South Australia

WA road trip 2015 - Conclusion

November 11, 2015 in Travel

One of the things I’ve been saying to people who’ve asked me about this trip is the insight it’s given me into West Australians. The psychology of them, as a population compared to the eastern states, the sense of isolation.

It’s a very long way from Victoria to Western Australia.
It’s not something you can do on impulse.
You can for Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide and even Brisbane or Tasmania. There’s no huge expanses (fine there’s water for Tasmania but on the ferry it’s not you driving), there’s no areas of nothing. Or the special sort of nothing that the Eyre Highway is.

South Australian farmland–one side of the road

The other thing people have mentioned, which I said in my introduction is why I didn’t visit X or Y. I never intended to, and looking back on this trip, I’m glad I focused on what I did.

South Australian farmland–other side of the road

It’s been similarly with my other road trips, I’ve gone on them to go to one particular thing, to see a particular place and to drive the gaps in between. Then I’ll return in the future and see other things, once I’m familiar with the passage to each of the capital cities then I can expand and go further out from that.
The only city I’ve been back to more than once is Canberra, and enjoyed it each time.

Having done my road trip to Western Australia I fully intend to return, by road again. I massively enjoyed the trip over there. The isolation, the desert, the remoteness.

If there was one black spot on the whole journey it was Border Village.
But there’s always one bad spot anywhere when you’re travelling, at least it was on the way back and didn’t leave too much of a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve learnt from the experience and know to steer clear of it. It also doubly makes me mistrust anything said on TripAdvisor.

I did use TripAdvisor here and there when planning this trip (and for the most part completely ignored the reviews on that site, usually to my benefit), one thing reviewers seemed to bang on about is water pressure at locations along the Nullarbor. Which is an odd thing for reviewers to fixate on.
I didn’t notice any problems with water pressure at all the places I stayed at; Poochera, Mundrabilla, Border Village. They all had perfectly fine water pressure.
There could be a few ‘howevers’ attached to my experience and other people’s judgments. I shower at night, and because I liked to get an early night’s sleep I was showering early in the evening, so there’d probably not be a lot of people taxing the water system, be it pumps or mains pressure.

Welcome to the Great Western Woodlands sign at McDermid Rock.

Something interesting I found upon returning was people’s ideas of the Eyre Highway / the Nullarbor’s sense of “isolation”. People seem to think that it’s a remote, isolated location. It’s not.
Not really.
There are roadhouses spaced apart every not even 200 kilometres apart.
There is a surprising amount of mobile phone reception.
At all the roadhouses and probably 100 kilometres in likely a circle (as that’s generally how phone reception works across a relatively flat surface) around them. There were times when I got a call and could see as I was driving (on my ute’s centre console display) my reception bars drop off as I drove. But still held reception for a long time, and not just reception, 3G data at a relatively good speed, most of the time.

There are rest stops that have shade, places to camp and at several of them water.
If you broke down somewhere on the Eyre Highway and were without phone reception the highway is busy enough that you would be able to find yourself out of trouble.
I think unless you deliberately wandered away from your vehicle and away from the highway it would be quite difficult for you not to be rescued from a problematic situation on the Eyre highway.

McDermid Rock, it had a small dam on it.

It’s remote in the sense that it’s isolated from any sort of sizeable population. Due to the fact the original towns are along the train line and the Eyre Highway’s current alignment follow different paths it means that there are none of the more common town–pub–petrol station sort of arrangements after Ceduna. After that it’s just roadhouses (with the exception of Ecula just west of Border Village). So that can give the sense of isolation because you’re not encountering anyone that forms a ‘population’ beyond those working at roadhouses, everyone’s transient.

Of the people I did interact with, albeit mostly at the roadhouses and petrol stations throughout my journey, and the occasional people at lookout points, I found them all to be friendly.

My overriding adjective for this road trip was ‘awe’. Awe inspiring and awesome (in its traditional definition). I was amazed and awed by the landscape I saw, that I drove through. I enjoyed every daylight moment of it.

View from on top of Wave Rock with Hyden Dam on left.

It’s also the most unique trip, across a sealed road that anyone can take. If you’ve got a spare week or so.
It can be done one way in about 4 days.
It’s enlightening, amazing and insightful.
It’s not something you can do on impulse and it does require a little bit of planning.
But it’s a journey that was fantastic and awesome and one that I will repeat sometime soon.

What this road trip cemented in my mind is that I want to continue to explore Australia.
By road and at ground level. That we have a fantastic and amazing landscape that should be seen. As I have mentioned and probably will continue to say, the destination is only a part of the exploration. I think it’s the wrong part to focus on. The destination is like the origin, they’re things to aim for and return to, I don’t see them as the goal of a journey.

WA road trip 2015 - Day 9 - Port Augusta

November 11, 2015 in Travel

I left Border Village having taken back my key in order to get the key deposit back very early in the morning.

In fact it was still dark when I left, it was something I’d said to myself that I wouldn’t do; drive in the dark. Mostly down to my minor fear of hitting a kangaroo, while I had a ‘roo bar on my ute it’s not there for me to go around running into the local fauna.

However my concern for running at speed into local wildlife was overridden by my night’s stay at Border Village which left me just wanting to be rid of that place.
I’d had a thankfully uninterrupted night’s sleep at Border Village, but not a pleasant night’s sleep, and stepping out of bed onto a towel I’d placed there the previous night brought it all back as to why I’d felt so...disturbed by the place.

I understand, I knew staying at places along the Eyre Highway I was not going to get high class accommodation and I’m willing to forgive some things.

Maybe Mundrabilla just has a higher standard than the rest of the roadhouses along the Eyre.
Maybe.
But Border Village just seemed like it was taking advantage of its location, being the convenient stop off point along the Eyre Highway on the way to Perth.
There were certainly a lot of people staying there that night I noticed when I left. It seemed like most of the motel units had cars out the front of them.

You live and learn, and I learnt I’d rather spend the night in my swag out in the freezing night than stay at Border Village again.

Having departed Border Village early I hadn’t at that point really decided where I was going to stay that night. I had only decided where I was going to eat breakfast. Which was at the Nullarbor Roadhouse, some 2 hours from Border Village.

At the Nullarbor Roadhouse I think I got the best cooked breakfast I had throughout my trip, a good proportion of everything and a nice dining room to sit in. It is also where on my next trip across the Nullarbor I’d stay on the way home. Interestingly they’re the only roadhouse with both a website and a Twitter account the latter of which is pretty active as well. I wouldn’t say I’m active with all the social medias, but do use Twitter and it does make a difference if a business has a website.

According the signs on the fuel bowsers at the Nullarbor Roadhouse you have to give them your driver’s licence before they’ll activate the bowsers, this is to stop drive offs. I noticed this on the way through and back although both times I didn’t need to give them my licence. I noted to them it would take some gall to do so, it’s not as though you’ve got much choice for fuel along the Eyre and they all have video cameras. I would presume that all the roadhouses know the others out there and could call ahead to make them aware of fuel drive offs.

Waiting for my breakfast I utilised the presence of 3G to work out where I might stay that night.

My original plan had been to stop at Wudinna. which was about 7 hours 20 minutes from Border Village, however I had found in previous days that I was able to do more like 8-9 hours in a single day rather than my rather conservative 7 and a half hours. So then I thought that maybe Kimba would be the night’s stop, being about 8 and half from Border Village, or 6 and a half hours from where I was at that point at the Nullarbor Roadhouse.

But at that point it was still quite early and I wasn’t sure. At that point at breakfast I decided sort of that when I got to Kimba I’d decide where I was going because between Kimba and Port Augusta there wasn’t much in the way of accommodation, so I’d need to decide then.

Ceduna was the next major stop I had at around lunch time and it was there that I had the quarantine check from South Australian quarantine. They asked for fresh fruit and vegetable, checked out my ute for both, I got orange dirt on my hands as I opened the still very dirty tailgate of my ute.
Reflecting on the Western Australia quarantine experience however, this seemed a somewhat more lacklustre investigation and questioning than my experience entering into Western Australia. There were also a few more roads you could take and more open areas leading to Ceduna than at the border crossing in Border Village.

The gigantic air con unit in my room in Port Augusta...only photo I took in the room.

In the end I obviously continued through Kimba and went on through to Port Augusta.
It was I admit quite a long drive and I had to stop and have a few power naps along the way.
It was the longest drive I’d done so far being almost 10 hours all up and just over 970 kilometres.

