Martin Jeffes in Australia
A Collection of his Writings

Introduction by Barry and Margaret Williamson
Martin founded, built and managed the Sakar Hills campsite in SE Bulgaria, before recently handing it over to his son Matt and retiring to the south coast of England. Near to the campsite Bulgaria meets Greece and Turkey, making a rare European triple point, which for forty-five years was the southern end of the Iron Curtain. It remains a place where cultures, languages, religions, histories and much else meet; a place where a bicycle takes you through the three countries on a magnificent circular ride. We should know!
What follows are just a few of the many words Martin has written over the years, words that create their own landscapes, populated by people whose activities are captured with a wry humour. Here we are at the interface of Bulgarians, English ex-pats and a heterogenous bunch of worldwide campers and tourists. Complementing this rich mix is Martin’s fascination with Bulgaria’s origins, using his trusty Land Rover to trace the remnants of Thracian and Roman occupation.
The following collection of Martin’s writings over the years is one of seven.
The other six collections are:
Martin in Bulgaria and the Balkans
Martin in England
Martin in his Land Rovers
Grapevines One and Two
Grapevine Three
Grapevine Four
As well as many Photographs
Martin founded, built and managed the Sakar Hills campsite in SE Bulgaria, before recently handing it over to his son Matt and retiring to the south coast of England. Near to the campsite Bulgaria meets Greece and Turkey, making a rare European triple point, which for forty-five years was the southern end of the Iron Curtain. It remains a place where cultures, languages, religions, histories and much else meet; a place where a bicycle takes you through the three countries on a magnificent circular ride. We should know!
What follows are just a few of the many words Martin has written over the years, words that create their own landscapes, populated by people whose activities are captured with a wry humour. Here we are at the interface of Bulgarians, English ex-pats and a heterogenous bunch of worldwide campers and tourists. Complementing this rich mix is Martin’s fascination with Bulgaria’s origins, using his trusty Land Rover to trace the remnants of Thracian and Roman occupation.
The following collection of Martin’s writings over the years is one of seven.
The other six collections are:
Martin in Bulgaria and the Balkans
Martin in England
Martin in his Land Rovers
Grapevines One and Two
Grapevine Three
Grapevine Four
As well as many Photographs
Prospecting for Gold
We flew out there, on the Qantas non-stoop, 16 hour flight to Perth. We take off at mid-day Christmas Eve, and land at mid-day Christmas Day. Among the million and one things that Shirley has packed is my metal detector, and I hope to do a bit of gold prospecting. Our caravan that we had in Bulgaria is now out there and I've been given permission to take it off for a bit of a road-trip, so where better to go than the goldfields, which will have to include a dinner at the Palace Hotel in Kalgoorlie, where one can get the best fillet steak in the world, (probably).
My suitcase of clothes that I lugged out of Perth airport, containing long trousers, socks, shoes and long-sleeved shirts, remains unused. I shuffle around in a pair of flip-flops, denim shorts and a lightweight, short-sleeved, shirt, and intend to do so for most of my stay. We are going off for an adventure into the goldfields sometime in February. I want to go to Gwalia and Kookynie, two old, now pretty much deserted, gold-mining towns. Look them up on the internet. Luckily, in amongst all my pairs of trousers, there was room for me to bring a metal-detector, so I'm going to look for nuggets. Can't be that difficult, can it? Just wave the thing about a bit and I could be a millionaire.
Hebert Hoover and the Mining Ghost Town of Gwalia
In the beautiful place about twenty miles from Perth, in WA. Gorgeous long hot sunny days and glorious sunsets, with parrots and parakeets hiding in the shade of the trees, and, occasionally, of an evening a kookaburra or two nearby. Warm, starry nights, and grandchildren who wake up at five o'clock in the morning and return to their favourite occupation, making lots of noise and ricocheting off the walls. Just to complete the picture, one of their dogs decided to have ten puppies on or about the day we arrived. We had many great days out to local parks, pools and restaurants, but spent much of our time just living the life.
