The Wonderous adventures of Mik and me.

Hello again, so soon? that's surprising i usually don't update in such quick succession, that's because I've been lazy and I'm still catching up. Well it'd down to just two of us, Nels and Heffie are back in Wagga Wagga going to weddings and what not, leaving me here with Mikki G and the Eyre peninsula. I arrived here on thursday 11th around lunch time hung out with Mikki G and we drank some Stones and went to bed. The following day i used to drop resumes around, as soon as i set off i got a call from supercheap auto informing me that i had an interview on Wednesday 17th WOHOO i thought. I had applied for the position online whilst in Port Lincoln. This could be good. Anyways i continued around town and dropped a few resumes off. finished mid afternoon and returned to the caravan park we are living in (and as yet haven't paid a cent for). Mik formulated a plan for the weekend, we would go on an adventure around the Peninsula and aim for Port Lincoln on Sunday to catch the Sunday session, then head back too Whyalla on Monday excellent!

Click here for travel overview

If you click the link above I've put all the spots in where we stopped, Starting obviously in Whyalla on Saturday we made a beeline for Iron Knob, apparently if you can get a look at the size of the hold dug there its amazing, unfortunately they only run tours during the week. That didn't stop s from taking bumblebee up some dodgy track up the side of the quarry trying to get a glimpse over the top unfortunately we couldn't get to the top despite driving all over it, the top area was fenced off. Defeated we left the man made hill and found somewhere less hilly, wasn't hard because there were no other hills around and made some sandwiches for lunch. Stupid Iron Knob, the only time anyone would come and visit is on the weekend you knobs, why not run a tour on a Saturday! BAH.
We promptly left that shit hole behind us and headed for the town called Kimba. Kimba is quite proud of the fact that its the halfway point across Australia GO Kimba, also it had a giant Galah so Mikki G got to tick that off the list of big things, yay progress.

Flamin' Galah!

We bought a coffee from the local cafe and clambered back into ol bumblebitch, kicked her in the guts and we were back on the road again, the next destination was Buckleboo. Halfway there the road became dirt, which is awesome because bumbles loves dirt roads so she was happy, i was happy and I'm fairly sure Mik was also happy. Just a Big yellow truck of happy thundering across some terrain in the middle of nowhere.
I think it was around this area we saw pildappa rock which is SA's largest monolith or so my lovely navigator / tour director told me. so we checked it out here are some images for your eyes to look at.

1500 million years ago water smashed into this on a regular basis
thus forming its wave like structure hmmmm. PS that guy in the image was weird.

On top of pildappa, there was a 500mm deep hole full of water.

 We got to an area named Buckleboo which i think turned out to be a homestead of some description. We kept on down the dirt track joking about not really knowing where we were going. I was loving it, the road was getting rougher and i thought it would be a good opportunity to test the 4wd functionality of Bumble bee.
So i pulled over and locked the front hubs in and put the 4wd selector into 4L which is 4wd low "for maximum traction" In 5th gear ol bumbles was doing about 55kms/hr but it felt like we could tow a continent behind us. I opted for 4H next seeing as though 55kms/hr max speed wasn't doing it for me. 4H is the same as normal 2wd mode except all wheels have drive so that was good, we got back up to a cruising speed of about 80-90kms/hr and it felt great, the steering was much more direct and there was no more slipping in the sandy parts of the track WOOOOW i love Bumblebee! It wasn't long after this we saw a sleepy lizard which we avoided as Mik had recently informed me (reading from a brochure) that they mate for life, which is lovely but sad because you do see them on the road quite a bit. and next in our safari was a group of emu's running for their lives at the sight and sound of Bumblebee smashing down the road, what was extra cool was the baby emu running behind the two adult ones it was very cute and terrified awwww. We also spotted a couple of snakes along the track i think they were brown snakes can't be too sure they came and went pretty quick.
The road was great fun, it would have been a pain in the but for anything but a 4wd but for us it was great fun, we felt like we were legit explorers trekking through the outback when suddenly there was a speed limit sign. 40km/hr WHAT??? i considered it for about half a second and said F**k that and continued at our thundering pace which was actually quite comfortable as it was just fast enough to skim over the corrugations in the road. I said just my luck there will be a highway patrol car behind a bush out here. There wasn't.
The scrub opened up into a clearing which contained a self pay permit allocation station. We put some cash in an envelope and stuck a sticker on the window and we were good to go again. The are was a farm station to so long ago so there was still some hints of that around. After about 20kms of track we came across another car, enthusiastic waves all round and we were off again, we stumbled across old paney homestead so we stopped and investigated. It was slightly creepy really the fireplaces all looked like they had burnt up the walls. There were rotten mattresses on old beds lots of random old stuff like lanterns and kettles. Interesting though.

