Road Trip – Day 17 (1 April)

Last night I went down to the waters edge to see if I could photograph the prawn trawlers that were tied up for the night. We bought half a kilo of Venus Bay prawns and they look very much like what we get in WA at Exmouth. The photos were a little diffricult to take as the boats were moving in the water. The black space between the boat and the reflection is a sandbar.

 

Alas we have to leave Venus Bay and get back onto the road again. We aren’t travelling far, just another 60kms down the road to Elliston. It seems the less distance we have to go, the longer it takes us to get moving. I went to retrieve the $50 bond we had to pay for Kurgan to stay in the park and had one last cappuccino. Photo is the view from the balcony of the kiosk of the caravan park.

We travelled only 2kms before our first stop at Doyles Waterhole. There was a stone trough there for water (empty) and of course our resident clown, John, just had to climb in and pretend to be having a bath. The explorer, Eyre, used water from this waterhole for over a year in 1839. We looked down the hole but didn’t see any water.

Onwards towards Elliston where we passed a historic town that has a few  buildings remaining and a cemetry. Hard to imagine there was a hotel here and a thriving town back in the 1800;s. The reason this area made a hit with us is the Colton Bakery. Baker Mark Archer and his family live in the old schoolhouse. Each morning he fires up his wood-fired oven and produces crunchy loaves which he sells from a small shed beside the road. It works on an honesty system, with people leaving money in a tin for the bread they take. All of us were eating fresh bread as we got back into our cars.

We arrived at Elliston and our caravan park. It is so nice to camp on green grass for the first time in 10 days. Our cars and vans are covered in dust and you can tell we have travelled some distance. Tomorrow we explore the town and try to find the leak in our water tank.