We took the old caravan on a seven-day expedition into the outback, via Kalgoorlie, ending up in the old mining 'ghost town' of Gwalia, where one can wander through long-abandoned old miner's shacks, made mainly out of corrugated iron sheets, some with furniture inside, one even with a piano. Fascinating place.
Sadly, our efforts at metal-detecting for gold nuggets only produced an old rifle bullet and a metal button., but, on the plus side, we experienced a dust storm in Menzies, got to see the Department of Mines palatial offices in Kalgorlie, an amazing place, and spent three or four days of delightful idleness in one of my favourite WA places, Westonia.
Herbert Hoover's house, or, more correctly, apparently, the house that HH designed, but which was not completed in time for him to occupy, now offers bed and breakfast accommodation, and, via the good offices of a young Asian girl, a range of light lunch-time snacks. We sat in the shade of the veranda and enjoyed a couple of very good toasted cheese and ham sandwiches, washed down with a ginger beer, as we surveyed the large hole in the ground, which is now a working mine. There is, also, the makings of a museum of old mining equipment, which includes a large steam engine, built in Erith, on the banks of the Thames, which was used to power the winding gear of a nearby mine.
Herbert Hoover, when he wasn't calculating stresses and strains with his slide-rule, turned his attention to a fair young maid, who worked as a barmaid in the Palace Hotel in Kalgoorlie, purveyors, these days, in their first-floor restaurant looking out onto Hanan Street, of the finest fillet steak, served in green pepper-corn sauce, that you will find anywhere.
It is said that, such was young Herbert's feelings for the girl, that he decided to buy her something to impress her. Not for him the bunch of twelve red roses, or a box of Cadbury's Milk Tray. Imagine the scene, it's mid-morning, and the sun is just starting to warm the streets of the town, swept as they were by cooling breezes overnight. The girl is polishing glasses in the cool and the gloom of the ground-floor bar, when the clip-clop, clip-clop of hooves and the creaking of a wooden cart heralds the arrival of the predecessor of the Amazon delivery van. "Got something for you miss, have you by any chance got a dozen blokes to help unload it?" "My, whatever is it?", she inquires. "Well," says he, "it's about five square metres of reflective plate-glass, surrounded by a considerable amount of intricate woodwork" As gifts go, it's fair to say that this mirror, which stands in the elegant foyer of the hotel, is impressive. Next to it is hung a poem that he is credited with writing to her, which I have a photo of somewhere, but, for the life of me, cannot find.
Alternatively, the story goes that he spent a lot of time at the hotel, and was fond of it, as well as the barmaid, during his time in the area, and gave the mirror to the hotel as a leaving present, when he moved on, but that's not such a good story.
Lack of Oxygen
Returning to the theme of Gwalia, and I can't believe there will be much more of interest after this, it is a little known fact that a plane, a Beechcraft 200 Super King, no less, took off from Perth airport on the evening of September 4th , in the year 2000, with seven employees of the Sons of Gwalia mine, as Herbert Hoover's mine was called, plus a pilot, bound for Leonora. Five hours later it crashed into the ground, having lost radio contact with Perth hours earlier, near Burketown, in Queensland. All on board were killed, and the subsequent investigation, while unable to say with certainty what had gone wrong, gave lack of oxygen, leading to unconsciousness, as the probable cause. It became known as the 'ghost plane'. Can there be anything else to say about Gwalia? I think not.
Life North of Perth
It gets light here at about 5, and the birds and the grandchildren, who have no curtains in their bedrooms, start squawking soon after. The sun goes down at about 7.30, usually in a glorious riot of colours, and dumpsey, what you would call twilight, turns in about fifteen minutes into night. Most nights so far have been reasonably cool, with cool winds, because we are up in the hills, although last night was a bit warm. Now it's 10.30 in the morning, and the temperature in the shade has just reached 40. It's going to be a hot day.
