Our plans on the coast were curtailed by heavy rain, so we drove back (through it) to Canberra – via the bakery in Braidwood, and the KFC in Tuggeranong! We had one other stop before leaving the ACT (the next day) – Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. I was a bit sceptical about any nature reserve in the ACT, as I thought it was pretty small and wouldn’t have room. I was expecting something like the patches of moorland that you find in cities in the north of England. I suppose I wasn’t really thinking in Australian terms.
As you can see there’s plenty of room in the ACT
Tidbinbilla was actually a pretty short drive out from the suburbs, and has heaps of wildlife living in it. We took a few walks from various points and found Black Swans, Black Ducks, and a Black Snake. Looking a bit closer, we found a Platypus and a Musk Duck – which seems to be the duck equivalent of a Platypus. As with any open, green space in Australia, there were Wallabies hopping around. If you’re in the ACT, I’d recommend a trip out to Tidbinbilla, it’s a pretty good place to visit by any standard, and easy too. And it looks like this:
Although less humid than at lower elevations, Tidbinbilla was plenty hot the day we went – it’s still Australia!
Our visit was pretty brief, as we were aiming to be in Sydney in time for drinks/dinner (which we were). But that just meant we got to do the drive in the light this time, and that meant seeing Australia’s awesome big sky again.
Just a rest stop on the Federal Highway, but it’s this kind of thing that keeps me going back
Heading north out of Sydney, we had a look around Coffs Harbour. We’d been through Coffs Harbour before, accidentally getting lost in the Sapphire Beach housing development (not sure what we were looking for but it wasn’t there, nothing was). There must have been something about the place as we ended up there again after getting confused on a roundabout. These things happen. We managed to escape however, and investigate Sapphire Beach itself, and some of the other beaches – this part of the NSW coast is just beach after beach after beach.
Unfortunately for us it tipped it down with rain, until we got fed up and went to do other things (like buy new jandals). At least we were staying in a building and not a tent that night!
Another my classic blunders occurred during the planning of our journey from Muri Beach to the Canberra Suburbs. Due to multiple timezone changes – it’s hard to document this journey meaningfully, but in brief, the plan was to get up at a normal time, stay awake all day, fly to Auckland overnight, stay in the airport until our flight to Sydney, fly to Sydney, pick up a hire car, and drive it Canberra. This actually adds up to staying awake for at least 32 hours, plus time going through immigration, collecting cars and other delays. It was more like 40+. This is nothing new, but driving 4 hours at the end (in the dark) was a new variation, and one I wouldn’t actually recommend. I managed to organise myself into “sleeping” the whole flight to Sydney, except for when I woke up and drank a bottle of coke, which kicked in just when it was needed! The silver lining was that we arrived in Canberra at bed time, which we respected fully and promptly.
Planning had been postponed (that’s the positive spin on “we hadn’t planned”), so we had to spend a little time turning our ideas (“walks”, “bush”, “beach”, “fun”) into an actual plan – or at least a destination. To be fair, we’d planned enough to know what destinations were reasonable – so it didn’t take long to decide on Meroo National Park. It took a bit longer to tour the camping and wine shops (priorities) of the Canberra ‘burbs and then drive down the hills to the coast. If you go there (from any direction), the signage is appalling – its one of those places where you find you’re on the right road after you start driving down it – which is fine for the characters in Gorky Park, but a bit annoying if you’ve never been there before and are just trying to find your campsite. Saturday morning in Canberra is pretty quiet though.
Pigeonhouse – been wanting to go there for literally five years!
We’d first heard about Pigeonhouse a few years earlier, but had never been there. Now we were closer than we’d ever been, and we weren’t going to miss our chance. It hadn’t rained much the night before, and the dirt road up to Pigeonhouse has drained a bit and was easily passable in 2 wheel drive. The signage wasn’t too bad, and we managed to find the trailhead car park. Presumably because it’s in the bush and away from main highway, this road had a lot of lyrebirds on it – which I failed to photograph, since I was driving. They seem to spend a fair bit of time just off the road, in the ditch alongside it or on the slope into the ditch from the bush. You keep seeing them turn and scuttle away.
It’s a pretty steadily rising trail, passing through a couple of rock outcroppings with great views. The real fun starts when you’re almost to the top though, with steps that are really ladders bolted into the rocks. They’re not all that difficult though, and aren’t steep enough that the rails are really for anything more than balance – you aren’t hauling yourself up with your arms. Even if you were, the views from the top – not panoramic, but in all directions – are worth it. Here’s some of them:
The view from the topAnother one
It was a bit hazy up there and I think that might be due to the gum trees, like in the Blue Mountains. Or maybe I should clean my camera. Coming down as no big deal either, but best done backward, so something to be aware of if the ladders aspect is a worry. The drive back down was uneventful, and as it was Sunday night, we had the campsite to ourselves!
Pigeonhouse Info:
Distance: 5km return – but fairly steep
Access: Dirt road, 2wd when dry. Ulladulla is the nearest town.
Cost: There’s a free car park
Difficulty: Steep, but not long, but with ladders at the top. Also as it’s return, you can turn back at any time.