Ol' Paney Homestead front

Bumbles covering the rear

 Onwards and upwards along some more dirt road we saw an old water tank and a couple of stone walls all quite historical and interesting. T intersection, and the end of the National park we passed a couple of 4wd's entering the park gave them waves and continued full steam left. On our way out we saw a sign for Murphy's Haystacks so we went and explored them as well unfortunately my camera was flat and on the charger so here is a picture i have stolen off the net.

Legend has it an idiot on a coach thought they were haystacks hence the name

After the haystacks we drove to Streaky Bay, we were hoping we could watch the sunset over the ocean, no such luck as the bay curved around and so the sun went down behind the land, not good enough. We stopped here and had tea at the local pub. Streaky bay was gorgeous, but again my camera was flat so here is another flogged image just for your reference.

Photo doesn't do justice 1 because i didn't take it 2 because Streaky Bay is beautiful

We tried the caravan park at streaky bay, but it was closed, the sign on the door gave us the option of staying in the car park and paying in the morning, but that sounded like a bullshit deal to me so we got out the Camps 5 book and found Sceale Bay and thought we'd try and locate that. Ended up just heading inland to some tiny little track that looked like no one had ever gone down it, HMMMM no good back into streaky and heading towards Port Lincoln now, I was completely bushwhacked by this stage it felt like we were driving towards Alice Springs but we should have bee going south. The road signs said we were going the right way so we plundered on.
We saw a sign that said Baird bay and we had noticed that in the Camps 5 book earlier so we took that road. After some confusion (because the signs in SA leave a lot to be desired) we made it to a campsite, set up the rooftop tent, took a bottle of stones up in there with us an drank it until we could sleep. (the tent is very floppy when its windy, sometimes sounds like 27 ducks are stuck to the outside of it flapping as hard as they can.) Next morning we woke up with a surprise noting that we had driven past a large body of water and not noticed it at all... Weird ... It's like the Bermuda triangle i swear just less dangerous... so far.
Next up was a high speed burn to Elliston. The scenery down the west coast of the peninsula is amazing, everything from white sand dunes contrasting against the sky to sheer cliff faces plunging into electric blue waters, The water is so clear and beautiful here its hard to fathom, it's so bright in some parts it looks like the colour of blue neon, very awe inspiring. Which brings us to Elliston a cruisy little country/beach community with a thriving art culture, we cruised along a cliff face drive and to our surprise it was dotted with different sculptures all along it. Here are some images to tickle your brains.

"Hey did you see that yellow 4wd"
"nuh"
"oh, maybe I'm imagining things again"

Crappy lil camera phone can't capture the brilliance of the blues



"Nah look there it is!"
"Oh that one?"
"Yeah"
"Yeah what about it?"
"OI YELLO.."



"Shut up blockheads! Your comments are irrelevant because you and i are inanimate"

Anyways back to the story. After Elliston it was about an hour and a half back down to port Lincoln, a beautiful big inland salt lake stole our attention for a little while and soon we were arriving in Lincoln. We pulled up out the front of Amber's house and i was just telling Mik about how Amber said she can always hear us coming, so i gave the engine a little rev, and sure enough Amber popped out the front all excited that we had come to surprise her. We talked crap for a couple of hours and then headed down to the good ol Boston for the Sunday session.

