As I mentioned before, as soon as I arrived to Alice Springs, I was planning to stay for only two or three days and then continue further up to Darwin. I stayed in Alice for almost three weeks and I ended up in Fremantle instead. Why I changed my plans so radically? I stayed in Alice so long simply because I bumped into some very nice people and I just really enjoyed hanging around them. Moreover Central Australia is a very special and strong place and I just wanted to allow myself more time for exploring it. Similarly, I travelled to Fremantle instead of Darwin because I met Chris Jones, a mosaic artist, who lives in Freo but was working on a mosaic floor for Chris and Tash Raja in Alice during the time I stayed at their place. Because the wet season was just about to start in Darwin and because Chris seemed to be an extremely interesting person, I decided to accompany him on his journey back home. It turned out to be a very good decision.
We left Alice on Sunday afternoon 8/11/2009 trying to get as far as possible along the Stuart Highway. We crossed the South Australian border and stopped at a rest station around 50 km before Marla. Spent a night there and took off again early next morning.
On our way down south we visited spectacular Breakaways (not far from Coober Pedy). The Mars-like landscape is absolutely stunning and definitely worth visiting. It doesn't surprise that a couple of sci-fi movies were shot there.
We stayed on the highway all the way to Glendambo, which is located a few kilometres down south from the southern border of Woomera Prohibited Area (a military area), where we took a right-hand turn-off in order to see a bit of the desert and some salt lakes. I must mention that I drove for a few hours on the highway that day, first time in my life using the left line (woohoo!), which was actually a lot easier than I'd expected.
The bit from Glendambo through Kingoonya, Kokatha, Lake Everald and Hiltaba to Wirrulla was pretty rough - all gravel, very dusty roads, dry, hot air and strong wind. Chris' ancient Land Cruiser has got a damaged floor insulation in the cabin, so it works like a heater (you can barely place your bear feet on the floor), which is not really comfortable in 40℃. Consequently, we had to have both side windows fully open, which actually allowed the wind blow all the dust into the car. But that all was nothing to us for we are tough guys and adventure seekers and we bravely bear any inconvenience in order to see what hasn't been seen before (like a meter long dead wombat or a beautiful salt lakes and salt creeks).
Once we left the rugged desert land, the landscape changed dramatically - large golden fields of crops everywhere, hills, meadows, trees, farms. The fields reminded me of Czech Republic...
We arrived to Streaky Bay late in the evening and set up our camp on the beach a few kilometres behind a caravan park, just under a "No camping" sign (for we are great rebels and provocateurs). We cooked yummy pasta for dinner, watched a silly movie and went to our super comfy sand bed.
Next day (10/10/2009), we visited Streaky Bay and Smoky Bay towns, both small and pretty, Ceduna (where Chris demonstrated his charisma and high skills in flirting with elderly ladies in a local op-shop and both of us checked out some mosaics of a local young mosaic artist) and spent the afternoon at Cactus Beach.
Cactus Beach is absolutely gorgeous place with shiny white sand, huge white sand dunes, black cliffs and crystal clear water. Unfortunately, a little boy was attacked by a shark there in the past, so you can swim only in a small protected area. Nevertheless, it's still worth spending a couple of hours there swimming in the refreshing water and climbing on a jetty, especially in a hot australian autumn day. It's not really a best place for camping though, so we decided to move little bit further to charming Fowlers Bay.
Fowlers Bay is surrounded by beautiful salt lakes and huge white sand dunes and we found a great place for that night, in the middle of the long white remote beach. Yummy pasta again, Mad Max and sweet traveling dreams in the sand.
Heading westerly along the Great Australian Bight, we entered amazing Nullabor Plain the next morning. The name comes from latin and means "no trees", which is pretty descriptive. Nullabor Plain is 200 000 square kilometres of flat thick layer of limestone, covered by low scrub and limestone dust. There are hundreds of caves scattered around the whole area, including large, complex cave systems with underground water. Unfortunately, only 3 of them are accessible for public. They are called Murrawijinie caves and they are pretty bizarre - just holes in completely flat ground. You can climb inside which is heaps of fun. All definitely worth visiting.
We continued along the coast taking pretty much every turn-off to check out the spectacular cliffs and hopefully see some whales. The cliffs are really amazing but we were unlucky with the whales, poo (we saw one dolphin though).
We passed the quarantine check at the Western Australian border (you are not allowed to transport plants, vegetables, fruit etc. between Western Australia and the rest of the country) and asked the locals in Eucla, yet another little town, where to find a nice spot on the beach. The place is called 3 mile (you can get there if you go to the Eucla Telegraph Station and then just follow a sandy 4WD track all the way to the beach) and it's one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. Kilometres and kilometres of white sand, crystal clear water, very photogenic (and fun climbing) old jetty fully covered by (white) bird shit and absolutely no people! We filled up our evening with guess what - swimming, climbing the jetty, yummy pasta and Mad Max 2, and fell asleep on the soft sand.
Thursday (12/11/2009) morning, we just lazed around until we decided to take off, only to get to yet another beautiful white beach. We drove about 250 km along the highway and then, about 20 km before Cocklebiddy turned left to take yet another sandy track. After about 35 km, we finally arrived to the beach. It's not so difficult to find the way, you just have to drive towards Eyre Bird Observatory, pass by and as soon as you get to a limestone cairn, turn to the right, which will lead you to the desired beach. You'll recognize the right spot by a blue ship wreck.
We rested a bit there and then decided to drive along the beach to the west, hoping we could find the next turn-off which would lead us back to the highway. Unfortunately, after about 15 km, we got stuck in the thick layer of sea weed, so we had to come back. But it was still worth trying, we saw a cute seal puppy and a dead shark in the sand along the way. And we found a few really beautiful shells!
So we got back to the highway and continued westerly. After another 100 km, we entered longest straight stretch in Australia - 146 km of highway without any corners. It's pretty amazing to drive there at night and be able to see cars that are perhaps 10 km away. We landed at a resting place not far from Balladonia. It wasn't really pleasant night - hot and humid air, heaps of bugs, even a bit of rain, so we had to (surprisingly) eat yummy pasta, watch Mad Max 3 and get pissed to make it more bearable.
We spent the last day of our trip (Friday 13/11/2009) pretty much whole in the car, driving all the way to Fremantle. We passed by beautiful forests of Dundas Nature Reserve and very interesting dry Lake Cowan.
It was an amazing trip and I really enjoyed traveling with Chris. He's an experienced traveller and very efficient (i.e. fast) in pretty much everything he does, which was (considering the fact that I'm rather slow kinda guy) pretty inspiring ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment