Blog 12 – Locked and Loaded, We’re on our way to WA

After a few days on the road, we arrived at Morisset and set up at the Showgrounds.  This would be our base for a few days while working on De Trailer, catching up with Brad and Vicki and finally loading up to head to our very first show in Busselton WA.  If you are going to jump in, you might as well jump in boots and all!

Later in the afternoon, once the traffic and day parkers had retreated to their night life, we parked beside the warehouse and began filling De Trailer.  We had taken guesses as to how many mats we would fit and how it would work and to our delight, it worked even better than we thought.  It was like the trailer was purpose built for camping mats with them fitting exactly across with not even a mm to spare.  We stacked 5 rows deep and still had some room left for the extra bits in the small space left at the back.  After a tiny hiccup, yep the back door wouldn’t shut, again by millimetres, we got it sealed and hit the road.  Due to our size we would struggle to park anywhere close by so headed to the freeway, stopping at the first rest area.  This is it, we are on our way mats and all!

We are beelining it for a few days making sure we aren’t rushing at the end.  Our first day put us at Nyngan for the night, arriving early enough to allow me to have a cook up to use all our veggies in preparation for the border crossing into SA in the next day or so.  I also did a very quick walk about town, finding it’s a lovely place.  When we have more time we will stopover for more than 1 night

Our next stop was Olary, this is where our mat journey began.  We drove via Cobar, another town that we want to return to when we have more time.  Long straight roads featuring goats, emus, lizards, skinks and even a snake venturing out of hibernation.  We continued on to Minnipa where we camped at Tcharkuldu Rocks.  Another driving day done and we plan to spend 2 nights this time.

I explored the rocks while Fred did a few maintenance chores.  We rode to Pildappa Rocks, another set of impressive rocks which feature a wave rock.  We took the opportunity to have a camp fire and cook dinner in the camp oven.  

We were still a week away from Busselton but today we began the drive across the Nullarbor and set up camp just past the first lookout.  The Great Australian Bight is awesome and the weather was just as awesome and not as windy as we expected.  Again I cooked up all our veggies as we cross the quarantine border into WA tomorrow.  

This days drive included the 146.6km straight, yep part of the Nullarbor does not have a turn or corner for 146.6 kilometres.  We camped at Newman’s Rocks and as we arrived we discovered that we no longer had a working clutch in the truck.  The fluid had completely drained away.  Lucky for us there were heaps of people camped, scattered around the bushland. I wandered around meeting fellow campers asking if they had any brake fluid as this is what we needed to correct our problem.  I had success at the tenth camp a couple of kilometres away.  This was a lucky break for us and we were able to continue on the next morning as overnight it had bled itself.

We had a brief stop at Esperance, another on the list of return to places, camped outside a truckstop in Munglinup, then onto Katanning where we stopped for 2 nights before reaching Busselton.  Katanning was another lovely town with gorgeous wild flowers, canola, grain fields, babbling brooks of course sheep.  There are many towns with names that end in “up”.  I researched that “up” is an Aboriginal term meaning “place of”.  We camped at an overgrown racecourse and took the opportunity to have a ride around. Now relaxed and ready for Busselton and our first camping mat show.

Stay tuned…….