WA trip 2015 – East on the Eyre Highway

Welcome to the final section of this year’s trip, across the Nullarbor on the Eyre Highway.

Some would say that the Eyre Highway is one of the most boring trips you can take in Australia (there are others which are worse), and whilst it is very long being more than 2000km, there are enough daily events to make it interesting.

We don’t stop in roadhouses, either overnight or for supplies, we ensure we have enough to get to the other end (quarantine restrictions not withstanding) and we’ve done it enough times that we are fairly familiar with its environment.

Our first trip across the Nullarbor was in 1975, in our old Land Rover we drove from England in, and at the time we though the Eyre Highway was so simple compared with the challenges of international travel in the middle east and Asia.

It was straight, clean, smooth (mostly, the exception being the Old Eyre Highway section is SA which back then was still limestone gravel) and pretty much free of traffic and people. Luxury travelling. Even today, most of those conditions still exist, with the additional safety net of occasional mobile coverage, more visitor information and frequent scenic stopping places.

We’ve done it quite a few time since 1975 but most of our recent annual trips have been on outback tracks which bypass this great strip of bitumen.

Read on for this years experiences.

21 Sept

On the road from Norseman east towards Balladonia.

An early encounter of a large kind:

A rather large load we had to get off the road for

 Just off the highway on an unmarked track we discovered Newman Rocks, a huge low hill of solid granite with a rather nice rock pool on its summit. We camped near here:

Or alternatively…

22 Sept

And so children, what have we learned from this morning’s experimental breakfast?

     You can successfully refry frozen cooked sausages.
     It’s very difficult to separate slices of frozen bacon.
     You can’t make potato cakes with Deb.
     Smoke alarms and burnt toast don’t mix.
     Creating baked beans by combining tomato sauce with left over salad beans does not work.
     Complex breakfasts create stress and loads of dirty dishes and the cooktop needs cleaning.

Back to Vita-Brits tomorrow.

Today we did around 250km from Newman Rocks to Caiguna and there was a bend in the road. But only one and here is it, at Balladonia:

50km straight before the bend and 146km after, the longest straight piece of road in Australia and one of the longest in the world. The truck in the distance is merging into the mirage on Australia’s longest section of road, 146km dead straight.

Proof that we had been there. Everyone stops for a photo here.

At Caiguna there is a rather large blowhole. Completely unguarded and big enough to fall into:

The wind rushes up the blowhole from the coast 30km away at 72kph, but not today or my hat would have been airborne.

Near the blowhole there were 2 men in a small camper. That was different enough, but these 2 were dressed in fly net hats and playing music on a guitar and banjo. How strange is that?

At the end of the longest straight was Caiguna, notable for its Telstra network. As a result I had a number of queries and problems to resolve with the Oka website, most of which I was able to sort out on the side of the road.

We camped about 20km past Caiguna in the Jilbunya rest area about 1km off the highway in a beautiful bushland setting with flowering shrubs everywhere.

23 Sept

On the way out of the campsite this morning we had a close encounter of the slithery kind:

Nothing much else happened until we stopped for lunch when a distinctively coloured Oka pulled up in front of us. It was Frank in Oka 410 who he says spoke to me for advice before buying an Oka. He painted it in those striking colours and seems to be happy with his purchase, and its cracked windscreen.

We had a chat for 1/2 hour or so with Frank and his mate Richard driving a ute of some kind. They were heading east but turning inland at Madura while we are also heading east but turning up the old Eyre Highway at Eucla.

Later we passed through Madura Pass, which is where the coast used to be before the sea receded 40km many thousands of years ago, leaving only the cliffs behind.

After passing down the pass we spotted an unmarked track leading to the Madura Cave, so on a spur of the moment decision we turned down it to investigate.

On the way we had an “Attenborough” of wildlife experiences. Several kangaroos bounced madly across the track in front of us, a bustard walked hoitily across the track in front of us, but this large stumpy tail lizard failed to crawl across the track in front of us at all and nearly met a sticky ending.   The grumpy tailed lizard just lay there growled at us until she was ready to move on.

Janet even tried negotiating with one of them:

The cave (actually part of a sink hole) was quite interesting, if you call the skeleton of a long dead kangaroo interesting, but more so was the track which continued another 40km towards the Nuytsland Nature Reserve and the south coast.

So on the spur of the moment (a completely different one) we went down that track which got progressively thinner, sandier and more difficult. It took us a couple of hours in 4WD to do the 50km (my navigator had adjusted her glasses) until we reached the dense bushland covering the sand dunes which border the sea.

We got tantalisingly close to reaching the elusive coast, we tried but ultimately failed, so after a 17 point turn on a narrow track we backtracked to camp in a clearing in the forest like Little Miss Red Riding Hood and will try another track tomorrow.

The rangers do keep what few tracks there are in good nick, using one of these towed behind a tractor:

Sadly, also like Little Miss Riding Hood, there is no phone service in this clearing in the forest either. But I did contact the Adelaide Base on our HF Radio and give them our whereabouts, even though the spelling of “Nuytsland” caused some difficulties. Apparently its going to be in the low to mid 20’s for the next 5 days where we are, with sunny days and no rain. Just what we need, I hate mud.

24 Sept

The drive back from the Nuytsland Nature Reserve was easier than going down, probably because we knew what to expect and could plan ahead.

From Madura to Eucla, the road across the former beach is long and straight, with the cliffs always present for 100km.

At Mundrabilla we filled up with water from the thoughtfully placed tanks alongside the highway in a raging wind strom. We had to position the bucket some way upwind from the receiving container so water actually went in it.

At the Border Village we veered off left onto the old Eyre Highway first travelled by us in 1975 and again in 2013 with Bill and Judy.

We camped around 20km up the track on a small side track which probably leads to some delightful caves or sink holes.

Janet did some washing which was left out to dry all night.

25 Sept

However, with the overnight condensation, the washing was even wetter this morning than last night.

