Day 366 - Happy 1 Year Anniversary Karma Bus!

• Glenelg
• 16°c

12 months on the road for The Karma Bus and what an experience it has been! We have travelled over 41,595kms and seen so many amazing places and met so many fantastic people. It has been an absolutely awesome adventure and one we are so glad we've embarked upon.

Oscar and Ella chose The Sushi Train as our lunch spot in the heart of Adelaide today and it was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

In Adelaide we checked out Rundle Mall and were quite surprised at how big the city actually is! We haven't been in the big smoke for quite some time now. Then it was back home and a chance for one last play before we pack up and move on tomorrow. Steve went out for dinner with Freshy and had a great time catching up, many a yarn and a laugh I bet! Ella, Occy & I had pancakes for dinner as a treat and I managed to improve on the best pancake ever by making them even healthier!

Day 226 - On the road again!

• Yaroomba – Hervey Bay
• 200km
• 30°c

Bit sad to be leaving our dear friends but we have to get the Karma Bus back on the road or else we’ll never leave! But before we did Lizette gave me a little haircut, just a snip here & a snip there, for a hair analysis!

 We bid farewell and hit the open road for Hervey Bay, we found a great caravan park and settled in.

Shelly Beach Caravan Park, $29 powered site, pool, clean amenities, great location, friendly people

Day 14 - Eagles

• Menzies - Mt Magnet
• 529kms
• 24°c

Look out, i'm driving!!

Steve decided I was ready for my lesson in Caravan Towing.  I was super impressed with how well the Jeep towed it, although i must admit I did not like the Wind Wobblies at all, it just comes outta nowhere and you have to fight it to keep her on the straight and narrow! 

I was getting the "Flying Vibe" from Steve and could tell he wasn't enjoying being a passenger so after my 5kms of being Caravan Captain I pulled over and let Ketut take command again!!

He assured me I was a "Wonderful Driver" but was just more comfortable being the driver.

That's fine with me, cause to be honest i'm more comfortable with Steve behind the wheel too!

Really glad we'd done the "ring around the Caravan" when this roadtrain went hooning past us!

Colours in the desert are a nice break from Red, Red, Red!

Finally we managed to get some photos of the Wedge Tailed Eagles that have been flying overhead!

They are larger than I ever imagined, the photos really don't do them justice. We were unable to get photos of the two largest ones we saw. The wingspan on one of them was as wide as the bonnet of the car & another one perched on the side of the road was about two feet tall.

Mt Magnet Caravan Park, $35 a night, power, water, hot, hot showers, dump point,  and a really cute dog "Bam Bam" who's hobbies include wearing sunglasses and riding motorbikes!

Day 13 - Drive Faster, I Hear Banjos!

• Balladonia - Kalgoorlie - 380kms
• Kalgoorlie - Menzies - 133kms
• 20°c

Overnight was super windy, maybe that herd of wild camels went rushing past our camp? 

seriously thought the van may tip over during the night!

So we started the day with no phone  reception again, until we were about 25kms South of Norseman.  That was 599kms no phone reception across the Nullarbor, we didn't need it but were thankful we had the Satellite Phone.

Also no radio reception so were on ipod shuffle for most of todays drive and we couldn't help but giggle as Duelling Banjos aka Deliverance blasted onto the stereo, yet i did stop laughing when Steve wouldn't let me use my veto to skip it.

Thought we'd stop over at Kalgoorlie for a night or two, but that wasn't to be.  All the caravan parks were booked out, The Goldminer caravan park doesn't open it's office on Weekends? Strange.

We found a free camp spot and discovered the reason all the parks are booked out is that The Kalgoorlie Cup is on!  Apparently it's a huge deal in town, we thought the dressed to the nines locals were just a little odd? Really would've liked to see the Super Pit but it wasn't to be, we decided to keep driving and stop a little further on.

 We stopped for the night in Menzies, which is almost a ghost town yet has a really good vibe to it

Menzies Caravan Park, $29 a night, only charged $1.50 each child!, power, water, shower, great place to stop, super helpful & friendly caretaker

Day 12 - The Wild West

• Border Village - Balladonia
• 525kms
• 30°c

We did the hop,.. we did the Border Hop,.. the Border Hop,.. it was kind of a flop! Well according to Oscar anyway, but i'm sure deep down he really thought it was cool?!

Quarantine was a serious affair, the lady checked over the car, under the blankets, in the boot, she looked in everything that opened and closed in the van, including the freezer! I think we were lucky she didn't pull on a pair of gloves!  All good and we were waved on into the West.

The second we crossed over into Western Australia we lost phone reception, we are now in radio silence, see you on the flip side.

They aren't lying when they say 90 mile straight road! It is the longest straight road in Australia.

Not a curve at all, lots of ups & downs but not even a bend!

Caiguna Blowhole breathes in and out! Was awesome to feel the cold air coming from the blowhole, however Ella & Oscar weren't keen to get too close to it.

 We did see lizards, 2 eagles, 1 snake, an emu and a camel, unfortunately the emu and camel were on the side of the road and they weren't resting. oh and we did see more crazy cyclists.

We stopped for the night at the Balladonia Roadhouse which also happens to be home to....

SKYLAB!

How very cool, a real piece of space junk in our own backyard!

Pretty cool to touch something that has been into outer space

Balladonia Roadhouse, $32 a night, powered site, no water, shower - just enough to get wet, nice spot to stop off for a night

Day 2 - Crossing the border

• Kaniva - Adelaide  
• 320kms 
• 23°c

So we kinda missed the border.. Here we'd been talking it up to Ella & Oscar - 

"we'll do one foot in Vic & 1 foot in S.A. and hop back and forth over the border", it'll be really cool!

There we were busy trying to eat as many of the pears we had on board before we hit the quarantine bin, when the sign "Welcome to South Australia" whizzed past.. Crap! You'd think the quarantine bin would be on the Victorian side of the border but nope it was a couple of km's further along into SA territory & there was no where to turn around for that Totally Awesome photo op.  Hmm what to do, should we pretend we hadn't seen the sign and act surprised or just make an executive decision that the border is actually the quarantine bin? That's what we thought to! But we have definitely got the Border Hop on our Photo List for the way back.

We bought a Jeep, thanks for the heads up that the fuel gauge could go from a safe 40kms to WARNING 4kms of fuel, over the very steep hills coming into Adelaide?  We learnt a very important lesson about carrying Jerry Cans, yes they were full, but it would've been a great idea to label the fuel type! But thankfully Steves' nose was able to distinguish diesel from unleaded and we were sorted in no time!

Adelaide Shores Caravan Park - Big4  - $50 a night