A caravan trip around Australia had been on ‘our
list of things to do’ for many years but pressure of work had
denied us the opportunity to do such a trip until 1997.
I planned to take 6 months off from photographing
Weddings and leave early in April but I kept takings Wedding
bookings in April and September until my ‘window of
opportunity’ was reduced to only 4 months and it was almost
the end of April before we finally managed to leave.
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Our 164 just after setting out near Hay in
Southern NSW still nice & clean and sporting a
'Supermarket Display Stand" as a bug collector on
the front
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Warning signs on the Nullarbor Plain
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Cliffs on the Great Australian Bight, these cliffs
extend for over 200 miles. Note the caravan
parked.
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They are not
kidding about road trains - give way every time!!
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Headed west from Brisbane in our 1974 Volvo 164 towing a
Millard 12 foot caravan we overnighted in St George the first
night and then down into NSW to visit Lightning Ridge, which is
a large Opal field. I
had decided to include as many places I could that I had not
visited before and we managed to travel on some ‘god awful’
roads before we finally hit the main roads again at Griffith.
The Hay Plains west of Hay are wide and desolate which we
thought was probably a taste of things to come when we finally
began to cross West Australia later in our journey. We cut down
into Victoria and out to South Australia through Underbool where
I used to live and work back in the 50s during my Bank career. I still know quite a lot of people who still lived there but
I’m afraid many had relocated to the local cemetery. After catching up on old times we set off for Adelaide.
Adelaide,
Flinders Ranges, Port Augusta and down the Eyre Peninsula to
Port Lincoln which we both thought was a great little town and
the last sizable town until we get to WA.
From here we follow the coast through little towns with
charming names such as Coffin Bay, Streaky Bay before we reached
Ceduna the last town before the WA border almost 500 kms to the
west. Out here you
can travel for 2 or 3 days without seeing a town other than
roadhouses and some of these are almost 300km apart so you need
to plan your fuel purchases very carefully.
We crossed into WA and tackled the Nullarbor.
We thought this was going to be a boring drive but it was
just the opposite and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
One signpost declared that we were entering the longest
straight section of road in Australia – 146.6km without a
bend!
Wave rock formation about 700km east of Perth
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Perth City by night
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Perth Mall
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The Pinnacles at Cervantes north of Perth
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It was just after this section that the Volvo began to
‘miss’ now and then, (don’t you dare do that way out
here!) and after camping in the scrub by the side of the road I
only managed 1 km next morning before it ‘quit’ altogether.
The Volvo was put on the back of a recovery truck and the
caravan on behind for the 80km drive to Norseman.
Why it stopped was a blocked fuel filter, that was
quickly fixed but the ‘missing’ problem was worse without
the van. Every time
I accelerated hard it would cough & miss until I slowed down
and then it was OK again. The
Norseman mechanic spent 10 hours altogether, another mechanic in
Albany spent another 6 hours and the problem was finally fixed
when we reached Perth by a Volvo specialist who identified the
culprit!
THE DIPSTICK !!!
It seemed that when I accelerated quickly the dipstick
would swing backwards and short out on the wire on the side of
the distributor and short out the ignition circuit.
When the car slowed the dipstick would swing back
returning everything to normal.
It took 3 mechanics 20 hours to finally fix the problem
by bending the dipstick!
We spent quite a lot of time exploring the SW corner of
WA and found some delightful spots. Perth and surrounds are well
worth visiting and it was about here that I began to regret not
taking longer on our trip as we still had a long way to go and
we had already used up 2 months of our allotted time.
Kalbarri National Park. Natural Window
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Thorny Devil Lizard. Strange little critter that
eats ants
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Myself, Prince
Leonard of Hutt River & Margaret.
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One of our roadside campsites on the Ashburton River
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We began the long trip north and stopped off in Geraldton where
I caught up with an old school buddy from 1953 before detouring
to Hutt River Principality to meet Prince Leonard and Princess
Shirley. Hutt River Principality came into existence in 1970
over an argument with the Government about wheat quotas.
The Government would not budge from the allotted quota of
only 1,647 bushels of wheat from their 18,500 acres property and
so in the end secession seemed the only solution and this was
achieved on 21st April 1970 and Hutt River has been a
separate Country to this day.
They issue their own Passports, stamps, currency, don’t
pay Australian taxes and have appointed Consul Generals in over
36 countries around the world. Visitors are welcome and we
thoroughly enjoyed hearing the stories resulting from the
secession.
Further up the coast we found wonderful places such as
Kalbarri National Park with outstanding gorges along the
Murchison River. Monkey
Mia, where the dolphins come to meet the people on the beach
every day, regrettably, it is now so tourist orientated that it
did not appeal to us at all.
