After leaving the Talia Caves Road we drove through Port Kenny and stopped at Murphy’s Haystacks, unusual rocks known as Inselbergs, they were given the name Murphy’s Haystacks became they are located on Murphy’s hay farm. These rocks have been naturally sculptured from pink Hiltaba Granite which is about 1 500 million years old, the present forms were established about 100 000 years ago! What was weird to us was why they only appeared here in this small cluster?

We then drove onto Bairds Bay, the place to swim with the sea lions and dolphins, then Sceale Bay where we had lunch then drove to our rest area just outside Streaky Bay, the Eyre’s Waterhole, 5 of us camped up that night, the most we had seen in a while at a rest area. Streaky Bay was named by Captain Matthew Flinders in 1802, after seeing bands of colour in the water that he thought indicated a large river entering the ocean, it turned out to be oils given off by seaweed. We took a scenic loop drive to Cape Bauer viewing the “Whistling Rocks” and blowholes, these geological formations are created when vertical fractures in the limestone cliffs become enlarged over thousands of years, the process is due to erosion in the fractures caused by chemical reactions between the water, air and soil – the sound is quite amazing.

Next stop was Smoky Bay and Thevenard, at Pinky Point you see the islands of St Peter and St Francis. Ceduna is the last major town before one starts on the Great Nullarbor Crossing from East to West, so we stocked up on supplies. The crossing is 1 215km’s from Ceduna to Norseman with very little in between other than roadhouses. We were forced to book into a caravan park as the cylinder head (rocker/tapid) cover gasket needed to be replaced and the supplier had to get one in from Adelaide, which arrived the following morning for Peter to fit. On the Saturday we filled up with water and diesel and headed out on our Nullarbor crossing, first stop was only about 30km’s out of Ceduna, more about our crossing in the next update.