I had a holiday yeah!
Jan. 22nd, 2004 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gemfyreRead about the cats I met here!
Read about the birds I saw here!
I'm not gonna give a day by synopsis. I'm not even gonna post any photos (yet). There are 486 photos and I noticed there's stuff I didn't take photos of, like Whyalla. I spent a few hours yesterday numbering and labelling them all.
What I am going to do is a list of stuff I saw, thought, heard, remembered etc. I wrote lots of notes in my book and I'm pretty much just gonna flesh them out. It's disjointed, often irrelevant and not in chronological order.
So, lets see what I have.
- Near Caiguna, spotted two circling Wedgies (Wedge-Tailed Eagles).
- Had a close encounter with roos on the road the second day, I've already written about this in a previous entry.
- Coolgardie-Norseman road, a smallish lizard ran across the road, obviously not a bobtail. Possibly one of the monitors I saw more of on the last day before home. I think they may be baby racehorse goannas.
- There are loads of roo skeletons on the Coolgardie-Norseman road. But not many fresh ones.
- The stars in Balladonia are absolutely stunning. They also have bits of Skylab in thier museum, because some parts of it crashed near there.
- Luckily on the Nullabor in summer, the days may be warm but the nights cool off nicely.
- First half of the second day it tried to rain but failed. From Madura onwards a gale blew outside. Creating a headwind/crosswind that sapped the petrol and made Matt's arms ache from keeping the car on the road.
- Subsequently we got a cheap cabin to stay in Ceduna rather than a) put up a tent when Matt is tired, b) battle the wind while putting up the tent and c) risk getting rained on during the night. This cabin was dodgy as, the windows were stuck shut with screws, the security door had no lock so you HAD to close the wooden door. These cabins are obviously from a time when you were still allowed to smoke inside. The place REEKED, and there was no way to air it out. You had to pay 20c for 2 kilowatt hours of electricty to power the air-con, stove, T.V., toaster and kettle, but luckily the fridge ran all the time.
- Ah yes, the idiots in the Honda. They passed us, speeding a lot because we were doing 10 over the limit for starters. Later we saw them pulled over by a cop, I wonder what for. Later still at the Ceduna roadblock these dills almost drive straight on through, a guy had to come out and signal to them to stop, not like it's not obvious that you have to do so. There are signs all the way from bloody Southern Cross in W.A. explaining the roadblock (it's a quarrantine point to keep fruit flies at bay) but there's a building and boomgates and all sorts of hints that you should actually stop. Morons.
- Some of the seagulls at Whyalla are pinkish. Apparently it's due to all the iron dust in the air from the smelters.
- There is spinefex in the Flinders Ranges! I was amazed to see it so far south but it and the crested pigeons nicely reminded me of up north. On the way home I also noticed that there was quite a bit of spinefex near Norseman.
- I'm pretty sure some of those roos we saw in the Flinders were euros. They're considerably beefier than regular grey and red roos.
- Masked plovers are funky looking, and there are a lot of them over there.
- Some people are good hosts, some aren't.
- Saw 4 sheep somewhere with starlings sitting all along their backs. Wish I could have got a photo.
- The bird emblem of S.A. is the piping shrike. I noticed that this piping shrike did not appear in my birdwatching guide, as either a current or previous name. Matt's dad told me it wasn't actually a shrike but couldn't remember what it was. I spent the rest of the holiday insinuating that the ever-present, slightly daft peewee was this mysterious piping shrike. When I get home I look it up. It's a fucking magpie. Geesh, way to go to confuse everyone S.A. government!
- There is a line in "Not The Doctor" by Alanis Morissette there's a line that goes "Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom". What the heck does that mean??
- Would anyone be willing to baby sit one or two rats when I went away IF I get some rats??
- Sometimes I can be totally on the ball and sometimes I can be totally clueless.
- Who won World Idol?
- Open your eyes, take your time, see things. Too many people just rush through things like they are a chore rather than a pleasure. On the way over I didn't even read or sleep in the car, I was too busy looking out the window at the changing landscapes and soaring birds and incoming weather. I see beauty in it all. It's not "boring", if you think it's boring you're just not looking.
