Young - Lithgow

We only spent one day in Young and there were a few showers, so we didn't get to do much. There was a moderately interesting heritage walk around town, and a fairly dull scenic drive, although it might have been more interesting if we'd been able to find the lookout mentioned in the drive brochure. We ended up just pulling into the side of the road to look out over the valley, but couldn't escape a nagging feeling that perhaps we'd missed something spectacular. Probably the most interesting part of the drive were the drifts of 'tumbleweeds' - which appeared to be broken off dried grass stalks - which in some cases massed right across the road. It was a bit creepy to drive through them, never knowing if something was hidden underneath.

Lithgow is just west of the Blue Mountains, only about 200km from Sydney. We've spent a couple of days here and it could have been a lot longer, as there are heaps of interesting things to see and do. Lithgow has quite an industrial heritage, and coal mining and electricity generation still form the backbone of the region's economy. The area was opened up in 1869 when a railway was built over the Blue Mountains, utilising a series of zig zag switchbacks to make the steep descent to the town. This section of track was made obsolete in 1910 when they blasted some tunnels through the mountain, these tunnels are still used today for rail services which go west of Sydney. The original zig zag section has been restored and now has a tourist service. On the weekends a vintage steam engine runs the Zig Zag service, we did the tour on Friday which is run by diesel. Any disappointment we might have felt at missing out on the authentic steam train experience was quickly dispelled when we realised the extras offered on the diesel service. Because the diesel engine doesn't need to be shunted from one end of the train to the other at each 'zig', they have time to take the passengers into one of the signal boxes and explain how the manual signalling system works. We even got to change the signals and track alignment ourselves - it was harder than it looked! Once we got to the bottom we were given a short tour through the maintenance yards where they maintain all the engines and rolling stock for the Zig Zag railway - because the steam engines are so old it is impossible to get parts for them, so everything that needs repair or replacement has to be made in their own workshop. Then it was all aboard for the ride back to the top, with spectacular views down the valley.

Spectacular views are also to be found from the lookout at Hassans Walls, only 3km out of town. This lookout is on the top of a sheer escarpment and faces over fertile valleys towards the Blue Mountains in the distance. The lookout itself spreads along the cliff top, providing magnificent scenery no matter where you look. Unlike the usual situation at similar lookouts around Katoomba, closer in towards Sydney, we had the entire place to ourselves, and we could take our time absorbing the marvellous views. Places like this are very special with almost a spiritual quality, we felt very lucky to have experienced it.

One of Lithgow's original industries was a blast furnace producing pig iron, used for further processing into steel (this was in the days when we had this sort of industry ourselves, instead of just shipping the ore straight out of the ground and over to Japan). The blast furnace closed down in 1928 and now there are just the shells of a few buildings remaining. Not far from Lithgow are 2 huge electricity generation plants, fed by the local coal industry. The Mt Piper power station has an exhibit on how the plant works, and offers free power station tours. We spent an hour browsing through the expo, then at the time the tour was due to start were told that it was power station policy not to run the tour if it was raining. Given there was a bit of drizzle about at the time it meant we missed out, which was a shame as we were the only ones there so would have had a private tour. Maybe next time.....

In the early 20th century a railway was built from a mine at Newnes down to Lithgow. The mine and railway are long gone, but part of the railway alignment is now a popular walking trail. The highlight is an old railway tunnel which has been populated by glow worms. The 400m long tunnel has a gentle curve, so in the middle you can't see either end. Turn off your flashlight and hundreds of blue glowing dots appear - glow worm larvae attempting to attract small insects into their sticky web. Its a fantastic walk and an eerie experience.

While we have enjoyed our short time at Lithgow, we haven't enjoyed the cold spell, we've had to pull out our long sleeves and trousers, the winter doona and even the heater at night. Hopefully things will warm up again once we get to the other side of the Great Dividing Range.

Renmark - Hay

We crossed the Murray River several times on our way to Renmark, in the far East of South Australia. We knew that there had been flooding throughout the eastern states, but spending the summer in drought stricken WA it had been hard to really picture what the river would be like, so we were stunned to see just how high the water is. The entire floodplain area is under water, there must be trees getting a drink that haven't had one for years. Our caravan park in Renmark was right on the river's edge, the water was only about 10 metres from us, almost up to the park roadway. The wildlife are obviously coping well, one of our neighbours had a yabby trap in the water and came back with heaps of the crawly critters. They didn't offer us a feed though!