While dropping my tyre pressures for the unsealed road, I noticed that the vicious march flies, which would normally take a chunk out of someone’s leg if given the chance, preferred landing on the tyres of the Oka rather than my leg, which I found slightly insulting.

Today was a day of sinkholes, blowholes and Welcome Swallows.

The first event would have been the excellent sinkholes 3km off the track to the south but we stayed there 2 years ago with Bill and Judy (where we also hung washing out to dry in the moonlight) so we didn’t go there again.

The next event was the Burnabie Blowhole. Right by the side of the track, it has a powerful blow as our tea towel will attest.

10km further on we ventured north up The Olde Coach Road, an early inland track from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, predating even the Old Eyre Highway, which itself was only developed in the wartime expedients of the early 1940’s.

The Olde Coach Road heading inland across the Nullarbor

We were looking for Coompana Rockhole which we didn’t find, being below ground level as they tend to be.

The Olde Coach Road is a very desolate narrow track across a flat “grassy” plain and seems to comprise mostly dry, dusty sand. On the map it leads west across towards Eucla, Mundrabilla and/or Madura, depending on which track you follow. But don’t try that route after rain, you might still be there.

However, it is a perfect environment for wombats, (although we didn’t see any since they are nocturnal), but their presence is very obvious from all the low volcanoes of sand that they dig out of their burrows, and their scats scattered all around.

Who are you calling a wombat??

Along the same section of Olde Coach Road, is the nearest we have ever been to a man-made meteorite crater. When and why it was dug remains a complete mystery, or there are some very large wombats roaming around.

But being within a km or so of the Old Eyre Highway, it’s reasonable to assume it was something to do with the original road construction project.

Here it is on Google Earth at this location  -31.501764, 129.413430, about 80m long and 50m wide.

The Twin Caves/Rockhole on the map were elusive, and we failed to find them/it on this trip. Maybe the map has them wrongly located.

Koomooloobooka Caves we also visited with Bill and Judy and took quite a while to locate, but locate them we did in 2013, and it was worth the effort. As a reward, we had lunch there then but bypassed them this time.

We did discover a sinkhole at 31:28:20 S, 129:41:41 E after the correct track was found, which was not the one marked on the map. The actual start is 366m east of the marked track.

Next on the agenda was the Koonalda Homestead, home of the headquarters of the Nullarbor National Park housed in the old Koonalda homestead building.

There’s no one in residence there and the park signage is distinctly sparce. However a sign asking visitors to “Keep the doors closed to keep out the cats” must be considered a good start.

Removing my cynical hat for a moment, the Nullarbor National Park has a great deal to offer visitors when there are a few more signs and some literature on the sites to visit, and the tracks are a bit better maintained. Already there is a camping area near the homestead and a toilet block.

In the homestead, Janet waxed lyrical about the kitchen range which she knew about from her early (very early) childhood.

Nearby the homestead is an interesting graveyard of old vehicles and a petrol pump that we would have got fuel from in 1975 when we passed though this area in our old Land Rover, just after we arrived in Australia. 

1km up a small track through the rusty car park is a very powerful small blowhole, only about 30cm diameter, but when it’s blowing it’s more than enough to remove your hairpiece, if it’s not firmly attached.

The centrepiece of Koonalda is its cave which is a rocky 5km trip north from the homestead, but well worth the rough ride.

It looks quite intimidating at first glance, especially the danger sign forbidding entry to the cave to anyone without a permit. However, the nearby industrial strength stile over the stout boundary fence would seem to be contradictory.

However, the stile does make a handy step ladder for peering into the innards of the cave:

The cave is home to countless pairs of Welcome Swallows who are able to defy gravity in their quest for a safe nesting location, and they are so inquisitive that every time we stop, a flock of them do a fly past to check out our Oka as the location for a new housing estate.

They particularly liked the rear window overhang of our Oka and the spare wheel as the landing ground.

We camped just past Koonalda along the Old Eyre Highway behind some bushes.

Sept 26

This morning’s ride was marred somewhat, when we killed a big black snake.

We didn’t mean to, I thought it was a stick or a shadow across part of the track and it wasn’t until I was right up close that we realised is was a snake basking in the morning sun, but by then it was too close to do anything about it on a narrow 2 lane track.

Is it a stick or a tree root?

Here are it’s last moments:

Too late we realised it was a snake.

We stopped a bit later and checked that it hadn’t flicked up and got wrapped around something under the Oka but there was no sign of it.

I don’t like killing any animals (except maybe flies, mosquitoes and march flies) and it bothered me for some time. It’s bad enough seeing all the roadkill along the highways without contributing to the toll.

After completing the Old Eyre Highway past some wrecked cars and rusting water tanks, we emerged on the new one at Nullarbor Roadhouse.

We chose to complete this year’s journey on bitumen since the next section of the Old Eyre Highway does not have the same number of points of interest, and our tyres are not perfect.

The downside is the Nullarbor plain in all its visual glory:

We camped in a rest area well off the highway at Caroona Hut, just east of Nundroo.

Sept 27

Today we passed through Penong, which, apart from 100 windmills, has the first shop we had seen for over 1000km.

This truck passed us, leading to a completely new meaning of “Road Train”:

At Ceduna we stopped for the necessary but tedious quarantine check.

       “Did you come from Western Australia sir?” “Yes”.
       “Can I have a look in your fridge please?” “Yes”.
       “Any fruit and vegetables with you?” No, we ate them all last night”.
       “Do you have any other food cupboards?” “Yes, in here”.
       “Thank you sir, honey is OK travelling in your direction. Have a nice day”.

And we were through, as we knew we would be, we’ve done this many times before and learned to eat it, cook it (like a soup with left over veggies) or throw it out, before reaching the check point. Then there are no hassles. Some people get into endless and fruitless (pun intended) arguments over a few $$ worth of veggies (or fruities).

