Oh my, I'm Building a House!

My meeting with Richard from Hotondo Homes went really well and I felt comfortable with him, which means a lot to my intuition. I was excited but quite nervous about this meeting as I’ve never gone through the process of building a house where I make all the decisions. Throughout the several hours I spent with him he ran through all the information he needed to tell me, we looked at the layout, inclusions and standard of the houses already built by Hotondo Homes. Looking around I was impressed with the standard, not that I’m an expert. I also ran through the three pages of questions I had prepared. It was pretty weird writing my questions as I didn’t really know what questions to ask.

Seachange Estate

During this initial meeting I also made some preliminary decisions on things like roofline, lighting requirements and extras I really knew I wanted. Although nothing is set in stone until much further in the process. I was then required to pay a $1000 refundable deposit. He also advised that the title of the land would not come through for 12 -15 months as it is only a paddock at the moment. That takes it well into the tail end of 2020, but that doesn't worry me as I have to have time to get my current house organised and sold. Then it was a short drive to checkout my piece of land. It took exactly 3 minutes to drive to the beach. 

Lot 614 - This is where my new house will stand

Oh I'm thinking there might be a little bit of fishing done from this pier

Oh, my giddy aunt my head was spinning when I left. I can't believe I am actually buying a new house.

Kiama, South Coast New South Wales

Kiama is a delightful little town on the south coast of New South Wales. With a population of around 13,000 it's bigger than some towns we've visited but still small enough not to feel overwhelmed by lots of people. The caravan park we are staying at is called Kendalls on the Beach and as the name implies it is literally right on the beach. Lying in bed at night listening to the crashing waves certainly is a nice sound to fall asleep to.

The beach at our front door

Our stay here is a lazy few days but Kiama still has quite a few attractions to visit, with Kiama Blowhole probably being the most famous. The Kiama Blowhole is an unusual rock formation that spouts spectacular plumes of water high into the air.

Kiama Blowhole .... before the surge....

Kiama Blowhole

Right next to the Blowhole is the imposing Kiama Lighthouse. This lighthouse was established in 1887. The original apparatus in the lighthouse was an oil burner, producing a light that was visible for nine miles. After several upgrades to coal gas, acetylene gas then 240 volt the lighthouse was then de-manned.

Kiama Lighthouse

Just around the corner from where we are staying is the Little Blowhole. Similar to it's big sister, the Little Blowhole spouts vigorous sprays of water from a naturally rock cove. The reason for the name Little Blowhole is not that it spouts are not as high, but the hole where the water comes from is narrower.

The Little Blowhole

As the water rushes through both blowholes it is accompanied by a thundering sound of the air and water being forced through the openings.

Warrnambool, Victoria

WooHoo after 12 months I am back in my home state and I must say it certainly is a bit chilly. Even though our short stay in Warrnambool was cold and wet it was still nice to be back in this seaside city again. With a population of around 34,000 Warrnambool is quite a large regional city. I have been here quite a few times and it never fails to impress me. If I was to ever move from Eltham to a regional area this is one city I could live in.

A bit chilly, but I do love the ocean on a wintery day

In days gone by the Fletcher Jones and Staff company was the place for men to buy clothes. I remember my Dad always bought his trousers from Fletcher Jones. Sir (David) Fletcher Jones OBE (14/8/1895 - 22/2/1977) was an Australian clothing manufacturer, and pioneer in workforce participation. It is claimed that "Arguably, no single person or firm had done more to transform and, for a time, homogenize Australian dress standards among men, than Fletcher Jones and his staff". He structured his business so that all the employees owned shares in the company. Initially the Jones family had two-thirds and the staff one-third, but the balance gradually swung and by the 1970's the staff held over 50 percent of the shares. As well as the factory outlet Fletcher Jones' beautiful gardens were a drawcard for many tourists visiting the area. But by 2012 all the Fletcher Jones stores and the Warrnambool factory had closed. The factory is still standing but most of it has fallen into disrepair, but luckily the gardens are still there and as beautiful as ever.

Beautiful .....

Fletcher Jones Gardens

Still very impressive after so many years

There was even some very impressive vegetables

I don't like the taste of Artichokes but I really like the plant

Port Broughton to Ardrossan

Well what an interesting few days I have had since my last post. After having ringing in my ears for about 5 days I ended up spending our last night in Port Broughton in hospital. I came down with a bad episode of vertigo, which in turn had me throwing up violently. Shane bundled me up and got me to hospital. It was really weird as I couldn't walk straight no matter how hard I tried. They think it may be caused by a middle ear infection, but not sure. After getting and injection to stop the ringing, dizziness and vomiting and spending the night in Port Broughton hospital I am now OK, although my ears are still ringing.

