During the planning of our journey, we were going to have an overnight stop in Merredin which is roughly half way between Perth and Kalgoorlie. However we came across some information about a tourist attraction called the Hood-Penn Museum which was located in the town of Westonia. Only a further fifty kilometres from Merredin, we decided to book in to it’s caravan park for a couple of nights.

Heading east along Great Eastern Highway towards Kalgoorlie, Westonia is ten kilometres inland. We turned off the highway and drove through woodlands of salmon gum, morrell and gimlet mixed with granite outcrops. Quite a stunning outlook.

We arrived at the caravan park which was small but absolutely immaculate. It only costs $20 a night for power, water, flushing toilets, hot showers, camp kitchen and a tv to watch. We were met by the lovely caretaker who showed us to our drive through site and gave us a brochure about the town. After setting up, we took a stroll along the very wide main street.

The Shire of Westonia brochure explains: “The Wolfram Street Facades project involves the construction of all new buildings in Westonia’s town’s centre in a 1920’s historic style as well as the restoration and maintenance of all existing historic buildings in the town. The facades of the town’s original bank, cafe, hotel, fire station, boarding house and green grocer store have also been replicated and front new buildings constructed in Westonia.”

The Hood-Penn Museum – Wow!!! This has to be one of the best museums we have ever seen. Again from the brochure – “this is the result of an extremely generous donation of a large historical collection from the Hood-Penn family who previously owned the Burracoppin Store.  The museum features a variety of scenes showcasing early life in the shire including a pub scene, a shop/hardware store scene, a petrol station/garage scene, a kitchen scene, a bedroom scene and a blacksmith/farm workshop scene.  Each scene also includes a realistic lifelike mannequin, complete with wrinkles and blemishes.” The Council only charge $3 per adult to enter which is incredibly cheap, we would have been willing to pay far more. We highly recommend a visit as the photos we took don’t do it justice at all.

If you follow the AFL team Fremantle Dockers, which we do, you will love the Westonia Tavern! We had a tasty meal whilst watching a game on tv and chatting to the friendly locals.

We absolutely loved our couple of days at Westonia, an unexpected gem.

Wave Rock – a bucket list item. We had been trying to get here for years and finally made it on this trip. Rising 15 metres from the ground and more than 100 metres long, the rock looks like a giant surf wave of multicoloured granite about to crash onto the bush below. It’s believed this amazing formation was more than 2,700 million years in the making. It is located near the Wheatbelt town of Hyden, 340 kilometres south-east of Perth. We stayed at a place called Tressies Museum and Caravan Park which was a 15 minute drive from the rock.  It is owned and run by Charlie and his mum Laurel. They had a small museum on site showcasing a variety of items in use from years gone by.  (Update 2022 – Tressies is now closed permanently.)

Next to the entrance to Wave Rock were two museums – Memories of Yesteryear and Miniature Soldier Military Display. Both interesting and well worth the time to look around.

We also checked out Hippo’s Yawn – a stony outcrop looking like a Hippo yawning, Mulka’s Cave – The name comes from the aboriginal legend of Mulka and inside you can see the imprints of his hands, much larger and higher than that of an ordinary man. Lake Magic, a colour changing salt lake. There is an awesome floating pool at the Wave Rock Resort, next to Lake Magic. The water of this natural pool has a beautiful turquoise colour and is full of minerals and salt, so much of it that it will keep you afloat.

May 2021 – we set off to Albany. We are slowly making our way to South Australia. Heading there via Albany, Hyden, Westonia, Menzies, Kalgoorlie, Cocklebiddy, Head of Bight, Nullarbor Roadhouse, Ceduna, Port Augusta, Clare and Adelaide. A journey of approximately 4000 kilometres.

Albany sits on the south coast of Western Australia. Before European settlement, the Albany region was inhabited principally by the Menang Aborigines of the larger Noongar group. The area was called Kinjarling which means “place of rain”.  Evidence of an Aboriginal presence in the area dates back to about 25,000 years.

In December 1826, Major Edmund Lockyer arrived on the brig Amity to establish a military outpost at Mammang-Koort/ King George Sound.  On the 21^st of January 1827, an official ceremony was held proclaiming the foundation of the first settlement in Western Australia.