Nick and Steve (respectively) playing some awesomeness.

Mik and i had a bit to drink and ended up getting invited to some randoms house, which we didn't end up doing, but i some other people to go, even Ricardo was going if he could get a lift. We ended up chillin at Toohey's house again while amber used his oven to cook some killer pizza. After catching up we went back to Amber and Steve's and caught some zed's. Next morning we woke up late, as you do in Port Lincoln and cruised back up the eastern side of the peninsula. We checked out a couple of the little townships along the way but nothing was as pretty as the western side.

Mikki enjoying a scenic lookout

This is what Miks eyes saw (roughly)

Eventually we made it back to Whyalla and had a great sense of accomplishment we'd done over 1000kms in a couple of days and enjoyed every minute. Thanks for reading :)

The Eyre Peninsula

Oh Hello and welcome to another brain leak detailing my travels with the Wolfpack. This could be a long one so make yourself a cuppa or stiff drink I'll wait here.........
Cool well the best place to begin is where i last finished so lets do that shall we. In the last episode we had just arrived in Port Lincoln and helped Amber celebrate her birthday. The next day was a Sunday so we enjoyed a nice sleep in and prepared ourselves for a day of strenuous rest. We were all still quite buggered from the large drive the day before and our brains were not firing on all cylinders but that's cool, because all of pt Lincoln seems to be like that the place is a damn time warp, impossible to wake up in the mornings and then when you do the time flys by without much happening at all. (I think the Eyre Peninsula is like the Bermuda triangle some places the time isn't constant, the sky is massive and other places your sense of direction is completely bushwhacked.) Amber was telling us about the Sunday sessions down at the Boston Hotel, good tunes supplied by Steve, Nick and other local with musical bones. This sounded like a great idea. Amber also forewarned us about a character named Ricardo, apparently he is quite the interesting character and usually indulges himself in a hefty dance and tambourine play along. Nick (one of Amber and Steve's friends) added that he had already hidden the Tambourine so that Ricardo couldn't have it. Quite the funny story and i was interested to go to the Sunday session for a number of reasons now.
Enough time had passed that we were invited to join our new Gracious hosts Amber and Steve for a Sunday session at the pub, need i say more? an invitation to a pub we're there. We arrived and watched a few different people play, whatever they felt like on the stage in the back corner of the pub, It was beautiful, a great vibe, great tunes and the view from the back area of the pub is spectacular, It looks right over the water in the bay. After a few drinks we went to the smoking area and continued to listen to the tunes and drink a bit more. Approaching us from 1965 was a man who walked with a swagger not unsimilar to Johnny Depp as Hunter S Thompson (or any other of his characters really) and looked alot like your stereotypical fisherman. No prizes for anyone who can guess who this cat was....... Yup Ricardo the man who's reputation lived up perfectly to his physical embodiment. He swaggered his way over to our table and plonked himself down and introduced himself,
"G'day I'm Ricardo" he said with his hand extended, I'm not sure if i thought or replied with
"of course you are". He continued to tell us a story about how the whales had come into the bay to see that the signs on the silo's had been changed to sport the Viterra logo "oh they've changed the signs" is apparently what the whales thought. His ramblings wandered more than his swagger in the beer garden. The notable story was that he was looking for his Tambourine that he had misplaced somewhere. he said something like.
"I had a Tambourine man, It was just out here, but now it's gone, how do you make a tambourine disappear man, that's crazy." Yeah that's whats crazy Ricardo...
We snuck back inside to catch some more tunes, Nick and Steve are amazing musicians and are excellent to watch. Ricardo was enjoying the tunes too, you could tell by the weird click, clap touch the ground dance he was doing, I don't think the 60's have ended for this man. After a fun afternoon we went back to Amber's for tea, can't remember what it was but it was delicious Amber is an awesome chef these days.
Monday was spent hunting for work, dropping resumes off where ever we could. Mik applied at all the pubs around town and needed work A.S.A.P. Unfortunately nothing happens fast in Port Lincoln and there were no real bites for jobs that day or as it turned out that week. After that day of hunting about we were invited for tea at another of Amber and Steve's friends house.
Amber had told us of Toohey's (not sure if that's the right spelling but that's what i gather his nickname is :) )cooking and he did not disappoint. That night we also met Toohey's housemate Heidi and some other lovely people who's names escape me :s sorry guys. Toohey had prepared an unbelievable feast for us. All made from a large fresh tuna he had procured. The first course was sushi mi, Raw tuna with some dipping sauces, one of which was wasabi. To my surprise i quite enjoyed sushi mi and had tried all the sauce except for the Wasabi that had everyone scared. One of the other girls that was there tried it first and seemed to enjoy it so i thought "oh well, she's not dead i guess I'll have a go" so i picked up a piece of tuna and dunked it in the wasabi sauce put it in my mouth and braced for the incoming pain........... oh that wasn't so bad really bit of a kick that only lasts a second and then the spicy feeling is gone. I quite enjoyed it and went back for more.
The next course was cooked as a roll seasoned on the outside and sealed on a hotplate, the fish was beautifully presented sliced up on a plate with 3 more dipping sauce. The verdict around the table was that the taste actually resembled roast lamb, and it did strangely enough it was delicious. After devouring that plate and some Sav. Blaunc Toohey had commenced the course that was to be the grand finale. Tuna Steaks on the BBQ. They took very little time to cook and were amazing, fresh tuna does not taste fishy at all the meat is read and more resembles beef or lamb but breaks apart as you push your fork through and dissolves in your mouth. Unbelievable and so damn delicious. Now we all sat around for a while chatting joking and nursing our swollen stomachs. After a great night we headed back and hit the hey.
The rest of the week was filled out by looking for work and catching up with Amber. Mik was at this point getting quite stressed, she really needed work and wasn't getting any love from Port Lincoln unfortunately. After a week of trying she headed up to Whyalla to drop some resumes off, we all wished her luck and hung back in Port Lincoln as Nelson and Heff had a flight booked from there leaving on the following Wednesday.
Meanwhile Amber and Steve had started a communal painting in the kitchen i added a bit to the bottom right corner and this is where it was up too last time i saw it.