After a night in hospital I felt almost 100% better

So we are now on the East side of the Yorke Peninsula in another seaside village called Ardrossan. At first I was a little bit apprehensive about coming to the Yorke Peninsula. After reading the tourist brochures nothing really grabbed me. But after having time here I now see why it is popular with South Australians, it is a really pretty area. It has some lovely small villages, spectacular scenery, beautiful countryside and coastline.

I don't think I will ever get sick of looking out at the ocean

Ardrossan is a thriving seaport with a population of about 1100 people. With an abundance of blue swimmer crabs, great fishing, shipwrecks and an interesting history it is no wonder it is so popular with tourists.



Yet another Wharf! This one has been good to us.
Shane got six Blue Swimmer crabs for my dinner

Wattle Point Wind Farm.
When this wind farm was officially opened back in June 2005,
it was the biggest wind farm in Australia with 91 megawatts.

As this weekend is a long weekend in some Australian states this peninsula is pretty busy. We have visited some of the normally quiet little settlements and even though there are a lot more people around they are still delightful.

The Stansbury village had some beautiful murals

Today I spent the day in one such village, Stansbury at the Stansbury Seaside Market. Due to a cancellation, I was lucky enough to get a spot to have a stand with my jewellery. It was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky, the sun beaming down, but not to hot, the beautiful blue ocean beside me and having the privilege of sharing my jewellery with the masses. The market was quite busy and I had a fairly successful day.

My little stand for DavineRaeDesign

Now that's a Fish!!

Today is our last day in Streaky Bay. I have liked it here, it's a nice little village, public spaces are covered in lush, soft grassed areas, the streets, wharf, in fact everywhere is very clean. There are also some beautiful old houses and buildings.

Fishing is very popular in this area but we haven't had any luck, but back on April 26, 1990  a young 21 year old Dion Gilmore did very well on his fishing adventure. On that day he landed a 1520 kg (3351 pounds), 5 metre (16.4 feet) Great White Pointer Shark!

Prior to getting here I had read about the local service station having a replica of the shark on display. As we entered the room it was located in we almost jumped out of our skin as the lights were out and the great huge mouth and set of teeth was looming in our faces. It is huge, and would be such a hard fish to reel in. Then later in the day I found this photo of the catch on the back of a trailer.

Wow it is huge!!

Excuse my language.... but this sight frightened the crap out of both of us

The replica of the 1520kg Great White

Now that's a FISH!!

Westall Way, Point Labatt and Sealions

Today we went on what started out to be a short drive and ended up being a whole day drive. Our first drive was on the Westall Way Loop Drive, just south of Streaky Bay. First stop was at what was called "Smooth Pool" but it didn't look to smooth to me. Very pretty with it's amazing ancient rock pools but not smooth.

Smooth Pool - not to sure about the smooth bit!

Then it was onto Point Westall, with an ocean calmer than we had seen in quite a while.

Point Westall

Next was onto the "Granites" with their lichen covered rocks.

Granites

It wasn't hard to know when we had arrived at Tractor Beach by the old rusted tractor.

The entrance to Tractor Beach

After a bit of a drive along the Point Labatt Sealion Drive we reached Point Labatt to look at the only permanent colony on the Australian mainland of Australian sea lions (Neophoca cinera). From the viewing platform you can watch up to 50 of one of Australia's most endangered marine mammals and the world's rarest sea lions and New Zealand fur seals.

A small portion of the sealions and seals

Then to cap of a pretty good day we arrived at "Murphy's Haystacks". Murphy's Haystacks are ancient, wind-worn pillars and boulders of pink granite estimated to be over 1,500 million years old. The actual name of these rock formations are Inselbergs. They obtained the Murphy's Haystacks name when an Irish traveller in a coach saw the formation in the distance. He asked how a farmer could produce so much hay. As the farm was on a property owned by a man called Murphy they became Murphy's haystacks. It didn't matter to me how they got their name they were pretty spectacular.

The only word the describe the sight is ........

..........Amazing

Cape Bauer Loop Drive

Today we went for a drive around the Cape Bauer Loop drive. The scenery along this part of the Great Australian Bight is both rugged and spectacular. Before heading onto the loop drive we went and checked out the Back Beach to see if it would be OK to have  fish. Unfortunately no, it was way to windy, but the view was beautiful.

Back Beach

Along the loop drive our first stop was at Cape Bauer, this coastline is so rugged you had no hope of getting down to the beach but oh my it was a wonderful sight.

Cape Bauer

Then it onto the Whistling Rocks and the Blowholes. both these locations are easy to get to with a 360mtr boardwalk and viewing platforms. I wouldn't say the Whistling Rocks actually whistled it was more like an extremely loud whoosh as the force of the waves rushed up the cave. The power of the ocean always excites me. The blowholes was a little disappointing as the ocean wasn't rough enough for them but the sight was still spectacular.

