Night Sky Photography at Lake Ballard
This post is part of our Western Australia road trip. In case you don’t want to read this sequentially, or you are looking for another part of the trip, here are some shortcuts:
- Lake Ballard <– You are here
- Exmouth and Coral Bay
- Shark Bay and Monkey Mia
- Kalbarri
- Jurien Bay
Perth to Southern Cross
After a night in Perth, we woke up early due to the two hour time difference. It was 6C/42F when we stepped out the door looking for coffee, so we turned straight around and decided on a ridiculously overpriced hotel breakfast. I hate buffets, and was pleased to see most of them disappear due to Covid, but they still exist in Western Australia.
We checked out of the Doubletree and took an Uber to the Apollo office near the airport. It took about 45 minutes to complete the final paperwork and do a quick intro to the vehicle. In retrospect, we should have spent more time on things like how the reverse camera works, what only runs when connected to power, and how to use the toilet. The vehicle looked larger in person, but it was the only option so we were on the road by 11am with a goal to make it to Southern Cross, which is located about 4 hours East of Perth.
There wasn’t much traffic getting out of Perth and the giant campervan was surprisingly easy to drive. Along the way we drove through seemingly abandoned towns and saw silo art, blue trees, and a giant camera.
We arrived in Southern Cross a little before 4pm and checked into a powered site at the Southern Cross Caravan Park. I’d called ahead to make a booking, but it was only about half full when we arrived.
There wasn’t a lot open in town, but the Palace Hotel looked like a possibility. We picked up some emergency food at Foodworks just in case, but called as instructed by the sign and went over around 6. The food was surprisingly good, and the place was packed with workers so it was a good thing we called for a booking. The caravan park was about three quarters full when we returned from dinner.
If you are keen to learn more about Southern Cross and the Shire of Yilgarn, theres a video here.
Southern Cross to Lake Ballard
We woke up at 4am again, possibly because of the time difference or possibly because it was 6C/42F again except this time we were in a campervan with no heat. Though we’d plugged in to the power pole at our site, we skipped the all important step of flicking the power switch on the pole to the “on” position. The laminated manual for “Hercules” was very helpful. We thought Hercules was the campervan’s name, but apparently its the model name. It’ll always be Hercules to us though.
We wouldn’t have power at Lake Ballard, so this was a good test while we still had time to pick up some extra supplies in the thriving metropolis of Kalgoorlie. We topped up the tank with diesel, and learned the hard way that you can’t fill a caravan with a “high flow” diesel pump. $60 in fuel and $10 for two takeaway coffees, and were on the road by 7am.
Sidenote: petrol stations are few and far between so we didn’t let the tank go below half without a top up.
The drive from Southern Cross to Kalgoorlie (“one of the shittiest towns in Australia“) should take about 2.5 hours, but we lost a bit of time due to road works so it was closer to three hours. We actually recognised the road works crew from the Palace Hotel the night before.
We had four tasks to accomplish in Kalgoorlie:
- Buy food and water for the next two nights
- Find Andy some sort of jacket
- Refuel and check if they sell firewood
- Find some apparatus to use to cook sausages on a campfire
We parked, well, kind of abandoned, Hercules a few blocks short of town to avoid having to navigate a Woolies parking lot. Andy spotted a red dot store in the same plaza, so we ventured in hoping to find something to keep him warmer than a t-shirt. There were exactly two jumpers in his size, so he had his choice of a white “Chillin” design or a navy “Feed me Pizza” design. He deemed white one impractical given where we were headed, so, this:
Red dot hoodie, Mokona instant coffee, and a PB&J wrap #Ballin
The hoodie was a real find, but we also bought a wool beanie and two hot water bottles to warm our bed in the campervan. A luxury impulse buy at $3 each.
With tasks one and two complete, we headed to the petrol station to top up the tank and see if they sold firewood. They didn’t, but suggested the camping and fishing store next door which we’d completely overlooked. It was too bad we’d already spent $10 on Andy’s hoodie because this place had everything! There were aisles and aisles of camp kitchen items – jaffle makers, pour over coffee contraptions, and every shape and size of cast iron cookware. I must have looked overwhelmed because a helper appeared to assist. I explained that we hadn’t planned, had little camping experience, and then rambled something about cooking over a fire with a metal hangar when I was a girl scout. Her face lit up and she took me to the display of telescopic marshmallow forks. I’ll take two please.
