The Grass Patch Yabby Classic!

We may need to stop off in Perth to get Ben some therapy because he REALLY didn’t want to leave Esperance.  It was awesome and we had loads of fun.  We arrived on the Fri 26^th because we wanted to attend a local event the next day.  We also read about a rodeo the following Sat evening (March 5th) so we knew we would be in Esperance for a week or so.

We initially booked in to the Pine Grove Caravan Park because it was quiet, not too near the main road and had a pool (Ben absolutely loves a pool).  Jenny and Ben wasted no time in getting into bathers and going for a swim, only to return 10 minutes later slightly blue, with chattering teeth.  Jenny said the water was so cold that it was like being stabbed with a thousand needles.  Even Ben refused to go in.  We also realised that the park was too quiet for a 5 year old.  The playground was smallish and there were no other kids.  It’ll probably be the place to stay in 30 years when we are real grey nomads, but isn’t so suitable now.  So, we looked around and then moved to a park right opposite the beach and bike path with a big playground and lots of other kids.  Lesson learned. :)

The Grass Patch Yabby Classic

There were terrible fires here in November and the damage is still very apparent.  Most of the highways are lined with burned trees and the local businesses were hard hit.  An organisation called BlazeAid works with rural communities and farmers after natural disasters and they were the main beneficiaries of this year’s Grass Patch Yabby Classic.  Grass Patch is a small town north of Esperance and each year they celebrate the yabby by way of a carnival.  There are yabby races, yabby shows (prizes for biggest, longest, largest claws etc), yabby shelling competitions, yabby lucky dips, yabby BBQs and many other yabby themed activities.  I’m sure it is a bittersweet day to be a yabby.  Half the crowd are celebrating your existence and the other half is eating your family and friends.

We attended the Grass Patch Yabby Classic with a mixture of curiosity and the excitement that comes with not having any idea what you are about to experience.  We really hoped it would be quirky and interesting and we were not disappointed!

This is their mascot, Yabster.

The event was held in a big field, the area defined by a fence on one side and a huge ring of caravans on the other.  The caravans housed various stalls, from ice-cream and pies to Enjo products, the local wildflower club, sausage (and yabby) sizzles and games booths.  The first thing Ben saw was a yabby lucky dip.  There was a huge round tub of murky water and when he paid $5 he was given a small fishing net like they use in pet shops when you buy a goldfish.  He scooped the fish net through the murky water (along the bottom as advised by a local girl) and pulled up a yabby with a pink plastic tie around its middle.  The prizes available are determined by what colour tie your yabby has and pink meant he could choose one of the better prizes.  He chose a wind up hot wheels type car (no surprise there) and then they plonked the yabby back in the tub. 

Ben with his lucky yabby dip prize.

It was about 37 degrees and there was very little shade so the presence of an inflatable water slide was great news for Ben (kids only unfortunately!).  There was also a dunk bucket where you sit on a platform above a huge tub of cold water while kids throw balls at a target.  If they hit, your seat collapses and in you go!  Ben did this once but the seat hit him on the back of the head as it collapsed so he wasn’t keen on another go.  There was a jumping castle next to the dunking and water slide but the sun was so intense that it became too hot to stand on.

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The highlight of the day was the yabby racing.  We had no idea what to expect but were eager to witness the amazing spectacle that had required the construction of ‘a bigger and better grandstand’ this year. They had a TAB and form guide for each race.  Ben placed a couple of dollars on a yabby called ‘High as a Kite’ (no 5 in Race 2) but unfortunately it didn’t even place.  Here is a video of the race.

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We left mid afternoon because it was just too hot to stay out there without any shade.  We had also discovered that shops shut at 5pm in small town WA and don’t open on Sundays so if we wanted some groceries for the rest of the weekend we would have to get back to Esperance in time!

The Nullarbor. Not at all like Mad Max.

The Nullarbor.  Hot, dry, dusty, empty.  Car wrecks lying rusty and broken in ditches along the roadside.  Gigantic road trains looming up from behind you and threatening to run you and your poor bulky caravan off the road, or flying past you at high speed, showering you with rocks and red dust, leaving you choking and coughing as you try to hold the wheel straight.  Kangaroos, camels, emus and livestock wandering across your path randomly causing you to brake and swerve like you are playing Sonic the Hedgehog.  That’s the Nullarbor right?  Null–arbor, meaning no trees.  A wasteland between states that you just have to survive, right?

