Busselton WA – Elliston SA

6 – 19 February 2024

Our 2 odd months in Busselton over summer was a very busy time for us. We moved back into our house after being away for 8 months, celebrated Christmas with the family, enjoyed Busselton’s beaches, restaurants and our friends and did some minor renovations to the caravan. Pete & Zac even spent 2 days redoing the suspension on the car in readiness for our 2024 adventures. Most importantly though, we celebrated the marriage of our son Zac to his wonderful partner Jess. We really enjoyed our time home, but were ready to hit the road again.

We have been planning our South Australian adventure for quite a while. The plan, well there is no plan except drive and see where we land. In the 10 or so years since we visited SA things have changed a lot for us so this trip is guaranteed to be a very different one. Gone are the kids and the daily home schooling routine, gone is the roof top boat, gone are the back seats in the car, but we’ve gained a different perspective on life and what matters to us.

The day before setting off, we had a rather large plumbing issue to contend with. Unfortunately the septic pump died and needed replacing, along with pumping out the tanks. 2 very large holes are now having to stay in the backyard until we get back to finish sorting the tanks out.

We set off on a balmy Tuesday morning to tackle to long road ahead of us. We planed to take 4 days to cross the Nullabor and get to our first stop somewhere east of Ceduna. The weather in the southwest was tipped to be about 40 for 4 days, so we hoped to stay ahead of the heat as we drive. Our first day was a mid morning start and we drove around 500km to a roadside camp site just north of Ravensthorpe. After waking in the morning to find the gas was out, we realised we had forgotten to check the gas bottles and had an empty bottle on board. Thankfully, Esperance has a Bunnings where we could easily refuel and swap the bottle. Our second night was spent on the Nullabor 50km east of Balladonia about 700km further along on our journey. This roadside stop allowed us to drive a few hundred meters back into the scrub and trees to try to escape the road train noise.

After a somewhat restless night we set off again to put some more miles behind us. Our last night on the Nullabor was spent at a pull over 20km west of the Nullabor Roadhouse. Once again we managed to drive back a few hundred meters to escape as much noise as possible. Our job this night was to cook up the vegetables as tomorrow they will need to be discarded at the quarantine station if we don’t. The rules are a bit hit and miss. You can take in sweet potatoes but not normal potatoes. You can take carrots and beetroot (topped and tailed) but not onions, capsicum or tomatoes. Anyway we have enough cooked vegetables to last us a week.

Fuel has become increasingly more expensive and today we hit the jackpot. We thought the fuel at Boarder Village (WA/SA border) was expensive at $2.80 a litre (Eucla was only $2.20 which is 20km prior) but we were wrong. We paid a staggering $2.95 a litre at Nullabor Roadhouse. If only we knew that only 95km up the road was a fuel station at Yalata where diesel was $2.06 a litre, we would have held out. At least we know the cheaper stops for the way back.

Day 4 saw us finally reach the town of Ceduna where we passed through the quarantine station with no problems. We fueled up and kept driving towards our stop, Haslam. I must say, after 2,200km and 4 days of constant driving in unrelenting south easterly head winds, we were glad to stop and relax a bit.

Haslam is known (like many other SA towns) for its jetty and seafood. We camped up with only 2 other vans in the little towns’ campground and settled in. The campground would be big enough for around 15 or so vans and has a playground, toilet and water. At $15 a night, it’s much cheaper than a caravan park. We enjoyed relaxing here for almost a week, chatting to the locals who were very friendly along with fellow travelers. One of the travelers actually lived in a house next door to where Pete lived at one stage of his childhood. It really is a small world. Each day we crabbed from the jetty and waded into the water to fish. We caught plenty of huge blue swimmer crabs, king george whiting, squid and even a flounder.

Phone and internet reception is certainly hit and miss away from the major towns. One minute you have 1 bar of 4G then it’s SOS for the next 3 days. We thought WA had crappy reception, but SA is definitely way worse. We resorted to making a phone call using the local phone box to touch base with family (thanks Telstra for free use of all phone boxes) and the satelite tv kept us across all the important stuff (like the news, weather and of course MAFS).

Next we moved further south along the Eyre Peninsula to another small seaside town of Elliston. We decided to stay at Walkers Rock Campground in the Conservation Reserve, 10km from town. Our campsite was large and flat with a pathway leading straight to the beach. The bay was beautiful, with areas of crystal clear water, interspersed with seaweed. Low tide showed many rock pools to explore and widened the beach for plenty of beach driving. It was quite tidal so fishing was not all that great. Actually, the fishing was non existent, but not through lack of trying. We swam in the icy water each afternoon which was very refreshing with the weather being a little warmer. One of our days we drove into Elliston and had a fish/squid from the town jetty. Once again, we had no luck. 4 days of better phone and internet did allow us to do some research into our next spots to camp at along the Eyre Peninsula. Most spots now require booking so might make it a little trickier to just rock up when we feel like it, but we will see how we go as we venture along. Who knows, it might mean we find a hidden gem somewhere unexpected.