Paws and Reflect

BIG Gold Nugget, SMALL Brown Dog                                As Spandau Ballet once said 'GOLD.....you've got the power to know you're indestructable....(boom boom) GOLD'. Having completed the Nullarbor we hit a rich seam of Gold; namely the Goldfields Highway. A number of folk had recommended we visit the Goldfield Region due to it's historical significance in Western Australia.  The Western Australians would have you believe that they prop up the economy of Australia single handedly, and I guess to some extent they make a good point. The majority of the huge mines are over this way and bring in huge swathes of money...mainly for the share holders and owners. It is no coincidence that the top two richest Australians for 2021 are in the Mining Industry. Despite the pandemic, Gina Rinehart increased her personal wealth by 123% to a mere $36.28 Billion making her the richest, closely followed by the 2nd richest Australian, Andrew Forrest, who increased his wealth b

  A Von Blog.   Well, we finally got to Western Australia.  I did not get to it as a backpacker in 1990, we did not manage it during our sojourn in Sydney between 2009 and 2012 and, this time, we have only been waiting a mere 18 months to get here... To achieve it meant driving one of the most iconic roads in Australia, nay, the world!  But what is it about this particular road, the Eyre Highway, which makes it so?  Firstly, the sheer length of the thing, some 1675kms, including one section, the 90 mile stretch, which has NO, and I mean, NO bends or corners.  146km of straight road.   The second thing to think about is the alternative routes.  Mmm.  If you are looking for bitumen (tarmac to our European readers) then the only other east/west crossing is just a mere 2099kms north (oh, and you can only go north from Port Augusta).  To put that in some perspective for those non-Aussies, we drove from (A) Bosnia & Herzegovina to (B) Spain but if we had wanted to use the alternative roa

  Peninsulas, Peninsuli, Peninsula, whichever the plural, that's the theme for this blog! We decided it would be good to compare and contrast the highlights from both the ' Yorke ' (which seems an age away since we were there) and the ' Eyre '. They do share some common ground; they're both in South Australia! They were both surveyed by Captain Matthew Flinders during his circumnavigation of Australia in 1801; he named the Yorke Peninsula after Charles Philip Yorke and narrowly beat the French navigator Baudin who wanted to name it Cambaceres Peninsula. The Eyre was named after an explorer Edward John Eyre who physically explored the area in 1839-41. This is not forgetting the Traditional Owners of both lands who had lived and survived here well before any white settlers. The Narungga in the Yorke and the Barngala in the Eyre. One is shaped like a boot (Yorke) and one a triangle (Eyre). The Yorke is 5,834km2 whilst the Eyre is much bigger at 170,500km2. Thus the