Car hire in Western Australia seems cheap at first, but if you look closer, the cheapest hires don’t allow you to stray further north than Exmouth and some stop you at Geraldton. This is a bit of a pain, as I had worked out (at the time of research) that it would be cheaper for two people to drive a car back to Perth from Broome to return it, incurring a few days extra hire and petrol costs, and avoiding the charges for differential dropoff and flights + baggage and transfers. I eventually found FireFly, who were hiring out cars in the second tier of the market, before passing them down to Ace rentals, who we usually use. FireFly had none of the distance restrictions and still came in at an attractive price, still worth driving back for. With that booked, we headed over to Perth and picked up a few other essentials.
Petrol – it’s one of the essentials. Get it at authentic outback roadhouses.
The good thing about driving from Perth to Broome and back, is that you only have to repeat the stretch along 80 Mile Beach, as the Great Northern Highway, and the coastal route, join at Port Hedland. This means you need to drive a 1600km through pretty sparsely populated country, including the Pilbara. We only made a few stops on that route, with three days travelling around 700km per day. Out in the desert, you really need to be prepared for a breakdown or some similar mishap, and remember that both the heat and the cold could be a problem. We had our tent (purchased at Kmart the year before – $35), and decent sleeping bags (it was October/November), as well as the ability to boil water, put on more clothes, and enough food for a few days. In the ever reliable K-Mart, we picked up a tarp, to construct shelter from the sun if necessary, and a couple of 10L tanks of water – its BYO out there! We were hoping to free camp, and even some of the not-so-free camp sites don’t have drinkable water, so we tried to keep our tanks full all the time.
Not much water to be found around here
To preserve your mental health, you need to recognise the reality of the isolation and long distances involved – sometimes we didn’t see another vehicle, person or animal for hours at a time (except in the Pilbara), so remember to bring music, audiobooks and whatever else you can think of to keep you amused and awake. Much of the landscape is simply mile after mile of dusty red scrub, or wheatfields in the south – you can lose track of time, and your speed – so use cruise control if you have it! It’s a lot easier with two people, even if you don’t share the driving.
The road stretches off into the distance – watch the speed, and try to stay awake!
Although Firefly are hiring out well used hire cars, we happened to get given a brand new one, it had about 20km on its clock. We resturned it covered in red dust with well over 6000km on it. They don’t mind too much about the outside, but it can be a struggle to return it looking OK on the inside. If you haven’t been taking care the whole time, then start trying to clean up and keep dirty things in bags, etc, a few days before the car is due to be returned. The return will probably take place at the airport, so bear in mind you’ll potentially need to take all your baggage out there (and pay for the transfer – Perth is a nice $4 bus) and get away from there at the end. If you have no intention of seeing Perth or Fremantle, or don’t mind doing so with a car to look after, consider picking up the car straight from your flight (you can go shopping and drive a bit out of the city to camp before the jet lag kills you) and returning it before you fly again.
Those dirt roads’ll ruin your shiny white rental car
Some of the things you will likely find you’re advised to watch out for on a long distance drive in rural Australia are the road trains and the wildlife. We encountered lots of road trains in WA; the full sized ones with a prime mover and three trailers – they don’t take up the entire road, you can still pass them without having to drive in the gutter, although being stuck in convoy between them is a bit irritating and ebst avoided – their stopping and starting distances are quite long. If you go through the Pilbara or along route 1 south of Port Hedland, you’ll definitely meet them. On narrower, or dirt roads, be more wary, as they are likely to have even longer stopping distances, throw up debris, and generally take up more of the road. They also have much more fuel on board than you do – I saw one drive off into the wilderness in the Northern Territory once, past a sign warning of no fuel for 500km – hopefully he knew where he was going. The wildlife is a different proposition and mainly comes out at dusk to sit on the road, as its warm when the evening starts to cool. I’ve heard of people driving for hours below 40km/h when necessary, and I’ve seen the amount of roadkill in Tasmania, where the wildlife is smaller and therefore less likely to cause serious damage. Insurance often doesn’t cover Kangaroos, and you may do your car and yourself some serious damage if you hit one, and you may need to get out and finish the job if you hit a big one, just like deer in North America. We tried to get a decent start in the morning and put in 7-8 hours driving before dusk, the sun comes up quite early in WA, so it worked pretty well. Another thing that car rentals companies can be a bit iffy about is significant amounts of off-road driving – on gravel, or dirt. Obviously driving up your cousins gravel drive will not be a problem, but driving hundreds of kilometres through the outback on a dirt road, only to burst your spare tyre, run out of petrol of overheat the engine, may not be taken well. Our route only included stretches of dirt road at Karijini and on the road to the campsite at 80 Mile Beach. We did that one in the dark too, so it was just a tiny bit sketchy. I’ve done a decent amount of dirt road driving, but if you haven’t this may not be the time to start, one more reason to get early starts and leave enough time to reach your preferred destination, or tackle dirt roads in the daylight without worrying that you’ll miss checkin!
Watch out for the wildlife……don’t follow the road trains into the wilderness……and have a great time! Obviously not by drinking and driving; that would be wrong.
ducksoftheworld 