Apart from a game of golf and a walk by the river, we didn't do much in Renmark. We only spent 1 day here, and the weather forecast said rain and thunderstorms. By mid-afternoon we were beginning to think they'd got it wrong, then about 4:00 the sky darkened and the clouds opened. It pelted down for hours, we could hardly hear the tv in the evening with the noise on the caravan roof. The already sodden ground quickly became waterlogged, and the grass around our van filled with puddles deep enough to almost qualify as small lakes. We took it in turns to wear our emergency plastic rain poncho over to the amenities block, splashing through the wet in our thongs. It's conditions like this that make us wonder whether the caravanning lifestyle is all it's cracked up to be! The rain eased off during the night and by morning most of the standing water had drained away, so it wasn't too bad for us to hitch up the van and head off.

We headed east to Hay, leaving South Australia behind. The previous day's storms had obviously tracked in a similar direction, there were places on the road that were covered in water at least 30 cm deep, we were concerned that the car wouldn't be able to get through with the van on the back, but we managed to power through steadily, leaving a huge bow wave in our wake. There were intermittent showers for most of the drive, but luckily by the time we arrived in Hay in the mid-afternoon the skies had cleared.

Hay is on the Murrumbidgee River, and when we had made our plans to stop here one of the things we intended doing was a walk along the river bank, which sounded interesting with information boards and some historic sites. However, the muddy conditions made this impossible, so we contented ourselves with the heritage walk around the town centre. We also visited the Dunera museum, which gives the story of the WWII internment camps in the Hay area. The first internees were 2,500 mainly Jewish refugees who had fled the Nazis in Austria and Germany, they were shipped on the Dunera to Australia and interred as enemy aliens, not a particularly compassionate response to their plight. After a while they were moved on (and some time later someone realised that. hey, maybe they weren't enemies after all, and they were released) and the camps filled with captured Italian and Japanese POWs, as well as German, Italian and Japanese Australians, who the authorities feared would side with the enemy. After the war all these people were shipped 'home' - including people like the Japanese pearl divers from Broome who in many cases were born in Australia, but under the white Australia policy had been denied Australian citizenship. Not one of our country's finest moments.

Port Augusta, Clare, Gawler

Having been rejected by Cowell, we decided to spend a couple of nights at Port Augusta instead. On our way through Cowell we understood why the caravan park there was full - they had their annual 'Ute Muster' and every second car we saw was towing a trailer with a fancy vehicle on the back. This is our third visit to Port Augusta, so we didn't really do anything except have a game of golf and stock up on supplies - the general store at Elliston was fairly limited.

Next stop was Clare for a couple of nights. We arrived and had the caravan set up before lunch, and spent the afternoon doing a walk at nearby Spring Gully Conservation Park. The Clare Valley is well known for its wineries specialising in cool climate rieslings and sparkling, so we also visited a select few to stock up the van. After a game of golf the next day we did a scenic drive in the area, including a few lookouts. We could have spent longer in Clare, as the area is quite historic, but we managed an extra item of interest by stopping in Auburn to do a local history walk on the way to our next stop at Gawler. The photo at left shows an old mounting stone, used by the ladies to get into their carriages.

Gawler is only 45 km from Adelaide, and in fact is the end of one of the suburban rail lines. The station is only 5 minutes walk from the caravan park, so yesterday we caught the train into town. Things were pretty chaotic, as unbeknownst to us it as the first day of the Clipsal 500, a Super V8 car race carnival, and it was also St Patrick's Day. We carefully avoided the race goers and fake Irishmen in green felt hats, and stayed away from the pubs offering green dyed

Guinness. Instead, we walked around the city sights, admiring the many attractive old buildings. We also strolled around the Botanic Gardens, including a visit to the Australian Wine Centre, which had displays showing the history of wine making.

Yesterday also marked 2 years since we first left Melbourne on our Grey Nomad adventure, so we walked to a local pub for dinner and celebrated. The time has certainly flown, when we look back on all we have seen and done we marvel at just how much this big country has to offer. And we haven't even started on the north-eastern part yet!

Esperance to Eyre Peninsula

After leaving Albany we spent the weekend in Esperance. We had a week in Esperance last year, so all we did this time is play golf at each of the two golf courses there. We played in the Saturday competition at Pink Lake, both of us struggling with the poor condition of the course and the hills. There was obviously a reason why we didn't bother playing this course on our last visit! On Sunday we fared much better, coming runner up in the Esperance GC 2-ball ambrose competition.

