Day 8

Even though we were the first to arrive in the caravan park yesterday, we were almost the last to leave.  There were plenty of caravans that arrived during the afternoon, and one or two rental motorhome/vans.

It took us a couple of attempts at getting up to speed on the highway.  After descending down the escarpment at the Eucla Pass we stopped to take a photo of the RFDS landing strip on the highway.  Then about 500m later we saw three big wedge-tailed eagles take off from a kangaroo carcass on the side of the road, so we had to get a photo of them too.

The wedgies soon became frequent.  Milhouse would not have been impressed.  Often you'd have to try and identify them 100m before you arrived on the scene so you could start slowing down in case the bird decided to take off in front of the car.  They are bloody slow to get up and mobile.

Stopping off at Mundrabilla Roadhouse we topped up the tanks and sought to stock up our fresh food supply, only to be told the bad news that we wouldn't find anything like that until we got to Norseman, 675km further west!  At the rate we're travelling that would be another 4 or 5 days, so we decided to fast-track our route by cutting out the Bilbunya Dunes.  We'll do that on the way home if we have time.

We intended to break from the highway at Madura and follow the track that follows the bottom of the escarpment along to the Burnabbie Homestead ruins and the Eyre Bird Observatory track, but when we asked about the track conditions at the Madura Bar the barman said "No go. Track got washed out two weeks ago. We had some others try to get through and they had to turn around and come all the way back".  That made the decision much easier for us to take the much quicker, slightly longer, much less interesting route along the highway and down the Eyre Repeater Tower road.  Although we're pushed for time with how long we can live without fresh vegies and bread, we'd still like to see the interesting things on our trip.

So we eventually passed the Eyre Repeater Tower and made it to the top of the escarpment, radioed the managers at Eyre Bird Observatory, and followed the "steep" track down the escarpment where we "might need to engage low range".  Pfft. These West Aussies have nothing on the steep tracks in the Victorian High Country.  First gear, High Range, and the track was graded well enough that the Lancer could have driven up and down the escarpment all day.  The track across the dunes though was a bit sandy, but still no sweat for the Landcruiser.

We made it to Eyre around 2:30ish, had a poke around in the museum and did a couple of the short walking tracks.  Being mid-afternoon we weren't expecting there to be much bird activity, and there wasn't.  Back home Morgs and I call it "afternoon back-beak hour" because there's usually a period where all the birds have their beaks in their back feathers fast asleep.  Albeit slightly disappointing that we didn't see any special birds (we saw a small snake though!) it was still interesting to see the restored building and look around the place.

We took a quick look down at the beach, and the access track to the beach has been covered over by a sand dune now.  I'm not sure where the beach access is to Twilight Cove, but we weren't heading that direction anyway so I didn't care.  We tracked back to the escarpment and turned eastward to camp the night near Burnabbie Homestead ruins.

This was a nice camp, nestled amongst some trees.  Plenty of options to set up some tents if you had a number of vehicles too.  The air temp was warmish too so we knew we we're in for a good night's sleep.