Off to See the Wizard - Penong to Kimba

We got a relatively early start from Penong, having a quick look at the old buildings in the small town before heading on our way.

This is just a few of the windmills on the eastern side of town.  They are hard to take a photo of as you drive along.

The next town, only about 70kms down the road is Ceduna, what is generally considered to be the end of the crossing of the Nullarbor, although the Eyre Highway actually continues on to Port Augusta.

Just before Cenduna we had to go through the quarantine station.  The caravan park in Penong had a terrific idea.  In the laundry they had a poster with all the quarantine regulations around Australia.  We have the little book, but this was great if you don’t.  They then have a spot where you can drop off any foodstuffs that will be taken at the quarantine station, either at Ceduna heading east, or at Border Village if you are heading west.  That way anyone who can use it may take it, rather than it being surrendered and destroyed.  After losing quite a bit of food when we entered South Australia, heading west at the start of our trip, this time we were prepared.  I was able to leave a lemon at the caravan park and someone had dropped off a couple of carrots, which would be OK to take to South Australia, so I was able to take them. There was some honey dropped off by someone heading to WA, but I was unsure if I could take it to SA, so left it.  As it turned out, honey was OK.  At the quarantine station I did lose a couple of potatoes, but that was OK.

We called into Ceduna as we needed to stock up the larder after going through quarantine.  I bet the supermarket does a roaring trade in fresh fruit and veges.  We had to check out the jetty.  Ceduna is known as the Oyster Capital of Australia and they have Oysterfest.  It was on the weekend after we were there.  It would be a bit of fun, but I think it was going to be wet.

There are some lovely old Norfolk Pines up the Main Street.

And a couple of nice old churches.

We had to make a big decision at Ceduna.  Do we go south around the Eyre Peninsula or just head directly east across the top of it?  We had been pondering this decision for some time and it all boiled down to what the weather was doing.  We would have liked to take the detour, but it was still quite breezy and fairly cool, so we made the decision to just take the direct route home and save the peninsula for another trip.

Once we had made up our mind we were now once again in an area known for grain crops.

Grazing sheep is also one of the main agricultural activities.

There are more little towns along the highway, but I must say the ones in WA were much nicer from a tourist point of view.  The first we visited was Wirrulla.  

They have a few old buildings, but nothing looks as fresh as the other wheatbelt towns. 

They do have a quirky thing, an Inland Jetty.  It sounds like they were bemoaning that they don’t have a jetty as an attraction, so they built one back in 2001 as a bit of a joke, using mainly recycled timbers from an actual jetty from which the wool and wheat from this district was exported.  A nice touch.

The largest building in all these towns is the silo.

The next little town was Poochera.  

It is famous for an ant - the “Dinosaur Ant”.  Apparently, it most resembles what the original dinosaur ants were like.  They are nocturnal, foraging alone and taking the food back to the nest. Their sting is painful, but as hardly anyone ever sees the ants and they aren’t aggressive, next to no one gets bitten.

There is a little outdoor museum with the centrepiece being “Peter’s Humpy”.

It was built in the 1920s out of flattened out kerosene tins and local pine logs.  

It is interesting to read about him and his humpy.

I dare say he was quite comfy in there……..except when it was really cold…..or really hot, particularly if it was hot.

Continuing on our way, don’t you love the colourful section of road, where they have used different road materials each time they have widened it.

More wide loads, now with police escorts if they load was particularly wide.  I must say, having the UHF radio in the ute has been very handy, particularly with wide loads, as the pilot accompanying the truck advises people that a wide load is approaching and how wide.  That way we generally had plenty of notice.

Wudinna is the larger of these little towns, but was still quite small.  Their main feature is the “Australian Farmer” sculpture.  I really liked it.

 The spiel says “The Australian Farmer stylised human form. Elements - sun, source of life, wheat and sheep, female side, missing grain, drought years, children, families, generations.”  You can see it all there, and so elegant.

We arrived at Kimba fairly late in the afternoon. We camped at the Recreation Grounds, which is a community based free camp.  

Just as well we didn’t arrive any later, as there were hardly any spots left.  There would have easily been fifty vans parked up.  

The campground is award winning and you can see why.  There were two blocks of amenities, spotlessly clean and a coin operated shower, if you didn’t have an ensuite in your van.  There was also a huge camp kitchen. It would be one of the best we have ever seen.

We didn’t have a look around the town when we arrived, as it was just about to rain.  Fancy that.  The weather was quite a contrast to what we had experienced in the more northern parts of the country.

I noticed that a peewee had its nest in a tree near where we camped.

We finished the day with another nice sunset, once the rain had passed.

The highlight of the day was just driving through the lovely countryside.

Off to See the Wizard - Great Australian Bight to Penong

Fortunately, the worst of the wind of the previous night had passed by the morning, so we continued on our way.  It was, however, still quite breezy and a bit wet.  Once again, we felt for those charity cyclists.  It would not be fun at all.

The landscape continued to change, now with low heath-like plants.

There have always been several look out points where you can see the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight. There was one we wished to visit, as it has the best view, but we couldn’t find it.  We then learnt that several of those sites have been closed, as the erosion of the cliffs have made them unsafe.  We did find one that we could access. 

How moody does that look.  It reminds me a bit of when we visited the Cliffs of Mohr in Ireland in similar weather. Pop over to my blog post to see what this area of the Great Australia Bight was like when we visited in 2010.

