I’ve done some driving in the last week or two, I’m sitting at Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory and it’s about 36 in the shade. Strange to think that only a couple of weeks back I was suffering from the cold back in Tingha, in fact I still have the little fan heater out in the back of the troopy, figure I could pack it away now as nights rarely get to 10 or less. The picture above was somewhere in Northern Queensland just before dawn, the sky was the bluest blue I’ve seen in a long time.
Yeah sorry, another car picture. I pulled into a caravan park which seemed very full and I was about to turn around and leave till I saw another troopy parked by the water so figured I’d stay for a night. They had bought there’s many years ago as an x-camper and changed almost nothing on the vehicle, it was the old straight 6 with no turbo, only 2 years older than mine. I’d arrived back in Tassie at about 5 in the morning, it was dark and foggy and I’d had very little sleep laying down on a couch in the ferry.
I’m not going to say a lot in this post about Esperance, I was only there for a few days, some of that time I spent preparing for my trip across the nullabor and the rest of the time I was driving around taking photos. Although Esperance has magnificent beaches, the thing that impressed me most during my stay was Helms arboretum, about 15kms north of Esperance.
Mullewa is about 100km inland from Geraldton and right on the boundary of the wheatbelt and the expansive rangelands. You’ll notice as you leave Mullewa heading north or east there are road signs about road conditions, now you’re heading out into the real outback. I drove from Geraldton in a loop passing by the Mumbida wind farm, dropping in at the Ellendale pools, passing through the Coalseam conservation park then up through Mullewa before returning to Geraldton.
Yep, finally time for me to buy proper reading glasses, cheap supermarket ones just weren’t cutting it any more. The same day I picked up my new reading glasses I had also collected a couple of litres of shell grit earlier from Parry beach. That night I sat down with a few bowls, put on some music and picked through the shell grit looking for whole shells and this was the result.
The next stop was to climb Mount Frankland, the mountain is the crowning glory of the southwest forest corner and you can see for many miles from the summit. The climb to the granite capped summit is a good walk, it’s only about 600m from the car park to the top, but it’s also about 200-300m upwards.
Beautiful fishing spot
Part of my plan while living in the motor home was to supplement my food supplies with freshly caught fish, it’s taken me a month to get my act together and actually go fishing, but what a beautiful place it was to fish.
This is the east end of Mazzoletti’s beach and I’ve been coming to this spot to fish for probably 30 years or more with mixed results in the fishing stakes, but it’s always a pleasant place to be.
