lost4good

Whales not Wales (the Wales blog from 2023 is @ https://neuage.me/wales/)

A simple request. For my 78th birthday we would go whale visiting at the Head of the Bight over on the Nullarbor Plains. “Hi I’m Terrell – from New York – where you all from?”

Head Of Bight, Eyre Highway, Nullarbor South Australia

Unfortunately, the above is just the beginning of our issues and dramas pursuing us on our once-were-simple-plans to see a lineup of planets (see the line-up of planets story at https://neuage.org/six-planet-alignment.html) and frolicking whales for my 78^th birthday.  We left, caravan all packed, Monday 4^th of August at 10 AM. I am now continuing writing this on 11^th of August, seven days later, in a hotel room in Port Augusta. We have managed to get 304 kilometres in that time with no exact date when we too will frolic with the whales, if in fact they are still around the place. Someone yesterday said they move on mid-August. BTW, we missed seeing the wonderful line up of planets yesterday morning (my birthday was yesterday) because it was too cloudy.

Narda is either the writing in italics or the pictures with handwritten thoughts.

The drive from Adelaide for anyone not familiar with this part of the world is lots of miles of open land, hours of it. We stopped at the Adelaide International Bird Sanctuary National Park – Winaityinaityi Pangkara and took an hour nap. After all we had left home at ten am and it was now almost noon. Two hours driving on a week’s long trip probably was a bit of a lazy start.

Next week we will be out on the Eyre Highway across Nullabor Plains with Australia’s longest uninterrupted stretch of highway, 146.6 km (91.1 miles) between Balladonia and Caiguna.

However, it is not the world’s longest uninterrupted stretch of highway. (not that we care, but since we will be in Saudi Arabia in December this year we discovered that the title of the world’s longest straight stretch of highway is Highway 10 in Saudi Arabia, which runs between Haradh and Al Batha. This stretch is approximately 256 km (159 miles) long without any curves, surpassing the Eyre Highway’s straight section. Nonetheless we drove long distances without seeing much more that fields of not much to see.

04 August Monday

As Narda has noted, we stopped at Jubilee Park, Crystal Brook free camp spot at 330 Goyder Highway. Got all set up then realized we had no power. So, we went to the Crystal Brook caravan Park and got a powered site. Having made a wonderful meal of a tuna loaf I had thrown together before we left, we drifted off into what we thought would be a few days before grooving on whales at the Head of the Bight.

05 August Tuesday

Next morning we had the battery checked at O’Dea (https://powerandwater.com.au) at Laura. We needed a new deep-cell battery as ours was long in the tooth and had no charge left. I asked the salesman to put in a new one – $450. He blew fuses three times. Then he suggested we should go to an auto electrician shop to see what was wrong. We went first to the local Pajero dealer, but they would not look at our caravan, suggesting that we go up the road to the next town, Wirrabara, to C & R Motors where we met Ron. He was busy with several vehicles he was repairing but I managed to plead with him to come look at our lot in life. He quite quickly realized that the battery cables had been put in wrong, shorting out all the electricity in our sorry little home. He said he would think about what could be done and we should come back next morning.

We went to the local caravan park, overnight at Wirrabara caravan park. A wonderful place with a bit of a forest and great walking trails. A highlight was the painted silos.

The Wirrabara Silo Art was completed October 2018.
The Silos were painted by Melbourne based Artist SMUG aka Sam Bates. The image represents a forestry theme which emphasizes the hard-working people of the Wirrabara township and Wirrabara Forest. This project was aimed at boosting tourism to the area and showcasing special little rural towns and what they have to offer. We were told by our hosts at the caravan park that the male image was of a former farmer from Tumby Bay, Dion Lebrun.  Our host told us a story of when he was viewing the silos one day there was a man standing there looking at them and our host asked if that was him, and the man said yes.

BTW, these silo arts are expensive. They are spread through out Australia. Narda mentioned at one town we passed through that if they had art on their silos it would probably bring more folks to their town and she was told that it costs at least $100,000 to do and their town could not raise that much. Every small town seems to have multiple silos and now we know why they are not all painted. Quite the thing – Google it https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=silo%20art%20of%20australian&first=1

For example this town – forget which one – apparently had enough cash on hand for just a few scribbles

The park in back of the silos next to the caravan park is full of interesting art…

We spent the night at the Wirrabara Caravan Park with walks through the local forest to the silo art. The couple hosting the caravan park were a delightful couple and as we were to leave our caravan the next morning to be repaired we said we will be happily back when our little house is up and ready.

