Perth to Armidale: 6 days
I’ve not intended to use this blog for subjects outside of my creative projects, but it is an easy medium to present the story of my recent trip from Perth to Armidale. Another reason for this post is many people are asking for the story – so I’ve given in. I bear no responsibility for my crap photography. Let the tale begin:
Aside from all my experiences with airplanes, airports, waiting, brainwashing, hanging out with Jarrad and James in the lovely city of Perth, what follows is the roadtrip. If you are confused regarding localities please get yourself a good map and follow along. Heading south from Perth we followed the western coastline down to a famed surfing town named Margaret River, which isn’t on the beach but 3ks inland. We decided to go down and check the surf:
The whole time since I got to the West Coast it had been raining and murky – I expected postcard clear and hot skies with melty sunsets into the ocean. My impression is forever tainted! Here we can the hero of the story, doubling as our driver:
Needless to say it was cold:
This is a rather poor shot of some beautiful Karrie forest south of M.River, and area which is also full of limestone caves. The trees have an awesome cathedral-like pattern with no middle story, unlike East Coast forests. We should have camped there:
Instead we drove east as it got darker and wetter (rain blowing in from the west). Going through some dryer forest country we found a little road that we could camp down. It was wet, cold and dark – a little intimidating being our first night and having to cook in the dark:
The next day we headed east through lush green dairy country with beautiful forests. Worth stopping off at Pemberton. Here’s one of the many vistas looking south:
We make it to Albany, which is an old town with some cool old buildings, but looking very regional like Tamworth does. The weather was foul and windy, and over on the southern horizon we could see many massive wind turbine generators:
Heading north through country that opens up into what people from WA call the ‘wheat belt’ we find the Stirling Ranges. These spectacular mounts rise up out of nowhere, one being Bluff Knoll actually getting snow on it during winter. It was nice to see mountains again:
Stirling:
Terrorists:
We ended up driving north right through the middle of them. You can see Bluff Knoll to the east:
Jazzoo looking for wildflowers:
Mountains, WA style:
South back to Albany:
Jarrad found some wildflowers, which at the time were only starting to come out. Apparently now, in October, they are out in full force.
One of thousands of different species:
Another wildflower auditioning for the part of roadkill:
North and then a long way east of the Stirlings we end up at the stunning Fitzgerald River NP. Stunted bushes and wide vistas to lonely peaks down south are home to an incredible range of bird species. Lacking tall trees we were struggling to find a place to camp:
We came to a nice creek with soft soil. When the wind died down it was a lovely spot:
The creek:
The view a long way south:
Tucked away:
I was a little disappointed that I didn’t take a photo of the wildflowers in the morning when they were more colourful. Nevertheless you can see what it’s like in arvo:
Despite only have two rednecks hassle us as they drove past it was a quiet and beautiful night. In the morning there was an exceptionally strange chorus of birds that sounded like a million computers being melted. Jarrad did some bird watching and then we headed east through the canola fields until we reached Esperance:
The weather wasn’t great because apparently this place can look quite a postcard:
Some of the locals get hungry:
We headed north and the country quickly became dry and repetitive. The shot shows you that, so just ignore my mug:
About 1pm we get to Norseman, which looks like a real outback town. It’s on the road north to Kalgoorlie, for which north of there is nothing of any significance map wise until the north coast of Australia. We head just a little way north of Norseman along the highway and stop at a very cool place called Lake Cowan:
Despite it looking so, there is no water here or out on the horizon – just a mirage of the clear blue sky. There’s all sorts of random junk out there on the salty sandy surface:
Cousin thinks he’s spotted a whale:
Tracks from Norseman hoons:
Only in Australia will you find evidence that some mad bugger had tried to farm this sort of land:
We had lunch back in Norseman at what could be described as our first of many roadhouses. Between Norseman the middle of WA to all the way over to Ceduna in the middle of SA there are NO TOWNS (maybe Eucla) for about 1000ks, only roadhouses. He’s a poor shot of the road that turns east to go across the Nullarbor, a simple two way highway that goes for over 1000ks:
This is a typical shot of the long straight roads going east. The woodland is very dry and some of the trees have a deep bronze golden colour to them which I didn’t get a photo of. Here you can see our intrepid co-travellers Mr. Squirrel and Fonz:
Late that afternoon, and hour and half out of Norseman, we turned off on the northern side of the road to a beautiful place called Newman Rock. Here you can see a small portion of it’s large redness where we made camp:
This is the view northeast where you can see more of the large rock and how endless the view north is:
It finally looked and felt like we were in real outback Australia. North of us there is northing except the main rail line and Darwin, and nothing south except the main road and then the ocean to Antarctica. Here’s the guy we hired as our chef for the night:
The sky being so clear we got a stellar sunset:
…And diving into the Earth’s shadow:
