Crossing the Nullarbor

Yeah... we made it! We drove half a day on 4WD tracks from Cape Arid National Park north to the Eyre Highway.

The Eyre Highway connects Western Australia with South Australia. You drive fom the village Norseman (Western Australia) to Penong (South Australia) 1120kms without any village or town!! The only reminder of population is the roadhouses that you can find every 100kms. As a comparison: If you drive from Flensburg to Garmisch-Partenkirchen it is only 1014kms.  Imagine this long way without any population!!!

Here one of the most boring sections of this highway! Here you really can cook a coffee while driving the car!

One straight road for 146km! Unbelievable!

Here you can see some seconds from this amazing drive:

 

Cocklebiddy was one of the roadhouses and this sign says everything...

Big, bigger, Australia!

Eva was a little bit sad when she had to leave WA.

But we definitly were also quite curious how it looks like in South Australia.

The first few hundred kms were quite similar. Nullarbor = zero tree!

Impression of a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Sometimes it is also very nice to visit the rubbish tips on the side of the highway. A lot of rust but the chrome plated handle is still OK! 

Cape Arid National Park

The entrance to Cape Arid National Park looked more like hell than the beaches in Cape Le Grand NP :-)

But our lady performed very well and took us everywhere.

Israelite Bay was our first destination in the park. We needed about 3 hours of 4 wheel driving to get to this bay.

Not that anyone can ever complain again that Australia doesn't have any history!?! This is the old Telegraph station built in the 19th century.

The people that worked there are unfortunately already dead.

Israelite Bay

The best toilet since Mongolia!

The next day we drove to Mt Ragged. The track was so bad that we needed 3 hours for 30kms! Deep potholes, a lot of rain damage and big limestones!

We also tried to climb up Mt Ragged, but we only made 2/3 of the Mountain, because the trail was too hard for Eva.

Rear view of "Spiderschwein"

Front view of "Spiderschwein" (Eva almost crashed together with this creature that was nearly as tall as Eva!)

An amazing view! We realized that we were alone within a diameter of 100kms. This was really crazy!

After our hiking tour we needed some energy... You can have a guess, which plate and drink was Eva's and which one was Joram's.

Australia Day on 26th of January - no pics from us but some music

We celebrated the Australia Day in Albany... It was somehow interesting and strange at the same time.

First of all there was no beer and no other alcohol at the official party in Albany!!! So there were nearly only old persons and children during the day.

At the beginning there was an official cermony with the major and some officials. The interesting part of this ceremony was that everybody was singing the official and the inofficial national anthem (more about this see below). Then all new citizens of Albany that immigrated to Australia were welcomed by the major. After that they all spoke the following pledge:

From this time forward
I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people,
whose democratic beliefs I share,
whose rights and liberties I respect, and
whose laws I will uphold and obey.

In the evening a band with the name "Homebrewe" played and after that there was a gigantic firework.

But here the inofficial National Anthem: "Waltzing Matilda" from Slim Dusty a famous Australian country singer:

 

By the way you also have to look at this song from Slim Dusty as it describes a litlle bit the Australian way:

Cape le Grand National Park or one of the best beaches in OZ

Despite the bad weather we went hiking on the first day.

What to say... Mother Nature is the best.

Lucky Bay - crystal clear blue water and dusting sugar sand.

The campsite kangoroo:

 

On our second day we were lucky and had perfect weather. So we went to the beach and relaxed. Here you can see the "Hellfire Bay". If this is hell I don´t want to go to heaven!

Also Little Hellfire Bay was beautiful as we saw a lot of dolphins there.

Without words!

Two weeks in the hell of Amuri Creek or strawberry picking with 40 Asians

Attracted by the nice job advertisement in Mt. Barker we thought: "Better earning money when the weather is bad than travelling." So we called and got the job.

Strawberry fields forever? Definitely not!!! These strawberrys didn´t taste and caused a real back pain. You got paid for trays. One tray was between 3.50 and 5.50$. This means for us around 18 to 20 bugs per hour. Some Asian guys made more than double of us! Unbelievable.

The race starts. Every day we picked around four hours. We couldn´t feel our back at the end of the day!!!

Eva carrying two trays.

And we had a supervisor that looked after us the whole working day: "Hey brother don´t forget the green mouldy ones and throw them on the ground! Pick only full colour" shouted Hassan alias "Tali" in a bad English with an Afghanistan accent.  

Here you can see the normal madness of packing strawberries. The video shows the beginning of the packing and the brother of "Tali" who was one of the fastest packers. We just called him "The Machine"!

After one hour of packing the packed trays: The Machine, Joram and Eva (from left to right)

Per tray you got 1,60$.

Jody from Hongkong.

Joram from Weißenbrunn and Eva from Randersacker.

See above.

But there was not only work, there was also a lot of garlic! Especially on Chinese New Year.

Some were working...

... and some were watching.

But one video says more than thousand pictures:

This is the result of all the preparation. Very tasty but the party was very dry. No beer!

For god´s sake the puppies survived Chinese New Year. ;-)

Our conclusion after 13days:

1. The work @ Brose is a little bit better!

2. Never, ever buy or eat any industrial strawberries

3. The only thing you can do with them:

Things to do at Normans Beach near Albany

Jo took out the fuel pick up assembly because we can use only 80l of our 95l main tank.

The problem was the bended pickup pipe. But to bend it back was not the solution... No more questions please because it´s a neverending story.

What is this??? The one of you that sends us the answer first will receive a little present from us!!!

We were camping next to the inlet.

Looks dangerous but is somehow dead.