I got a room at the Highway One Motel in Port Augusta behind the Shell Petrol station on the way into Port Augusta. Not much to say about the room. There were some noisy British people who from the sound of their really loud discussion on the phone were on a road trip from Canberra or Sydney across to WA or the NT. Their kids were quite noisely playing outside my room in the late afternoon to evening. Which considering how far I’d back my ute up was amazing they’d not whacked their legs on the tow bar. But I think at this point I was just a little grumpy from the long drive.
The Highway One Motel does have free and pretty speedy wifi, which was nice to have.
I rested, though tried not to nap in the afternoon, ordered a pizza to my room as I just didn’t feel like going out even to the dining room at the motel, showered then fell into much needed sleep.

WA road trip 2015 - Day 8 - Border Village

November 04, 2015 in Travel

I woke rested from a good night’s sleep in what appeared to be, judging by the state of the motel room next door, recently renovated motel room. The night’s stay had cost me $147, which, seemed pricey, though as I would discover I would soon get a lot less for not much less than $147.

Going back along the Eyre Freeway it remains my favourite part of the journey across the Nullarbor.

The range of landscapes from the lakes that are around Norseman through the hilly and bush-filled landscape and the onto the Eyre Highway and properly off along the Nullarbor.

The Madura Pass was still surprising, even though I knew it was there and had driven along it. It’s still surprising given the landscape around it.

I can’t really say much about this day’s drive without repeating myself from the previous blog. I’m also cheating with this first photo, which is actually from my westward journey at the Madura Pass, though one of many I didn’t use in the other blog.

What I can say however has to do with my evening’s accommodation and stop for the night.

Border Village.
I didn’t stay at Mundrabilla because the distance from Norseman to that was somewhat too short, so I’d decided to push on to Border Village. I came to wish I’d pushed on further...

The price for a room at the Border Village motel was $120.
Plus a $10 room key deposit. Which you got back when you gave the key back.
For reference and reminder my room at Mundrabilla was $95 and didn’t have any sort of room key deposit.

Once I had paid and got into the room I was left wishing I had continued up the road to the Nullarbor Roadhouse. It however was 2 hours up the road and by the time I had gotten into the room and thought about it, it was already approaching twilight and therefore, for me, with my rules of ‘try not to hit a kangaroo’ too late to be driving again.

On my last road trip, also on the way back it was Morgan that gave me a bad night’s sleep. But that was down to the locals and a few other issues I had.

With Border Village it was solely down to the price and condition of the room.

Border Village and Mundrabilla share several things, they’re both isolated roadhouses, they both have diesel generators going all of the time and they both are attached to petrol stations.

Border Village is larger, it’s right next to the Western Australia / South Australia border.

Said border is notable in that while you get met by a border patrol person going into Western Australia you have to wait until you get to Ceduna in South Australia to go through a similar process for entry into South Australia, despite actually crossing the border here at Border Village.

Border Village has much more of an air of it being run by a large business / corporation, just everything seemed a little too...I’m not sure. Not exactly prescribed, but there was just an odd sense in the bar and building.
Maybe it was that you couldn’t get a pub meal at any time unlike Mundrabilla. Maybe it was that (at least the information booklet in the room) seemed to suggest they were stuck on the Eucla timezone and that’s when meals were severed from 6 pm Eucla time till...I can’t remember, probably 9 or 8:30 pm.

Border Village motel, other side of room.

I wasn’t expecting much of the room.

But by this point I did have something to frame my expectations against. Mundrabilla, which is in a similar location and situation. Its room was clean and simple (ignoring the bathroom ceiling, which was easy enough to do).
The rooms at Mundrabilla looked like they’d been there since the 60s, but at least they had the look and feel of actually being built there and they were clean and well kept.

Border Village’s motel rooms were quite clearly portable buildings that had been cut in half to form motel units.

The ‘carpet’ in the room was I think damp and very dirty.

The walls were very thin, I could hear the neighbour’s TV quite loudly through the wall.

The bed was also very wobbly and the castors on it made it very easy to move. This was something of a positive as I was able to rotate the bed around so it was essentially in the middle of the room with the top of the bed against the desk at the back of the room and away from the paper-thin walls.

Inside the bathroom there were signs informing you that Border Village was on a limited water supply. This wasn’t stated at Mundrabilla, but it was stated here in Border Village.
The water pressure was fine (in fact it had been fine everywhere I stayed), I only mention this now because there seems to be a lot of people banging on about water pressure on sites like TripAdvisor.

I slept badly at Border Village, just the state of the room and especially the price vs the state of the room made for a bad night’s sleep.
The following day I left very early, eager to be away from Border Village. The night’s sleep, and in fact the whole experience there left me feeling unclean and just an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

There are no positives about staying at Border Village, it’s expensive, unpleasant and has the feel of a big corporation running it. On any future trips I will avoid it and stay at Mundrabilla on the way over to Western Australia and then at the Nullarbor Roadhouse on the way back, something I sorely wish I had done this road trip.

WA road trip 2015 - Day 3 - Mundrabilla

October 28, 2015 in Travel

Poochera Hotel breakfast and dining room

As I mentioned in the last paragraph of my last post my accommodation did include a continental breakfast of which I didn’t indulge. I wasn’t feeling immediately hungry when I awoke and felt like I could get a larger heartier breakfast further along the road in Ceduna.

Leaving Poochera it was basically a case of turn right and continue, there wouldn’t really be any more complicated directions until I got much deeper into Western Australia.

Ceduna was quickly reached in about an hour and a half, it was at the Mobil petrol station on the outskirts of Ceduna that I filled my ute up with diesel and myself up with a big cooked breakfast. This had become my standard thing, to have a large breakfast, have just a muesli bar or something like it for lunch and then dinner.
I found on my last few road trips that eating a small breakfast and then lunch and dinner just made me feel a bit bloated and fat. At least with a big breakfast early on in the day then in the middle of the day if I want to stop and have a walk around I can and not be beholden to finding somewhere for lunch or something.
Also as often a roadhouse will be the only option I prefer a breakfast menu to a lunch menu for its range of options.

It was today that I actually stopped and did the touristy thing of stopping, taking photos and looking at stuff. Mostly the sea and the Great Australian Bite.

Classic beauty shot of the Great Australian Bite.

It is amazing to look at the jagged coast line of Australia, something that you can only see by driving out to it. Or maybe flying to it by small aircraft of helicopter.
But it’s far from everything and when you get out there it’s amazing to look at.

I stopped at two of the photo opportunity / lookout spots along the way to look and take photos and it was amazing.
At the second location I saw some whales.

At the first location the drop into the bite it sheer, you can see the jagged rough edge of the Australian coast line where there are cliffs that drop to the sea. At the second it LOOKED less sheer, it looked almost driveable.
Albeit in a 4x4.
But I don’t think it is, I think it just looks flatter because there looks to be paths, but I think you could still easily end up in the sea if you attempted to drive along these what seem like paths.

My accommodation for the night was something I hadn’t booked and was either going to be Border Village (a petrol station, roadhouse and motel), Eucla or Mundrabilla.

But first I had to get through Western Australia quarantine.
It’s not as stringent as Tasmania’s quarantine, which involves dogs.
But it’s still more extreme than the fruit fly bins anyone who’s driven interstate would be familiar with.

I was asked do I have any; fresh fruit and vegetables, honey and any hessian sacks that might have contains potatoes.
I also had to open up my glove box, centre console, back doors and tailgate. Plus my esky.
Satisfied I wasn’t carrying any of these things I was allowed into Western Australia.

I’d decided not to stay at Eucla, which from what I’d read was expensive for not very much and decided to continue onto Mundrabilla.
Also I’d lost 2 hours off the clock upon crossing into Western Australia.
Although Ecula does exist in its own weird timezone which doesn’t really help. It’s 45 minutes behind Western Australia, despite being in Western Australia.

It doesn’t help at all really, but as I discovered at Mundrabilla time doesn’t really matter either regarding food and what not, so time literally becomes something of an illusion.

Mundrabilla is a roadhouse. Supposedly it has the cheapest fuel on the Eyre highway. It is certainly (as I would discover later on my return trip) much more friendly than Border Village.

$95 for a room at Mundrabilla.
The room was fine.
There was a bathroom which was probably built in the 1960s. The outside of the accommodation had a look of a 1970s primary school.

Outside of Mundrabilla accommodation block

One very notable thing about Mundrabilla and indeed all the roadhouses along this stretch of the Eyre is that they’re not connected to anything. So power, water, those things we take for granted they need to generate themselves.
This wasn’t noted anywhere I could see at Mundrabilla, but having read about this prior to departing while researching my trip I know that the water is drawn up from (somewhat salty) bores and then desalinated via reverse osmosis. This requires power, as does everything else that you use in day to day life.
That power is generated using diesel generators.
They’re noisy.
You are not going to sit outside and enjoy the serenity of the night. Well, you can if you take some photos.
But not if you’re wanting to listen to the night or any other guff like that.