- I'm a shockingly unfit and I must change this. Climbing Wangara Lookout at the Pound and Neagles Hill made my chest and throat burn and my heart thump a million miles an hour. I used to be able to do stuff like that no problem when I was a kid. What the hell happened?
- Reading "Curiosities of South Australia" and being shown around Minlaton and being told how it used to be, it struck me that EVERYWHERE has a history. The ghosts of previous people, buildings, plants, animals are everywhere. A brick laying in a field even has a story to tell about how it got there. Everything must keep changing, we can't hold on to everything physical but it can be remembered.
- There were crows in Minlaton. A VERY LARGE flock. All wheeling about and cawing. It was weird and kinda creepy.
- I heard a country style banjo based version of Tubular Bells. That was fucking weird. Must search kazaa for it. ;)
- Some guys at the Ardrossan jetty came back to their car (next to ours) carrying a bag and a 3 foot long mulloway. In the bag were 2 slightly smaller. They had caught these huge fish of the jetty! They HAD been out there since 3:30 am and it was 11am when we were there.
- I must stop typing "where" when I mean "were".
- I can only put up with Matt, his mother and his grandma in small doses. When they are all together it just gets worse. They argue over the most inane things purely for arguments sake it seems or just to hear their own voices. I tend to think about what to say, then when I do say it I say it in the most, clear, concise way possible. I guess I don't like to waste my breath.
- The best scallops in the world are to be found at Larry's takeaway in Clare. They are really cheap (80c each, when the price these days often pushes $1.20) and they are GREAT. They are crumbed instead of battered and they're not too small and they are soooooo yummy. Weird that a small inland town has the best scallops. The sad thing is I hear they are selling up. What will I do in Clare without my "best scallops in the world"(tm)??
- Was that a BAT I saw at dusk near the Clare golf course?? The flight pattern and wing shape seemed very bat like.
- There's a lot of mistletoe growing in the gum trees, you can pick it out because it was distinctive droopy yellowish leaves.
- What are those weird chickeny birds on Inchquin Lake?
- In... Cowell? There is a fish and chip shop called "The Fish Plaice". har har
- Saw a guy on a dirtbike in a field. He had a small yellow dog riding pinion.
- Were those bilby tracks at Moonlight Bay along Whaler's Way?? Or just lizards?
- Matt can tell you about the beach at Red Banks. I'll just tell you that we saw a pair of rare and endangered Hooded Plovers down there.
- Dukkah gets the thumbs down. That was $6 kinda wasted on something that looked tasty and classy. Hopefully it can be used as a steak sprinkle or something. It needs something in it to give it more kick.
- Murphy's Haystacks. They're trying to fleece you $2 each to enter the field. Lucky it's an honour system, really, it's not worth $2.
- Point Labatt is amazing. I'm sure there were around 100 sea lions down there. Amazing.
- Saw 2 wombats that had become roadkill. Probably Southern Hairy Nosed, which are a protected species.
- That leads me to "roadkill physics". The Eyre Highway is the link between Western Australia and the rest of Australia. Many, many large trucks traverse it every day and night carrying goods. Large trucks are not awfully maneuverable, they brake slowly, and braking then accelerating again costs valuable fuel. As a consequence trucks don't brake for anything smaller than a camel. This is why there is so much fresh roadkill in the mornings. Cars on the other hand don't come out so well from such altercations. If you are driving a car (especially at dawn and dusk) you better have your eyes peeled and be ready to brake and swerve and try and guess what daft kangaroos will do. Most kangaroos will go the direction opposite to that which they are headed if approached by a car. If you hit a roo, you'll most likely end up with a written off car, dead or injured passengers and either a dead roo or a severly injured and pissed off roo in the front seat with you. Those things have nasty claws on those back feet. It's not unknown for a hit roo to gets its revenge and kill the driver before it dies from it's injuries. Wombats... would be like hitting a small, steep, speed hump or rock. Not good for car or wombat. And emus. About 1 metre of legs that just get swept out from underneath. I imagine from there the heavy lump of flesh that is the body slides nicely up a car hood and smashes through the windscreen. It's a pity you can't make the animals more road safety aware.