In 1952, the Cheynes Beach Whaling Company began its operations at Frenchman Bay, continuing until 21st November 1978, when the Cheynes II, Cheynes III and Cheynes IV berthed at the Albany Town Jetty after their last whale hunt.  The last shore based whaling station in Australia closed and 178 years of whaling in Albany waters came to an end.

Between 1952 and 1978, they had caught 1,136 humpbacks and 14,695 sperm whales alone. In 1954, over 1,016 tonnes of whale oil was produced from 120 whales, and in 1957, the company purchased their second chaser, Cheynes II.

The Australian author Tim Winton, patron of the Australian Marine Conservation Society, grew up in Albany. He doesn’t remember seeing any live whales in the ocean as a child but he saw plenty of dead ones. When visitors came from the city, the Winton family would head to the station’s observation platform for a view of the flensing deck – the place where the skin and blubber was manually stripped off the whales. “You would stand there in this fug of blubber steam – the most repulsive smell you could imagine.” (As written in an article in The Guardian by reporter Graham Readfearn 21/11/18)

Jude remembers going to Albany in the early 70’s and also smelling the stench from the Whaling Station wafting over the town.

We had been told about some amazing wooden sculptures so took a drive out to Darrel Radcliffe’s Sculpture Drive. Darrel is a chainsaw artist and uses old tree stumps as his canvas to create spectacular sculptures and artworks. Below are just a few pics we took. We highly recommend a visit.

We had been to Albany before and highly recommend a visit to the National Anzac Centre. It is a very modern building overlooking King George Sound and it honours the story of more than 40,000 Australians and New Zealanders who left Albany, bound for the Great War in 1914.

On the 22nd March 2020 the Western Australian Premier announced they woul be closing the border as of the 24th March and all people coming in would have to self isolate for 14 days. The South Australian Premier announced the same for their border.
On the 23rd March, Australia starts lockdown – bars, clubs, cinemas, places of worship, casinos and gyms are closed; schools start to close.
On the 24th March, the WA Government is planning to restrict travel between Western Australia’s regions to halt the spread of COVID-19. WA residents are being asked to cancel Easter travel plans. Wow, things were really heating up and we needed to do some serious thinking about our future travel plans. The owners of our farmsit made contact and said they would be returning early but would miss the deadline of getting back into WA before the hard border shut. This would mean they would have to self isolate for 14 days on their return. We spoke to the owners of the next housesit and they were very upset to advise that for now they wouldn’t be going away. Okay so what do we do, where do we go?

We already had a booking for a week at a caravan park just outside Bunbury, a 3hr drive from the Porongorups. We made contact with them to enquire about a longer term stay. This was Waterloo Village Caravan Park in Picton. Given the cirumstances they were happy for us to stay as long as was needed. We were overjoyed at this news. Jude’s brother lived in Bunbury and was supposed to be heading off on a 6 month caravan trip around Australia with his partner, but this had to be cancelled/postponed as well. At least we would get to spend some time with them!

We spent five weeks at Waterloo Village and it felt like a very safe haven in a topsy turvy world. We were living under a raft of restrictions which included:

• only shopping for what you need, such as food or other necessary supplies;
• medical or health care needs, including compassionate requirements;
• exercise, including outdoor personal training without shared equipment.
• facilities including pubs, bars, clubs, indoor sporting venues, cinemas, cultural institutions and places of worship to close immediately
• restaurants and cafes restricted to takeaway
• staying 1.5 metres from others
• using hand sanitiser

We had enjoyed our time at Waterloo Village, but after five weeks we moved ten kilometres down the road into the town of Bunbury. We managed to get a site at the caravan park opposite Koombana Bay. We love being near the water and this gave us plenty of opportunities for walking and cycling along the beach whilst still following all social distancing rules.

We kept in touch with the Busselton homeowners and six weeks later, the regional borders were reopened and the homeowners were able to leave for their trip up north. Instead of a six month housesit, it became four months. We left Bunbury and moved to Busselton, which was only fifty kilometres along the coast.

From June until the end of September we did the housesit in Busselton which included looking after their dog. The property was outside the town but opposite the water. Again we felt we were in a safe haven, and given WA had no Covid cases at this time, and given what was happening in other States with high numbers and lockdowns, we felt life was getting back to some sort of normality. The WA Government had lifted a number of restrictions, and venues had reopened.