I didn’t have any issue with the diesel generators because they’re constant, it was noisy yes, but it’s a constant drone. I can deal with that.

There was an interesting menu range at the roadhouse, not just the standard fare of steak and chicken parma. There was pasta, curry, soup and I think even a salad.
I opted for steak, which was perfectly cooked and along with its chips also included a pretty good salad. Again kinda surprising since it was reasonably priced and Mundrabilla is about an hour west of the West Australian / South Australian border which means it’s not close to anything.

They also had fresh cake for sale.
I like cake and had been craving some cake for a day or two now, so that was a nice thing to see for sale.
Baked that day I was informed.
Everyone I encountered at Mundrabilla was very friendly in fact, it was oddly a highlight especially as I would come to find out on my return trip staying at Border Village which had been the other option for today’s accommodation.

There were very few problems with Mundrabilla. None that I found awful, but things I think people may rate it down for.
I looked at the ceiling in the bathroom in my room and there was...a degree of mould on the ceiling. I attributed that to the fact that the bathroom wasn’t vented. I looked for but couldn’t find an extractor fan switch.
That’s not really an issue, you use a bathroom to take ‘evacuate yourself’ and have a shower in. I left the bathroom door closed and didn’t really think about it.
Mobile phone reception isn’t amazing, but it depends. I got perfectly fine reception sitting in the roadhouse dining area, I checked Twitter, my email etc, but in my room which was number 10 and on the edge of the property the reception was poor to non-existent.
It wasn’t an issue for me, and really I hadn’t been expecting to get any phone reception, so to find that I could get 3G reception was a welcome surprise, even if it was only in parts of the room.
TV reception was snowy, at best. Again this was not something I was expecting to have at all, so it was nice to see I could watch a bit of the evening news, especially considering the patchy phone coverage in the room. But it wasn’t something I needed. I had with me my phone and a Seagate Wireless Plus drive which functions as my portable media server when I’m out and about.

Going to sleep the drone of the diesel generators didn’t keep me awake, I put a podcast on and set the timer; fell asleep and slept soundly until the next morning uninterrupted by the diesel generators or passing road trains.

WA road trip 2015 - Day 2 - Poochera

October 26, 2015 in Travel

Day 2 Barmera, South Australia to Pochera, South Australia.

Like my last road trip, by this day’s end I was slowly realising I had again made a mis-calculation with the timing of my journey.
Not a major one.
Just a small minor one.

Today’s journey on paper was 7 hours 20 minutes, or 710 kilometres from Barmera to Poochera.

I say minor mistake as when I was planning my journey I optimistically thought I was going to stop and look at lots of touristy sites along the way.

Except that’s not me.
I don’t really have a hankering to stop off at places like the so called “middle of Australia” town of Kimba.

What I actually enjoy is driving and road tripping.
I like being on the road and seeing the landscape roll past.

Although really, I also know my limits, a maximum of 9 hours on the road is really all I think I’m safely capable of doing.

Also in planning my journey I had to take into account time and distance considerations. Especially crossing the Nullarbor. There’s only so many places to stop in at and that cascades back and forwards to determine where and when I could stop.

Poochera appealed because it was on the Eyre Highway and was a pub.
Had I not been able to stay in Poochera I’d thought I would need to detour down to Streaky Bay.

Fortunately I was able to book and get a room the Poochera Hotel, so I knew that was ready and booked.

But first, departing Barmera.
I had a filling breakfast in Barmera overlooking Lake Bonney, which is a rather glorious large lake there.

Travelling from basically one side of South Australia to the wheat belt of South Australia again made me marvel at its diversity. When I travelled through South Australia last year I marvelled at its range and diversity of landscape and I still marvelled this time.

I found myself wondering if it was because I’d not visited South Australia when I was young.
I’ve never been to the Northern Territory. With the other states I’d visited them when I was younger as a kid or in my teens.

But South Australia is a state that I’ve only visited as an adult, and I wonder if that means I look at it differently, unformed or influenced by childhood thoughts and considerations.

The landscape in particular inspires me, the diversity of it. Travelling west north-west across the state, seeing the farms of canola and grains as I drove along, the farms of sheep and cattle.
How you go through elevation changes as you go from the river through the countryside towards the coast. It’s just a fantastic diverse flowing set of changes across the landscape.

On the way to Poochera I did stop off at one touristy sort of location. Port Germein. Location of “possibly” (although not) the longest timber jetty in the Southern Hemisphere.

I admit I pulled off to Port Germein in part to have a look and in part to have a piss. Not the nicest of reasons to pause on my trip, but I thought I’d have a look once I’d relieved myself.

Driving into Port Germein was something of a surreal experience.

It looked, through my sunglasses very washed out, almost apocalyptic. Even taking them off did not alleviate this vision. It was not helped by seeing a guy driving a horse drawn carriage down the main street. The buggy that he was driving looked like it had once been part of a trailer or something but now was drawn by a horse.
He was talking to someone as he road past, so I am sure it wasn’t some sort of solo driving induced imagination.

Looking at the jetty it is indeed long.
I don’t really have much to compare it to, mentally it’s longer than all the timber piers that I’ve walked along on the Mornington Peninsula, or anywhere else in Australia.
I admit I did not walk along the jetty, because it was extremely long. It’s (according to the information sign) 1,532 metres long.
Too long to walk along on what was a sunny though cold and windy day.
Also while I probably had enough time to walk it...well I didn’t want to.

Following this I travelled north up to Port Augusta, the last major point of civilisation in South Australia.
Leaving there you’re presented with two options, turn right and and head towards Darwin or continue, left-ish heading for Perth.

It was leaving Port Augusta, seeing the, they’re probably not high enough to be called mountains, but hills, gateways almost, signalling that you’re departing one piece of Australia for another.
It was an awesome sight, in the traditional sense of the word, inspiring awe. It made me feel like my journey began at that point.
The way the the road curved around them it looks like you’re passing between two vast gate posts, signalling your exit from civilisation for a moment. In fact, the road just seems to drift off between them and it’s not clear at first even where the road is going.

At this point it looked like it was going to continue being the desert-like rocky landscape, but then it slowly gets greener and becomes farm land once more. Grain silos become the signal that you’re passing through a town, or at the very least an area with some sort of population.
The grain silos are the tallest thing in every direction, they are the tallest thing on the landscape.

They’re also oddly awe inspiring.

Onwards I drove towards my accommodation for that night; Poochera.
Had I not been able to get accommodation in Poochera I would have headed onto to Streaky Bay, which is about an hour away from Poochera and is more of a tourist town being on the coast.

I didn’t, need or want to. Poochera is on the highway. Streaky Bay isn’t.

Poochera is a town with a pub, grain silos, a memorial hall, and a train line that runs past it, and not much else.
The Poochera Hotel has standard pub-type accommodation, with shared facilities.
From what I gathered the publicans (they who own / run the pub) live in the pub as well. The outbuildings of the pub are used for storage.
Which I wouldn’t think is ideal.
Not ideal to keeping your business and home life separate.
When I was shown to my room and given the ‘tour’ in the bathroom there were two shower cubicles and I was asked to use the one on the left, only, when later that night I was taking a shower did I realise they (the owners) also used these showers. Again, I wouldn’t have thought ideal to have that situation, living and working around your patrons.

What I was surprised by was how cold it was at night, actually not even night, just drifting on towards the afternoon it got cold. They provided me with a blow heater, which was efficient at heating the room, and needed.

The pub also got surprisingly busy, well busy enough, especially considering that Poochera is not a large town but it seemed there are active families there.

I appeared to be the only person staying in a room of the pub, there was one other couple staying in a caravan. The pub is also the caravan park for Poochera with space outside. From what I could see I think they were unpowered sites but I honestly did not look too closely.

Surprisingly the price of accommodation ($40) also included a continental breakfast the following morning.
However the following morning I just didn’t really feel like toast of cereal.

WA road trip 2015 - Day 1 - To Barmera

October 21, 2015

Day 1 of my road trip. Mornington Peninsula to Barmera.

I’d planned each day of my trip using Google Earth to plot out my route and to give me a vague idea of how long it would take each day, so I could in turn work out where to stay.
Today’s trip would take a little over eight and a half hours.

This journey I have actually done before, although not to stop at Barmera. My road trip last year to Woomera I stayed in Morgan on the way back. This time I had learnt from that experience and was determined not to stop in Morgan again.

Barmera looked good enough.