- By the way, I didn't see any camels. Bummer.
- There was a couple from Canada we were chatting to in the Ceduna camp kitchen on our way back. They were the only other non-powered site campers in the park. Turns out that almost 5 weeks ago at Balladonia we had also briefly chatted to them at the camp kitchen there. They were heading west, we were heading east. What are the chances of meeting up twice like that? We weren't even going to stay in that particular park in Ceduna originally.
- The tracks at Head of Bight intruged me. 4 prints looked like they had been made by a camel, however it would have to have been a camel about the size of a border collie. And there were only four prints. Matt supposed that maybe our small camel had teleported there then left again. There were what seemed to be lizard tracks heading into holes. Either these were holes that the lizard lived in, or more likely ant holes where it had stopped for a snack. The other tracks seemed to be made by either bunnies or bandicoots. More likely bunnies I'd think.
- Just as we were approaching Nullabor we noticed a delaminated tyre on the road, and just up the road a double semi left a trail of skid marks as he swerved into the conveniently nearby roadhouse kicking up a cloud of dust and parked quite neatly on the road side of the petrol pumps. I think we passed him a few times later down the highway.
- We came across a black dog on the road into Head of Bight and a scrawny gold dingo looking dog further down the highway. "There's some kind of animal up there..." *brake* "Wow, it's a dog... out here?"
- Apparently Aussie Survivor was held on Whaler's Way or something?? I thought it was a Queensland rainforest, maybe I missed something. I'll have to look it up.
- The graffitti at Pink Lake in Esperance was hillarious. I've now seen this lake twice and neither time has it been pink. High sunlight and temperatures cause the pinky orange algae to grow in it. Some of the graffitti - "Pink Lack", "I came all the way from Copenhagen for this shade of pink??", "Even on New Years day through bloodshot eyes the lake is not pink!", "Put on your rose coloured glasses", "Lake!! Show us your pink bits!" etc.
- And now my shoulder aches from typing too long.
Read about the birds I saw here!
I'm not gonna give a day by synopsis. I'm not even gonna post any photos (yet). There are 486 photos and I noticed there's stuff I didn't take photos of, like Whyalla. I spent a few hours yesterday numbering and labelling them all.
What I am going to do is a list of stuff I saw, thought, heard, remembered etc. I wrote lots of notes in my book and I'm pretty much just gonna flesh them out. It's disjointed, often irrelevant and not in chronological order.
So, lets see what I have.
- Near Caiguna, spotted two circling Wedgies (Wedge-Tailed Eagles).
- Had a close encounter with roos on the road the second day, I've already written about this in a previous entry.
- Coolgardie-Norseman road, a smallish lizard ran across the road, obviously not a bobtail. Possibly one of the monitors I saw more of on the last day before home. I think they may be baby racehorse goannas.
- There are loads of roo skeletons on the Coolgardie-Norseman road. But not many fresh ones.
- The stars in Balladonia are absolutely stunning. They also have bits of Skylab in thier museum, because some parts of it crashed near there.
- Luckily on the Nullabor in summer, the days may be warm but the nights cool off nicely.
- First half of the second day it tried to rain but failed. From Madura onwards a gale blew outside. Creating a headwind/crosswind that sapped the petrol and made Matt's arms ache from keeping the car on the road.
- Subsequently we got a cheap cabin to stay in Ceduna rather than a) put up a tent when Matt is tired, b) battle the wind while putting up the tent and c) risk getting rained on during the night. This cabin was dodgy as, the windows were stuck shut with screws, the security door had no lock so you HAD to close the wooden door. These cabins are obviously from a time when you were still allowed to smoke inside. The place REEKED, and there was no way to air it out. You had to pay 20c for 2 kilowatt hours of electricty to power the air-con, stove, T.V., toaster and kettle, but luckily the fridge ran all the time.