The night’s viewing of stars was impressive. I’ve never seen so much clear unobstructed sky before, though not as brilliant as I’ve seen stars at Cathedral Rock in winter. We counted 12 odd satellites and wondered at this weird column effect the Sun’s afterglow had. After a good night’s rest and some dingo howling this was the view in the morning:
On the road again east, getting very hot in the car after the Balladonia roadhouse:
There were some insanely long straight roads. Music in the car is essential:
This is the view back west showing the typical sparse scrub that makes up most of the landscape across the Nullarbor:
Mr. Squirrel and Fonz noted that there were fewer trees than they had bargained for:
At the end of the 90 mile straight we check out Caiguna Blowhole. Being a giant limestone slab, the Nullarbor is full of caves, some of which breathe like this one. Being above 30C in the car the icy cold wind blowing out of the hole was refreshing and strange:
Jarrad in hole:
With the temperature up around 36C we decided to do some time travel. We lost 45 minutes, possibly to aliens sent down from Pine Gap:
This is the view south from the Madura Pass, where the road dips off the Nullarbor slab onto the sea-level Roe Plain, both of which are dead flat:
The view east down to where the road goes and the Madura roadhouse:
There were no elephants spotted:
Mr. Squirrel and Fonz observe the very plain Roe Plain. To the north you can see the Nullarbor slab 200ms higher. Along here we got stopped by the cops worried about Jarrad’s obscured rear numberplate and full load in the car. They asked if we had any drugs or firearms. We got talking and it turns out Jarrad knew one of the cop’s workmates – WA is a very small place after all:
Here you can just see the Roe Plain coming back to meet the Nullarbor in a transition of dunes. Here the road goes up to Eucla, and then not much further onto the border:
Boarder village:
We decided to treat ourselves that night by lodging in a cabin (besides Jarrad HAD to watch the Brownlow Medal on TV). It was a good time for a shower and to checkout the overnight roadhouse culture. By 9pm the cabins were full. By 9am the next day they were empty again:
This is the view back west to the WA-SA checking station. All westbound travellers have to claim fruit to stop disease from getting into WA crops. We stoped at the border and shot a video of us throwing a Frisbee across the line:
Driving east we entered the Nullarbor NP where there are many cool lookouts over the Bight. Here’s the view back west toward Eucla and the Roe Plain:
Aside from have a crystal clear day, we were noticing many Budgies migrating west in large groups travelling at high speed close to the ground. We estimated there must have been near to 100000 of the little green things. Fonz and Jarrad keep watch:
Mmmm limestone biscuit:
Starkly beautiful westward:
Nice one of Cousin:
Keeping an eye out for the Budgies:
All the way along from Norseman to Ceduna at intervals of about 50 to 80ks were these 100+m communications towers. I first assumed that there were simply relay stations all the way along the road, but on further consideration they are more likely to be an extension of the CIA’s antenna array from Pine Gap, little under 1000ks north of us. There is nowhere to hide:
After a bit we hit what you would call the Nullarbor Plain proper. The trees thinned out as did the small stunted bushes. I’d hate to do this trip in summer, as it was very hot in the car:
For lunch we stopped at the amazing Nullarbor Roadhouse, which is surrounded by NOTHING! Here you can see a CIA agent ingeniously disguised as a whale:
West:
Southeast:
Northeast:
The nothing last a surprisingly short amount of time, maybe only 20-30 minutes:
Mr. Squirrel and Fonz enjoying nothing:
After the Nullarbor NP we head into Yallatar Aboriginal Land, which has many trees and long big undulating hills. The roadhouse there was closed down and it was very hot. Slowly we came out of that and into fenced off wheat country. Eventually we reach beautiful Ceduna by the bay:
Unfortunately Ceduna is a rather rough place. We turned up at the park and a big family were arguing. Later, after this shot, a drunkard man came up to us unzipping his fly and asking if we wanted a cigarette. Needless to say we refused and drove to the shop to get some supplies. There was a road sign point west saying Pepth instead of Perth. But other than that, Ceduna makes the tastiest bread in the whole world:
Taking the bread east as the sun went down we were hard pressed trying to find a camp site without enough trees to hide us from the wheat fields and a spot far away enough from the rough looking towns. We found a spot about an hour east and didn’t take photos of it because it looked and smelt like a dump. Jarrad had a good time having a conversation with the Owlet Nightjars. The next day we headed east through the wheat country, passing many towns with huge grain silos:
There were a few roads north that had signs stating that they led to proper Aboriginal communities, and the neglect was apparent. This photo here shows Darkie Peak, obviously not too stressed about being PC:
…Another town, another servo. We found another CIA agent:
We stopped off at a NP I can’t remember the name of right now to look for Eastern Yellow Robins. Jarrad was very excited to find lots of other interesting and rare species after trudging around the scrub for an hour. It’s real Aussie bush:
Finally heading northeast we swing closer to the mining spectacle that is Iron Knob. I was suddenly noticing how big Australia really is because I’ve been to this point before in 1998. I can now mentally put the whole island together. Here’s the Knob:
The landscape becomes desolate again heading toward Port Augusta. We were slowing creeping up on the southern end of the Flinders Ranges:
Here is a poor photo of a famous turn off (I’ve got older better photos of this). Go straight ahead and you go to Western Australia. Turn right and you go to Northern Territory. There are no other major roads!
