Le Grande Nat Park to Ceduna

What a week of contrast, from the most beautiful beaches (ridiculously beautiful as one backpacker told us) to the Super Pit then leaving Western Australia, a very beautiful state and into South Australia across the Nullabor .

We spent the weekend in Le Grande National Park camping at Lucky Bay.  We set up camp and went for a long walk along the beach, the whitest sand we have ever seen and the clearest water, and the colour, unbelievably turquoise. There was an area where there was weed washing up that made the beach look messy, but on the whole it was beautiful. Garry climbed a hill after lunch for some magnificent views of the bay, islands and ocean that take your breath away. The next day we decided to go driving to explore the rest of the park, first was Rossiter Bay which was long and nice, then onto Hellfire Bay. Well the first glimpse here had us seeing the most beautiful beach we have ever seen, in Australia or anywhere. The beach was so white with not an impurity on it, no weed, no shells, no rubbish and the water, so clear, so many shades of blue, you can’t describe it, just perfect.  After walking the length of the bay and just spending time here marvelling at the beauty, we dragged ourselves away and on to Le Grande beach and again just beautiful. This beach was also white, long (all the way back to Esperance 60kms away), and the water pristine again. We swam here even though the water was quite cool. We just had to go in.  Garry then snorklled and even though there were no fish or coral, the visibility was the best he has ever seen and he paddled around for ages looking at the water and the pure white sandy bottom being washed in the waves.

Our first walk on Lucky Bay beach

Lucky Bay from the granite hilltop - campground mid left

granite islands keeping the waves down

Lucky Bay

Hellfire Bay

It is so hard to photograph sand so white and water so clear

sooo clear

Our favorite beach so far

Enjoying the waves on Le Grand Beach

heading for the snorkel and back in again...

Catching rays not waves

Thistle Cove

Just one last look at Hellfire Bay

We found it hard to drag ourselves away from the beautiful beaches and water on Monday morning, but after one more look at Hellfire Bay and another bunch of photos, we headed for Kalgoorlie travelling via Coolgardie.

Coolgardie buildings reflecting bygone good times  

Garry had rung ahead and booked on a tour of the gold mine which he took next morning.  Gold has been mined since 1895 and the area called the Golden (square) Mile had more than 80 steel framed poppet(lift) heads with hundreds of other hand dug shafts and thousands of kilometres of tunnels dug down to 1,700m deep and with over 2,500km of narrow light rail line installed.  Alan Bond came up with the idea of buying all the leases up and digging one large open cut mine to recover all of the gold in between all of the smaller mines.  The Super Pit now owned 50% Barrack / 50% Newmont, has been developed to be 4km long, 1.5km wide and 720m deep and growing.  The mine operates 44 Cat793 trucks moving 300,000t of material per day resulting in 40,000t of high grade ore for processing, With the remainder being placed in the Marginal, Low Grade, or Waste dumps.  The tour was excellent offering a good look inside the pit, around the processing plant and from good pit edge lookouts.  They have recently discovered a large underground workshop area still intact with jarrah benches, tools, and office furniture complete with plans and mine drawings and are in the process of recovering it all by large crane lowering people over the side wall and into the reopened tunnel.

Kalgoorlie buildings are not plain

even the dome on the clock tower is 24ct gold foil plated as of 2012

Beaut old pub

Super Pit 720m deep, the bench near top of opposite wall is being widened 350m 

drilling and excavating the wider bench

240t truck passing tunnel from old underground mine

heavy duty shovel bucket .

Wednesday and we set out for the Nullabor crossing and onto South Australia. Garry decided to play the Nullabor links which is the world’s longest golf course. There are 18 holes spread over 1,365km from Kalgoolie to Ceduna. Having to stop at towns and roadhouses along the way broke the trip up and made us take regular breaks. Carol made a photographic record of the golf whilst Garry enjoyed the challenge of the course. 

Hole 1 of the Nullabor Links, looks great at this stage...

the fairway grass changes a bit as you go!!!  Note the guide posts marking the fairway and the Japanese flag showing where the flag is.

We were lucky that the first day of travelling was overcast with the wind behind us, and the second was overcast with very light rain so made the trip very cool as apparently it can be very hot travelling the Nullabor. We also free camped the second night near the cliffs of the Great Aust. Bight.  A weather front moved through late in the day which meant we experienced a delightful evening / night of sea breezes averaging 100+kph with gusts well in excess.  We thought the van was going to blow away on several occasions.  The sun peeped out right on sunset giving us some good photos of the cliffs but the wind still howled through it. The road itself it wide, straight and in excellent condition. It is a lot more vegetated then we thought it would be, with plenty of wildlife of course, emus, kangaroos, eagles, dingos and a camel. There were even emus walking around on a couple of the golf holes.

Our first look at the cliffs of the Bight

The sun peeking through but you can't photograph the 70knot winds!!!

Sunny days and great views

At the Head of the Bight where 90 southern right whales come each year during winter

We saw camels, roos, dingos, eagles, emus but no wombats

 The third day on the Nullabor had a bit more to see with several stops to view the ocean cliffs and a change in the scenery from flat scrubby plains to rolling wheat fields nearer Ceduna, although the whole way looked dry.  Ceduna looks nice and peaceful and we are ready for bed after a walk along the pier in the cold wind.  Turns out we timed our trip right with Ceduna having 47 deg heat yesterday and 25 deg maximum and cold wind today.   

Ceduna beach - van park right behind the trees mid photo