Nannup to Kalgoorlie

We stayed at 2 different camps in the Nannup area. Nannup Caravan Park, and Wrights Bridge. Nannup is a cute little town and the caravan park was right there.  Plenty of wildflowers around as well.  Wright's Bridge was in the National Park and it would have been fantastic except it was cold and rained most of the time. We were camped in amongst the tall Karri Trees.

We passed the Discovery Tree on the way, but Jayne didn't get too far up it

Parked amongst the trees

The drive through the Southern Forest region is fantastic.  There's nothing similar we've seen on the east coast, so it's a pretty special place.  We then headed to Sid's Campground near Northcliffe.  Sid has created quite a quirky camp, which had everything you needed in an open free-camp area.

We celebrated our 37th Wedding Anniversary here, with the weather turning on quite a show for us, Christmas Tree lights sparkling in the the trees and a full rainbow.

Jayne and I enjoyed our celebration with lovely prawns and fresh tuna steaks, and of course a nice bottle of bubbly, Mumm to be precise.

Complete with Western Rosella, which has a yellow beard whereas our Eastern Rosella has a white beard, go figure?

Green Pools was supposed to be a millpond from the photos we'd seen, but it was blowing a gale when we visited

It was then off to Albany, where we wanted to visit the WW1 Anzac Memorial.  Who even realised all the Australian and New Zealand boats set-off from Albany to go to Anzac Cove? This was their last view of the Australian shore. 37,000 Aussies and 6,000 Kiwis left from here. Only one third returned and most of them were badly injured/damaged and many didn't last long once they'd got back home. What a terrible war that was.

The weather was still cold, no rain but bitterly cold with the wind blowing right in from the Antarctic. The forecast for the rest of the east WA coast was maximum 21ᵒC for the whole time we would be travelling it. The temperatures 300 kms north of Albany were low 30ᵒC, so it didn't take much discussion for us to turn north at this point and get warm.

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Wind farm at Albany, well there's no shortage of that around these parts!

There's a Sky Bridge at The Gap, in Albany. Amazing

The Gap

Having Bailey with us hasn't been a problem, until we want to visit a National Park.  We really didn't want to miss this one, but driving in the sign said "If you have a dog in your car turn back now".  Considering there was absolutely nowhere to turn around we continued to the car park.  Not to be deterred, we covered him up with a map and left him to stay cosy and warm in the car while we quickly visited the sights.  We used code between us and wondered whether our "cake" in the car was okay or if it had started to melt.

He's peaking out from under his cover, luckily his cover didn't get blown!

The beaches are lovely and as white as in Esperance

Dog Rock, photo taken from the Dog Rock Shopping Centre car park, where else?

Leaving Albany we passed this cute pink lake

Jayne really wants to drive home via the Great Central Road, from Laverton to Yulara (Uluru/Ayres Rock). This is 1,126 kms of dirt road. It'll add about +1,000 kms to our trip, rather than driving the nice smooth tarred Nullarbor Plain Highway. There is no reason for us to drive this road, although I've been assured that it's a very nice dirt road with lots to see. But remember we are one spare tyre down as we haven't been able to obtain a new/2nd hand rim in WA.

But it was really a no-brainer to head north from Albany. To continue east along the coast would have continuing into 21ᵒ max temperatures, whereas north we could get +30ᵒ days in only 350kms. So we hung a left turn!

The WA coast reminds me of some women I've meet over the years. Stunningly beautiful one day, and the next without rhyme nor reason they are nasty looking, blowing a gale and bloody cold. Thankfully Jaynie isn't one of them! 

On our trek north we visited Wave Rock, we've been there on our very first trip to WA in 2003. Gee it's changed a lot since then! Very touristy now. We didn't stay, just watched Bailey have a quick surf and then headed further north.

Bailey going solo surfing Wave Rock

Our first night heading north was spent at Anderson Rock, which was a Wikicamps recommendation. We had the place to ourselves, so it was really nice and it was warm, 27ᵒ when we pulled in at 4.30pm. It's a large rock, and doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere besides Wikicamps. The dirt road in was amazingly good with lots of wildflowers.   We've certainly achieved our third wish this trip which was to see wildflowers.  They're absolutely everywhere to the point where we stopped taking taking photos other than the really exceptional ones.

A wide view from the top of Anderson Rock

It's only a small rock, but there are two of them

We saw our last wildflowers there. This cauliflower plant was enormous

We then headed further north on this great road that's not marked on our very new map. We ended up in Southern Cross, so it was then only 200kms to Kalgoorlie where we are now.

We passed through the Rabbit Proof Fence on our way

Here are some of the rabbits trapped on the wrong side of the fence

In Kalgoorlie we came across this in the local IGA Supermarket.

I'm not sure the action described is from the heat of this sauce, or the fact that it's $30/bottle. Talk about making a mess in you bed, $30 for 8 Oz is a hell of a lot!

Tomorrow we head to Laverton to start on the Great Central Road on Tuesday. Temperature in Laverton tomorrow is supposed to be 36ᵒC, FANTASTIC, I can't wait.

I have to have rocks in my head, yet another +1,000kms of dirt. What we do to keep our women happy!