So next to the IGA to replenish our supplies. Not as cheap as in Adelaide, but who cares, we still have to eat. Just leaving the check out, who should we meet than Rick and Sue Whitworth, who we last saw at Ningaloo Reef a month ago, 2236km away by the Great Circle Route or 2238km by the Rhumb Line process.

They were heading back to Geelong and had parked next to us and we made plans to visit them next time we were in Melbourne.

After lunch on the seashore and a long but useful talk with Scott in Melbourne, we refuelled and set off for Port Augusta. This was the first fuel we’d put in since Norseman, more than 1300km ago (due to our side trips) and we still had 50 ltrs left (out of 250).

Ceduna is a really nice town and maybe one day we should spend a bit more than 1/2 hour there exploring.

Lunchspot view from the Oka cabin

The scenery gradually changed from bushland to pastoral sheep country to arable farming land with fences. We hadn’t seen fences alongside the roads for weeks, how suburban is that?

Still 900km to go to Adelaide but already we are getting into local mode after 9 weeks away.

Finding secluded camping spots is becoming more difficult with encroaching farm activities but we did find a small track near the little known location of Cungena, between Wirrulla and Pochera to place it firmly on the map, which offered us some seclusion and a nice bushland setting and that’s where we are tonight:

Nearby we found what we think are some orchids:

Sept 28

We thought today would be a fairly boring bitumen drive from our campsite to Lake Gilles, our normal stopping point in the eastern Eyre Peninsula about 25km east of Kimba. We often camp there for it’s great bush scenery. It’s a No Camping area, which makes it perfect for camping in since there’s never anyone else there!

However, when we reached Kimba in early afternoon we found some changes had taken place since our last visit. The town has become an RV Friendly Town and a money spider had been spending up big there.

Looking for our usual water supply point we came across a brand new free RV park with water, toilets and showers. We filled up and sought out the Visitor Centre for more good news. Along the way we found  a free Lions Club rest area for campers and caravans with good facilities (which is where we are camped now).

The Visitor Centre is having a big makeover and the nice young lady there gave us maps and told us of other innovations, like two sculptures on the hill top, the museum, manicured gardens around the recreation areas with a new bowling green and golf course.

The sculptures were of Edward John Eyre and his aboriginal guide, cleverly composed from rusting local relics and overlooking the town:

Even down to the prismatic compass Eyre is using:

Next to the RV rest area is a new Mining Village. Aha, so it’s mining $$ which is causing all the activity. But according to Bruce, a 92 year old former farmer in the area who came to visit us later in the afternoon, no mining had actually begun. It was/is going to be a new iron ore mine but the low iron ore price and difficulties with railways and funding a new deep water port has stymied development.

Nonetheless, Kimba is fast developing into an attractive place to visit, not just an overnight stop. It’s another of the very few towns which actively encourage visitors to stay and in return all they ask is that visitors patronise local businesses, which we did, food and fuel.

One of the streets in Kimba has all its trees and power poles fitted with “tree socks”, presumably knitted by ladies of the CWA.  Janet calls the colourful streetscape a new “street address“:

On a gate next to the IGA supermarket, I spotted this ingenious use of an old universal joint from a car as a gate hinge:

Since we dallied a bit in Kimba and it’s 450km from Adelaide, we’ll spread the remaining journey over 2 days and arrive home on Wednesday.

Tomorrow we’ll reach Port Augusta and camp at Mambray Creek.

29 Sept

And yes, we did reach Pt Augusta today after a few experiences.

We met Bruce again this morning on his rounds and he said he was “working” at the museum (at the age of 92), taking people around. So we said we’ll see you there on our way out of town.

He was and he did and we did. The Kimba museum is a treasure trove of old farming and “living in the country” memorabilia.

Relocated buildings, complex farming implements, engineering tools, old tractors, stationary engines, an old school room, a sewing machine room, an old camera display and an olde shoppe.

It’s described in the tourist brochure thusly:

Eight separate buildings: The historic pioneer house, the one teacher school, the blacksmith shop, the Government Shed are equipped. Sheds house the farm machinery, stationary engines and fire engine, while a separate museum centre contains a library, photographic and interpretive displays, taped histories and various documents relating to social history. All in bushland setting.

Kimba’s local history museum includes pioneer domestic and farming items, stationary engines, harness vehicles and equipment, vintage trucks and tractors, a water conservation model, schooling and communication equipment together with supporting documents, maps, tapes, photographs and ephemera.

All of it was very interesting but ultimately we became overwhelmed and overloaded with history but you can read more about the museum here. It is well worth a visit.

An old fireplace. I shall build a mantlepiece like this when we get home.

A grader that Bruce built himself from an old truck and collections of scrap iron and used it for several years. Note the steering wheel is miles away from the seat but he said you didn’t need to steer it much anyway.

After the museum overload we moved on to Lake Gilles, not to camp this time, just for a lunch spot.

Pigface in bloom next to the lake Emu footprints across the lake bed. Later on the highway we had to move over for some monster moves. Eventually after bypassing Pt Augusta and waiting for hours (it seemed) at some new bridge works, we arrived at Mambray Creek to camp. Our last camping place for this trip. Home tomorrow and the search for the keys to the lawnmower shed will begin. Everything back to normal. Epilogue This has been quite a good trip, maybe not as spectacular as others, probably due to the fact that we had done much of the route before, and we had a few unexpected technical problems before and during the trip. We’ve done 10,500km in 9 weeks and covered an area half the size of Europe. 1900 photos and a lot more memories than that, we’ve met some very nice people, a few other Okas and surmounted quite a few problems, not all our own either. A fairly typical trip. There were some highlights of course, like camping and snorkelling in the reef lagoon on Ningaloo Station (while you still can, it’s under threat from the WA Government), and visiting the northerly section of the huge Rudall River National Park neither of which we had done before. Plus the freedom and peacefulness of the outback wherever we are, and the warm coastal towns of Dampier/Karratha. To re-read out blogs use the following links or the “2015 Trek across WA” drop down menu at the top of each page: Home to Newman, Newman to Ningaloo, Ningaloo Northwards and then Southwards, East across the Eyre Highway.

