significantly to our daily step count). After setting up, our kind attendant visited and seemed amused by the remoteness of our chosen plot. “Do you know what?”, he said chuckling, “I think you can have this site for free”, and off he went.
I thought that was nice, Beth thought that he might know something that we did not. Our proximity to the gate of the horse cross country course together with the advertised equestrian event the next morning only heightened her suspicion.
A nice walk around the cross country course (baulking at the jumps of course) helped to bolster our paltry step count and rounded out the day nicely.
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| Kaniva sheep |
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| Clarke’s silo |
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| The Kaniva passion fruit sponge |
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| Checking in with passed relatives - Nhill cemetery |
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| Sunset tree - Mount Pleasant |
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| Another Mount pleasant tree - on the cross country course |
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| Radio tower Mount Pleasant I don’t know - I just liked the colours |
2 May 2021 - Mambray Creek, Mount Remarkable
Up early today to get in a sunrise walk around Mount Pleasant before packing up and heading off. I had already scoped out the two cafes in town to make sure that a coffee reward followed the walk, but sadly SA power was doing works that day, which knocked out both coffee shops. So nice big walk, but no coffee.
Upon our return to the campsite the crowds had started to mass for the horse event. I expected a couple of horses trotting around, but no, this was a serious event, with half the horses in South Australia in attendance as well as their entourages and probably even some spectators. As our empty paddock began to fill with horse floats, we thought that perhaps we should get moving sooner rather than later for fear of being over run.
Our hasty departure meant that we were running early for our lunch appointment, so we decided to take a small detour to Sevenhills winery, a place for which S holds fond childhood memories from long ago holidays. Sevenhills is a Jesuit retreat and winery, where all the wine (which we are reliably informed is first class) is totally produced by the resident Jesuit priests. It is a lovely place and we really enjoyed wandering through the gardens for an hour or so.
That just left lunch to have (very nice and a pleasant departure from our standard campers fare) and a relatively short drive to the Mambray creek campground in the Mount Remarkable National Park, where we arrive just in time to setup our camper before night falls.
Sevenhills winery 
Sevenhills 
Sevenhills
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| Sevenhills |
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| Mambray Creek |
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| Mambray Creek |
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| Mambray Creek |
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| Mambray Creek |
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| Mambray Creek |
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| Mambray Creek |
3 May 2021 - Coober Pedy
Today is a big day of driving, so we are up early to have a shower (purportedly hot, but apparently the moon and stars don’t do much for solar hot water, so 5:30am is not a really smart time to choose), and take a walk before packing up our van and heading to Coober Pedy.
The walk along Mambray Creek is very beautiful, which of course causes me to reach for my camera quite frequently and all too quickly I remember what that means. A walk for Beth is a walk, and stop-start is not an option, so for me it is walk-stop-ponder the shot-click-then run to catch up. Then repeat. I think it is called interval training.
Mambray Creek really is beautiful, and absolutely warrants more than an overnight stay, but we must remember our objective at this stage is to move quickly, and we are keen to get to Alice Springs by the 5th May to spend two nights there so we have a full day in the big smoke to deal with some time critical home business which we could not completely sort out before we left. So we pack up camp as soon as we return from our walk and set off on our 6 hour journey to Coober Pedy.
Such a journey is not possible without a latte under your belt, so we stop off at Port Augusta at a nice little coffee shop hidden down a little back street but found for us by google.
Beth and I are trying to share the driving load as equally as we can, with Beth taking the early shift and me taking the late shift. I think this is because usually the major navigational decisions are made approaching our destination rather than departure from our previous stopover, and perhaps it is unwise for me to be sitting in the navigator’s chair at these critical decision points.
There is not a lot of things to see or do between Port Augusta and Coober Pedy, but the landscape does constantly change, so the journey is still quite a bit behind the Geelong road in the boredom stakes.
We decide to stopover at Woomera to get some lunch, take a toilet break, replenish some supplies and change drivers. Woomera Village is set up to accommodate up to 500 service personnel managing various very important secret things in the broader Woomera prohibited area, but at the moment it seems a bit of a ghost town, with lots of empty Canberra style houses and flats on nice tidy streets. But not a soul to be seen, and the supermarket and shops all vacated. We took our toilet break, changed drivers and made a hasty exit just in case there had been a nuclear accident or something which nobody had told us about. Pies at the Pimba roadhouse did the trick for lunch.