- Ah yes, the idiots in the Honda. They passed us, speeding a lot because we were doing 10 over the limit for starters. Later we saw them pulled over by a cop, I wonder what for. Later still at the Ceduna roadblock these dills almost drive straight on through, a guy had to come out and signal to them to stop, not like it's not obvious that you have to do so. There are signs all the way from bloody Southern Cross in W.A. explaining the roadblock (it's a quarrantine point to keep fruit flies at bay) but there's a building and boomgates and all sorts of hints that you should actually stop. Morons.
- Some of the seagulls at Whyalla are pinkish. Apparently it's due to all the iron dust in the air from the smelters.
- There is spinefex in the Flinders Ranges! I was amazed to see it so far south but it and the crested pigeons nicely reminded me of up north. On the way home I also noticed that there was quite a bit of spinefex near Norseman.
- I'm pretty sure some of those roos we saw in the Flinders were euros. They're considerably beefier than regular grey and red roos.
- Masked plovers are funky looking, and there are a lot of them over there.
- Some people are good hosts, some aren't.
- Saw 4 sheep somewhere with starlings sitting all along their backs. Wish I could have got a photo.
- The bird emblem of S.A. is the piping shrike. I noticed that this piping shrike did not appear in my birdwatching guide, as either a current or previous name. Matt's dad told me it wasn't actually a shrike but couldn't remember what it was. I spent the rest of the holiday insinuating that the ever-present, slightly daft peewee was this mysterious piping shrike. When I get home I look it up. It's a fucking magpie. Geesh, way to go to confuse everyone S.A. government!
- There is a line in "Not The Doctor" by Alanis Morissette there's a line that goes "Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom". What the heck does that mean??
- Would anyone be willing to baby sit one or two rats when I went away IF I get some rats??
- Sometimes I can be totally on the ball and sometimes I can be totally clueless.
- Who won World Idol?
- Open your eyes, take your time, see things. Too many people just rush through things like they are a chore rather than a pleasure. On the way over I didn't even read or sleep in the car, I was too busy looking out the window at the changing landscapes and soaring birds and incoming weather. I see beauty in it all. It's not "boring", if you think it's boring you're just not looking.
- I'm a shockingly unfit and I must change this. Climbing Wangara Lookout at the Pound and Neagles Hill made my chest and throat burn and my heart thump a million miles an hour. I used to be able to do stuff like that no problem when I was a kid. What the hell happened?
- Reading "Curiosities of South Australia" and being shown around Minlaton and being told how it used to be, it struck me that EVERYWHERE has a history. The ghosts of previous people, buildings, plants, animals are everywhere. A brick laying in a field even has a story to tell about how it got there. Everything must keep changing, we can't hold on to everything physical but it can be remembered.
- There were crows in Minlaton. A VERY LARGE flock. All wheeling about and cawing. It was weird and kinda creepy.
- I heard a country style banjo based version of Tubular Bells. That was fucking weird. Must search kazaa for it. ;)
- Some guys at the Ardrossan jetty came back to their car (next to ours) carrying a bag and a 3 foot long mulloway. In the bag were 2 slightly smaller. They had caught these huge fish of the jetty! They HAD been out there since 3:30 am and it was 11am when we were there.
- I must stop typing "where" when I mean "were".
- I can only put up with Matt, his mother and his grandma in small doses. When they are all together it just gets worse. They argue over the most inane things purely for arguments sake it seems or just to hear their own voices. I tend to think about what to say, then when I do say it I say it in the most, clear, concise way possible. I guess I don't like to waste my breath.
- The best scallops in the world are to be found at Larry's takeaway in Clare. They are really cheap (80c each, when the price these days often pushes $1.20) and they are GREAT. They are crumbed instead of battered and they're not too small and they are soooooo yummy. Weird that a small inland town has the best scallops. The sad thing is I hear they are selling up. What will I do in Clare without my "best scallops in the world"(tm)??
- Was that a BAT I saw at dusk near the Clare golf course?? The flight pattern and wing shape seemed very bat like.
- There's a lot of mistletoe growing in the gum trees, you can pick it out because it was distinctive droopy yellowish leaves.
- What are those weird chickeny birds on Inchquin Lake?