Wednesday 6^th August

You would have read in Narda’s notes the sad story of our electric life above.

We popped over to Ron’s Wednesday morning and he spent time looking through the electric stuff. The main component, an electric box was no longer available from Jayco – our caravan is too old, 2006. Ron said he had a similar van and had redone all his wiring on his van, and our only hope was to redo the who thing with a new electric board with all the fuses and some voltage thingy all installed and that at the earliest it would be ready in a week.

We felt we had no choice but to drive back to Adelaide – only 4+ hours but we did not want to go home, yet. Obviously, we would not be seeing whales for my birthday.

Thursday morning our neighbour needed some help as her phone had stopped working, her husband was in hospital, and she could not drive her car. Narda quickly said I will take you to the hospital. They are in their mid-80’s, he has cancer and it makes our little issue seem so unimportant. She doesn’t think he will be coming home. It was good we were home, so perhaps something good did come out of our home-stay.

Friday morning, we did our usual aqua Zumba and gym classes. When we got home, we got a phone call from Ron that we could collect our caravan and off we drove the four plus hours back to Wirrabara. $1558 for the repairs and our insurance company said forget it mate it was your fault for putting in the battery wrong. We couldn’t go back to the person who put it in because I had asked him to put it in. Not sure what we should have done. I know some people would have pushed for the store to have paid the bill.

Friday night we stayed again at the Wirrabara Caravan Park, driving off toward the whales on Saturday, August 09, the day before my birthday. Having a difficult week we even had no 240 power plug in for our caravan after spending so much to redo our electric. It turned out our cord was no good as we have folded it incorrectly for years which makes a kink in a long cord (ours is 25 metres). It was just one more thing added to our issues. Fortunately, the hosts of the park had one to loan us which was good as it was two degrees Celsius in the morning. Our caravan has 12-volt power (with our new beaut deep-cell battery and $1558 re-wiring) giving us lights, fridge, but of course, heat from our air-conditioning and portable heaters and even electric blankets, giving us a very warm night inside.

I even have a fold up piano that we may or may not take on our overseas trip in October. I used to have piano lessons like 70-years ago. There was even a time when I played piano for Sunday School and my brother played the organ for the church services. Basically, I learned how to play out of the Methodist Hymnal. My parents won’t allow that rock and roll stuff of the 1950s-early 1970s which is really all I wanted to play. But now at home I have tried to re-start my piano craze minus the Methodist Hymnal using Narda’s first grade piano books that she taught her students from. I won’t let her hear me and use headphones for our electric piano at home and only play the old upright when she is downtheroad which is rare. SO, here I am back at kick starting my career of concert (to one – me) piano extraordinary – headphones included.

Saturday 09 August – one more day before turning 78. Yippee. What could possibly go wrong? And as we know, all the planets and stars were lined up to make me happy – I thought.

We drove the beautiful drive through the Flinders Ranges (see photos and video below) and when we got to Port August around noon we thought we would pop into Coles and get some groceries for the week of free camping ahead. Firstly, we were going to park on Flinders Terrace. Then we saw there was the port Augusta Visitor’s Centre just across the street with large parking spots for folks like us with car and caravan attached. We made the turn into the parking lot and parked. When we looked at the back of the caravan we saw a lot of damage including a bar with lots of electric wires hanging down onto the ground and people coming up to us inquiring what happened. We had no idea. We called RAA road service, but they said they would have to wait until we contacted our insurance company before towing us anywhere. We were told we could not park there overnight and decided to tie up the back with some strong rope we had luckily brought with us – and went to a caravan park four-minutes away. Shore caravan park – a scenic place we had stayed at once years ago when we were going north, Cober Pedy. We told the insurance company we had no idea what happened. We tried to trace our steps mentally and thought that we could not have done it before leaving in the morning, that it had to have happened recently. Did we side swipe someone did someone sideswipe us? It was all such a mystery. We did see there was green paint on the back side of our van so that may be a clue. Obviously, it was someone else who had done the damage to our home.

The body of water at Port Augusta, South Australia, is the Spencer Gulf. Port Augusta is located at the head of this large, triangular gulf, which is part of the Southern Ocean and lies between the Eyre Peninsula and the Yorke Peninsula.