Not so much.

I was expecting this:

And was totally blown away by how different the Nullarbor is to what I had imagined.  It looked like this: 

So  much green!

There are trees for a start.  Certain sections of the highway have lots of them.  And they are green.  There are shrubs (also very green) and areas of grassland.  Yes, there are several car wrecks along the way but that’s not surprising given the mind numbingly long distances and straight stretches.  It would be very easy to fall asleep and slide off the bitumen.  Luckily, we had the regular mental stimulation of coming up with interesting and original responses to “are we there yet Mummy?” and “look Mummy, I beat Eggman with Sonic!” 

The trucks weren’t a problem either.   We found the truckies to be quite pleasant (we can talk to them on the UHF radio) and not at all inclined to run us off the road.  The highway is in good condition and is well sealed so oncoming truck traffic is no problem at all either.  We saw a few roos and some camels but none ran on the road and although there were a few carcasses here and there, we saw far more roadkill on the highways through SA. 

So, all in all the Nullarbor was a very pleasant surprise.  Another surprise was that there are 3 Royal Flying Doctor Service emergency runways painted on the highway at various locations.   If needed, the road is closed temporarily and the Flying Doctor swoops down to provide care where needed.  There is no way urgent medical assistance could get to remote outback locations otherwise.  

After our free camp in the carpark at the Head of the Bight, we drove down the road to the visitor centre where they have whale watching platforms.  Unfortunately it is not whale migration season so we didn’t see any sea life but the views of the Bight, ocean and Bunda Cliffs are spectacular nonetheless.  Thankfully, Jenny had brought our head nets to keep the flies away because there were LOADS of the little blighters.  Millions of them in fact.  We counted.  Jenny theorised that even if every person in Australia killed 20 flies at the same time, it would make no difference to the overall fly population.

Fly nets. Daggy but functional.

After Head of the Bight, there are many cliff viewing areas along the highway and we stopped at several to look at the stretch of the Bunda Cliffs.  They are stunning.  

Amazing cliffs and a funny boy.

Ben saw a car with Tassie plates at one stop and asked “How did they fit that car in the plane to get it here?”

From there, we drove through to Eucla which is in WA and we had to go through quarantine as we crossed the border.  It’s the usual restriction on fruit and veg so we had a very healthy eating morning.  I ate 2 huge carrots (raw) just before we got there (wait for it, there is a reason I’m telling you this).

Quarantine involved an extremely thorough inspection of the car and van but was no problem and we made our way into WA. 

We stopped for the night at Eucla, which has a simple caravan park, a great bistro, a pool with a real live frog in it, a giant plastic whale and the steepest slide I have seen in many years.  It was double the height and twice as steep as any slide these days.  It reminded me of the playgrounds of my childhood and made me realise how over-safe we now make everything for our kids.  Then Ben went down it head first, nearly falling off the side halfway down and made me realise why we now make everything over-safe for our kids.

Blake's undies in Eucla

I didn't get a head first shot. I was busy having a heart attack.  At least he wore his helmet.

We also met a couple who were stuck in Eucla waiting for a replacement windscreen for their bus (yes, they have a full size bus). Due to the remote location, it was going to cost them $10,000 to get the windscreen replaced and their insurance company was giving them a hard time. Lucky we're not in a bus!

Back to those carrots.

I (Lou) started to get stomach pains just after dinner but knew it wasn’t from my meal.  Jenny and I had ordered different meals, eaten half each then swapped plates, and she was feeling fine.  I went to bed and it got worse.  I had sharp, stitch like pains up under my ribs and cuddling a hot wheat bag wasn’t helping.  At one point I thought seriously about those RFDS emergency airstrips on the highway, almost hoping that Peter O’Brien, Lenore Smith and Robert Grubb would come to my rescue. 

My daggy TV obsession.  Robert Grubb lived around the corner from us and I used to stake out his house hoping to see him.

Instead of calling for my 90's heroes, I asked Dr Google what was wrong and found that large amounts of raw carrot cause many, many people to have horrendous stomach pains.  The treatment is pretty much to wait it out.  So I took some Panadol, had a glass of milk and eventually went to sleep.  In the morning I was magically better.  No more raw carrot for me…

The next day we drove from Eucla to a free camp just past Caiguna.  Along the way we started on the 90 Mile Straight, which is 146.6km of dead straight road, the longest straight road in Australia. 

