10 - THE LAST LEG

After a week in the city we headed down to the south bypassing the other major towns, spending our time travelling country roads and bushland.  We spent a night at Big Valley Sheep Station, then Windy Harbour (no more windy than the rest of the state!), and Fernhook Falls.

By now it was getting close to "going home" time and the weather was showery a lot of the time.  We spent a wet night in Albany, an overnight at Meridian Rest Area and had a quick look (again in the rain) at Esperance and it surrounds before getting to Cape Le Grande, another of the "must see" places.  We had planned to go on to Cape Arid, but as time was running out and we were told it was very similar to Cape Le Grande, we decided to give it a miss (save it for later).

We opted to take a short cut road to Balladonia rather than go all the way to Norseman, however this proved to be a long way round in the end as we got a flat tyre on the front of the truck.  When I went to put a chock under the back wheel on the opposite side, I thought that one looked low too, but presumed it was because the weight was all being biased that way with the front being on the jack.  By the time the front wheel was changed, the back one was completely flat!.  Fortunately it was a slow leak which held until we got to Balladonia where we were told we could go back almost 200k to Norseman or 500k east for the nearest places to fix tyres.  We plugged the front tyre and put it back on, but it soon went flat again.  We couldn't find a leak on the back, but it was holding up fairly well.  This left us with no spare and a slow leak so we decided we'd better go back to Norseman.  The result was that the front tyre was a write-off but the back was an easy repair.

After that it was a quick look in at the various vantage points along the Bight and one night stops at rest areas and caravan parks until we got to Wagga where we spent our first night in a house (guests of my sister and brother-in law) since leaving Melbourne five and a half months earlier.  The next night we were home.