2015, somewhere near Cocklebiddy on the Nullarbor Plain Last night we had to operate on our toilet. It appears that the rough Fowlers Bay road dislodged the seal slightly causing it to smell like a urinal at the MCG, on Grand Final Day. Continue reading Mastering Chemical Toilets
Older Australians cringe at the thought of an American style burger. Whenever hamburger is mentioned the first thing that comes to mind is that it must have a layer of crimson beetroot with egg dripping all yolky through the layers. Pickles? Never! And when it comes to great burgers there’s none better than the famous Nindigully Burger served at Queensland’s Nindigully Pub. This pub is worth going out of your way for and the food lives up to it’s reputation. The burger? Well that will feed a small army of hungry travellers and you can camp out front and sleep … Continue reading Now that’s a burger!
June 2015 Katherine in the Northern Territory is the birthplace of champion cyclist Cadel Evans. This is a very tropical town and Shady Lane Caravan Park is all palms and mango trees. I ask the chap at the Katherine Info Centre what the main attractions are in town, apart from the Katherine Gorge of course, and with a big grin he replies “me”. I’ll have to stop asking that question. Continue reading Katherine
Capes Naturaliste and Leeuwin In the south west corner of Western Australia, best described by Easterners as the Margaret River region are two similar lighthouses. On the northern tip near fashionable Dunsborough is Cape Naturaliste. The lighthouse here is 20 … Continue reading Compare the Capes
2015 Up on the Irwin River lookout at Dongara, WA we stare at the ti trees on the opposite bank and wonder why they are white. What does that sign say? Oh, a cormorant rookery. Continue reading A Good Paint Job
We rarely leave the bitumen so supplies aren’t such an issue. All around Australia most towns these days have good supermarkets and I’m sure that even if our fridge/freezer broke down we’d still have enough food on board to keep us going for quite some time. Pasta, rice noodles, canned soup (there’s nothing better than soup on those cold wet nights when you are too tired to cook), rice (short grain and Arborio of course because Woody loves his risotto), small cans of tuna for lunches, sandwiches and salads. Tubs of tomato paste and bottles of passata. We always carry … Continue reading Staples to Keep On Board
Autumn 2015 We eat our sambo’s under The Big Prawn. The Exmouth, WA one. Did you know that 700,000kgs of prawns are harvested in Exmouth annually? Anyway this Big Prawn gets put into storage for safekeeping during the cyclone season. Continue reading The Big Prawn
March 2015 It is a warm morning in Pildappa, South Australia and I’m sitting in a National Park long drop trying hard not to breathe until the day’s work is completed, when an ant bites me! Ouch!! Translation note: Thunderbox = unsewered outdoor toilet, hence ‘long drop’. Campers sometimes remark on how well the rangers have dug the hole as they often listen for the deposit to reach the bottom. Continue reading Thunderboxes
Winter 2015 Beasley River WA, a lone bird sings us awake. The inside of the van is a sea of dead bodies, a film of tiny black dots and bits of wings. It must have been a bugger of a … Continue reading Bugs
Charlie Honey was a Gulflander train driver of yesteryear. The Gulflander runs between Normanton and Croydon in the Gulf country of outback Queensland. It leaves Normanton every Wednesday at 8:30am. It then makes the return journey leaving Croydon at 8:30am on Thursday. Weather permitting the train has been running since 1891. The journey takes five hours because the track is meant to be travelled slowly but Charlie liked to work hard on improving his times. One morning he left Croydon at 8:30am and at Normanton at 11:30am he answered the telephone to be greeted by his superior. Charlie was sternly … Continue reading The Gulflander
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