Waking up at our camp in Southern Cross was amazing – pic up top. We left Southern Cross and headed for Kalgoorlie. It was an enjoyable drive and we stopped off at a few towns. We had lunch in one spot and found a few dog parks to give Cooper a run around. She was only 11 weeks old and we wanted to make the trip enjoyable or at least bearable for her. Having said that, I think Tim had all the fun running around the dog parks with Coop.
After a few days of travelling on our own, we were shocked in Kalgoorlie as some of the houses were huge! And no, we didn’t go see the super pit nor did we make it to the infamous brothel. It was here that Covid 19 really started to get scary, and we decided that travelling a few hours a day was no longer an option for us.
A lot of people were calling to check in on us and to provide updates as to any changes. Again, thank you. Things were changing fast and the one thing that was truely worrying was the talk around locking the borders. This has never happened before so we were unsure exactly what that would mean. Would we be able to cross the border? Would we be made to stay directly after the border? Would we be able to find work and get provisions? So many questions the only solid answer we found was to travel home to Rocky.
We did meet a lovely family in Kalgoorlie, that had just left working overseas with the UN doing crisis management. They were glad to be back in Australia with their children however their 6 month trip of Australia was now in jeopardy and unfortunately for them, they didn’t have an Australian residence as they opted to travel first. Who could blame them? Thankfully the children were still enrolled in an international school and were capable of home schooling even though they were looking forward to being back in a class room. As they had no fixed address, nor knew where they would end up, they couldn’t enrol in a school. We did feel for them as there was also talk of closing caravan parks. These guys were travelling in a camper trailer, so without access to amenities and fresh water, it’s not like they had many options. Just one of the many stories from the Nomad community of Oz. This community is basically a large town with estimates of around 100,000 members.
Tim somehow managed to find a micro brewery while in Kalgoorlie and this place didn’t disappoint. While it was great to be able to introduce Cooper to a craft brewery it was concerning to see the new social distancing orders starting to crop up.
So we had an early night and headed off again the next day.
We were hoping to stop off about 8 hours down the road, still in WA. Plans changed changed quickly when a mate from Kununurra got wind that the WA border may close early. What a bloody big day that turned out to be.
We now have a few covid memories including getting fuel. What a mission that was. We had it down to a fine art. Tim would have his card ready and fill up. I would be in the car armed with baby wipes and home made hand sanitizer. He would make sure he’d clean his card and wallet every single time.
It was during one of these stops I came across one of the staff members who was whinging about all the travellers and naturally us caravaners were the worst. ‘Why don’t they just go out bush and sit it out?’ and I couldn’t help but interupt. ‘hi, I can tell you why. See that van out there, well that’s mine. We have three water tanks in the van and one in the car. You would assume that would last ages, but really, if we watch our consumption, that would last us about 5 days – providing it’s cool. Having said that, the toilet needs to be emptied every three days, but we have the biodegradable stuff so that’s better then most. The next issue is food. We don’t have a lot of room. We certainly don’t have room for enough food to cover 2 weeks isolation. That is, two weeks from the last day we are able to get to a shop’. At first I was upset and then, I got to understand their concerns. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, in today’s society we are all over opiniated and under educated. While we have opinions on everything someone does, we don’t really have all the information.
We consider ourselves one of the lucky ones. We are heading home to Queensland to stay with my parents – who are not young but are willing to help us out. I feel for those that sold their home for the dream to travel Australia. Be that the grey nomads, family nomads or any other type of nomads. Up until covid, this was a great life to be had.
While this was only a minor incident, when we went to town’s, we only shopped at those that had signs up asking to support small business. More than happy to help those that were willing to help us. Selfish, but now was not the time to convert the masses.