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 :)