WA Trip 2015 – Ningaloo Northwards a bit, then Southwards

Welcome back to the third instalment of our WA 2015 Trip Blog


5 Sept 2015

Shrieks from Janet this morning, she found a long hair in her own Weet-Bix today. Oh, such blessed irony!

For the past few days we’ve been using our reserve drinking water tank which still had good old Adelaide water in it. The reason being that while at Yardie Caravan Park, we (I) accidentally filled up both main tanks with less than savoury bore water (it wasn’t a health risk, it just tasted like liquid paraffin and tainted the tea). So today we had to transfer water out of the drinking water tank to the shower/washing water tank today to make room from some fresh drinking water available at the Exmouth visitor centre.

Having been spotted by Rick and Sue yesterday at Oyster Stacks, today we spotted their Oka in the shopping centre car park in Exmouth.

That done and the laundrying, shopping and a visit to the bottle shop (for we don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to get 5 litre casks of wine), we set off south to go east and then north if you understand, Exmouth being at the top of a peninsular.

If I said the landscape south of Exmouth was totally boring, it would be a major understatement. 100’s km of scrubby, dry grassland over low sand dunes suitable only for sheep. No trees, no flowering shrubs like in the National Park, no features of any kind except the occasional termite mound. Here’s a drawing of the landscape:

————————^——————————^——————————

We found a small track into a clear area between 2 sand dunes which was a perfect campsite (see below), apart from the boringness of the view.

————————^————O-O————^——————————

6 Sept 2015

Today, being father’s day we had a special Father’s Day treat, a flat tyre, the first of this trip and only the 5th in 10 years and 170,000km of touring.

It was between Exmouth and Karratha on the North West Coastal Highway. We were quietly motoring along enjoying a Father’s Day drive when Janet said “Should the Oka be weaving back and forth like that?”

Well actually, no it should not. So we stopped to have a look and the left rear tyre was almost flat.

So my mechanic and I got out jacks and wheel braces and blowing up thingees and set to replacing the wheel on the side of the road with road trains whizzing past and blowing dust and stones all over us.

In little more than an hour, we replaced the wheel (they weigh over 80kg each), plugged the sidewall hole in the offending tyre (which had also lost a block of tread), blew it up again as a workable spare and put everything away (which was the biggest job).

Number of vehicles who passed by >100, number of vehicles who stopped to help

With a replaced wheel we travelled on circumspectly, if there is such a word, noting that both our spares now have plugged sidewalls and even 2 of the other 4 have nasty gashes in their sidewalls.

Due to our diminishing stocks of safe and useable tyres, if we can’t get any new ones in Karratha, we’ll have to retrace our steps carefully down to Perth where we would be able to get some and come home across the Nullarbor. If we kept going north and then east and then south, there would be bugga of a chance of getting any tyres the right size along the way and I doubt we could get home with the tyres we have.

Ironically I have 3 almost new tyres at home but considered that the 6 we took with us had plenty of life left in them for one more trip.

In the words of me, on my Oka blog: ”You wouldn’t leave home on a trip with tyres more than half worn, would you?“.


Well they weren’t half worn then, but they certainly are now. I shall have to amend my saying to: “You wouldn’t leave home on a trip with tyres more than 0.001% worn, would you?”.

Experience is a great teacher but why does it conduct its lessons when you’re 4000km from home? 

We crossed the Ashburton River at the Nanutara Roadhouse but needing nothing we didn’t stop. Last time we called in they didn’t have any diesel anyway and the manager was very rude about it. (“Well, could we have some water instead then?” “No”). Excellent customer relations.

We are camped tonight in the Cane River Conservation Park. There is a rest area marked on maps but in practice it does not exist. If it ever did, it’s now completely invisible and anyway a recently constructed causeway over the river precludes any chance of reaching it.


Not to be outdone, we located a small track which led about 1km off the highway to a beautiful area of red gravel and green spinifex clumps.

Tomorrow we should complete our journey to Karratha, which is the residential area for the Port of Dampier, where Rio Tinto export their iron ore from.

Hopefully we’ll meet up with fellow site administrator James who lives in Karratha.

7 Sept 2015

An auspicious day, my LXX birthday and now I’m officially a septicuglerion, or something similar. (I don’t have the confidence to face numerical realities yet while I can still speak fluent Roman. What have they ever done for us? Not simple mathematics, that’s for sure.)

Several Happy Birthday messages on my Facebook page and emails, many thanks to all, and the usual computer generated messages from websites I have visited.

And I had a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushrooms and fried tomatoes on toast surrounded by my birthday cards:

Fings wot I have Supa-Glued today:

A broken towel rail rail. I can’t believe it, it’s only 10 years old too:

A couple of minor points where the soles of Janet’s sandals had come adrift.

I can believe that, not so cheap but definitely nasty ladies sandals made to look at not for clambering over rocks, sand dunes, squashing bugs etc.:

We are now in Dampier in mid west WA, a major exporting port for Rio Tinto’s iron ore, but you wouldn’t guess it from the photos of the bay (from the bar in the pub):

Unlike Port Hedland which is covered in BHP’s red dust, Dampier is a very pretty area with all the nasty port-y type things kept very low key and out of sight.

We celebrated my birthday at the Dampier Mermaid Hotel, carefully chosen due to the fact that it’s the only one open on a Monday, but the food was good and they had an SA wine on the wine list (only one) plus a free shuttle bus to our campsite.

Sadly no mermaids were on show, although Alex the wine waitress was a good approximation.

We don’t look very happy in the photo but we’d had a long hot drive today and it was still very hot (mid 30’s) and we hadn’t had a drink yet:

Once the wine bottle could be upended without spillage, all seemed much better.