Whistling Rocks

Blowholes - without the water spout

These huge holes beside the lookout were pretty amazing

We then headed back to Streaky Bay to try a bit of fishing on the wharf. Prior to leaving this morning we asked the girl in the caravan park reception what sort of fish you could catch off the wharf. She told us a couple and then said "hopefully you don't get to many shitties"!! We said what are they? She couldn't remember the correct name and said "oh we call them shitties because they taste terrible". I think you can guess what we caught, yes your right - Shitties. Oh well at least we can use a couple of then as bait when we go crabbing tomorrow.

Streaky Bay Wharf

This baby was doing an awful lot of complaining

Streaky Bay, South Australia

Bugger, I typed all of this post last night and it didn't upload so I will have another try again!

Our drive from Smokey Bay to Streaky Bay was certainly a long drive - NOT! It was all of 73kms (about 45 miles) but we still had a lazy day after packing up and then setting Myrtle up again.

Our Streaky Bay home

We are staying at Streaky Bay Foreshore Tourist Park which by the name implies we are right on the water. I've already been told we should be able to get some more crabs off the jetty here. Apparently they had a huge down poor on the same night we did in Smokey Bay.

A local said all was OK but the Pub got flooded, instantly Shane asked if it was still open!!

Our view from Myrtle - as you can see the tide goes out a long way

These guys always know where to get an easy feed.
As soon as someone heads to the fish cleaning area the pelicans arrive not long after them.

  Streaky Bay is another small coastal village with a population of around 1200. The main industries are the growing of cereal grains, fishing and tourism. It was named by Captain Mathew Flinders because of the streaks in the water across the bay, which were caused by the reflection of light and seaweed.

I love these guys

 

....sometimes they look like they are smiling

The Nullabor Plain.....so far

Yeah I finally have Internet coverage, for a little while anyway.

The Norseman Camels bid us farewell as we started our Nullabor Adventure

Well here we are our fourth night on the Nullabor Plain. We were both a bit excited about this part of our adventure as we had never travelled across this vast expanse of land before and really didn't know what to expect. The name Nullabor was given to this area  by a surveyor, E. A. Delisser back in 1867. The name came from the Latin "Nullus" and Arbor" meaning no trees. The aboriginal name for the Nullabor Plain was "Oondiri" meaning "the waterless" as the average rainfall of the areas about 8 inches per year. The Nullabor stretches approx. 724 kms (450 miles) from east to west and from the coast it extends 321 kms (200 miles) to the Great Victorian Desert in the North.

Our first night on the Plain was spent at Fraser Range Station. Traditionally Fraser Range has run Merino sheep, but due to the rainfall and inaccessibility of the range and Hardwood forest they are planning to run cattle in the future. We originally thought we would spend two nights here but due to the tremendous wind we decided on just one night. 

The sun starts to peek through the clouds at Fraser Range Station

Our second night was at a Roadhouse called Cocklebiddy Wedgetail Inn. It was an OK place to stay. But what got me was that this area has it's own time zone called the Central Western Standard Time. It's the only part of Western Australia that is 45 mins different to the rest of WA. I found it very confusing not knowing what time we were WA time, Central West time or South Australia time!!

We were greeted by this amusing sign.....but we didn't see one kangaroo!

......and yes it was a very loooong straight road......

Then last night our third night was spent at the Western Australia/South Australia border. Once again it was a road house and again OK. We decided to have a meal in their bar and it was very yummy. 

These signs are at regular intervals along the Eyre Highway. But we didn't see any camels. wombats or kangaroos....but we did see a family of Emu's that thought they would try and get across the road before I got there. I had to almost stop to let them pass. Luckily there were no other cars around.

One foot in South Australia and one foot in Western Australia

Today we hit the Nullabor Plain as I had imagined, very flat and barren. This part of it is also closer to the southern coastline so we got to view the famous Bunda Cliffs and they certainly didn't disappoint. The plain drops 90 metres into the pounding Southern Ocean. The Bunda Cliffs stretch for over 200 kms. 

What a spectacular sight greeted us

Tonight we are staying at yet another roadhouse this time it's called the Nullabor Roadhouse. The roadhouse is pretty basic and just somewhere to lay our head, but this part of the world is amazing. The land is very flat with low growing tough vegetation and this huge expanse of glorious blue sky. I have never been in a place where there is so much sky. I am really looking forward to sitting looking at the stars tonight. 

The land is so flat and vast you can actually see the curvature of the earth

The Nullabor treated us to a spectacular sunset tonight.