Because she seemed to know her stuff, I asked if there was anywhere nearby that sold firewood. She looked at me quizzically, “Why would you buy firewood? Just go into the bush and get some.” She didn’t say “dumb ass”, but it was implied.
There’s not much between Kalgoorlie and Menzies. A few turnoffs for mines, but that’s about it. Menzies has a population of about 100 and accommodation options are limited to a caravan park and the hotel. You can read more about Menzies on the Shire website.. In Australia, pubs (or “the local”) are often called hotels because until recently (late 1980s) liquor laws required them to provide accommodation. When we first thought of going to Lake Ballard, we considered flying to Kalgoorlie, driving to Menzies, and using that as a base to explore Lake Ballard. The hotel was booked though, and in retrospect it would have limited our exploration to daylight as it isn’t advised to travel after dark due to wildlife and road conditions.
Main Street, Menzies
We stopped at the visitor centre, but they were closed for lunch so we continued on to Lake Ballard.
The first 30k or so is a two-lane paved road, which narrows to one lane for a bit before about 15k on a decent dirt track before the turnoff. The dirt part could be a challenge if there had been any rain, but it was fine.
Lake Ballard
There were more people than we expected, maybe 6 groups, but there were still plenty of available campsites so we snagged one with a fire pit. We’d forgotten to gather firewood along the way, so Andy drove up the road a bit while I guarded our coveted campsite. Lesson learned: stop along the way as the area around the campsite is pretty bare.
We went for a quick walk to see the dried lake and the 51 steel statues which represent Menzies’ locals, whose bodies were scanned for the casts. This is when we had our first experience with the flies. When we were hurriedly packing we came across our fly nets from Alaska and threw them into our luggage figuring they are tiny and of no use in a box at home. This is the only time we had to use them on this trip, and mid-day in Lake Ballard would have been a complete nightmare without them.
Andy made a great fire around dusk and we used the swinging hotplate thingy built-in to the fire pit to cook the snags before toasting them with the telescoping skewers. We were pretty pleased with ourselves, especially since we hadn’t planned for this part of the trip at all.
There were no flies once the temp started to drop, and once it got dark we ventured out onto the lake for some night sky photography.
The only light pollution is from campsites and a tiny bit of glow from the nearby metropolis of Menzies. For context, here’s the data from Dark Sky Finder.
We slept pretty well but still woke up before sunrise. The hot water bottles kept us warm despite having no heat.
We went for a walk on the lake for sunrise, explored some of the islands, and got completely covered in mud from the early morning condensation on the red earth.
Most people from the previous night had left, including our neighbours who left a pile of great firewood for us. We hid in the caravan for the peak of fly time, and then went for a walk to the top of a nearby hill which was covered in quartz and granite.
We also went for a walk on the lake before sundown to find a statue a little farther out to avoid the campsite lights in the background. We found one that was a 15 minute walk away, and remarkably we were able to find our way back to it in complete darkness.
Milky Way Rising
83 images stacked for star trails
We got an early start the next morning because we had a long drive back towards Perth. I was nervous about leaving so close to sunrise given the signs noted there were cows, camels, kangaroos, and other critters in the area. We took it slow and didn’t have any issues.
The plan was to stop in Cunderdin, which put us under two hours from Perth the next day for our flight to Exmouth.
Menzies was packed for a cycling event, which explains why the hotel was booked. This was probably our best drive, because we stopped to stretch every hour and drank lots of water. We also passed the time playing name that tune using Spotify once we were back in 4G range..
We pulled in to the Cunderdin Caravan Park shortly after 2pm. We flicked on the power this time, so had access to heat and were able to recharge all of our devices and batteries. The ablution block, a new term for my vocabulary, had eight individual rooms. This was the first shower I’d had since the Doubletree three days previously so I was grateful that there was plenty of hot water and good water pressure.
The park was next to the football club, and the Mighty Magpies were playing. The park is also adjacent to the railway (we saw the Indian Pacific speed by at one point). For dinner we walked over to the pub, which was only open for one hour and was also the town drive through bottle shop.
We tidied up in the morning and had a leisurely drive back to Perth.
We returned Hercules to Apollo around 10 and summoned an Uber to the airport. Unfortunately the Uber driver took us to the wrong terminal, and we didn’t realise it until he’d left so we wound up with a $30 cab to the other side of the airport.
With the unplanned part of our trip behind us, we were now headed to Exmouth. Continue reading…