a journey through time if you left for the 80's and the future is now...

I painted the weird pelican looking thing, not sure what it is but it's name is admiral Percival. It was now Sunday again and Heff, Nelson and i decided we should go and surprise Mik in Whyalla  for the day as she had been alone for a couple of days now and had just stared work at a pub. So we left in the morning found her at about lunch time and totally surprised her it was awesome. We had a look around whyalla at the beach and such had some tea with mik and headed back to Port Lincoln. This is what we come up with from that trip.

Old Refinery in the middle of town looks interesting in black and white

Gnarly kite surfers on the beach

After getting pack to Port Lincoln, we hung out for a couple of days until i dropped Heff, and Nelso off at the Airport and said goodbye. I spent that night in Port Lincoln and then headed up in the morning to go and stay with Mik and look for Work in Whyalla. and i'm still looking :s

Broken Hill and Port Lincoln

One very average sniffle filled sleep later it was day again, time to continue to Broken Hill. I took the reigns of Bumble bee for a while and we drove to Wilcania. If you ever get the chance to stop and have lunch there like we did, DON'T its a decrepit old town and hasn't got much to offer eccept boarded up windows and a disgusting pond like creek. I didn't like it and i was scared Broken Hill would be much the same.
Wrong!! Broken Hill was a great place. We arrived there at night and set up base in Kathini's Living room, Kathini is a life long buddy on Mik's and she was a very gracious host and tour guide. After another snuffly sleep i woke up early and went for a drive. I ended up at Macca's and had a coffee, i then decided i should go to Big W to buy some undies (say no more) and turns out i was too early for Big W to be open. I waited out the front like a looser until the store opened and i got what i was after. By this time Heff and Nels had found me and we all went back to the house.