It was hard finding anything reasonable to eat in Port Augusta (another rough town?), especially after eating roadhouse food for a while. So I gave into Jarrad’s desire to eat at Hungry Jack’s. Yes, the pink lake is still there:
Then we headed southwest into the South Flinders Ranges. They are eerily beautiful:
I missed a photo-op of a cool sign that said ‘Sydney is this way’, so instead we have this on the main road that heads for NSW:
The pass through the ranges felt great because we had not driven through windy mountain roads for a long time. On the other side the ranges open up in the dry wheat plains with quiet little towns:
Keen to cover a lot of country being closer to home we head out from Peterborough northeast through some of the starkest country I’ve ever seen in my life. Again, I’ve done this once before, but that road to Broken Hill never ceases to amaze me. These photos do it little justice:
You can see by now Mr. Squirrel had given up:
I missed some other amazing photo opportunities due to us rushing and not being able to find a camp site amongst the naked desolation. The sunset was probably the best I’ve ever seen in my life, probably only beaten by the sunsets I’ve seen in 98 at Broken Hill. We stopped briefly to throw the Frisbee across the SA-NSW border. Then it got really dark and I convinced Jarrad we should just treat ourselves and go to a caravan park in Broken Hill. That we did: and had a relaxing camp as a result. You can spend weeks in Broken Hill with all its arts and mining attractions, but we headed out very early (after retrieving a stray Frisbee) and headed east into hot boring country:
Some photos are just full of a story. …A long boring trip to Wilcannia, with nothing in between. Then nothing onward to Cobar and by then you’re half way across NSW. We had to stop and get a drink and the only place between Wilcannia and Cobar is a little place called The Emmdale Roadhouse. There is nothing there but trucks and a gruff old guy to serve us. Ice coffee does the trick and we take off. I had a little ritual of checking my pockets for my wallet after stops. 20ks down the road I tell Jarrad to pull over because I’ve realised I’ve lost it. The car doesn’t yield the item, so we turn back dreading that it may be lost on the road or at the roadhouse. Of course, all sorts of scenarios go through your head. It must have been the longest 20ks of the whole trip. Sure enough the wallet was lying on the ground outside the roadhouse – it had fallen there because like a baby I left it on the roof of the car. Before even picking it up I had to take a photo:
We had lunch at Cobar, the same nice place I had lunch at in 98. We had already done +600ks and being so near to home we were confident we could drive all the way back in the one day. After 6 days of car and camping we were getting a little giddy from constantly telling jokes to each other. You could tell we were headed back toward ‘civilisation’:
Reaching the dead straight Maxwell Highway and killing a rather majestic Monitor so big that it took up the whole lane of the road we reached our turn off to head east. More silos:
NSW, the possibilities are endless:
Meandering through river country on the Oxley we make a pit stop at Gilgandra and admire more silos:
Getting excited at the sight of eastern mountains we headed northeast around the south of The Warrumbungles.
Sun set by the time we got to Coonabarabran, and we drove onward in the darkness north to Gunnedah to grab some food. Then we went onto Tamworth where for the second time got pulled over by police concerned about Jarrad’s rear numberplate and the amount of luggage in the backseat. Unscathed, we excitedly headed up the Moonbi’s to New England. We got back to Armidale around 9:30pm, having driven around 1200ks from Broken Hill that same morning. My flat was the first stop, and Jarrad quickly unloaded my luggage:
So there you have it! Next post shall be back to normal.
