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.