After we all were ready we piled into Thini's car and began the tour. First stop was the top of the line of lode, i think its a pile of dirt dug out of the mines. Its in the middle of town and has an oversize bench seat i didn't get any photos of this but i probably should have, meh oh well. The next stop on the tour was another area of dirt just out of the town. It is in this position that i took the following panorama image.



oooooooh dryness (click to enlarge)

Next stop Silverton, this place is where alot of films set in a desert are filmed, Mad Max, Priscilla and lots more we stopped in at the silverton hotel to check it out. Mik Heff and Nelson were all up for the free beer challenge at the bar i opted out because Partially because i still didn't feel well and i knew what was coming, And partially because I'm a party pooper.
Anyways the point of the challenge was this, the bartender put a funnel down the front of their pants and a potato on their foreheads. They had to move their heads down so that the potato would fall into the funnel. The trick of it all was that when they had the potatoes balancing on their heads the bartender poured water into the funnels. HAHAHAH i laughed i think they knew what was coming but did it anyway in good spirits, they all received a certificate and a free beer, mind you the free beer was poured into a shot glass, just the final nail in the coffin of humiliation they were being buried in.

Some replicas of of the interceptor and another Mad Max Esq buggy

The love child of the interceptor and a vw beetle

After the silverton hotel we went and checked out an art gallery still in silverton, had some pretty cool art i bought a couple of postcards. When we had concluded oogling the pretty pictures we clambered back into Thini's car and headed for the next part of the tour LUNCH. Chips and gravy were the order of the day and boy didn't the troops love it. Nelson and Heather opted to stay home for the next part of the tour, because Nelson was feeling crook. It was quite unfortunate for them because they missed some truly inspirational art.
Thini's took Mik and i to the tourist info centre to hire a set of keys for the sculpture symposium, sounds awesome and it was. The statues were created as a workshop by artists from all over the world, I think the workshop ran for about a week and the end result was these monolith type sculptures standing proudly in a high point of the desert. The seemingly random location and baron landscape really make the sculptures stand out, almost give them some sort of significance separate to what the sculptures had intended, or maybe my bullshit gland is in full swing, irrelevant really fact of the matter is i enjoyed the sculptures alot and i wish Heff and Nelson had seen them.

Family portrait

I think this one was called horse head, dunno why?

This one was by an Aztec sculptor and was my favorite

You can fit your arm through that whole, in case you were wondering.

 Hmmm were did we go from there, only the biggest canvas painting in the southern hemisphere, i took a sneaky video of the room it was amazing. We walked through the gallery and into a cave like area, it had some indigenous Australian style art on the walls, once we were through the cave the was a deck, kind of like a patio with a roof the deck lead to a rotunda and the view was an almost 360 hand painted canvas of the broke hill area. In the foreground in front of the canvas was some taxidermificated animals and various pieces of nature found in the area. If you have a look at the video you might figure out what I'm talking about.

It was awesome, again it was a shame Heff and Nelson missed out, tut tut tut.

After the massive canvas viewing we were ready for some snacks so we headed to the other side of town, on the other side of the line of lode and found "Bells" it's a 50's style milk bar that still make authentic 50's style drinks and treats i had a Cream soda spider i think it gave me diabetes but it was delicious. After the drinks we were ready to call it a day and headed back to Thini's for some Bourbon and a viewing of the Repo Man movie.

What an awesome surprise Broken Hill was i am really happy we spent a couple of days there and it's somewhere i could easily go back to. Sturt desert pea anyone?



vibrant no?

