Laverton to Perth

It was quite lucky that our bodies were still on NT time, and that the kids woke up pretty early the next morning.  The caravan park we were staying in was pretty basic, but adequate after our trip across the GCR.  It was also reasonably empty, except for a number of workers, presumably miners.  After dark a big work truck rolled up towing an old van.  They parked right beside us and setup.  During the night, we did notice the boys (maybe having come back from the pub) talking amongst themselves like it was midday.  Weird, but whatever.

What was a little more enjoyable however was them getting up, chatting (loudly) and then.... best of all, starting their truck up at 5.30am, for a 10 minute warm up.  Just as well we are so relaxed and on holidays.  Like I said, we were (just) awake, so no great biggie, but sheesh, respect!

From Laverton, we drove down to Leonora, fuelled up, and continued down to Kalgoorlie.  On the road down to Kal, we were absolutely amazed with how many trucks were on this road.  This looked like the central hub of mining for the whole of Australia.  Wow.

Back in Leonora, we had parked out the front of a pub to also get a quick bite to eat.  Standing there, we looked across at the chalk boards on the wall near the door.  One said “Tonight’s Specials”... yep, pretty standard.  On the other side it read “Tonight’s Skimpy”.  Ummm..  is that??.. really?  Does it really mean that????  In very faint chalk was written “Kashia”.  Hmm.. yep, seems to mean what we think it means.  For a laugh, Amy got a photo taken in front of the board.  Pity we didn’t have any chalk handy to put her name up there too.

Possible employment option...?

In Kalgoorlie, we stopped for a quick lunch.  It looked like a pretty big place, and interesting.  We didn’t have time to go see the ‘Super Pit’, maybe on the way back through.  We did notice though, on nearly every pub we passed, “Tonights Skimpy”.  It was all over the place!!!!  The boards were a little more ornate, and not rubbed out.  “Holly” was on tonight.

Good to keep abreast of the competition

We drove through the afternoon until getting to a designated roadside stop.  It was a huge area for camping and we wandered up the back to find a spot.  It looked perfect..... then we got out... and hmmm..  a few flies here.  Let’s setup.

By the time we had setup, we had about 20,000 flies on us, over us, around us.  They were horrendous!  We did murmur about packing up and moving out, but that seemed a bit over the top.  They were VERY bad though.  We ended up eating dinner in the camper which was actually quite comfortable.  We sat up on the cushions and the girls had their little table on the floor.  A quick washup, brush teeth, and we all hit the sack early.  Bugger those flies.  That’s ridiculous.

We were fearful of the onslaught in the morning.  We got up, and Glenn organised the breakfast, passing it through to the girls in the camper to eat there.  They were ok actually, not toooo bad, although when the sun did really come up, they started to appear.  Time to get out of there!

We did another reasonable day from there, stopping at Northam for a relaxed cafe lunch, a few ingredients for spag bol that night, and we were on our way again.

Rolling into the big city, our first since, well, Melbourne really, was not too bad.  We were early enough to avoid the thick traffic, and got to the caravan park in enough time to setup, have dinner, and hit the sack early.  It had been a big trip to get here!