My accommodation for the night was the Barmera Hotel Motel. I had booked online (the only accommodation on my trip that offered this). I’d opted for one of their hotel rooms.

Hotel rooms I find have more character than motel rooms, they’re usually older and in the main building rather than being tacked onto the side at some point when cars and motels became a thing that needed to be provided for.

The Barmera Hotel Motel hotel room was interesting and had character. It also had an ensuite, which was nice.
In fact it had everything that you’d expect of a motel room; fridge, TV, balcony. The fact it had a balcony was the only real thing that differentiated it from a motel room (I presume). That I had to go into the hotel and walk up a flight of stairs to get to the first floor room.
Also the floor was creaky, which I’d guess the newer concrete and brick motel rooms to the side of the hotel wouldn’t exhibit.

Downstairs in the dining room I was again reminded of the curious presence of the hot and cold sides / salad bar in the dining room. Something that I remember existing in Victorian pubs and bistros in the distant past. I remember they were a fixture of the 1980s and 1990s, and they basically disappeared from pubs in the late 90s and early 2000s as everything went more gastro-pub-like.

But in South Australia it’s still there. Or maybe it’s just country pubs, I’ve not really visited any really country pubs in Victoria so maybe the salad bar is still alive and kicking. Although that said I’ve not visited enough pubs in South Australia to make a pronouncement on the presence of salad and hot vegetable bars in pubs either.

SA road trip - Day 5 - Returning home and Reflections

June 20, 2014 in Travel

I woke early, after a night’s sleep that I wouldn’t call amazing. The night before’s antics of the pub’s patrons still fresh in my annoyance.

When I woke it was still dark and it was still early.

I did try, and ultimately fail to roll over and get some more sleep. Trying for about 40 minutes or so to get back to sleep before deciding that sitting in bed wasn’t doing anything useful so I decided to leave.

I did pass one guy in a towel as I was leaving, so I wasn’t the only person to be up at that time.

Downstairs was kinda creepy, empty aside from one person who I only briefly glimpsed and then I had to look around calling ‘Hello?’ before I found a woman who appeared to be cleaning the floors.

Outside it was still dark. The moon was still out and the sun hadn’t risen.

Beginning my drive I left Morgan and had barely gotten down the road when the sun began to rise.

The drive was fairly simple for today.

Morgan-Renmark Road to Renmark, then continue along heading east for Mildura, then very simple. Turn right and continue south.

So basically today was driving across Victoria, and a little bit of South Australia. West to east (for a little bit) then north to south.

I actually felt remarkably good considering the night’s sleep I’d had.

Maybe it was the early start, maybe it was just leaving that pub and the town. But it was rather nice.

I only nearly hit one kangaroo in the early morning twilight.

During my drive south away from Mildura I passed a lot of police going north, it only occurred to me as I passed through Wycheproof that they were heading for Mildura for triple j’s One Night Stand concert. Previous to that I couldn’t fathom what all these police, including one towing a police horse float were doing.

Farm next to rest stop somewhere south of Nandaly

This drive was possibly the most boring. It’s all landscape I’ve seen before, gum trees mostly. Some farms, some towns. In a way I preferred the stark landscape of South Australia, the drive from Port Augusta to Woomera, it’s on first glance flat and featureless landscape was actually a stark landscape full of intricacies.

Returning to Melbourne of course I hit peak hour. That was one of the things I was intending to avoid by staying in Wycheproof so I could coast through Melbourne without needing to tangle with the peak hour mess.

Fortunately it wasn’t that bad, so aside from a little bit of a traffic mess going through Melbourne it was relatively painless.

Reflecting on my trip, South Australia surprised me. Surprised me in what I saw and how much I enjoyed the landscape. Its rich ruggedness in places and how quickly, going across the state its landscape can change.

Prior to this, Tasmania was the only state that really drew me back. I found when I was there that I went thinking that I would have plenty of time, and found I didn’t. The passage through its heart trickier and more fascinating with every stop.

South Australia also makes me want to return, there are more things I would like to discover in South Australia. Nothing so tedious as a winery or whatever, but the spaces in between. The space between the destinations.

SA road trip - Day 4 - Woomera to Morgan

June 19, 2014 in Travel

Today’s drive I rather enjoyed. Rising early, though not amazingly so I left Woomera around 9:30 am ish.

Had breakfast at Spud’s Roadhouse as Woomera doesn’t have anything approaching a café. The food outlet in the Heritage Centre probably could have done me something, and I’m not sure about the restaurant in the Eldo Hotel.

For a roadhouse that’s 2 hours from a town it was a good proper sized breakfast. I ordered eggs, bacon and mushrooms. Got a plate piled with bacon, a quarter of the plate was mushrooms, 3 pieces of bread and 2 fried eggs. A proper sized breakfast that kept me not hungry till the afternoon.

I followed the road back down to Port Augusta and then headed south along the Princes Highway. Turning off for Crystal Brook and Burra.

Burra had been, early on in my planning the location where I was going to spend the night, but I’d decided to push on a little bit more and instead stay at Morgan on the banks of the Murray River. Something I later regretted that night.

This drive along the Goyder Highway and various other roads that lead me to Morgan was actually rather nice. Not flat either, different terrain changes, more farm land, it was all rather nice and different from the landscape that I’d previously passed through.

My route took me through farmland, past creeks and up hills. The landscape quickly changed from dry scrubland to somewhat dry farmland and then as I approached the Murray River green farm land. Trees neatly planted in rows crept up along the landscape.

Morgan was surprisingly hilly. It seemed a rather hilly place to settle a town. Odd that is was settled here being such a hilly town. But it did have good access to the river, which was probably its appeal when it was settled. Access to the river and the river in turn providing water for the surrounding land.

My accommodation for the night in Morgan was the Commercial Hotel, Morgan. It’s one of two pubs in Morgan. Both are on the same road, opposite one another. The other is the Terminal Hotel. It doesn’t do accommodation.

The Commercial Hotel is one of those great old hotels that has been added to throughout its life. So the accommodation that’s upstairs is all over the place. You go up the main flight, then it peels off in two directions for more rooms and then the bathrooms. The men’s bathroom had two showers and a toilet, with doors but within the main space. The women’s facilities were individual rooms 2 of them, which was interesting. From what I’ve gathered from the other places I’ve stayed at the men’s and women’s facilities are basically mirrors of one another.

History plaque for Commercial Hotel, Morgan

The proprietor gave me a tour of all the facilities and where the emergency exists were etc. This I’ve not had before, though he explained it’s ‘legal shit’. I do wonder if he’s been done for something and now does the show and tell to be careful, maybe I didn’t exude the tradie atmosphere that his other clients do and there was suspicious I was an OH&S dundridge.

My room at the Commercial Hotel was probably the worst of my whole trip. It was a room in what was probably part of the original hotel as it was above the pub and looked out onto the street beside the pub.

However it had been linked to the room beside it at some point in the past and the linking door remained. It also didn’t really close very well and had a door stop wedge to stop it moving around too much. Except the wedge wasn’t chunky enough to do its job.

The room had two beds, a double and single. The single was fine, unless you sat on it, then it sagged and bounced around.

No problem though I slept on the double bed.

Whilst waiting for 6 pm to roll around (so I might eat) I had been calculating my next stop which would have been Wycheproof in Victoria.

It’s notable for having a train line that runs down the main street. It does this because the council (when it had been originally built) didn’t want to pay extra money to buy land around the town to run the train line around the town. So it does down the main street to save money. This main street is also the Calder Highway.

Having arrived early into Morgan, as I’d mistimed / miscalculated how early I’d be rising and how much I’d been stopping at places along the way (very little) it meant I was arriving early.

The journey from Morgan to Wycheproof I’d calculated at being 5 hours 37 minutes or 6 hours if I had a look at the other side of the Murray River (necessitating two ferry crossings).

Instead, I’d decided to just push on and head home.

Making the trip from Morgan a little bit under 10 hours drive time.

Which meant getting a good night’s sleep.

I dined early, I was the only one in the dining room, a little odd. Though the clientele of the pub weren’t really the people I wanted to be sharing a dining room with.

The meal was pretty good $24 for a pub meal of steak.

Afterwards I showered and headed for bed.

Then, probably an hour maybe 2 hours later, as I was drifting off the shouting began.

This wasn’t exactly late at around 8:30 or maybe 9:30 pm.

The shouting was from bogans outside. I’m using the term, I feel accurately because, even without seeing them they were, the women especially sounded quite bogan. I presume that, based on their ‘discussions’ they wouldn’t mind me using this term to describe them. They were outside the pub. Outside my window in fact. Well actually they were outside and below my window.

