We hit the road. Not far back to the highway and we got going towards WA – only about 90kms away. We stopped in at the first (eastern-most) lookout which was spectacular with the massive cliffs, wild ocean and indescribable water colour – turquoise or aquamarine or some other blue-green blend influenced by waves and foam and white water.
We reached the border and topped up some fuel – $1.89c/L – we dreamt of the $1.31c/L of only a few days ago. It was a splash-and-dash – we definitely didn’t fill up at that price! Next stop was the fruit fly quarantine checkpoint – a pretty serious operation where every vehicle is questioned, checked, searched and recorded. We had eaten through all our fruit this morning so we were fine to let the officer search the car. For us it was a fairly quick snoop around – mainly the fridge. For others they looked through their caravans and had more of a poke around. For the foreigners and backpackers who are more likely to disregard the rules and ignore the quarantine – they spend more time searching and finding hidden contraband.
We pushed on and got to Balladonia – famous (? on the map?) for the space station that disintegrated and crashed in the area back in the late ’70’s. We decided to drive about 10ks west out of town and started looking for a track off the highway to camp for the night. Not long and we found a good track and winding our way in we found a great spot that judging by the lack of tyre tracks no one had come into for a while. A nice area of woodland. A bit of highway noise – but few people – even trucks – were driving once it was dark – hitting a camel or even a lump of wombat isn’t worth it. The march flies were biting and we moved into the tent to do some school work and read books. Soon after the mozzies started buzzing and bashing against the tent mesh – we were glad we were inside and had a big tent we could spread out in. Two rooms means the boys can separate to do school work without getting distracted (and irritating their parents!).
JALC-OZ-2018 