The campsite was about half way along and there were about 10 other vans/campers there.  We parked towards the back to get away from a pesky person running their generator.  For their sake we hoped they had a medical reason for it to be going until 9.45pm (and starting at 7am the next morning!) because it wasn’t hot enough to need air conditioning and it was really loud.  

We saw a beautiful sunset that evening and Ben started a photo journal, taking some great shots on his camera (he has one of those waterproof, shock proof cameras that he is just starting to really use properly)

Tree photo by Ben.

We decided to do a big drive the following day so that we could get through to Esperance.  It’s a bit annoying packing up and moving every single day and we just wanted to stay in one spot for a while.  Along the way, we drove past an overturned wreck with broken windows and debris, water containers, a mattress and table strewn in the dirt beside it.  It looked recent but we were travelling at 90kmph so it flew by quickly and we couldn’t tell if anyone was inside or not.  Jenny happened to get a photo of it as she was collecting photos of landmarks for a bingo game.  We felt uncomfortable about not knowing if anyone was hurt so decided to go back to check on it.  It took us a few kms to find somewhere to turn around and then we drove back and pulled up opposite.  Before we could get out, a truck coming up behind us asked over the UHF if we were ok and we told him that we were checking on the wreck.  He said that it looked old, had no plates and he was sure it had been there a while.  We took a look anyway but he was correct, it was deserted so we resumed our journey. 

Freaky to drive by this.  Had to stop.

The roadhouse at Balladonia has expensive coffee and a museum that is largely dedicated to Skylab.  When it crashed to earth in the late 70’s, large chunks landed throughout the area and NASA offered rewards for pieces of wreckage.  Several locals made big bucks after finding chunks of space station and for a while the area was flooded with people fossicking for scraps.  There is a large segment in the museum and we wondered if it was real until we noticed the BBQ grill screwed onto it next to a drawer handle that was far to shiny to have been through re-entry and then a high speed collision with a planet.

It was lovely to reach Esperance that evening and we looked forward to a week of stability.

Nullarbor, here we come.

We drove from West Beach, Adelaide to Port Augusta on a stinking hot 40 degree day.  We didn’t stop for much sightseeing but definitely had to drop into the general store at Kimba, the halfway point between the East and West coasts of Australia.  The store has an impressive array of knick knacks, magnets, ‘precious’ stone fragments, Jesus related tea towels, dream catchers, mood rings and random skull candle.  It also charges $4 for a cup of Nescafe Blend 43 and has a magnificent 7 metre high fibreglass pink galah out the front.

Ben with the Galah and Blake's undies

The Big 4 at Port Augusta is fairly simple and utterly devoid of grass.  The ground is crunchy stone and dry dust, which says a lot about the climate here.  We pulled up, plugged into the power and got the aircon blasting in the van as soon as we could.  Outside was 41 degrees, inside the van was 39.  We were very pleased to see that there was a pool so we got changed and took our sweaty selves over there. 

The three of us each rate very differently on the water wimp scale.  Ben is a zero, as he will jump into anything bigger than a glass of water and general stay there until we drag him out or until his lean body begins shaking uncontrollably and turning blue from cold.  Jenny is about a 6 on the water wimp scale but is able to reduce that by at least 3 points by way of a ‘dedicated parent’ rebate.  If water is cool she would rather not go in but does so because Ben wants to go in (or he has already jumped in and she has no choice).  Lou scores a pathetic 9 on the scale.  Unless the water is bath temperature, getting her in is hard, hard work.

So, there we were in the searing, oppressive heat heading towards the shaded blue, almost empty pool.  Ben was first to jump right in and gave a little shriek.  Jenny was second in and instantly regretted it.  The pool was freezing!  We couldn’t work out how it was possible in such heat but it was so cold that Jenny lasted 5 minutes and Ben only lasted 10 because he kept getting out to do running bombs and those momentary forays back into the stifling heat thawed him out slightly.  Cold-water phobic Lou saw both their reactions and never ventured in more than dangling legs in whilst sitting on the side.

There were a few Grey Nomads there who gave us some good tips.  Apparently Coober Pedy is terrible at the moment and when they checked into the caravan park the manager handed them a card with the number for the Police on it.  They recommended avoiding it and we are glad we are bypassing it anyway.