At this point I thought ‘fine, they’ll drink and then leave’.

No.

That’s what I should have done.

I don’t actually recall how long they were drinking and shouting for. There was primarily one guy who liked to shout the most.

It think it was at least 10:30 pm maybe 11:30 pm when they left, tooting their horns all the way along the road.

And then driving back and doing the same thing again.

Then, finally probably nearer to midnight it went quiet.

It’d been sort of dozing though not really sleeping during all of this.

Eventually I got to sleep proper.

It’s all part of the experience is what I thought to myself.

I have bailed on a location before, though the last time was on my Brisbane trip heading away from Brisbane I’d decided to stay in Coopernook in New South Wales (it’s about 20 minutes from Taree). There I’d got to my room and found that it had a door that opened onto the balcony that wrapped around the pub.

It would have been lovely. In the summer.

I wasn’t there in the summer. I was there in July, a particularly cold July.

I thought maybe I could have put my bag against the door or something to ward off the cold. If there’d been a heater or something I might have stayed. After about 15 minutes though I’d decided no. I couldn’t stay there and got my money back from then and went down the road to Taree.

In Morgan I didn’t discover the shortcomings until later. Well alright initially I saw some shortcomings but they weren’t huge. I could work around the wedged door.

I suppose it wasn’t actually the pub’s problems it was their clientele.

But of all the places I stayed Morgan was the worst. Sometimes a small town is nice, quiet and homely. Other times it isn’t.

I think, were I for some reason to go through that neck of the woods again I would stay in Burra, which I did drive through. It was larger than Morgan though still a small town and seemed nice.

SA road trip - Day 3 - Port Augusta to Woomera

June 18, 2014 in Travel

Today I allowed myself to leave a little later than I had for the previous days’ drives, as Woomera is only 2 hours from Port Augusta.

Leaving Port Augusta you basically have two choices, turn left for Perth and Western Australia or turn right Darwin and the Northern Territory. I needed to turn right. There’s nothing between Port Augusta and Pimba. Just roads and cattle grids, which are something of a surprise at 110 km/h, once you go over one you get used to how it feels when you drive over them, but still a surprise at first.

A sign which I noticed as I was driving up to Woomera, but only really processed what it said after seeing it a second time was an ironically hard to see small sign that said “See and Be Seen Use Headlights 24 Hr”. With an illustration of a car with headlights. As I’ve got a black vehicle it makes sense for me. I’m always wary of the times at twilight and near that of having my headlights on so people can see me.

I’ve tried going through Flickr and Google image search in an attempt to find an image of this sign, which like all road signs is well set out. Except it was smaller than most road signs and positioned quite low to the ground. Hence I didn’t catch all of it when I first saw it.

I think maybe it just needs to be one of those things that’s in the tourism booklets or whatever that says ‘if you’re driving in the desert have your headlights on 24 hours a day’. I have looked through “The Nullarbor” tourism map (published by http://www.exploreeyrepeninsula.com.au/) which list various useful things for outback travel but doesn’t say anything about headlights.

I had two destinations today, the former site of the Island Lagoon Tracking Station and Woomera itself.

The former, located next to the a salt lake was a tracking station in the 1970s. From what I gathered online there wouldn’t be much left, just some remains of the building.

It’s located down a road that probably doesn’t have a name, although there was a road sign pointing towards it, but I didn’t pause long enough to look and Google Street View isn’t of high enough resolution to see it.

I didn’t pause because I was trying to keep an eye out for what I’d written on my directions as a ‘semi-sealed road on the left’.

The road was vaguely alright until you got further away from the freeway where it had deteriorated much more down to a gravel road.

Surprisingly I needed to drive a fair away to get to the former site. Disappointingly there were practically no remains of the former tracking station.

I noticed there were some long screws left on the ground, so I salvaged one of these as a souvenir for getting out there.

I think, I would like to go back to this site and go out further to the Island Lagoon and get up closer to its shores. On this trip I had other focuses, I think in the future I would like to return and camp near by to it. Ponder it and its island.

Being there, being 2 kilometres from the highways there was this surprising silence around. Although it was windy, so maybe it was just that.

Continuing on from there there’s Pimba, which is Wikipedia calls a “small settlement”, which appears to be a roadhouse ‘Spud’s Roadhouse’ and a wrecker’s yard.

A very short drive up from Spud’s Roadhouse was Woomera. The town I’d come to see.

It’s a weird town.

It is a defence town, which is only somewhat responsible for its weirdness.

It’s a town that basically stopped in the 1960s and it looks it. Aside from a few TV satellite dishes on the roofs and most houses having solar hot water tanks it looks like it’s stuck in the past.

Driving around the town to its outskirts is also odd. It has sections that have been lair out with roads, power, street lights, even bus shelters but the houses haven’t been built or have been taken away between the 60s and now. Though I suspect given the scrub that’s on these plots they never materialised.

Some roads just stop at “road closed” signs, though there seems to have been the intention that they would go on further.

There were three places I visited whilst in Woomera, the rocket park; an outdoor display of various rockets and planes that were tested at Woomera. The Woomera Museum ($4 entry) and the Heritage Centre.

The museum was well worth the entrance fee. I found the history of the town fascinating. Though I am someone who is quite interested in Australia’s contribution to space and space flight and all the things in between.

In the 1970s they worked out that Woomera was at the wrong latitude to put satellites into geostationary orbit. To do so from Woomera would’ve involved a dogleg manoeuvre in space in order to get it into the right position. So that basically curtailed Woomera as a launch site. But up to that point Woomera had been a great hive of activity and there was much development in various military and scientific technology disciplines.

It’s also a town that has several American influences. Whilst driving around the town (before I’d visited any of these locations) I drove past the oval. Set up with AFL goal posts it struck me as looking a little odd, as behind one of the goal posts was a large fence, when I saw it I thought it was odd. Thinking as I looked at it ‘it looks a bit like a baseball pitch’.

Which is what it was, baseball was quite popular in Woomera because of the American contingent in the town.

The town also has a bowling alley (in what is now the Heritage Centre).

The rocket park is a bit like being in a Gerry Anderson Thunderbirds / Captain Scarlet storage facility. All of the rockets, missiles and other aeronautical objects are very 1960s. There’s also the occasional object that isn’t aeronautical like that

Ikara an Australian made anti-submarine missile. Which looks kinda like the space shuttle.

Outside the Heritage Centre is another example of a rocket; the Thunderbird Mark 1, a British made anti-aircraft weapon designed for the UK Army. To me when I was there I was reminded of the “Thunderbolt” a missile that appeared in Doctor Who 'The Mind of Evil'. Now that I can do some research I’ve found that that missile was the Thunderbird 2 SAGW. No wonder it reminded me of it, it is basically the first generation of the missile.

The Heritage Centre was something of an odd mish-mash of areas.

There’s a bowling alley, left over from the town’s past American inhabitants.

You can do your banking there as there’s a Westpac bank branch. Okay, branch may be over selling it a little, it’s a window.

There’s also a little museum / history of the town in there.

Unlike the Woomera Museum out in the rocket park which mostly focuses on the rocket and weapons tests this space in the Heritage Centre gives some background to the formation of the town and how it all came together. This little history is pretty interesting and gave me some background of how it was in the early days.

When the town was set up everything was pretty segregated, due to the military influence. You could only socialise based on your rank. So depending on what rank you were you could only go to certain social clubs. This extended to the spouses of the servicemen there. Which led to many people feeling somewhat isolated when they first arrived in the town.

Later when the European Launch Development Organisation (ELDO) came to the town. These scientists didn’t fit into the rigid military organisation of social and professional classes. So they were housed in the Eldo Hotel.

Said Eldo Hotel still stands and was where I had my accommodation for the night.

It’s run, I found out by Transfield Services.

It’s also not cheap for what it is, a 1950s hotel that was probably upgraded maybe in the late 60s and left like that.

$106.50.

I forgot to ask why it’s such a specific amount right down to the 50 cents.

All the accommodation blocks, and there’s a few, very large blocks in fact have names. I know there’s at least Blue Steel and Redstone. Because I was mistakenly given the former and actually stayed in the latter.

The accommodation had a double bed and then in a side room another single bed along with tea and coffee facilities and fridge. Plus an ensuite bathroom.

The bathroom was interesting because there was a separate shower and bath. Though not a huge bath. It wasn’t the romantic sort of bath, or even something large enough for a person of average height. A small functional bath I would say.

It’s interesting because on the way back to my room I noticed lights glaring in the middle of the corridor back to my room. The lights were brighter than the corridor lighting which is what drew my attention. Wandering down, it was right in the middle of the building, I found communal (though divided into cubicles) showers and toilets (and a urinal). This is interesting because the tile pattern for half of this area matched the tile pattern in my ensuite.