Here’s the Mermaid Hotel as it was in 1968. The views over Dampier Bay are still the same except they are now in colour:

Historical Note:

The Mermaid was the name of Lt Philip King’s ship when he first surveyed the Dampier area in 1818. He also named Mermaid Sound in the Dampier Archipelago.

8 Sept 2015


Today somewhat refreshed and with only a minor hangover we went to visit James, my fellow Oka website administrator at his home in Karratha.

We had a very congenial chat about life, the universe and Oka websites and a cup of tea.

In the course of discussions we talked about tyres. I’d previously asked James if he knew of any available in the Karratha area but we both really knew tyres of an Oka size were difficult to come by and we were resigned to spending a few days here while we arranged for some to be trucked up from Perth.

James then said he had a few old ones lying around his yard which were used as supports for boats, trailer covers etc and would we be interested if that would help? So yes, we said and had a look at what he had. There were a couple of brand new Toyo M608Z’s but a few years old and some part worn tyres, all still on original Oka wheels, which he had no further use for since he had moved on to 17 inch alloys and larger tyres imported from the US (partly due to the difficulty in sourcing 19.5 inch tyres).

After some discussions on price, we agreed the simplest course of action was to simply swap over wheels with tyres still on them. So we moved across the road to a piece of hard standing gravel and changed all 4 wheels. It was hot grinding work in the Karratha heat which is starting to wind up to summer.

New front tyres

In the end we took 3 of the 4 tyres available since the 4th one we found had a long Tek screw buried in the tread. After removing it, air came out so I plugged it up but its remaining tread wasn’t any better than one of mine, and replacing the wheel on the rear gate is a real drag, so we didn’t change that one over.

Now we were the proud owners of some new and part used tyres which should see us home. As luck would further have it I have a couple of similar part-worn tyres of the same type at home, part of a job lot I bought a couple of years ago.

Problems solved we thought, but fate was about to play another dastardly hand.

While outside James’ place, we had the air conditioning on full blast since it was hot and humid, when we heard a loud hissing sound from under the Oka, similar to that you get when a radiator boils over. This was followed by a gurgling noise and green liquid spewed on to the ground, which also looked like green radiator coolant.

However, it was nothing quite so simple. The green fluid was actually oily, of the kind used in air-conditioning systems. A high pressure hose from the compressor had ruptured.

Green fluid spewed out of the 2 black hoses

Bugga, another problem to solve.

9 Sept 2015

So this morning, after the aches and pains of changing 4 wheels had subsided, we took the Oka to an air conditioning place in Karratha, “Jolly Good Auto Electrics”, owned somewhat surprisingly by a Trevor Jolly. They had the Oka for most of the day with the news getting progressively worse as we wandered around and sat and waited in Karratha City, a nearby shopping centre which was mercifully cool.

At first the hose replacement was an easy fix, but then they found that the condenser cooling fan had failed which had allowed the system to overheat which caused the hose to fail in the first place. Then they found a leak in the condenser itself, which is why we needed the system regassed in Alice Springs 3 weeks ago.

So to make a long story almost as long, we had to have a new condenser, new cooling fan, sundry pipes replaced, the system leak tested again and regassed, the total cost being northwards of $1300.

New high pressure “Tee” piece after Trevor was scathing about Oka’s original brass joiner

Shiny new condenser, fan, filter and pipework

However, I (and Trevor) are now pretty confident that the air conditioning woes we’ve had over the past few years should be behind us. Trevor was surprised that the previous “experts” we had consulted hadn’t been able to spot these problems before and I should tell them of the real situation.

Sadly, air conditioning systems are one of the few areas of car maintenance that I’m not able to work on due to legal restrictions on the use of refrigerant gases, because the plumbing work is no different fundamentally to compressed air, bottled gas or water piping.

10 Sept 2015


Today at last we had a free day to see some of Dampier’s delights.

We start with our small, volunteer-run and therefore cheap but adequate caravan park, right on the bay:

Right across the road from the caravan park is Dampier Bay, a very quiet picturesque bay dotted with islands, yachts and other small craft:

Of course, being an iron ore exporting port, you’d expect some industry to be evident, but it is fairly discrete, up the other end of the bay:

Surt Desert Peas are almost weeds in these parts and grow everywhere, even on the edge of the shore:

This is Tidepole Island, a private island with a castle built by a recluse in the 1960’s:

There is quite a nice beach nearby:

With proof of at least one swimmer:

From the bay we went up to a lookout overlooking East Intercourse Island (yes, that’s its real name the origins of will be explained later), the site of another loading facility:

From there it’s only 20km to the North West Shelf gas processing plant, one of the biggest in the world and its statistics are staggering:

$42bn of investment, including 4 offshore extraction platforms, 135km of undersea 1m diameter high pressure gas pipelines, a huge gas processing plant (which is the only part of the project visible) and dock facilities despatching 1 LNG tanker every 1.5 days.

The view of the round domes of the underground LNG storage tanks from the visitors centre. These 4 tanks each hold 60,000 tonnes of liquified natural gas cooled to -161ºC while awaiting  delivery, a very large potential time bomb:

The Karratha gas plant can produce 52,000 tonnes of LNG a day.

This is an aerial view of the processing plant, which surprisingly does not interfere much with the natural beauty of the surrounding environment:

This is us at Whitnel Bay, right next to the gas processing plant and it’s nice enough to camp there:

But right behind us, fairly well hidden, is the processing plant:

 Even a white bellied sea eagle is at home in this environment:

Nearly every part of Dampier and the nearby Burrup Peninsular is built on huge piles of naturally occurring brown boulders.