After an early night Sunday we were up at 6:00 Monday morning to head off back across the Nullarbor. We planned to try and do the 1500 km from Esperance to Streaky Bay, on the west side of the Eyre Peninsula in SA, in 2 days, a fairly ambitious ask when towing, particularly given the 2.5 hours time change. On the first day we managed to get to Mundrabilla, only 79km from the SA border, arriving in the early evening. It is not a good idea to travel in twilight in the outback, as this is when all the animals come out to play on the road, and hitting a roo or camel would put a big dent in our travel plans, so we were glad to stop for the night. Next day we wound our clocks forward to SA time and headed off again, getting to Streaky Bay around 5:00. We hadn't booked at the caravan park as we hadn't been sure we would actually make it, and you can imagine our dismay when we got there to find the 'park full' sign out. There was no option but to keep going, although we feared that by the time we got anywhere else the caravan park office would be closed. We couldn't even ring ahead as our Optus mobile phones, as usual, didn't have any reception. Another 62 km further on we came to Port Kenny, a tiny speck of a town with a jetty and thank heavens, a roadhouse with caravan park. By this time our eyes were just about falling out of our head and despite the rather basic facilities we were just glad to be able to stop for the night.

We had a good sleep in the next morning, not least because our bodies hadn't yet adjusted to the time change, before heading a further 63km south to Elliston, also on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. They hesitated before accepting us without a booking, then gave us a lovely grassed site for 3 nights. They also warned us that we would be unlikely to get into the next place we had intended to stay at, Cowell on the eastern shore of the peninsula, and sure enough when we contacted the Cowell caravan park they said they had no vacancies until the end of March. We've certainly learnt our lesson now, and in future will be more scrupulous about booking ahead, even when we think that we'll be the only ones in the park!

Elliston has been a nice little town to rest up in after our long drive. Most people who visit here come for the fishing, which makes us the odd ones out. The local coastal drive has sculpture exhibitions each year, many of which remain as permanent artworks. There are also several walks and lookouts in town along the coastal cliffs.

Today we drove back north a bit along the coast, exploring the Lake Newland Conservation Park, Talia Caves and Venus Bay. Apparently they had 40mm of rain here a few days ago, so the 4wd tracks in the conservation park were pretty muddy, but the patrol managed to keep powering through, and we were impressed with the spring water bubbling up out of the rocks feeding the lake. Talia Caves were cut into the pink granite cliffs by the waves, providing a good rock basis for scrambling around and exploring, and the beautiful Talia Beach shown at right looked far too clean and sandy to be totally deserted.

Venus Bay (population 20) had a nice 2.5 km walk around the cliff edging the mouth of the bay, and we had a lovely lunch at the local general store, sitting in the sunshine on the balcony.

All in all, we now feel fully refreshed to continue our journey, albeit at hopefully a much more leisurely pace.

Finishing up in Albany

After two and a half months in Albany we are finally about to hit the road again. We have enjoyed our time here, particularly the experience of being part of a golf club again, but the weather hasn't been as summery as we would have liked, and we are heartily sick of the never-ending wind. Since our last post we've done a couple more walks, including Mt Hassell in the Stirling Ranges and Possession Point, quite close to town. The photo at left shows the view down from near the top of Mt Hassell, if you zoom a long way you might spot John waving from a flat spot in about the middle of the photo, and the car way down the bottom in the car park in the middle left. Although it was only supposed to be 3 km return the extremely steep slope made it feel an awful lot longer, the trip down was almost as difficult as the climb up, as the path was covered in loose scree and at one stage Wendy's feet came out from under her and she landed hard on her backside.

Wendy did the Possession Point walk with her Mum when we were in Albany previously, but it is a lovely walk and only about 20km from town, so we decided to do it together. Unfortunately we were unaware how high the tides come, and where last year we walked along a lovely sandy beach, this time we had to wade through the water to get back to the car, avoiding the bluebottle jelly fish that were everywhere on the sand. The photo at left shows barnacle encrusted floats that had washed up onto the beach.

Last weekend John made a lightning visit to Sydney for his granddaughter's baptism and his daughter's 30th birthday party. He had a lovely time catching up with his family. Wendy meanwhile decided to do the last remaining walk in the Porongorups, about 50km north of Albany. The walk description included the note that you needed a good head for heights, which rather lets John out. When she got to the trail head she found a track closed sign, from 1 March 2010 to 'until further notice'. Apparently the track reopened yesterday, so she missed out by less than a week. Wendy also played in the Albany Classic golf tournament over the weekend, blowing a one shot lead after a good first round with a terrible second round on Sunday to finish runner up. Another trophy to tuck away somewhere in the van.....

The consistent play on the same golf course has done wonders for our handicaps - Wendy has dropped from 12 to 6 while we have been here, and John from 12 to 8. Now that we'll be on the move again and playing at different courses every week our handicaps are likely to reverse direction and start heading back up again!