Which doesn’t make sense, if they’d both been put in at the same time then you wouldn’t put both of them in. You’d have one or the other. Every room would have an ensuite or all the rooms would use the shared facilities.

But if it had been re-tiled, when the ensuites had been installed surely that was late enough in the program that they wouldn’t have needed the shared facilities.

It also wasn’t just my room that had these facilities, there was at least one person/persons staying in the room opposite mine (I think a couple) and I saw many other people (tradies overwhelmingly) at the restaurant who were presumably staying the night.

Also in my investigation of the shared facilities there didn’t appear to be any evidence of them having been used. Though there was a rather ominous sign stuck to one of the doors that read ‘Chemical Storage Area’.

The only other possibility that I dismissed as soon as I thought of it was that some of the rooms have an ensuite and some don’t hence the need for these shared facilities. I dismissed this because the Eldo Hotel had originally been built to service the European Launch Development Organisation scientists because they didn’t fit into the military’s way of doing things. Which means all the rooms would be the same. There wouldn’t be some “officer’s” rooms and other bog-standard rooms without a bathroom.

In twilight Woomera is no less eerie. The twilight and the light of the street lights and lights around the hotel only add to the eerie dream-like state the town seems to exist in.

The restaurant and bar was pretty fully featured for a town in the middle of no where. They even had a pear cider that wasn’t Somersby. Bulmers this time, and served in a glass, with ice. Which was nice.

Unsurprisingly it was a quiet night’s sleep, considering there’s no industry, no youths, no nothing really out there.

Ultimately, I would recommend anyone who has an interest in space, rocketry, military or weapons to visit Woomera, it’s a unique experience, out there in the desert. Strange, lost in time, frozen almost, yet it’s still active. There’s still people working out there, living out there. It’s also not isolated. Not isolated in the sense that there’s nothing and no one out there. I had Telstra 3G coverage that was pretty speedy. Roxby Downs is less than an hour away and Port Augusta is only 2 hours away and the petrol station in the form of Pimba’s Spud’s Roadhouse is barely 5 minutes down the road.

SA road trip - Day 2 - Kingston SE to Port Augusta

June 13, 2014 in Travel

Today’s second day was calculated at 6 hours 57 minutes.

Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE breakfast room

Leaving early and enjoying a solo breakfast, the other people staying having not woken yet as there was no evidence of other people having breakfasted in the dining room I left. Kingston SE was quiet with no one out on the road yet at 8 am I seem to recall leaving.

My route today took me along the Princes Highway and then along the highway continuing into Adelaide.

Just outside Kingston SE and pretty much all the way to Adelaide I had very much a sense of the moors in England.

Everything has a very flat, windswept sense to the environment.

Also, like the drive to Kingston SE a sense of post-apocalyptic desolation.

Perhaps it's just that I was travelling in the off season and mid-week. But this has very much been a journey where I have seen very few people for an extended period of time. For more than an hour I saw no cars, not a living being save for sheep, cows and the occasional fox.

I think the lack of people and the isolation that I've seen thus far is what's the biggest difference from my trips up to Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra. Going along the Hume Freeway I was almost guaranteed to see some vehicles, mostly trucks.

As the Princes Highway rejoins the ‘main highway’ system away from the coast at Tailem Bend it brought with it more traffic and as I approached Adelaide proper a realisation of how much height it has to drop in order to get to Adelaide CBD.

That’s something I hadn’t really realised when I was looking at the satellite image and planning my route.

Of course it looks hilly, but I was surprised at how much descending was needed for the highway to get closer to sea level.

It wasn’t as much of a steep incline as the highway through Toowoomba or the Blue Mountains which come with percentage grade warnings.

But still I am somewhat concerned I may have incurred speeding fines as the road was continuously at an incline, this was something I wasn’t expecting.

The way through the city was more a passage through the inner suburbs of Adelaide, the solution to this by the residents who reside along Portrush Road seems to all have been to build high fences to keep out the road that is on their doorsteps.

I do wonder if the Adelaide state government is looking to build a bypass around the city. But the hills would pose something of an obstacle in devising such a solution. But I think with the increased traffic towards the ports it'd be something that would soon become necessary.

Though if you look at a sat-image of Adelaide there isn’t really any space where a bypass could be built easily. Or if one was going to be built it wouldn’t be remotely cheap.

Following my chosen route I was greatly pleased that I had thoroughly researched (looked on Google Street View) at the intersections that I had to go through along that route as it was most worrisome going towards them. So when I was driving along I knew where to turn for Gepps Corner and which right turn to take at Grand Junction (there’s a hard right and a soft right that’s possible from Grand Junction Road) with only one lane for taking either of these right turns.

Heading out of Adelaide toward Port Wakefield the landscape was surprising in how not dry it was. From the sat-images I’d looked at I thought it would be dry arid conditions. But no, while there was some sense of dryness it was mostly verdant throughout my journey. Even as I neared Port Pirie and the landscape dried somewhat there was still much greenery around. It was only mid-May, so not quite into winter enough for rain I would have thought to have much of an effect on the landscape.

I didn't really stop until I was about an hour outside Port Pirie and then it was just for lunch and after that lengthy amount of time not speaking to anyone I found that needing to speak to someone, to form words rather difficult. Like I had a cold or something and had trouble just asking for a sandwich, forming words was briefly difficult. Perhaps I need to talk to myself more or something like that.

After my brief stop I decided to continue on into Port Pirie, intending to have a look around. Fill up with diesel and continue on.

One thing, as I drove through Port Pirie (twice) was the layout of the town. It being a port and therefore not being the layout of the road going right through the town.

I didn’t actually end up filling up with diesel in Port Pirie, I drove past the first station, just because I was taking in the town, the second one didn’t have a working low flow pump, only hi-flow ones. That never works out well when you try to fill up a vehicle with its regular opening with a hi-flow truck-use nozzle / pump. So I just ended up filling up in Port Augusta. There was no real worries for me, I still had half a tank of diesel at this point, but I feel more comfortable filling up when I have the chance to do so, and am always mindful of distances and how they effect the price of fuel. I’m also paranoid about running out of fuel.

Port Pirie seems to be a town in transition, Maccas and Hungary Jacks both look like they’re new additions to the town, with the International Hotel (somewhere I had intended to stay, though no one answered the phone), there sitting as something of an anachronism, even more so than its Art Deco exterior presents to the world.

Leaving Port Pirie and continuing north towards Port Augusta the kilometres rolled along. The hills to the right undulated as I drove, lending an odd almost alien quality to the flat and becoming even more arid landscape.

Yet these hills were quite green, dark against the patchy, dry landscape below them.

There was a train line and I only saw one train travelling along it; it was quite long, for at least a couple of minutes, travelling at 110 km/h I saw only the carriages. Containers and also cars being pulled by two locomotives.

Travelling along the Augusta Highway I also had my first experience of overtaking B-triples and road trains. In order to pass in any good amount of time a truck doing 110 km/h I found out quickly that I needed to do 140 km/h. It could have been done slower, but as it’s only a single lane road that speed allows you to pass the truck and put some distance between the truck and you.

I always want to be sure I put a good couple of car lengths between myself and any truck I overtake.

One of the things that I became fascinated with during this part of my journey is power poles. Not something I imagine people often become fascinated with, some might say a blight on the landscape.

But they are a very necessary part of our modern life and have been for over a hundred years.

South Australia’s power poles fascinated me, they are not the T-shaped sort of pole. They’re trident-shaped.

It’s a very interesting design for a power pole. Indeed it’s an interesting shape for anything that isn’t a trident.

In order to get the trident shape they’d need to have engineered and manufactured them much more than the standard T-shaped power poles.

There were also other power poles I saw, also a three pronged design that came off the right of the power pole with a straight horizontal line followed by an angled line down.

Again there would have been more manufacturing and engineering to create this design rather than the T-shaped variety.

Driving into Port Augusta I was firstly intrigued by the path the highway takes into Port Augusta; along a levy between two lakes. According to my GPS that I was messing around with as I drove over it my height above sea level was -2 meters.

Port Augusta struck me, a bit like Port Pirie as a town that’s had some booms recently. It’s a small town, but one that’s had some expansions recently. Driving down Commercial Road it didn’t seem like a small town, it seemed like a busy, quite active town. Yet, later when I went for a walk down to the Woolworths it felt like this was a town that had expanded quickly and perhaps lost something. There seemed like there had once been a village atmosphere to this location but as time and growth has happened that’s gone. Though perhaps I’m reading it wrong, perhaps Port Augusta has always been like this. It’s always been the last big stop before the Nullabor.