 The very next morning the wolfpack arose to the smell of bacon and eggs, Kathini is an awesome hostess. After breakfast and goodbyes we hit the road again. This time we thought we could do an all day burn all the way to Port Lincoln. It wasn't very hard except for the boringly straight roads of S.A. the highlight of the trip was crossing over the Finders Range it was really cool. The view looking out after the range onto the ocean was spectacular. Down here in S.A. the outback runs right up to the ocean, very different to what I'm used to grain fields running right up to the sand of the beach, a vast contrast to the Lush density of North Queensland. We kept on trucking through the afternoon and part of the night until we arrived in Port Lincoln. Just in time to help my bestie Amber celebrate her Birthday, we partied for a little while and then collapsed after a big day of driving. Cheers.

Gold Coast to half way between Nyngan and Cobar (bum f^ck nowhere)

Hello anybody. Where were we last time... hmm just leaving the Gold coast if i remember correctly. After sleeping off the amazing time we had at Movie world it was time to embark on the next cross country run. Our Eventual destination was Port Lincoln but we had to take a few days to do so obviously. We also had a planned stopover in Broken Hill. So thats the basic rundown, now for all the details this brain retains.

It was my birthday on this day, the girls left us early whilst we were still packing up our site (which i thought was a bit rude but anyway) they were going to get some "supplies" for lunch. Nels and i packed up the rest of the camp site and then headed off, Perfect timing as the girls had just finished their rrands and we were ready to go. Its always a good feeling to get nack on the road again and it's amazing how much ground you can cover when you put your mind and foot to it. We were aiming for tamworth or Armidale two places we thought would definently have a steak available, becasuse thats what i wanted for my birthday dinner. mmmm Anyways after driving for a bit we pulled over at a service centre and i got out of the car. Mik came running over to me with a straw hat with a feather boa in the top of it, apparently it had been decided that this was to be the birthday hat and everytime i was out of the vehicle i had to wear it. Woohoo just what i wanted, hahah it was all in good fun, though i did feel like a goose everytime someone looked at me strange, i could see what they were thinking "Nice hat dickhead" or something along those lines. This happened a few times, we would pull over for a quick break and i would get out of the car forgetting to put the hat on, untill i saw Mik's dissapointed face then i would put the crown back on, It was embarrasing but fun.
Eventually we got to Armidale, found a caravan park to stay in (even thought it seemed like a problem for the owner to take our money, what a wanker) and then we went to the RSL club for a steak dinner. Upon arrival we were informed that the stove had been turned off (even though the sign said they would be cooking for another 45mins.) so we had to order a roast from the carvery. Good thing it only cost $10 because it was pretty average. After we finished dinner, Mik went "to the toilet" or something and i was talking on my phone. Then the lights in the dining room were turned off, i thought "you rude bastards" then i noticed Mik had found me a piece of Black Forest Cake and had organised to have the lights turned off for effect. That was awesome, I felt very spoilt. The lights came back on after the guys had finished signing happy birthday to me. The Black Forest Cake was delicious and Mik and Heff revealed to me that they had been looking for a cake all day, thats why they had snuck off early that morning and gone awol in the small towns we passed through, i suspected nothing and realised how lucky i was to have such awesome friends. Love you guys.
After a few drinks and conversing with the locals (by locals i mean a bloke by the name of Bevo) we went back to the caravan park and slept the night away.
The following day We were all up nice and early ready for another days travel. Today out target spot was a rest area camp site half way between Nyngan and Cobar. I travelled with Mik that day in Smadaity as Nelson was punishing Heather with some Metal in the Troopy. As the day progressed i was getting ill, some sort of man cold (the worst kind) Mik put up with my whinging between games of who can guess the song first. We made it all the way to the rest area and set up. Its amazing how much scenery can change in a day of driving, The lush greenery had been left behind and had made way for thebarron landscape of central Australia. It's still pretty but in a different way. By the time the Camp was established there were mozzies everywhere i had some tea and promptly went to bed.

A lookout with particularly smelly drop toilets. Nice view though

Scenery change