EPISODE 8 - AT LAST THE FINAL (?)
REEL
More
Long White Cloud
The onset of the 
deep and reliable New Zealand snow last year,
we couldn’t face the Victorian Alps, so a week on the piste at Mount Hutt was organised. This resort
was conveniently situated in the Christchurch area so
that skiing time was maximised. The accommodation was in Beluga Lodge at
Methven, a superbly comfortable home from home, run by a homely lady who
clearly loved her charming old cottage and the garden, which was a riot of pink
springtime blossom. Mt Hutt is a fairly steep mountain, so there was a high
proportion of intermediate and advanced runs which stretched our abilities. A
certain boring old fool who ought to act his age was brought down to reality
when a last day’s family “top-to-bottom” run had to be cancelled due to an
attack of gout caused by too much good living!
New
Broome Sweeps Clean
With repatriation ineluctably approaching and
our consequent need to pack in as many Oz memories as possible, our wedding
anniversary was a convenient excuse to blue some frequent flier points on a
week in the 
foolishly scheduled for the day of our
anniversary and resulted in the boring old fool being stung for a pair of keshi
pearl earrings (keshi pearls sometimes grow in the space left after a cultured
pearl has been removed, and are thus solid nacre without any form of artificial
core). We had hired a Land Cruiser 4WD and had great fun roaring round the
Kimberley, with stays at Derby (pronounced as spelled, not as the British 
English
‘darby’!) and Fitzroy Crossing. Between the last two we travelled on
some of the notorious Gibb River Road and visited Windjana Gorge, Tunnel Creek
and Geikie Gorge, all of which were hot (45°C) and gorgeous (pun intended). We
only got stuck once, in a rather large puddle left after a short, heavy and
unseasonable rainstorm, but managed to rock it out in reverse.
Jamie
Seeks Pastures New
We had to disencumber ourselves of
Jamie the Jayco camper trailer before the Christmas holidays, so that lots of
people would want him. I sold him for $50 more than I paid, even before he
appeared in the paper. We were sad to see him go, but he went to a good home
with a nice V8 Land Rover Discovery to
pull him along. He enabled us to see lots of Oz we wouldn’t otherwise have
seen.
Improperly
Dressed at Mornington
We had to attend the Jayco club
Christmas rally without a caravan, thus we suffered the indignity of staying in
an on-site unit. We gave the club a small farewell token: a folk-art plaque of
Australian wildflowers by Christine, bearing the Jayco logo in sterling silver
by me. This was well received and there were many genuine expressions of regret
that we were leaving the club, which left us feeling quite touched.
Go
West, old fool!
So what to do for the “works
fortnight” at Christmas? Without Jamie the Jayco, nothing really appealed. We
wanted to “do”
Ceduna
The next day peeled off a thousand
kilometres through
Norseman
Ceduna is the last town of any size before
the Nullarbor, so next day we hit the road, passing the signs advising trepid
travellers of the ongoing lack of water and the potential incidence of
wandering and suicidal camels, kangaroos and wombats. 
The Nullarbor Plain is
appropriately named; there are vast, flat tracts with “null arbors” (= no
trees, gerrit?). However although boring, one couldn’t call it monotonous,
there are many subtle changes of vegetation and some spectacular views where
the
Esperance
Next day only demanded a couple of
hundred kms down to Esperance where we had meant to spend 
Christmas, however as we were ahead of schedule
we decided just to overnight and leave the honour of Christmas to Albany. Once
again we found an on-site park unit at Croker’s
On Christmas Eve we put another 500
kms on the long-suffering odometer, which was now showing some 3,500 kms from
Collie
We found this sinful relaxation of
over two nights in the same place quite congenial, so we moved on through
impressive forests of Jarrah and Karri to yet another unit in the Mr Marron
caravan park at Collie (the marron isn’t an Australian chestnut, it’s WA’s yabbie,
a freshwater crustacean). Collie is a small village at the centre of WA’s
historic coalfields which promised museums and industrial memorabilia. However
these were closed, so we shopped, had a look at the Harris Dam/Reservoir and
took the scenic drive along the local creek before dinner, washed down with a
few tinnies. 