My accommodation for my second night was The Hotel Flinders. Which was one of the places I stayed at which did have a website (the other was the Royal Mail Hotel in Kingston SE). The Hotel Flinders’ however had been created in the past 5 years.

Looking at it and looking at Google Street View it looked like a grand old lady of a building, and when I went inside it had a lovely old stair case leading up to the upstairs rooms.

Alas I wasn’t to be going up said staircase as the room I’d booked was out the back of the hotel.

Paying up front the lady at the bar also took my driver’s licence details and my credit card info “in case any damage happens to the room”. Understandable I suppose, but does suggest that they have had past experience where they need to ask for this info.

It was a manual flip-flop card machine where they use carbon paper to take a copy. I was assured they destroy it after my stay.

I didn’t think anyone still had those manual machines for credit cards. I suppose if it works there’s no point in changing it.

The rooms were at the back of the hotel, I’d assumed that from the website and from looking at the sat-images of the hotel as I’d asked if there was off street parking there.

There were 5 rooms at the back of the hotel in a motel-style arrangement.

I had room number 3.

Pondering the space where these had been built I did begin the wonder if the space was where the stables would have been.

It’s certainly the right shape for where they’d have been out the back of the hotel.

The building however wasn’t original, I would guess that the building had been constructed in the 1950s or 60s. The bricks that were on the balcony between the rooms and where the car park was definitely suggested 60s to me.

Compared to my previous night’s accommodation the accommodation at The Hotel Flinders was really quite good. No shared bathroom, flatscreen TV (though it did need retuning to be able to get the ABC), tea and coffee facilities and a fridge (though I couldn’t get it to work).

The bathroom wasn’t amazing, it’s basically a space that could be a cupboard but it has the necessities. A toilet and a shower. The basin was outside that space.

The double bed was comfortable and there was even a table and two chairs in the room. These were tall ‘cafe style’ chairs and table, but perfectly serviceable to sit at, write some things, ponder the universe or have a cup of tea. Actually a mug of tea, no silly little tea cups in this room, two proper sized mugs.

My meal later that night was in The Hotel Flinders’ dining room. A really grand old room that had been renovated very well and it had a nice grand sense to the space.

The only downside to The Hotel Flinders is not really a slight against their service at all. It’s against whoever it was who parked in the car park in front of room number 1.

Lots of revving of an engine early in the night, they departed and then returned with much grunting and revving of their engine. I thought perhaps it was them doing deliveries of pizzas as I had looked through the book in the room and that had mentioned something of this. But I’d not seen any evidence around the hotel that they did anything like this.

Then later in the night it all went a bit...odd. Actually odd is me putting it lightly. There were voices outside that I could hear and two guys talking and walking around. Eventually I decided to get out of bed and peer through the wooden blinds on the window. It looked like two guys trying to break into one of the cars.

For a moment that’s exactly what I thought they were trying to do, and I thought that my car might be next, though I was more worried able them fucking up my car in some way rather than them actually succeeding in breaking in. I once unlocked my car with the key rather than the key fob and accidentally set off the alarm.

Also, they would have to be the most brazen or incompetent car thieves in the world as one of them had a high visibility vest on and the other wasn’t very good at breaking into the car.

At first I thought that of these two guys one of them was the owner, having locked his keys in his car. But, having got it open somehow, I didn’t sit at the window like some private eye watching for the whole time (though did take a few photos just in case something nefarious was going on) another guy was actually sat in the car talking to the other two guys. From his body language he didn’t seem like he’d been locked out of his car, or relieved, or thankful that these two had helped him get into the car.

It wasn’t something that I mused on much further as the guy in the high visibility vest and the other guy left in an 90s Holden Commodore and the guy whose car had ben broken into also left I allowed myself to drop to sleep.

Reflecting on this day’s drive I think I enjoyed today the most. The drive from Kingston SE along the coast was windswept and isolated, I saw very few cars, yet it was fascinating.

Likewise as I left Adelaide’s surrounds heading north there was hardly any civilisation, yet this emptiness was equally interesting.

Also neither of these drives was particularly difficult, having put my car in cruise control I didn’t need to constantly watch the speedo to remain at 110 km/h. I could enjoy the scenery roll past.

Update 2020:

Looking at The Hotel Flinders on Google Street View it appears they have installed remote gates, which would probably assuage some of my concerns regarding parking here.

SA road trip - Day 1 - South Eastern Melbourne to Kingston SE

June 06, 2014 in Travel

I set this trip (what had been a 6 day trip, but cut down to 5) for mid-May, and travelling beginning on Sunday so as to avoid any busy roads / tourists.

This first day I had set to leave at about 9:00 am with the driving time calculated at 7 hours 27 minutes.

The destination was Kingston SE.

The SE is for South East.

Notably there is no longer any ‘Kingston’. Anywhere in South Australia, not anymore.

There is Kingston On Murray.

Kingston SE used to be called Kingston, but the SE was added to differentiate it from Kingston On Murray, which was also known by ‘Kingston’ but has now been officially named Kingston On Murray (also written as Kingston-On-Murray).

Leaving from the south eastern suburbs, through Melbourne it was a fairly simple journey, over the Westgate Bridge and along the Western Freeway heading for Ballarat.

One thing I’ve not realised despite going there at least twice when I was a kid was how far Ballarat is from Melbourne. It never seemed like a long way as a kid, but it is a fair lick away from the city.

Basically there wasn’t much different about this trip that others might make on their journey to Adelaide by road.

There’s also not much to note, except after the road passes Ballarat that’s where the road has been duplicated up to. It is in progress, so at some point it should be duplicated all the way along to presumedly Ararat.

The change however from others driving to Adelaide is that at Horsham I turned at first set of traffic lights in Horsham heading west towards the coast along the Wimmera Highway.

All the trees along the Wimmera Highway, and indeed throughout Victoria at that time, though noticeably along this highway were beginning to drop their leaves. It gives everything a somewhat dream-like quality to things.

Except it was sunny and I had sunglasses on. So everything took on a bright, yet washed out sort of appearance. Everything had a de-saturated look.

The trees with their leaves half dropped didn’t look as dream-like as they might have done in the autumnal light. Instead they looked dead, almost sinister. It was a post-apocalyptic sort of sense that I drove along these roads, past abandoned buildings and towns with some shops closed, for lease signs in their windows. It made for an odd landscape to be viewed upon out the window.

In places it was like the destruction had come and gone, road houses and road-side petrol stations, general stores and the like closed long ago, though the light, the autumn’s sunbeams lighting it up with a dull saturation.

The road quality was something I had some issues with.

From Horsham to Lucidale it wasn’t just rough. Rough you can more or less cope with by driving around the rough bits in the road, you get to learn where the potholes or where they’ve been repaired. Also rough roads aren’t all of the time everywhere.

The road, the Wimmera Highway was both rough and uneven. It made for a trying several hours at the wheel.

Lucidale is interesting, sort of because of the route I was taking. Naracoorte incidentally is the larger town on the route going west away from Horsham.

Lucidale is the town I passed through to get from where I was on the Wimmera Highway to the Princes Highway which would lead me to Kingston SE.

Google Maps had other ideas, wanting to send me along Crower Road rather than Lucidale-Mount Burr Road and also the road the road signs indicated I needed to turn right along to get to Kingston SE.

Crower Road appears (on Google Maps / Street View) to be a sealed though in places very country road. It’s probably marginally shorter to go along Crower Road than to go through Lucidale. However Crower Road is twisty going along and around farm and bushland.

So after some more rough roads, joining the Princes Highway I made it to Kingston SE, and promptly missed the turning at the roundabout in town, because I forgot to look at my written instructions I’d written out for myself. “Go through town centre and turn RIGHT at roundabout.”

Because I’d forgotten that the town had two main streets, one that ran from the coast and along and then another that led into the town from the highway.

Two different eras I would guess of main street, the original main street with the pub on it and connected more closely with the coast and then a somewhere more modern main street that’s closer to the highway.

My accommodation was the Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE. $40 for a night.

A continental breakfast was included in that price. The only hotel on my trip that offered such a thing, though I’ve stayed at a few other pubs that have offered this. It’s a nice addition. Not something that’ll sway me when booking accommodation, whether I get breakfast or not. But it’s a nice perk.

The Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE has lots of parking, which it shares with the local Foodland which is next door to it.

The room was alright. A double bed with a single bed positioned over it in a bunk bed-esque sort of arrangement.

No basin, but there was a TV and a DVD player. The latter was something of an odd addition as the TV was an old (small) CRT TV. Though with a set top box for digital TV.