As my birthday week was going so far why would it not continue in the same manner? With our caravan “safely” tied up we cuddled up to a powered site with an ensuite. Plugged in our 25 foot cord that we got finally to work at the last caravan site (we laid it out flat overnight to get the wrinkles which impeded the electric flow) but of course, it did not work. Luckily, folks plugged in next to us had a spare cord and we borrowed it to stay toasty all night.

Sunday August 10^th happy birthday dear Terrell…oh! That’s me

We drove back to the visitor’s centre and looked around. We walked to the area where we made the turn. Damn! There was a pole with some stupid sign on it next to the gutter that was green and had big scrape marks on it and the pole was bent. Obviously, what had happened, we took the turn too wide and the back of the van hit the pole, pulled loose the back of the caravan and the gutter knocked one of our stays that holds up the van when we park sideways. Oops.

We went to the local Mitre Ten as we were still having electrical problems but from our cord and needed to purchase a new one. The man who served us, Lorenzo, quite old, probably in his 80s, a lovely person, listened to my woeful story of how I wanted to go see the whales for my birthday. He said why would you want to see whales when you can see cuttlefish? He told us about the glass-bottom boat tours in Whyalla where one could see up close these wonderful creatures. We knew very little about them except for watching a David Attenborough show on them just a month ago. Turns out he filmed it at this very location. Guess what? Off we went and did the tour – lots of photos and video. I am not quite sure if I would have preferred the whales – I just feel emotionally drained and ill from all that is happening. Of course, if I look at world events, our lives are great compared to so many others.

The water was a bit murky and I don’t have a ten-thousand 8K camera but I got a lot of video though reduced it to a bit over two-minutes so you could hear some of the explanation regarding the fish. Apparently, this is the largest collection of them in the world.

Monday August 11 – OK I am now officially 78, had to wait for a while as I was born in Michigan, and we are 12 or so hours different here in Australia.

We drove to the only caravan repair place in Port Augusta. Someone told us they are very busy and said one person had to wait two-months to get their awning fixed. We felt little hope of being on our way anytime soon. The folks at the caravan repair place were friendly and thought we could get slotted in on Wednesday. This made us quite happy..

Our insurance said we have up to a thousand bucks we can spend on accommodation. We went back to the caravan park, tied up the back some more and took it to be repaired. A service worker there said he could get us so we can drive safely but that when we got back to Adelaide we need a full rear-bumper and a new awning as ours got bent and it would no doubt be around ten-thousand dollars. Holy guacamole, we just spent $1500 plus the battery = $2000 and last month we had a lot of work done on the underside which cost $3500. Where is the end to all this? Because it was an accident and not due to bad workmanship or age of the caravan we should be covered except for three-hundred excess.

We got an OK cottage at the caravan park with a lounge and two-bedrooms and kitchen, giving us lots of room to be on computers and pretend we have a normal life.

A couple of days to explore Port Augusta. The Shoreline Caravan Park is, obviously, on the shore. We watched The Ghan go by and looked how much change we had in our entertainment fund. Less than a dollar which made the $7000 three day platinum slightly out of our range. Recounted our money and still had one-dollar which wasn’t enough for the cheap peasant class at only $2500 per person. But we got a nice photo of it

Australia I am told is a rich country – some of these prices, like $16,720 for a four days trip seems more fit for the Saudi Arabia average person. BTW we are taking a train half way across Saudi Arabia in November but it was much cheaper, here is a price chart to save up for…be aware – they sell out…This is in Australian dollars. In USD it would be $11,304 for the highest one a mere 8,389 British pounds or a fun 9,681 Euros or a most affordable $2,765 USD / 2,049 British Pound/2,368 Euros for the lowest priced one. Of course, that is today 26 August before some type of tariffs from youknowwho sets in.

Next to our cabin two dudes with their truck full of dogs were staying. My first interest of course, was that the truck was my favourite – a RAM – what I want for our tug but a bit out of our current price range, we are happy with our Pajero. Anyway, to get to the story – they were on their way to Perth from Victoria or was it New South Wales? with their dogs for a national contest in Perth and they hope to win and go up against the Kiwis. Did you know that New Zealand has more sheep than people – they have more sheep than Australia does too; probably, why the Aussies want to beat them. One truck had 17-dogs the other 9. Well behaved and no barking. I shook hands with one and said Hi I am from New York where are you from but the dog just turned away and hid behind the others for some reason. The owner said some dogs cost as much as $40,000 and they take up to three years to train. They are called muster dogs. I had never heard of that before and made an hilarious joke about people in New York eating dogs with muster on them – of course, meaning hotdogs – but no one got my joke. Though I laughed. There is a weekly show on ABC iView on this which Mich Hudson – the celebrity dog dude told me is watched by close to two-million people a week. when we get home we will watch to see if good old Micky won. We are fascinated by these trained dogs and have seen a few contests where they heard sheep through gates and put them into pens with the owner just moving a finger or making a slight sound. I didn’t get the other person’s name. BTW driving to Perth from the eastern states is like driving across the USA except most of the way there is just outback, so not quite the same as driving across the USA. And with a truck full of expensive dogs.