I suspect there is no other place in the world quite like Coober Pedy. It’s lunar landscape pock marked with opal mines and its generally bleak and desolate personae hold a strange fascination for many people. I am afraid Coober Pedy has never delighted me and I have always been happy to see it disappearing in the rear view mirror. This time however I think I might have found some of that attraction which I have never felt before. Not sure why, Maybe being roused early to walk before the heat of the day helped, or maybe the town has changed, or maybe I have changed. Whatever, I enjoyed Coober Pedy. As mentioned we took an early morning walk through town to reprovision and fuel up on coffee. We found a lovely little French bakery down a side street which sold fresh baked croissants and sourdough bread (aha, maybe this is the reason I now like Coober Pedy). There was also a really good supermarket with excellent fresh fruit and veggies, so we bought up big.
4 May 2021 - Kulgera
The opal mine molehills continued on for miles on either side of the road when we left Coober Pedy. In such a desolate place, I guess there are not too many lobby groups pushing for mine rehabilitation works.
Our destination today is Kulgera roadhouse just over the NT border. Border crossings are interesting at the moment, because COVID has caused every state to introduce its own travel permit system. We are all over it though and have been right on the ball when it comes to observing these new restrictions. We have however been ridiculously useless at managing the other border restriction which has been in place forever, fruit quarantine. When we set out on our journey we packed a heap of fruit and veggies totally forgetting that the next day we crossed the SA border, which meant (once we realised our mistake) fruit for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now here we are again, with bucketloads of yummy Coober Pedy fruit and only hours away from another border. A Herculean effort at eating and cooking fruit ensured that nothing was wasted, but although I love fruit, at this point I am a little over it.
Kulgera is not a place on many tourist brochures. At best it gets a mention as a rest stop. But it holds fond memories for Beth and I because it is the refuge we sought and found as darkness fell seven years ago at the end of a particularly nerve wracking drive from Mount Dare through pouring rain on roads temporarily transformed to mud rivers. Not such a dire situation this time, but again, Kulgera provided welcome rest for weary travellers.
Kulgera also has a lovely rocky outcrop nearby which it was great fun to scramble across (again and again and again - we both love rocks).
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| Kulgera - grasses & rocks, two of my favourites |
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| Beth on he rock - Kulgera |
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| C&S waiting patiently for us to stop playing on the rocks - Kulgera |
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| More gras more rocks |
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| Sunset at the stockyard - Kulgera |
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| Beth on the rocks again |
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| Rocks - Kulgera |
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| Clothes line - early morning Kulgera |
5 - 6 May - Alice Springs
We have been to Alice Springs many times, and invariably we comment how much we like it. You wouldn’t say that Alice Springs is beautiful, but it has a character which appeals to both Beth and I, so although this visit is all about business, it still feels good to roll into a place which is familiar and comfortable.
As I mentioned earlier, Beth has some time critical business to transact which involves signing papers and making quite a large payment, so proximity to technology and a bank branch is necessary. We set aside a whole day to do this, and that is about how much it took.
Our resting place for two nights (our first multi night stop) is the G’day Mate caravan park just outside the Heavitree Gap about three or four km out of town. C&S decide to spend their rest day exploring the West MacDonnells, and Beth and I walk into town ready for business. Well Beth was ready for business anyway, I was ready for coffee.
I won’t bore you with the details of our wheeling and dealing, other than to say it was much more difficult than it needed to be, and we were thankful that we set aside the whole day. One interesting aside, when we went into the bank, we were confronted with long queues, but luckily the man at the information desk was very helpful and ushered us into an office. When we mentioned how nice it was to skip the queue, he laughed and said that it wasn’t unusual for travellers to come into the bank, see the queues and turn around saying they will try the next branch. The next branch is in Katherine 1100 km away. They usually come back and join the queue once they discover the error of their ways.
My three sisters were born in Alice Springs, which may have something to do with feeling comfortable with this place. Whilst we were wandering around we happened upon the old Alice Springs hospital which has been preserved and now serves a different community purpose. Beth asked me whether this was where my sisters were born, and of course I didn’t have a clue, so she sent a photo to my mother via my sister. My mother confirmed that my oldest sister Tracy was born there, but the other two were born at the new hospital. She had assumed that the old hospital had been long demolished. Mum has some interesting stories to tell of how different it was having a child in the outback in the 1960s (we were living in Oodnadatta when my three sisters were born), so it was nice to have a real rather than imagined place to anchor some of those stories.
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| Alice Springs - The old hospital |
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