From October 2020 to May 2021, we did a mixture of housesits and long term stays in caravan parks. During those months we continued to experience a sense of freedom from the virus. We did have one five day lockdown when we were staying in a caravan park not far from Bunbury. We spent the time reading and watching Netflix! As time went on and WA continued to be virus free, we felt very little negative impact from it. However we were feeling a little stir crazy from being in one area for so long. We began to make plans to leave WA and head east, back to South Australia. They were virus free too.

We first became aware of this virus in late January 2020. Ray had been in the UK and was at Dubai Airport in transit to Adelaide. I sent him a message saying “Watch out for people from China, there’s an epidemic going around. Did you hear about it?” I had read about the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Australia in Victoria on the 25th January. The patient was from Wuhan and had flown into Melbourne.

Ray arrived in Adelaide, safely and in good health, on the 30th January. On the 1st February the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, announced that “foreign arrivals from mainland China will not be allowed entry into Australia” and Australia’s national airline Qantas announced it was suspending direct flights to and from mainland China following bans in the US and Singapore. We had a brief chat about this news but as we had no intention of going to China we didn’t think too much about it. We were excited to be getting on with our own plans.

Over the next two weeks we prepared our van for departure. We were heading back to Western Australia and starting our journey on the 16th February. We had two housesits lined up in WA, one for three weeks in the Porongorups and one for six months in Busselton. It was over two years since we had been in our home state and it would be great to catch up with family and friends.

Our journey saw us stopping at Kimba, Ceduna, Nullarbor Roadhouse, Cocklebiddy, Balladonia and finally into Esperance and out to Cape Le Grand National Park where we set up home for a week at one of the campsites. Over the six days we spent travelling we had little to no internet and even at the campsite we didn’t really have any internet and therefore we were oblivious to what was happening in regard to Covid and Australia and the world. Our main concern was the possibility of having to evacuate due to bushfires in the area. Fortunately that didn’t happen.

Our three week housesit in the Porongorups started on the 6th March. The homeowners had gone on holiday to Tasmania.

10th March – Italy goes into national lockdown, shortly followed by other European countries
11th March – WHO (World Health Organisation) declares a global pandemic.
13th March – Australia forms a “National Cabinet” – Federal, State and Territory leaders – to enable a united approach to the crisis.
15th March – Australian government bans gatherings of more than 500 people.
16th March – People arriving in Australia from overseas must self-isolate for 14 days and people are told to start implementing stricter social distancing rules.

By now we were beginning to notice some impacts locally. When we went into Mt Barker to do our weekly shop at the IGA, there were arrows/crosses on the floor and hand sanitizer stations at the entrance and exit. The checkout staff were wearing gloves and you had to pack your own bags. There was also a preference that you pay by card rather than cash. And there was NO TOILET PAPER!!!!

Our housesit was actually a farmsit on 100 acres in the middle of the countryside. We felt very safe there tending to the dog, cats, chickens and cattle. We stopped going out unnecessarily, only doing the shopping and following all safety guidelines. We were in touch with the owners who were heading back to the mainland from Tasmania. We also spoke to the owners of the next housesit who confirmed they were still on track to be away for the six months, starting at Easter.

CHECK BACK SOON FOR THE NEXT STAGE OF OUR COVID TRAVELS.

In June 2019 we set up our home-on-wheels on a farm in the heart of the Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia. Winbirra is a 200-acre farm nestled in the Willunga Ranges. They are running beef cattle and 3000 hens (chooks) in 5 mobile trailers, producing pastured free-range eggs under the brand ‘feather&PECK‘. The weather was a mixture of blue skies and sunshine, and heavy fog and mist. Some days it was almost impossible to see our van or the chook pens. (Update May 2022 – they now run 4200 hens in 7 mobile trailers.)

We volunteered for 2-3 hours per day (except Wednesdays) collecting eggs, entering egg collection data, checking the feed/water for the hens, feeding the Maremma guardian dogs and loading the egg crates into a refrigerated trailer ready for the farmer to take to the processing plant. By the end of our eight weeks, we reckon we collected approximately 10,000 eggs!

We fell in love with the Maremma dogs and their puppies. Beautiful, loyal, playful, aloof at times and fiercely protective of their flock. 6 adults and 3 puppies, all with different personalities.