As Narda noted above we got help from Keith in Kimba. Keith has his caravan and tug – truck whatever – fully loaded for super outback life. He has already been on the road for more than a year – doing the trip he and his wife were planning before she died weeks before they were to leave. A large caravan with pull-out sides and every item imaginable from all solar to tracking devices and most importantly his ‘comfort’ dog which so happens to have the same name as my son, Sacha. Keith has a small device which emits a sound that we can not hear but his dog does. If his dog goes off too far he pushes a button and the dog returns. If the dog is at our feet and he wants it to go.

Long drives of not much out there except for scary road trains on a bit narrow road.

After Streaky Bay [we did this trip to Eyre Peninsula November of 2024 see https://neuage.me/eyre-peninsula/] we stayed at the old school house site outside of Penong. Located just off the Eyre Highway between Penong and Bookabie in South Australia. Cohens Old School Site.

We were interested in the Penong Windmill Museum which has posts around the area of the thing to do or visit. Or as they say: Showcasing old, new, small and big Windmills, including ‘Bruce’ the biggest windmill in Australia. A tribute to farmers whirling workhorses that have nowadays been mostly replaced by solar panels, the outdoor museum at the side of Highway 1 features a unique collection of around 20 donated and restored windmills collected from as far away as Marla, the Riverland and Alice Springs. A wonderful attraction to stop at when heading east or west across the Nullabor or an easy day trip from Ceduna.

We stopped and spent who minutes here grabbed a few pixs and went on our way.

Windmills of today – outside of Pt Augusta

We did get to the whale centre – the sign out front said 18 whales today – we saw maybe three or four – mums with calves were interesting. The cliffs were interesting. It was Saturday – my birthday was last Sunday so it was within my birthday week and that was good. The YouTube video we made below shows more of a mum and baby – they are quite close to where we were standing.

We were able to free-camp at the entrance to the visitor’s centre and saw a groovy sunset.

17 August Sunday
to Fowler’s Bay – no caravan sites – to Penong – $38 dollars – realized didn’t put in Anderson plug – destroyed – pizza $55 at Penong hotel (with beer).

The next of many mishaps along our way was that when we packed up at the whale centre and drove off we didn’t plug in the lead to the Anderson output on the car. It is what connects the car battery to the caravan to charge up the deep-cell battery, which as above notes costs us $450 for the battery and $1550 redoing all the electrical because it was put in wrong. Anyway, the lead dragged along the ground and finally broke. In Penong we went to the only auto fixing place which had a big sign ;no entrance” we went in anyway and pleaded with the over worked folks there to fix our plug. Which he did for $60. Unfortunately, he must have done it wrong – crossed wires or something – so that by the end of the day the deep-cell battery was drained of all its goodness. Now we will wait until Adelaide to get that fixed which will be our third-plug of the Anderson cord replaced on this trip. We did have a good pizza at the Penong Hotel – our only eating out experience of the trip. $55 was quite high for two-pizzas. I had expected half that but this is the lucky country – so we pay.

To cut a long story short. The next day we had had a gut full of my birthday trip to see the whales which we thought would be three or four weeks and drove the rest of the way home in one day.

Back to preparing for our next trip in October: Utrecht Netherlands seven weeks, two week cruise from Athens through the Suez Canal (really – we got the tickets) to Saudi Arabia a while there visiting a colleague from China teaching days then on to an island off of Thailand for Christmas with Brendan and Sophie and the baby and back home early January to rest up for our trip in March to the UK for a month and the USA after.

No Anderson plugs involved.

See ya then. In other words our next blog will be in November probably after the Netherlands and before our cruise.

Our 15-day boat ride through the Suez Canal with some stops, hope the folks in Yemen are being chilled at the time:

So, if you don’t ever hear from us again we will last be in…

then the marvelous train ride through the Saudi desert. It will only be about five-hours but great views – we hope.