The bathroom facilities were down the corridor and then up a short flight of stairs. Like most pub hotels I’ve stayed in the location of the bathroom facilities can be in an odd location, though this one seemed like it’d been added in the 1960s or 70s.

Two toilets and two showers.

Downstairs it was a fairly normal pub layout, L-shaped bar with dining and bar areas next to one another. When I went down to eat at 6pm (because I was hungry and tired and wanted to get to sleep early).

One interesting thing to note about the meals that were served there was the presence of a buffet of vegetables.

So you ordered your meal and then you just got your vegetables from the buffet. Roast potatoes and pumpkin, broccoli and cauliflower in cheese sauce, peas, all the general hot vegetables and then also beside it cold salad, beetroot and other salads. Plus fruit and also hot bread rolls. I’ve not seen this sort of thing in a long time. The pubs around where I live and used to be taken as a kid used to do this, but I’d thought this sort of thing had long been abandoned.

The only other thing to note about the pub eating experience was ordering a cider (pear cider specifically) I was just given the bottle. No glass. I do rather like to have my cider in a glass with some ice, but it’s not something I’m going to get particular about.

Retiring to my room, up the steep stairs (though all pubs with accommodation seem to have steep stairs) and past the door that just seems to loom over the stairs evidence I think of a realignment of the staircase or the rooms at some point I headed for the shower. I like to have a shower at night, rather than the morning. I want to wash off the day’s adventures and go to bed clean than sleep in the dirt and sweat of the day’s adventures.

The shower worked, the water was hot, though slightly disconcerting was that the drain drained the water rather slowly.

My room was well insulated from the excitations in the pub below and after some time on Twitter and YouTube I dropped off to sleep.

South Australia by road 2014

June 05, 2014 in Travel

It’s been my intention for a while to go to each of the capital cities by road. To see the points between the cities, between the states of our country.

Australia is huge, but when most people go between states, between the capital cities they go by air. By air you see tarmac–sky–tarmac. Air travel is just walking onto an aluminium-composite tube that’s hurtled into the sky and then shoved back onto the ground. It’s essentially a bus for the air. It can be dressed up with a bit of food, maybe a comfy chair if you pay for those extras, but essentially it’s means of getting you moved from one location to another. There’s little regard for the

travel

itself. The

travel

the

journey

is a necessity, it isn’t something enjoyed or found or even discovered. Or if it is, it’s something you do when you arrive, your travelling begins when you arrive following being shoved onto the plane.

For me the destination is a secondary consideration. The destination gives you a direction to travel in. But the actual travelling is the primary purpose. That is what I find interesting, what I enjoy. To see the landscape roll past.

So that’s what I’ve been doing driving the highways, freeways, roads and other bits of bitumen between the capital cities.

On the way to Woomera

On this trip I did have a destination in mind, somewhere I wanted to see.

Woomera.

A name that probably conjures different things for different people.

It was a name synonymous with a detention facility in the late 90s/early 2000s.

in the 1950s and 60s it was the centre of Australia’s space, rocket and defence research.

It was for this that I wanted to go to Woomera for. Space research and Australia’s part in is something I have something of a fascination with. The potential that was there for Australia at that time and where it could have gone into the future fuels the imagination.

On the way up to Woomera I had to stop a few times, for sleep and that sort of thing.

I did not however stay in motels, even though, as I am driving that would seem the most obvious fit for me.

I dislike motels.

I think they service a need, but they are so very **boring**.

Every motel is going to give you a broadly similar experience. They’re usually built out of brick. They’ve got a bed which is nice enough with an awful bed spread in some beige, brown or a dreadful multi-coloured pattern. The bathroom will be there, there’ll be a shower/bath combination or possibly just a shower.

There’ll likely be some sort of tea and coffee facilities to make really awful cups of those beverages. Even if you bring and use your own tea bags it’s still awful (I know. I’ve tried). There’ll be a TV and maybe there’ll be some sort of single chair to sit in that will be comfortable enough but not for any length of time.

Boring, predictable and some various degrees of bland.

That’s kinda what you’re paying for in a motel; a predictable expectations. It generally won’t be outside of these expectations. You expect to get all those things, it’s part of the motel experience. Somewhere to sleep, shower and make really bad cups of tea.

I don’t want this.

I’d rather have somewhere interesting than somewhere nice and predictable.

So when looking for accommodation I seek out hotels. Hotels in the traditional usage of the word rather than the modern usage of it. Hotels as in pubs. As in those places with a pub downstairs and accommodation (usually) upstairs above the pub.

Two sites especially have helped me in this.

Gday Pubs

and

Publocation

If the town’s small enough even just looking on Google Earth and looking for a large building on the corner of the town’s main street usually helps to find the town’s pub.

Staying at a pub means you’ve got your accommodation there, you can go downstairs for a drink and a meal.

It also means, after I’ve arrived at my stop for the day I can park, stop and relax, there’s no where else to go. Not always the case with a motel which on many occasions may not have somewhere to eat nearby, meaning you have to go into the town to get a meal and then return to your accommodation.

Pubs are also interesting, and there will be a compromise or three to be made when you’re staying at a pub / hotel.

The biggest one which some people may not be able to go past when looking to this sort of accommodation is basically a historical one.

Because pubs are generally old buildings, which have historically offered accommodation and the idea of an ensuite is something of a luxury that has not existed as long as the pub has been in existence or when the pub was built.

The short of it is; shared facilities.

This does however mean much cheaper rates more than half the price of a motel.

The shared facilities come in the form of a toilet / shower block, generally on the same floor as the accommodation.

Some pub rooms may have a basin in the room, this again is because of historical reasons.

I don’t have much issue with shared facilities.

I balance it against the fact that I am getting a cheap room, and staying somewhere interesting and convenient.

I know that others do have issue with the idea of shared facilities. But, you shower once when you’re staying at your accommodation, you’ll use the toilet a couple of times (maybe). For that convenience it basically would double the price from a pub room to a motel room to have those conveniences attached to your room.

It’s not something I’m very precious about.

I shower at night as opposed to others who shower in the morning, so I do not encounter the queues for the facilities. I am very much likely to use said facilities early in the night rather than later because I have been driving throughout the day and will usually get an early night. So again no queues to be encountered.

With pub rooms there are a few other things to consider, there may or may not be a TV. It’ll be unlikely there’s any hot beverage making facilities and you’ll probably not get anything like a bedside lamp or anything aside from bed and towels.

But the bed will be relatively comfortable, it’ll be clean, the towels likewise will be clean, perhaps not the fluffiest towels but there’ll be there.

Some may be reading this and drawing comparisons between a pub room and ‘backpacker accommodation’.

Probably because of the shared bathroom facilities which is something they share.

However backpacker accommodation will usually make you bring your own towel and there may be some bedding requirements. And of course you generally have to share a room with upwards of 4 people in order to get a cheap room.

Pub rooms you’re not sharing with anyone, although the room you get may have a bunk bed in it, so you could have a room with a mate or whatever.

Pub rooms aren’t perfect by any stretch, each location where I’ve stayed I have had many issues of note with the accommodation, though only on my last night did I actually consider leaving, and it was only because I had decided to combine my last 2 days into one, something I’ll get to in that post.

Finally, or rather to begin proper, the route.

In general I went for the most direct with a modification or two.

I wanted to travel along a bit of the coast line, originally, though some time ago now I’d planned to go along the Great Ocean Road and Mt Gambier and work my way along like that through Adelaide and up to Woomera.

Over time that plan changed and Mt Gambier has become something I’ll do on another trip. Yet the coast idea remained so aside from my first night’s stop in at Kingston SE it was a mostly direct route.

The route

I planned the route using Google Maps / Google Earth. Yes my car has GPS, as does my phone. But I like to

know

my route, having a GPS is being informed about the route.

I also write my route out, where to turn at which intersection and where I need to be heading towards. Which major towns I should be heading towards.

I use the road signs.

With the road signs and knowing not just where I’m going but which towns I have to pass through to get there I feel much more confident when I’m driving.

The GPS is there as a last resort.

I am also very thankful for Google Street View having that so I can check intersections before leaving. Ones that look like they might be problematic or to look exactly where the exit for a highway or whatever might be has on every road trip I’ve done been of great usefulness. Likewise checking to see what sort of parking is available for accommodation and other such things has been useful.

I didn’t take a huge amount of photos during this trip (I did it in mid-May 2014) as, well I’m driving, kinda hard to take photos when you’re doing that. Also I only take photos of stuff that I find notable, so there’ll be a mix of room photos, and Woomera photos. Also probably a few photos that I may or may not have tweeted.