Heading West

Ballarat was rather uneventful, but at least we got all our Caravan issues sorted and still managed to spend a day at Sovereign Hill, which was great for the kids.

Sovereign Hill is a replica of the 1850s town of Ballarat, during the gold rush.

We rode on a horse coach, climbed into an underground gold mine and saw a demonstration of how wagon wheels were made 150 years ago.

We left Ballarat on Friday heading towards Ceduna. The trip was just shy of 1400 km and it took us 3 days to get there.

Iron Knob

Looking for a place to spend the night at the end of day 2, we ended up in Iron Knob, a place we had never heard of before. It didn’t look too exciting, and we quickly found out that this is an old mining town, but for economical reasons the population has declined to just over 120. What we found looked a little bit like a ghost town, with abandoned houses everywhere in a desert-like landscape. Huge backyards that looked like rusty scrap yards. The town centre consisted of 3 shipping containers, hosting 2 government agencies and a post office. Everything was closed as it was a weekend. For some reason it was 35 degrees here, which adds to the abandoned desert town feeling.

Some old poster claimed that the Bowls Club was open on Saturdays, so we went to find it, naively hoping to get a cooked dinner. But we soon found out that this was merely a bar selling canned beers and 3 blokes getting drunk, which resembled the towns social life. People were friendly though and a cold beer was welcome in the scorching heat.

Ceduna

Ceduna is basically the end of civilisation of the Eastern half of Australia. It’s the last town before the Nullarbor plain which separates South Australia and Western Australia. The town isn’t too exciting, as it’s mainly an industrial fishing town and a gateway for travellers making their way through the Nullarbor. There are quite a few nice beaches around though.

We are spending a week here to get some work done and also to get prepared and stock up before embarking on the trip through the desert.

Unfortunately, Meike and Phil both got quite sick and have spent most of the time so far in the caravan. This was a pity, because we have quite a beautiful campsite right in the dunes of a nice beach.

After a few doses of antibiotics, we now seem to be recovering quickly and are almost ready for the next leg of the trip. We are planning to leave on Saturday towards Esperance, which is about 1400 km from here. We anticipate to reach it in 3 days. This needs a bit of planning, as there are no towns, no shops other than petrol stations and no water on the way.