- In... Cowell? There is a fish and chip shop called "The Fish Plaice". har har
- Saw a guy on a dirtbike in a field. He had a small yellow dog riding pinion.
- Were those bilby tracks at Moonlight Bay along Whaler's Way?? Or just lizards?
- Matt can tell you about the beach at Red Banks. I'll just tell you that we saw a pair of rare and endangered Hooded Plovers down there.
- Dukkah gets the thumbs down. That was $6 kinda wasted on something that looked tasty and classy. Hopefully it can be used as a steak sprinkle or something. It needs something in it to give it more kick.
- Murphy's Haystacks. They're trying to fleece you $2 each to enter the field. Lucky it's an honour system, really, it's not worth $2.
- Point Labatt is amazing. I'm sure there were around 100 sea lions down there. Amazing.
- Saw 2 wombats that had become roadkill. Probably Southern Hairy Nosed, which are a protected species.
- That leads me to "roadkill physics". The Eyre Highway is the link between Western Australia and the rest of Australia. Many, many large trucks traverse it every day and night carrying goods. Large trucks are not awfully maneuverable, they brake slowly, and braking then accelerating again costs valuable fuel. As a consequence trucks don't brake for anything smaller than a camel. This is why there is so much fresh roadkill in the mornings. Cars on the other hand don't come out so well from such altercations. If you are driving a car (especially at dawn and dusk) you better have your eyes peeled and be ready to brake and swerve and try and guess what daft kangaroos will do. Most kangaroos will go the direction opposite to that which they are headed if approached by a car. If you hit a roo, you'll most likely end up with a written off car, dead or injured passengers and either a dead roo or a severly injured and pissed off roo in the front seat with you. Those things have nasty claws on those back feet. It's not unknown for a hit roo to gets its revenge and kill the driver before it dies from it's injuries. Wombats... would be like hitting a small, steep, speed hump or rock. Not good for car or wombat. And emus. About 1 metre of legs that just get swept out from underneath. I imagine from there the heavy lump of flesh that is the body slides nicely up a car hood and smashes through the windscreen. It's a pity you can't make the animals more road safety aware.
- By the way, I didn't see any camels. Bummer.
- There was a couple from Canada we were chatting to in the Ceduna camp kitchen on our way back. They were the only other non-powered site campers in the park. Turns out that almost 5 weeks ago at Balladonia we had also briefly chatted to them at the camp kitchen there. They were heading west, we were heading east. What are the chances of meeting up twice like that? We weren't even going to stay in that particular park in Ceduna originally.
- The tracks at Head of Bight intruged me. 4 prints looked like they had been made by a camel, however it would have to have been a camel about the size of a border collie. And there were only four prints. Matt supposed that maybe our small camel had teleported there then left again. There were what seemed to be lizard tracks heading into holes. Either these were holes that the lizard lived in, or more likely ant holes where it had stopped for a snack. The other tracks seemed to be made by either bunnies or bandicoots. More likely bunnies I'd think.
- Just as we were approaching Nullabor we noticed a delaminated tyre on the road, and just up the road a double semi left a trail of skid marks as he swerved into the conveniently nearby roadhouse kicking up a cloud of dust and parked quite neatly on the road side of the petrol pumps. I think we passed him a few times later down the highway.
- We came across a black dog on the road into Head of Bight and a scrawny gold dingo looking dog further down the highway. "There's some kind of animal up there..." *brake* "Wow, it's a dog... out here?"
- Apparently Aussie Survivor was held on Whaler's Way or something?? I thought it was a Queensland rainforest, maybe I missed something. I'll have to look it up.
- The graffitti at Pink Lake in Esperance was hillarious. I've now seen this lake twice and neither time has it been pink. High sunlight and temperatures cause the pinky orange algae to grow in it. Some of the graffitti - "Pink Lack", "I came all the way from Copenhagen for this shade of pink??", "Even on New Years day through bloodshot eyes the lake is not pink!", "Put on your rose coloured glasses", "Lake!! Show us your pink bits!" etc.
- And now my shoulder aches from typing too long.