And in Deep Gorge in Murujuga National Park on the Burrup Peninsular, literally every rock has ancient aboriginal artwork on them. Here is a selection (yes, close up with the sun on them, the rocks were this red!):

The artworks are fairly faded because they are believed to be between 25 and 30,000 years old, that’s 5 time as old as the pyramids. And there are estimated to be around 1,000,000 of these petroglyphs in the Burrup Peninsular and surrounding areas.

There are some nice waterholes along the gorge and it was pretty hot when we visited the gorges (mid 30’s), so it’s easy to see why ancient indigenous people would live in this area, water, shelter and plenty of sea food.

11 Sept 2015


Time to leave Dampier. Although we’ve had and are still having a trying time with a plethora of technical problems, it ws still sad to leave Dampier. Despite it’s industrial fundamentals, it is a very attractive and tranquil place to be.

Yes, it has huge iron ore loading facility and gas processing plant and all the infrastructure that goes with them but it is still on a beautiful bay, with very little industrial traffic, a small but adequate shopping centre and plenty of special things and places to visit. It was only occasionally noisy when an ore train arrived or a ship left port.

People who live in Dampier say they wold never live in Karratha, but when you need it, Karratha is a fairly large town of 20,000 people only 15km away, with all the shops, suppliers and facilities you could need.

For example, just before arriving in Dampier, I found a grey spot on my leg which I worried could have been a skin cancer. So passing by Karratha Medical Centre, I popped in and checked on the availability of doctor. I waited about 10 minutes and then saw a nice Indian doctor who checked me over and assured me that the spot was nothing to worry about, but a rough area on my face could be a worry if it didn’t heal up in a few months so “See your GP”.

It was surprisingly efficient (it took longer to fill in those stupid forms than the time I had to wait), and better still there was no cost, he must have liked me or maybe it was due to my recent birthday.


Historical Note:


Dampier was named after William Dampier, the English buccaneer who was given carte blanche to plunder Spanish ships wherever he found them and go forth and explore new lands on behalf of the Crown. All of this was 80 years before James Cook did much the same thing.


Dampier mapped the west coast of Australia as commissioned by the British government in 1699, but didn’t recognise Australia as a major new continent so he failed to plant a British flag here.


His exploits surrounding the abandonment of Alexander Selkirk on a desert island inspired Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (claimed to be the first ever novel in English).


Note Ends.

After leaving Dampier (the town), we called in at Point Sampson just up the coast which is a very pretty small seaside resort and has some nice beaches.

Honeymoon Cove

The layered rock formations on the way down to Honeymoon Cove were quite contorted and lifted to the vertical position.

We went for a paddle in Honeymoon Cove but the sun was getting too hot and burning our legs so we retreated to the Oka.

We drove around to Cossack, a very early settlement nearby where a leprosarium was once established due to to its isolated location.

We had lunch on a headland overlooking Cossack and decided that if we had leprosy, Cossack would be a very nice place to have it in.

The town’s old buildings are being restored by local volunteers and provide a wealth of understanding abut life in the early days of colonisation in a very remote part of the fledgling colony. There’s an Ice Cream Shoppe there now but I bet there wasn’t when lepers came to visit.


While we were parked for lunch a flock of Zebra Finches came to check out the Oka as potential nesting sites…

From Cossack , we backtracked through the Shire town of Roebourne and it was very sad to see local aboriginals sitting under almost every lamp post waiting for something to happen. It never will until they recognise that they must do something themselves to improve their own lifestyle.

We are camped in the Peawah Rest Area off the NWCH and fixed one of the a/c fan units which failed yesterday with a stalled motor which dragged the voltage down and did all sorts of unspeakable things to the electrics.

When I say “fixed”, what I actually meant was that I removed the offending fan unit, cleaned out the grunged up evaporator fins and blanked off the opening so we are now operating on only one fan unit, which is surprisingly about the same as 2 of them were with blocked up fins.

12 Sept

The NW Coastal Highway from Roebourne to Port Hedland is pretty boring, away from the coast and across endless plains of grassy scrubland, punctuated by a number of sharp booby shaped hillocks in the Tabba Tabba Range.

Port Hedland is our least favourite western coastal town. It’s covered in fine red dust, it’s hot and therefore dusty and it’s huge, spread out over 50 or more km. They have built a vast new road system including American stye freeways with loop back interconnectors between them, but with huge empty spaces between them.

You could easily spend a fortnight’s vacation in Dampier, but even an overnight stay in Port Hedland would be too long.

South Hedland, about 20km south of the port, has quite a good shopping centre and they have tried to provide all the essential community services and facilities that residents could require, sports arenas, green spaces and the like, but it still seemed to us to be a fairly dismal, hot, flat, and dusty place to eke out a living. No wonder BHP has to pay its workers so much just to live there. Karratha and Dampier, 250km further west, seems to have a much better living environment with pretty much the same industries and industrial infrastructure. (However see later note regarding the new Roy Hill iron ore mine south of Nullagine, which is even worse).

Having enjoyed all that South Hedland could offer (shopping, gas refills and fuel), we headed up the boring coastal highway for 50km and turned south towards Marble Bar and Nullagine.

Frankly it was getting too hot and sticky in both Dampier and Port Hedland, and the reports we got was that it was even hotter up north across from Broome to Kunnunnurra, so heading south and across the Nullarbor seemed to be the best route back to Adelaide rather than across the top and down the Stuart Highway, and it would be a bit more scenic as well.

The Marble Bar road started just as boring as the coastal highway but with a plethora  of long road trains, until we reached the area where the Gorge Range of hills met the Coongan River, when it all became very attractive and we camped (where we had a few times before) in Doolena Gap, a huge gap in the Gorge Range caused by the Coongan River. Being late in the season there was only a small water hole and a few birds making the most of the dwindling resources. In other years, there has been a wealth of birdlife to watch.

13 Sept

Traveling though the Coongan Gorge the next morning revealed this broken down road train trailer.