For those that have been following us, and those that are new to our blog, you may be wondering what happened to our website. The quick answer is cost, and in trying to reduce our costs we accidentally deleted a lot of already published content. 😱😢

However all is not lost as we did have a back up of our posts. We no longer have our full website, instead we are back to using our WordPress Blog site. At the moment, you can still find us by typing in smiffstraveloz.com and it will automatically default to our WordPress site. But should that change, our new address is smiffstraveloz.blog.

We have had feedback that it seems like we stopped travelling in 2018 as that is the last post showing. Therefore we will be updating our site with some of the old content so that there is a semblance of a proper timeline of our travels.

We travelled to the Yorke Peninsula (South Australia) today, Wednesday 11th May 2022, and what stunning weather we had. Blue skies and variegated blue water. We enjoyed an amazing view over Ardrossan from the top of a lookout provided by Simec Mining. We were last here in 2019 and we revisit that story below.

At the beginning of February 2019, we spent five nights at the small coastal town of Wallaroo on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. When we were first poring over the map, we thought we were back in Italy with its very similar boot looking outline. They may both have a comparable climate and beautiful sandy beaches, but that’s where it ends. The food, the history, the museums, the churches, they are all so very different.

The Yorke Peninsula has 700kms of coastline, with amazing beaches and scenery. There are a variety of towns, both coastal and inland to explore. Each one is unique in its history and landscape. Although we based ourselves in Wallaroo we didn’t actually explore much of the town itself. They have a Heritage and Nautical Museum, Marina, jetty, playground, golf club, and beautiful beaches. Copper was discovered in 1859 and the ore exported through the port. Today it is a big exporter of grain. Wallaroo, along with the towns of Kadina and Moonta, is also part of the Copper Triangle, because Copper was mined there from the late 19th century. The three towns are also known for their Cornish ethnicity and the area is known as Little Cornwall. Every two years a large Cornish themed festival, Kernewek Lowender, is held and claims to be the world’s largest Cornish Festival outside of Cornwall. The festival is being held this year from the 13th – 19th May. Unfortunately, we will be in Alice Springs, but we have put it in the calendar for 2021! Moonta is another quaint town and we enjoyed walking along the main street before having lunch in The Cornish Kitchen. Ray and Liz had the Cornish Pasty and gave it top marks for taste and authenticity. A five-minute drive from Moonta is Moonta Bay, and wow, how stunning is this beach! There is a long jetty which we walked along and saw quite a few folk fishing and crabbing. Halfway along the jetty, there is an area that has been fenced off as a safe swimming spot.

After visiting the Visitor Information Centre we decided to go on the Moonta Mines Tourist Railway. This was a fifty minute round trip on a narrow gauge rail, taking in the history of the copper mining operations. We went along and joined about forty other people on the small train that was operated by volunteers of the National Trust of SA Moonta Branch.

Rather than relying on our memory of the commentary by the Volunteer Train Driver, here is the explanatory text from the National Trust website – “Until the 1890’s all work underground was done by manual labour. No machines were used. The shafts were dug by hand using basic tools and blasting powder. To get from one level to another miners climbed up or down step ladders. Some shafts went as deep as 2,500 feet. The ore was hauled to the surface by horse whims. Engine houses were built to pump the brackish mineralized water from the mines. Hughes’ Pump House was constructed in 1865 and worked continuously until the mines closed in 1923. In all there was about 80 miles of shaft and drives in the area.

At its peak in the 1870’s around 2000 men and boys were employed by the Company. Pickey boys were paid 11 pence per day for a 6 day week. 16 — 21 year olds averaged 3/- to 5/- per day and men over 21 averaged 5/- to 8/- per day. The miners were paid on a percentage of the value of the copper they dug out.” This was a very informative and enjoyable journey and we would highly recommend if in the Moonta area.

Our last full day we drove from Wallaroo down to the bottom of the peninsula to Innes National Park which was absolutely spectacular. The national park occupies most of the land on the south-western tip of Yorke Peninsula. Some of the places we visited were Marion Bay, Chinamans Hat, Pondalowie Bay, and Stenhouse Bay. One day wasn’t long enough and we will most certainly be returning to explore in greater detail. Huge thanks to John and Liz for their company, their cooking skills and driving us around.