The last few days of the trip were spent hanging out with friends, and drinking far too much. You can take the boy out of Glasgow…

Out of the blue one night in Batemans Bay, I received a message from a family we’d met in Edith Falls. They were over from the UK for six months visiting parents, and were about to head back. We got in touch, told them we were close to Sydney and asked if they fancied a wee camping trip before leaving, and they said yes! Brilliant!

When we started our trip we had a week of a heatwave, followed by months of rain. Our final weeks looked to be shaping up just the same, as far as the rain was concerned that was. We had a few nice days in Melbourne, and one or two in Inverloch but apart from that, it had been miserable.

Leaving Coonawara, the landscape continued to be flat, and fertile. Huge farms all over the place, dotted with the occasional vineyard, and then, the forests took over again. Ahhhh… The obligatory stop at the border for a photo, accompanied by the inevitable moan from the kids, and we were into Victoria.

We sat on the roof of a little Oyster shack, looking out over tidal flats on one side, and the border crossing on the other. And relax. It was nice to have that over and done with. The Oysters arrived and I was delighted when Katie actually tasted one. There’s no way I would have tried an oyster at that age.

The Nullarbor is a vast desert plain that separates Western Australia from the rest of the country, and the road that cuts through it is called the Eyre Highway, after the first European to manage the crossing – Edward John Eyre.

“Shit. Are you OK?”
“Ah, no, not really. No no. I’ll be fine.”
“Jesus. Are you sure? Should we go to a hospital?”
“Hmm, maybe, I think so.” 

That’s roughly how it went. I think. Frankly I was a bit flabbergasted by the whole thing.

Illness and misfortune dominated the next few weeks. But we had the Pinnacles first, an odd series of limestone formations that emerge from the desert like the ramparts of a lost fortress.

The destinations are more spaced out on the west coast than they are on the east, so it was another three hours down to our next stop, Kalbari National Park.