Next day we drove down the Darling Scarp with
its fine views of Bunbury
to the town itself which proved not a town full of kiss-me-quick trippers from
So at last we made 
There is no way anybody can get anything other
than a superficial impression of a major city in that time; we took the tourist
tram, sneered at it because it had rubber wheels and a petrol engine (not authentic
like Melbourne’s trams!), but at least it took us to the tourist vantage
points, such as Kings Park. This afforded a magnificent view of the skyscrapers
of the CBD dipping their toes in the azure blue harbour, across which yachts
scudded in the cooling sea breeze. We wandered around the shopping malls, we
drove down the freeway into Fremantle (the Doctor was out), then back up the
coast road to our base. Everywhere was light, airy, spacious, relaxed, and
friendly; many of the accents betrayed Pommie origins. We loved it and decided
that if Jindalee had been based in
Next day (yes folks, we had a whole three
continuous nights without travelling!) we went on the obligatory quokka hunt to
Conveniently a fast ferry left Hillary’s
harbour, arriving at lunchtime. After a long wait for something to eat we
wobbled off on three hired bicycles; I was chuffed to be able to see and video
a couple of quokkas in the first hundred yards or so. Apparently this isn’t too
difficult since, with no natural enemies, there are over 10,000 of these diminutive
marsupials on the island (it was called ‘Rottnest’ by a stupid Dutchman who
couldn’t tell the difference between rats and quokkas!). After a mile or two
Peter and I cooled down with a swim in beautiful blue water at a lovely white
beach; I lay back and floated and wondered if this would be the last Australian
beach from which I would swim. That night there was a degree of saddle soreness
and aching muscles amongst those grandparents who are unaccustomed to bicycles,
but some Emu Export embrocation internally applied from a freshly-cracked tinny
soon relieved the symptoms.
Having reached our target, we now
started on our home journey, getting up at the crack of emus and spending the
morning driving the 600 kms through Coolgardie, then to 
But
alluvial gold had to be washed down from somewhere and a Paddy called Hannan
found the source at
We actually stayed in Kalgoorlie’s
‘siamese twin’ town, Boulder, but both had more of the impressive civil
buildings and wedding cake hotels, except that these were living and working
towns, so some of the hotels were only facades for such places as chinese
take-aways.
Nullarbor
After another early start on New
Year’s Eve, we set off through Norseman once more, and then across the big
plain to the eponymous Nullarbor Motel where we watched a superb sunset over
the Bight and had a surprisingly good and inexpensive dinner served by a deaf
comedian waiter. 
Having seen it all before, the only excitement
on the road was the sight of about half a dozen dead camels by the roadside. By
now we were well accustomed to the thousands of piles of furry kangaroo jam on
the highway and assumed that an errant herd of camels had been swiped by a road
train. But the till jockey at the next golden motion lotion station said that
they had apparently been shot. Further on we passed a young Robyn Davidson-emulating
girl, making “Tracks” across the plain with a train of six camels. Maybe these
were attacked by aggressive feral males which had to be shot - or maybe just a
trigger happy hunter after a few jars on New Years Eve?
Wilpena Pound is a famous geological
feature in the 
From the perspective of a walker the form of the
mountain could only just be perceived, but the buzz of a lone aircraft showed
that some lucky soul was having a view of the whole Pound as the evening
shadows lengthened. Nevertheless our trip back to the cabin was enriched by a
flock of emus sauntering across the road and some marvellous views of the Pound
as the setting sun painted the escarpment red. An obliging ‘roo sat and also
watched the view and provided foreground interest in the photographic
opportunity. So snags’n’mash, the odd tinny, then veg out till dawn, which came
up like thunder, as they say, providing yet another photo op.
Stawell
That day we zoomed through Port
Augusta and Port Pirrie and
Back
for the Packing
We arrived home on Saturday morning,
in time to shop for food and prepare for the Grace Brothers packing team who
were due on Monday.
From Grace the removal people we
didn’t get Young Mr Grace, just Middle-Aged Mr Grace and Fat’n’Smelly Mr Grace,
who spent over 2 days snatching the basic essentials of life out of our hands
just before we were about to use them, then cramming all into a 30 cu.m
container with very little ullage. Then we had to live with some 1930’s prison
furniture, leaking washing machines and dysfunctional vacuum cleaners, all
courtesy of Guest Furniture Hire, while desperately trying to sell Xtine’s Ford
Laser. Then a strange period of limbo set in, which served to convince us that