Look at us.  Who’d have thought that only recently we were wearing summer clothes and feeling hot.  One lady was complaining about the weather looking like it did, but having seen it in sunny conditions, we enjoyed seeing the contrast.  It makes perfect sense, as so much of our winter weather systems come from this direction.  Indeed, this weather system travelled through to eastern NSW, delivering a lot of rain and more minor flooding.

Of course, I found some more wildflowers, and different ones to what we had previously seen.

Back on the road, we encountered more unusual items on trucks.

Mr Whippy anyone?

We were starting to get less and less trees.

Finally, we reached the Nullarbor Plain.  People generally refer to travelling across the Eyre Highway, between Norseman in the west and Ceduna in the east, as ‘crossing the Nullarbor” but in fact, on the road, you only travel for a very short while across the very bottom tip of the Nullarbor Plain.  Most of it is further north.  You travel across more of it on the train. The majority of the highway is not across the actual plain at all, but is still a very remote part of the country.

We called in at The Nullarbor Roadhouse for fuel - $2.99 per litre.  The dearest we had encountered for some time, but they can get away with it out there, as just about everyone has to call in. The whale sculpture has been there for years.

We treated ourselves to a burger for lunch.  It was huge, so we didn’t need much dinner. As the roadhouses are the only places where you can buy a meal, they are generally very good.

Don’t you love their sense of humour.

The old original roadhouse building is still standing, which is nice.

We made one more detour off the highway, to the Head of the Bight, somewhere we hadn’t visited before. It is mainly known for whale watching.  The Southern Right Whales come to this area to calve and breed.  We were late in the season to see a whale, but apparently they were still being seen.  Well, not when we were there. They must have been avoiding the terrible weather too.  Oh well, I do hope to see a whale close up one day.  Still something to look forward to in the future.

It was still a nice look out point.

Back on the road, we continued on our way, leaving the Nullarbor Plain behind us and now seeing lots of trees.  Yet another change in the landscape.

Eventually, we started to see signs of inhabitation and rural grazing properties.

Windmills became common, as ground water is the main water source in the area.

Finally, we reached the little township of Penang, which is known for its windmills at the eastern entrance to town.  This would be our destination for the night, after another rather long day on the road.  We have stayed here before and knew that the caravan park is fairly well protected from the weather, so it would be a nice change from the previous windy night, as yes, it was still rather breezy.

As we drove to the caravan park we noticed a large grouping of windmills, which we didn’t think we had seen before.  As it turns out, we hadn’t seen them before, as the Penong Windmill Museum was only opened in 2016 and we were last over here in 2010.  It was created in response to the interest in the windmills on the eastern entrance to town, that are actually working windmills in paddocks.  A lot of tourists were parking to take photos and the locals were worried there would be an accident one day, so created this museum where you can get a proper look at some interesting windmills.

After setting up camp, we came over for a better look, as I said before, we like windmills.

Their main draw card, which can also be seen from quite a distance, is the “Comet 35 Foot “B” Pattern”.  It is the largest Comet windmill in Australia.  

It has an interesting history.

There were story boards about its restoration.  Mick was amused by the Health and Safety, compared to what hoops he often has to jump through to work at heights.

At the other end of the scale, there was an example of the smallest of the Comet windmills, being the “Comet 6 Foot C Pattern”, made between 1925 and 1963.

There were some windmills like you would commonly see, although there weren’t many Southern Cross brand, which together with Comet, are the main brands you see around home.  This “Southern Cross RH Pattern 25 Foot” was originally used at a well on the Nullarbor Plain from 1956. It is one of their larger models.

There were some really unusual windmills.  This one had wooden slat and is an “Adelaide Challenge No 84” brand from the USA.  Rather than having a tail that can be put our of gear to turn off the windmill, this one had wooden slats.

 In this position, the windmill is turned off.  To make it work the slats are turned out, so that they look like a regular windmill.  Quite ingenious.  

We are always on the look out for a windmill like we had when we lived out of town.  It was also a Challenge brand.  It looked like a regular windmill, except it had two tails.  We’ve never seen another like it.  I’m sure it would be welcomed in one of these windmill museums.

This is another timber slatted windmill, this time a “William Riddle 8 Foot”.

I think this “Osbourne Windmill” was the oldest, dating back to the late 1800s. It is unusual in that it has as small tank at the top. When the main water tank that the windmill was filling was full, water would be diverted to the little tank, which was fitted with a float, that would turn the windmill off.  Rather ingenious.

There was even a home made windmill from the 1930s.  That would be in the time of the Great Depression, when money for a new windmill would be hard to come up with.  I’m sure it did the job.

Quite a lot of windmills in the area are mounted on home made trolleys to move them between various ground water tanks and there was one on display.

We really enjoyed our wander around reading about them all.  What we did notice was that most are “on loan” to the museum, which we think is rather smart, if ever their is any contention as to the ownership of items.

There was one water pump that wasn’t wind powered.  It is a “Swing Pump”.

You act like a big kid and have a nice big swing and water is pumped.  Yes, Mick is just a big kid.  Look at at the grin on his face.

There wa a really interesting shelter with information.  The walls are constructed from a 5000 gallon Squatters water tank and the roof structure is a 17 foot Southern Cross windmill fan.  How appropriate.  The committee responsible for the creation of this museum have really put some thought into it and executed the construction so well. They should be congratulated.

We wandered over to the little pub late in the afternoon and it was dark when we walked back to the caravan park. We were so glad we did, as we discovered that the windmills are lit up at night.  Don’t they look beautiful.

The highlight of the day was of course the windmills.