Marble Bar is always a delight to visit, even though it is a very small town. There’s the jasper bar across the Coongan River, after which the town is named, a brand new but not yet completed War Memorial with an international war related signpost (Marble bar is closer to Singapore than it is to Melbourne or Sydney, the Iron Clad Hotel and a one stop fits all shop/fuel depot/post office. That plus some small council offices, a handful of houses and a few small mining ventures is about it.

The Iron Clad hotel on the left of the main (and only) street

The Post Office/Shop/Fuel Outlet

The War Memorial

Closer to Singapore than to Melbourne or Sydney

A beautiful chunk of jasper in the Memorial

A warm day in Australia’s hottest town

But it’s also in a very scenic part of the country, and it’s not always hot, it can be very hot however and has a history of extremes which give it its legendary status as Australia’s hottest town, but not at this time of year. Dry, sunny and mid 30’s, the perfect time for a wander around Chinaman’s Pool (the early Chinese veggie garden) which always has water in it. Further out is the Comet Gold Mine museum and the WW11 Corunna Downs secret airbase that we’ve visited a few times for a nostalgic reminder.

“The” Jasper Bar

The good bitumen road ends just after Marble Bar when the Rippon Hills road to the Woody Woody and Telfer Gold mines branches off and the rough track to Nullagine starts, so I dropped my tyre pressures to make the ride more comfortable.

Nullagaine is an even smaller town than Marble Bar but it still has a Telstra service so we could check our emails and catch up on the Canberra goings on. (“Rumours of a leadership challenge are just a media beat up” – Abbot. Yeah, right).

Nullagine, pretty much all of it

From Nullagine there is a very scenic track heading 150km east which leads to Eel Pool (great swimming) and Carrawine Gorge (good camping), but we’ve done that several times before and it’s still pretty warm so we continued south to Roy Hill.

That name has become synonymous with a new iron ore mine being built near there and the road/tracks south is a mish-mash of rough tracks and brand new freeway style roads, bridges and rail crossings.

Reaching the iron ore mine site is a revelation, with a huge workers village being established with streets and streetlights, landscaped and manicured verges and rows of temporary looking Dongas, all set in a dusty outback environment.

The mine site itself is a hive of activity even though no ore has yet been extracted. A new rail link to Port Hedland is being built for this purpose, criss-crossing the new road system.

A bit further on is a new airport (called Ginbata, possible an acronym from Gina Reinhart and other consortium members) and we were amazed by its huge car park with 20-30 brand new buses parked ready to collect/deposit FIFO workers.

But what really peed me off was that after 40km of superb bitumen highway, and just after I’d raised my tyre pressures again for the expected bitumen road conditions to continue, it all suddenly ended and we were back to a rough desert track for the next 100km towards Newman.

There was no way the new shiny buses could have driven into the mine site so they must all have been trucked in, along with all the other vehicles and equipment to construct the mine.

We camped just south of Roy Hill in an area just off the “highway”.

14 Sept

Today we continued to Newman, completing the circuit we started when we reached Newman from the Talawana Track 4 weeks ago, and lest you think Australia is a small place…

At least these are the wildlife on our Coat of Arms, the rest can obviously go to buggery.

A lot of large mining equipment was moving up the highway…

We refilled our water tanks at the visitor centre, and seeing the scones and jam that the people on the mine tour were enjoying made us hungry so we also stopped for a decadent Tea/Coffee/Scones/Jam and Cream interlude.

Headed south past the famous Capricorn Roadhouse and the pretty grotty Kumarina Roadhouse.


Mula Mulla’s near Kumarina…

Camped south of Kumarina just off the highway to do washing, always an exciting concept.

15 Sept

This morning, the washing having dried overnight and successfully harvested, I topped up the rear diff because the pinion seal is leaking, and greased the rear UJ. I would have done more but my grease cartridge expired and I didn’t have a spare (left home in too much a rush).

I also adjusted the front wheel alignment to toe-out more (or rather not toe-in so much) and the steering is quite a bit more stable now. So, on the basis that if some is good, then more must be better, in a day or two I’ll adjust the tracking a bit more, to achieve perfection in the steering department with our new front tyres.

Then on to Meekathara for a grease cartridge and water.

The public loos required a key from the shire offices but I can’t think why, maybe to keep people in, not out. They were not the best by far.


Then down the smooth and lonely gravel road towards Sandstone (only 1 car seen on it). Camped just off the deserted highway in the bush, so silent you can hear the curvature of the earth.

Camped just off a deserted highway in the bush,

so silent you can hear the curvature of the earth.

16 Sept

The track south to Sandstone had some interesting features:


The sides of the road were carpeted in pink flowers which looked like but weren’t pigface:

Barlangi Rock, which contrary to appearances was actually created by a huge meteor strike about a billion years ago, give or take a few. According to the interpretative plaque, the 10km wide meteor hit the earth causing the surface rock under ground zero to melt under the “incredible energy of the impact” and a mammoth crater to be formed.

The molten rock solidified and over eons of time, certainly more than a weekend, erosion of the surrounding landscape has left the hard core still standing. The surrounding area is covered in “shatter stones”, remnants of the original melted rock which as their name suggests shatter under the internal stresses still remaining within them.

Further along is a rather more recent development: an 1800km vermin proof fence one of the few which is still in use and properly maintained. Originally it was built to keep rabbits out but that was a dismal failure so now it’s only a dog fence to keep out dingoes. It’s wires are strung so tight you could play music on them.

Later we happened upon this large perentie ambling across the road. Normally they race off when alarmed but this one just crouched down and declined to move, so we had to blink first and move on. Had we been of a different culture, it would have made a superb meal.

When we reached the quiet, almost silent small town of Sandstone, something was different. A loudly dressed and voiced lady stood in the road and entreated us to taste her wares. She was Lady Di (no, not the original one) and her business was Lady Di’s Pies. She claimed they were the best pies we would ever taste and even quoted Trip Advisor as a source of support.