We had a BBQ dinner with some giant ants and went to bed just as a wind was starting to stir.  At 1am we awoke to a thumping and rattling and realised that the wind had picked up significantly.  We had rolled out the awning but because the ground was so hard, hadn’t put the guy ropes out to give it some extra stability so while Ben slept soundly through the whole thing, we hurried outside to roll the awning back in again.  We have heard too many tales of awnings blowing off to risk ours.

From Port Augusta we drove to Ceduna on another 40 degree day.  There was a lot of driving, a fair number of signs warning us of wildlife we didn’t see and a giant granite farmer in the South Australian town of Widunna.  ‘The Australian Farmer’ (also known as the Big Farmer) stands at 8 metres (26 ft) in height, and weighs around 70 tonnes.

Ceduna was lovely and had a great beach right next to the caravan park.  We walked up over the sand dunes and down onto the beach, which was deserted except for a couple of 4WDs, a young dreadlocked couple with a Chihuahua and 2 horseback riders.  The water was knee deep for at least 200 metres and was beautifully warm like a bath.  This meant of course that Lou was more than happy to go in, so we all walked and waded and walked out until we hit a wall of seaweed and since it was still only hip deep we sat down and Ben played on his boogie board.

Endless shallow warm water.

 Ceduna was also very windy that night and we had another middle of the night outing to stow the awning and rescue some washing that we had hung on it to dry.

We went into the town of Ceduna the next morning to get some supplies as Ceduna is the last sizeable town before you start across the Nullarbor.  While we were there we met some Grey Nomads who gave us some UHF tips (Truckies use CH 40 and Caravaners use CH18) and recommended that we stay a bit further along the highway than we were originally planning.  We have the Camps 8 book and the WikiCamps app so there are generally several options to choose from.   We found a free camp at the entrance to the Head of the Bight whale watching centre and since we were planning on stopping by there the next day anyway, we headed for that one instead.

On the way through we stopped at Nundroo Roadhouse and chatted to the girl working there who is from Arizona.  You meet some interesting people in the middle of nowhere.

The world’s longest golf course stretches across the Nullarbor.  It is an 18-hole par 72 golf course spanning 1,365 kilometres with one hole in each participating town or roadhouse along the Eyre Highway, from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to Ceduna in South Australia.  There is a hole at Nundroo and Ben took a putt with rock and stick.

We stopped at the Head of the Bight free camp which is essentially in the carpark next to the gates across the road down to the visitor centre.  The camp is a few kms off the highway and on the way down there we saw a sandy coloured dingo in the shrubs next to the road.  Ben called it a ‘Bingo’ for at least an hour before he corrected himself and then it became ‘Bingo’ the dingo.  By the time we arrived, the centre was closed, the gates were all locked up and the place was deserted.  We were the only ones there so we parked behind an old empty building and made dinner.  

People we meet give us lots of advice and tell us lots of stories.  Most advice is exceptionally valuable and we are really grateful for it but we have noticed a thread of what we suspect fits the definition of caravaning ‘urban myths’. One piece of advice that we have been given several times is that when free camping, you should park with a tree or your car in front of your caravan door because if people want to rob you, they will drive their own car up against your door, essentially locking you in and will then empty or steal your car at their leisure.  Nobody we have spoken to has actually had this happen to them, nor do any of them know anyone to whom this has happened but it is seriously and sagely given counsel.  Needless to say, we follow this advice because it sounds like a very sensible precaution, but we are interested to know if this does really happen often or if it happened once and the grey nomad telegraph has spread the story like wildfire.  Another precaution we were advised to take is to put locks on our water intake openings to prevent people sneaking up overnight and weeing in our water tanks!  Who does that??  Again, nobody has ever actually had that done (despite one man strongly claiming it happened to ‘someone’)  but apparently we need to be careful.  Luckily, locks came already installed on the van so we can sleep easy knowing our water is pee free.

With these stories in mind, we parked the door side of the van close to the corner of the building with no room for anything bigger than a couple of people to get through.

We didn’t put the awning out that night as we were leaving again first thing in the morning (and there was a building in the way!) and this turned out to be a good move.  The Nullarbor threw a whopper of a storm at us with heavy rain and wild winds pounding us all night.  It was really noisy and we were very glad to be in a 3 tonne metal box with a 3 tonne car attached to it rather than a tent.  Next morning we would continue along the long road to WA.