Eneaba to Myalup via Perth
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Okay, so here’s the power and battery charger story. Skip about 6 paragraphs if you’re not interested. Les had brought a 240 to 110 power converter with him. I had brought a cigarette lighter/110 adapter and a power strip. The idea was, we could plug in the adapter to the cigarette lighter, plug in the power strip, and use our various electronic devices (cell phone, camera battery charger, camera power, laptops, etc.). And use the 240/110 converter when in hotels to do the same thing.
Well, it turns out the 240/110 was defective or something. On the first day, we plugged it into the wall and plugged the power strip into it. When we turned it on, it blew up the power strip. We thought it was the power strip at the time. But okay, no big deal, we’ll charge things one at a time.
The cigarette lighter device worked great except that for devices that don’t have cords, like the battery charger, it has to hang from the dash. And with all the bouncing and shaking, it kept falling out. So Les found some boards and wedged them up from the floor using a soda bottle to provide a kind of platform that mostly held the battery charger in place, for the most part. (These were the boards we used to extricate ourselves from the camel ranch yesterday.)
But being engineers we wanted a better solution. We figured, we could buy an extension cord and then the battery charger wouldn’t have to hang, it could sit on the seat. But extension cords have Australian plugs on them here. Not a problem, we have US to Australian plug adapters. So we’re all set. Except on Saturday night, Les reasoned we could also plug the 240 to 110 converter into the 240V plug provided by the camper, and we could charge batteries overnight while we weren’t driving. A sound idea. But, since it turns out the power converter is bad, it burned up the battery charger. So now we can’t charge our camera batteries at all, which we’re consuming at the rate of 8 a day (4 each per camera).
So we’re on the lookout for a US to Australian (110 to 240) power converter (opposite of what we had). Then we can plug that into the cigarette lighter thing we have and plug the extension cord and battery charger into it and we’re good to go. Alternatively, if we can find an Australian version of the cigarette lighter thingy, we can do the whole thing in Australian and be done with it. But so far, no luck on either. And we’ve burned $100 easy and a few hours so far, getting to where we are now.
So why don’t we just buy AA batteries? Because buying 8 batteries a day, or more if we take a lot of pictures, seems excessive from both a cost and time standpoint. And besides, it’s a challenge and we engineers love a challenge.
Thankfully, the laptops run on either 110 or 240 and can plug into either plug.
So aren’t you glad you asked?
So as for today, we woke up in our roadside campground, hoping to photograph the black parrots that were screeching well into the evening last night. It was too dark to photograph them then. So of course, they were nowhere to be found this morning. It had thankfully cooled down in the evening with a nice breeze. We did a little laundry and topped off the water tank. The guy that runs this place is pretty crusty. Not unfriendly but a man of few words. Les asked if the water spigot had potable water and he said “Well, we drink it”. In our brief interaction with him we weren’t sure that was a ringing endorsement but we filled up anyway.
So, on to Perth! Well, we got about 100 yards when we saw the black parrots off in the distance and stopped to try to photograph them. Took a couple of shots with the telephoto but they were pretty far away. So off we go to Perth now. About 1km along we saw these weird plants that Les had seen before and wanted to get a picture of. So we stopped to do that. While stopped we got passed by a truck carrying some giant piece of something. Not machinery but nothing we recognized. It was larger than the highway lane by probably 3 feet on either side. We were stuck behind it for awhile but finally got past it. So now, finally, on to Perth.
The last 200km to Perth was as uninteresting on the way down as the way up. And just as slow with all the stoplights. We stopped for gas, more groceries, and found a post office and sent off a few postcards. We finally got into town and headed for the same hotel we had set up shop in before. Got the laptop hooked up and uploaded a few days of logs and photos, called home (nice to talk to you…) and checked out websites that showed what the Southern Cross looks like so we could find it. We got the analog pictures developed at a one-hour place, and Les went looking for a battery charger or transformer.
2 hours later we were driving to another part of town to locate a battery charger with a cigarette lighter. Success! We now believe all battery problems are solved. Time to finally head south.
The road out of town was equally uninteresting. Suburbs, tract houses, malls, on one side and heavy industry, petroleum, chemicals, etc. on the other. But finally, that faded away and the scenery became large eucalyptus trees and grasslands. It looked a lot like Santa Barbara where I went to college. Pretty in the afternoon sunlight.
After a few hours, I decided it was time to stop and see something and we pulled over to look at Lake Clifton, just because it was the next thing to see. Turns out it’s got this population of microbialites (“living rocks”), one of the few in the world, and the largest lake bound reef of them in the southern hemisphere. Pretty cool. (See the photos for the technical description.) But while attempting to photograph it, we discovered that Les’ camera had broken. He had dropped it earlier, only a foot or so, but apparently that was enough. So within 3 hours of getting the camera battery issue solved, no camera. Tomorrow we’ll likely be shopping for another one.
Anyway, we didn’t really know where we were going, other than south and along the coast. We found a little town about the right distance for stopping called Myalup that was along the beach. Although town is a stretch. It’s a few houses, a “beach store” and the caravan park. The caravan park had a world map with pins in it what showed where people were from and we made the lady put a pin in for us in Portland. Geography was not her strong suit, but we finally got it placed, somewhere between Ashland and Seattle. Close enough.
We went across the street to the store and were complaining to the proprietor that we hadn’t seen any kangaroos. He directed us to a road and guaranteed we’d see some or “he’d show his arse out in the street”. Well, luckily for him, he was right. We saw maybe 15 kangaroos at various points down this dirt road along a lake. It was dusk so the pictures aren’t so good, but at least we didn’t come halfway around the world and not see any! We discovered something else too. They smell. Big time. We noticed a smell when we saw the first ones but thought it was the lake. But then when we saw the second ones, we knew it was the ‘roos. So then, when we smelled them again, we were able to stop and locate them. Tracking animals by scent. We’ve become bushmen.
We headed back to the beach, where we had missed what looked like a pretty spectacular sunset (oh well, kangaroos were better) with the idea we’d take a twilight swim. But the riptide was pretty strong and it just didn’t seem like a good idea. So we packed it in for the night. We think we’ve located the southern cross (thanks to the Internet). It’s really hot again and apparently no breeze tonight. At least not yet. Tomorrow we have to figure out what we’re going to do down here for the next day or so. Then it’s on to the east.
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