Coffin Bay and Home Sweet Home

The fishing pictures were taken at Coffin Bay where we had a 9 day stay in a magnificent Caravan Park. Unfortunately the weather was terrible as we had about 6 inches of rain for the week as well as strong winds. Eric (pictured with Elizabeth Gates) managed to catch a good sized KG Whiting from the wharf. Di also celebrated her 65th Birthday at Coffin Bay Hotel with the Gates's and the Butters and Ray Reynolds from Little Douglas who organised Eric and Kevin to a couple of day's fishing with his son-in-law Jamie on the KG Whiting!!!

And finally after travelling a total of 15124k's we arrived home on Friday Night. We had a fantastic holiday and we hope that you all enjoyed the many BLOGS that we sent during the 3 1/2 months.

Couple of Specials

We are on our way home now and arrived in Coffin Bay today (Tues) for a week. The photo below is of Kevin Gates and Eric taken in the caravan park at Streaky Bay. It rained on 6 of the 7 days there but we had time for a Happy Hour. The photo on the right of Di and Eric was taken at El Questro which is a resort on the day we went for a drive to Wyndam and out to Emma Gorge in the Kimberleys with Jill and Murray and Pauline and Len from Nuriootpa. The picture below was taken in Hay Street Kalgoorlie when we 'both" went on a tour of the infamous "brothel". We anticipate being back in Adelaide around 15th Sept. Hopefully we can do some fishing with our friend Ray at Little Douglas near Farm Beach in the next week if the weather improves!

Across Nullabor and Streaky Bay

We left Kalgoorlie on 17th August to begin the long haul over The Nullabor and we found it quite boring with the scenery. We drove 660k and stopped at Cocklebiddy Roadhouse overnight and the next day we drove 486k staying at The Nullabor Roadhouse, We went to the Head of the Bight the next morning and saw heaps of whales and their calves, Worth the $10 entry fee. It was freezing there and so we ventured onto Ceduna to do some shopping before going to Smoky Bay Caravan Park for 1 night and then onto Streaky Bay where our site is right next to the beach (photo with blue canoe) The weather looks fine but we have had rain and gale force winds for 5 days in a row..so no fishing. We met Elizabeth and Kevin Gates who were originally coming on the trip with us but Kevin had open heart surgery just 1 week before we were due to leave. We move onto Elliston tomorrow 26th for 3 days and then to Coffin Bay for a week to hopefully do some fishing. Still having a great time even though the weather has been foul of late.

Kalgoorlie..Mining Hall of Fame

Today Sunday we went on a tour of the Mining Hall of Fame and went underground by lift to a depth of 140 metres. We had to don safety helmets as per the picture taken in the lift. The tunnels below the ground were very narrow and at times you had to stoop very low. Di had her photo taken with the drill trying to extricate some gold from a wall!! The photo of Eric taken alonside one of the dump trucks, shows you the enormous size of not only the truck, but of the tyres which are 4m in height. We also had a tour of the gold pouring area which was very interesting and the guide poured a gold bar as per the photo.

Kalgoorlie-Boulder consists of 2 towns with Boulder being the oldest part. In April this year an earthquake hit Boulder and some of the buildings have been badly damaged and the town is currently going through extensive repairs to the historical ageing buildings.

Kalgoorlie..Super Pit Mine

We are in Kalgoorlie for 4 days and on Friday we visited the Super Pit Lookout to view one of the biggest open cut mines in the world. It is situated on the richest square mile of gold bearing ore ever discovered. The Super Pit is currently 3.2 k's long, 1.3k wide and 330m deep. On Saturday there was to be a "blasting" at 1.00pm which is shown below. Di caught the action right on the stroke of 1.00pm, The photo on the right was taken on Friday with the preparation of the spot to be blasted. The trucks that take away the ore to be sorted etc are worth $4m each. It is an unbelievable sight from the viewing area and the trucks below look like kids toy trucks!!! Today (Sun) we both went on a bus tour with a guide of the Super Pit. We went half way into the pit and saw a different aspect of the amount of trucks/graders/bulldozes and other vehicles worth millions and millions of dollars!!

You just cannot comprehend the size of the Super Pit. It started in 1989 with Alan Bond and is estimated to be completed in 2021.

Geraldton

After spending 4 wonderful days in Denham and 2 in Kalbarri we moved onto Geraldton where we are now for 3 nights. The drive from Kalbarri to Geraldton via the Coast Road was very pretty with wildflowers and proteas growing on the side of the road. It was vastly different to the previous 500k's of just seeing scrub etc. Today we visited the site of the HMAS Sydney 11 Memorial in the heart of the town. The HMAS Sydney 11 which sunk during battle on Nov 21, 1941 and 645 crew were lost. The HMAS Sydney was discovered in waters off Shark Bay in 2008. The silver dome which you see in the photo is made out of steel and is shaped with 645 seagulls, representing each of the 645 sailors lost in battle. We are staying at the BIG 4 Sunset Beach Caravan Park and we have both walked along the beach and in the water each ady that we have been here and we thought you would enjoy "another sunset". Absolutely magnificent!!
We leave Geraldton on Thursday to go inland via Murrewa where we will see wildflowers for 400k's on our way to Beacon and then we move onto Kalgoorlie for a few days. Our sunsets will be missed and the warmer days are lessening and the nights are getting colder.

Denham/Monkey Mia/Kalbarri

After Carnavon we moved onto a place called Denham which is a lovely Coastal Town on Shark Bay and 25k from Monkey Mia. Whilst we were there we visited Eagle Bluff where some people from Vic took our photo at the top of the lookout. The waters in Shark Bay are a beautiful turquoise color and we both went in the water for the 4 days that we were there. The bottom photo was taken at Monkey Mia with the feeding of the dolphins. The Ranger's are very strict in regards to feeding the dolphins and no one is allowed to stand in the water whilst the feeding is on apart from the person/s selected to feed them with 1 fish. We moved further South to Kalbarri for 2 nights and the scenery in the bay and from the clifftops was sensational. Very rugged coastline but lovely white sands.

We did a fair bit of walking in Kalbarri and started to notice the wild flowers appearing. Our next stop will be Geraldton.