So we had a pie and cup of tea and whilst they were OK, they weren’t the best we’d tasted, rather greasy actually. But Lady Di was certainly a character and and definitely brightened up a quiet Wednesday morning.

We had a look around Sandstone’s other attractions:

The pub-cum-store International Hotel:

The memorial to Snowy Lewis, a local military character and base operator from our radio network who   ran the Sandstone base for several years. We first heard Snowy on the radio in 2002.

The fine local historical park :

After our lunch we drove on to Leinster for some fuel, just in case, and then down the Old Agnew Road, the original highway connecting several small gold mines in the area. These days the track and the small communities are now deserted and disintegrating.

We camped just of the busy highway after seeing no one for hours, or overnight either.

17 Sept

I raised my big Yagi antenna to get a network signal from Leinster 50 km away. As a result of concerns on the Oka website, regarding Universal Joint failures, this morning I greased all 4 UJs and ensured grease was purged from all 4 caps on each. 

It was a biting cold wind so I donned my cold weather maintenance gear, despite the sunny, clear blue sky.

We stopped for lunch at Doyles Well, the location of an olden day hotel complex. There’s very little left now, but in its heyday, they had bands and dances, cricket and footy matches and a swimming pool. But with the demise of the local gold industry and difficulties in establishing pastoral industries in the area, the hotel waned and completed closed down in the 1950’s. 

Along the track lower down, Sturt Desert Peas cover the sides of the sides of the road.

The gravel road surprised us with an unusual section of divided road over a small rise. However, there was a bigger surprise over the top.

Part way up a large scratch mark on the road suggested something had happened.

Over the top at the end of the scratch mark was a large mine drilling truck parked wonkily.

We stopped to check that all was OK but the truck was deserted. As I walked around taking a few photos, a smaller truck drew up. It was the youngish owners of the truck who had a mining lease and were moving their drilling truck on to it. However, they had a blowout yesterday which used up their spare wheel and now another tyre had disappeared completely. They’d been into the next “town” to get some help but there was none available.

They really didn’t know what to do next and didn’t have the equipment or expertise to fix their problem on a 20 tonne vehicle. We helped them strap up the dragging axle to the chassis in the vain hope they could continue with the tyreless wheel off the ground but we knew that wasn’t going to work.

They didn’t really appreciate our help either so we left them crawling the truck into the bush where they’ll have to leave it while they acquire another wheel and tyre, and something big to lift the axle with.

We moved on through the fast disappearing township of Kookynie to Niagara Dam, a largish dam built in the 1890’s to service the fast growing township of Kookynie. Sadly as the dam was finished, they found an underground source of water nearer Kookynie so the dam was not needed and never used. And the gold around Kookuynie didn’t last long either which accounts for it’s slow decline too.  All in all a bit of a balls up.

However, Niagara Dam still remains, and is an excellent picnic and free camping spot.

18 Sept

From Niagara Dam we ventured down to the small but not yet disappearing town of Menzies, and its quirky steel plate statutes all around the town. We spent so long checking emails and reading the news that we didn’t take any photos but we have done many times before.

From Menzies its an easy 150km drive to Kalgoorlie and our favourite but free rubbish-strewn bush campsite.

19 Sept

The call of the washing machines could not be ignored, even though our usual laundromat had “Closed” emblazoned on the door. Luckily we found another in nearby Boulder, and while that was doing, I refilled a gas bottle and one diesel tank.

It was getting late and we wanted to see if our friend Robin was at home at his Oka Workshop in Coolgardie on a Saturday afternoon. He wasn’t, but his grandson was there and we had a chat, left a message and took some photos.

Cruising around the town we discovered Coolgardie is now an RV Friendly town with a free 24 hour RV rest area next to the railway station (which hasn’t seen a moving train for many years). We also discovered that tomorrow was “Coolgardie Day”, the day of the year when festivities came to town for the young and young at heart. So fitting into one or both of those categories, we stayed in the rest area so as to have an early start.


20 Sept

For a town of only about 1000 people they really put on a big display and hundreds of carloads of people had come from all over. The main street (which is about 100m wide) was blocked off the and by 9.00am this morning it was filled with stalls, scary fairground rides (and I was only watching), eateries, displays of veteran cars, and a 200 tonne ore truck neatly angle parked in the main street, as is the law in this town.

But for a 200 tonne truck, 2 small plastic chocks under the wheels seemed barely adequate…

It was a bright blue sky sunny day but the wind was bitingly cold. Not Afghan cold you understand but enough to keep your hands in your pockets.

I felt very sorry for the 2 girls in skimpy bikinis standing on boxes (their money making plan being to entice people to pay for them to dance around a bit) but not sorry enough to loan them my jumper (or take their photo).

At half time there was a parade including a police band in Scottish kilts (I bet they were cold in parts too) playing the bagpipes, the local girls volunteer firefighters pulling an old fire truck, a pony parade and a drive past of veteran vehicles and Hell’s Angels.

Later the emergency services put on a sobering display of freeing 2 trapped people from a crashed car using the jaws of life to cut open the car and remove the doors and roof before carefully freeing the passengers.

The “Avenger” was the favourite ride and we were surprised that there was no vomit trail as the passengers alighted…

There was also wood chopping, bands of varying quality, a Maori song and dance display and a fire eater.

But by mid afternoon we had had enough fun and excitement so we returned to the Oka and left town to beat the rush.

We are camped tonight near Wiggiemooltha, (yes Virginia, there is a place called Wiggiemooltha) halfway between Coolgardie and Norseman.

As we are heading east next on the Eyre Highway, that will be the subject of our next blog entry (or blogentary, a word I thought I’d just made up, but sadly someone got there first, just like “thinkative” and “thingleness” which are 16 century words).


Reports of our 2015 travels are continued in these blog sections:

Home to Ningaloo
Newman to Ningaloo
Ningaloo Northwards and then Southwards
East across the Eyre Highway