Arriving in Carnarvon I had to buy a couple of new tyres
for the Volvo and the Caravan. Had to spend a couple of days
waiting for them to be shipped up from Perth.
The news item of today, 1st July 1997, was the
handing back of Hong Kong to the Chinese.
Millstream
National Park an Oasis in a very dry region. |
Hammersley Gorge in Karajini
National Park |
Wanna Munna Gorge near Newman in WA |
Chichester National Park near Dampier WA |
Visited Coral Bay, renown for it’s coral reef and fish that
swim around your legs when you wade into the sea. Exmouth Gulf,
Karratha, Dampier, where there are huge Iron Ore loading
facilities and on out to Millstream and Karijini National Parks.
We loved this area and considered it to be the highlight of the
whole trip. The
ancient gorges were fantastic!
Have to keep moving, (damn weddings) and it isn’t long
before we negotiated what we felt was the most boring drive from
Port Hedland to Broome, almost 650kms of not very much.
We both anticipated Broome because of all the publicity
and probably we were expecting too much and were disappointed
when we finally arrived. It
is a nice town but not all that great.
We expected to see the Pearl Industry here but it has
moved north and all that is left are Tourist Shops selling
expensive pearls.
Our next wonderful spot was the Kimberley district and
especially the Bungle Bungles. This region is so remote that the
Bungles were virtually only ‘discovered’ in the 80s and the
only road in is so bad that our experienced 4WD tour operator
took 3 hours to cover the 53kms.
Only a very small section of the Bungles are accessible
and we felt very privileged to be there.
Most parts of the Kimberley Region is only accessible by
air and what roads do exist are definitely not ‘Volvo
Country’
Although I was guilty a couple of times in not telling the Volvo
it wasn’t a 4WD and ventured into remote areas without our
van.
Fortescue Falls, Dales Gorge
Karajini NP
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Jetty at Broome WA
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Sunset at Broome WA
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Camel rides Cable Beach Broome
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By the time we reached Kununurra it was mid winter and quite
warm to hot even by Brisbane winter standards. This area is home
to the Ord River Scheme that created Lake Argyle when the Ord
River was dammed is 1972. The lake is up to 70kms wide in places
and has a capacity of 5,797,000,000 cubic metres.
There is quite a lot of irrigation but the potential is
hardly even tapped. We
spent a day on the lake that was a marvellous experience and
recommended. We now
crossed our fifth State Border into the Northern Territory and
we were soon enjoying Darwin and surrounds.
Litchfield National Park was fantastic, absolutely loved
the place, we liked Darwin and especially the Territory Wildlife
Park that is set in a huge area with 6kms of walkways.
A tractor towing little coaches, tours the complex
continuously to save on walking if you so desire. We saw
Australian animals I never knew existed and the Bird of Prey
exhibit that had the birds flying free was exciting.
Spent 8 days in and around Darwin and it is on our agenda to
return again some day. We
did not go to Kakadu National Park as we felt it was too late in
the dry season and decided to time our next Darwin visit to much
earlier in the year to take advantage of the waterfalls etc.
Home was now only 3,750kms to the South East with only 2
weeks of time left. On the road to Katherine had our second
puncture and we were now down to one good tyre (lost one of the
new ones to a sidewall cut), 3 bald on the road and 1 bald
spare. I tried to buy new tyres in Katherine and every major town
all the way back to Brisbane, luckily the bald ones held out.
When we crossed the border into Queensland Marg was heard
to say that we were “nearly home” But wait, we still had over 2,000 kms to cross Queensland to
reach Brisbane again. This
is A BIG Country!
Strange looking Boab Tree in the Kimberley region WA |
Bungle Bungle formations in the Kimberley |
'Friendly" freshwater crocodile in the
Kimberley |
Ord River Dam holding back Lake Argyle |
Finally arrived home on 26th August, 4 months
after setting out with 22,500kms and a lifetime of wonderful
memories and experiences behind us.
No serious problems with the 23-year-old Volvo, apart
from what I have described and we noted that it seemed to be the
oldest car towing a caravan from what we saw and also one of
only 2 Volvos we saw towing on the entire trip.
What did we think of the experience?
Well in 2001 we spent another 5 months doing the whole
thing again this time using our Volvo 960 Estate and traversing
Australia in the opposite direction knocking up another
24,000kms and in September 2003 we are again heading off to
travel to Adelaide and then cross Australia from South to North
through Alice Springs.
What we called 'Spider
Island" in the middle of Lake Argyle |
Walkabout Creek Hotel - "Crocodile Dundee"
fame |
Colourful bougainvillea tree in North Queensland |
The old 164 looked a bit sad when we arrived home |
Kevin
& Margaret Greenaway.
Beachmere, Queensland.
Link to Kevin's 164 Page
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