Bullsbrook is about 25 miles north of Perth, on the Great Northern Highway, which was the original, and until recently, the only route north to Geraldton and all points north. Now there are two new freeways taking most of the traffic away from the old road. The house is a couple of miles out of Bullsbrook, up on the start of the escarpment known as the Perth Hills, or the Darling Range, and is set in about 5 acres of land. They've got 3 olive trees, 2 rows of vines, even now with small green grapes on, a large lemon tree, a mandarin tree and, newly planted, a fig tree and an orange tree.
All the water that is needed for the house is rainwater from the roof of the house. This is collected in a large, circular, above-ground tank, near the house. Water for the plants and lawns comes from a borehole, and is stored in a separate tank. I used to think they were mad to buy a house with no access to mains water, but, if they run short of water for the house, there are several local companies that will deliver tankerloads of the stuff, at not too outrageous prices, which they get from boreholes down on the plain.
Work is underway to lay a new large water pipe along the side of the Great Northern highway, to provide a better supply for Bullsbrook, so they should be guaranteed an ample supply in the future, even if it doesn't come to their house in a pipe. The house has a solar panel connected to a large storage tank on the roof, which provides their needs of hot water, and it is always piping hot. Other banks of photo-voltaic panels provide most of their electric needs, with them selling their surplus to the grid. At this time of year they pay nothing for their electricity, and leave lights on day and night in the house, which I can't get used to.
Another thing I can't get my head around is the infrastructure planning. The suburbs around Perth are expanding at an amazing rate. Each time we come here there seems to be a new one. When we first visited WA, in 1996, we were shown a Red Rooster takeaway chicken shop on its own in the middle of a maze of roads leading nowhere, in the middle of nowhere. We were told this was going to be the new city of Joondalup.
Now it's a big place, with the largest hospital in WA. All over the place you can see roads being built that seem to lead to nothing, huge roundabouts, bigger than our motorway intersections, carrying the amount of traffic you'd expect from a Cornish village, new railway lines, new power lines. I suppose they can do all this because they have two things we lack in the UK, the space and the money.
How Aussies Live
One anomaly, however, concerning space. Although it's true they've got masses of it, they build all the new houses on the new estates in the new towns absolutely cheek by jowl. It's only just possible to walk between two of them. You have to remember that every open space that is available to the general public, ie beaches, parks, etc, will have facilities for having picnics, or buying food and drinks, and, most times, electric or gas-fired barbecues, most often free to use, and, amazing as it may seem, no-one vandalises them. So your average Aussie goes out to the park or the beach, rather than sit in his own garden.
Here, the household includes three noisy children, 36 chickens, seven sheep, four tropical fish, a canary, and old dog called Elwood, whose brother Jake shuffled off this mortal coil last year, and was replaced by two puppies, Starlight and Bonnie, brother and sister kelpie/sheepdog crosses. Such is the advanced state of planning in this household that it must have been at about the time they were discussing having Starlight 'seen to', that he had his wicked way with Bonnie, so now there are another nine little members of the household. Perhaps they can be sold for about a thousand dollars each. C'est la vie.
Esperance
When we were in Esperance last winter, we looked after a house outside the town, looking over a lake, for a woman who's family ran the roadhouse at Eucla, and who had been bringing up her daughter there, with schooling provided by the School of the Air. This woman had decided, her daughter having reached the age of twelve, that she needed to receive a better education now, at a proper school, and the nearest good school being in Esperance, had rented this large, modern, house, complete with swimming pool, overlooking a lake, and all about a couple of miles from the ocean. She had wanted to go back to Eucla for Christmas, and wanted somebody to look after the Esperance house, while she was away, so Ben volunteered us, and we had a lovely time there.
The following articles can be found on our websites:
The Jeffes Double Land Rover Journey to the UK
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/1966/30/index.html
Muppetry on a Grand Scale
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/295/88/index.html
What is 'MagBaz'? Reflections from an Old and Valued Friend
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/2021/515/index.html
The Wilsons’ and the Jeffes’ Transit of Serbia
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/1293/30.html
Memories of Bulgaria (139 photographs)
http://www.magbazpictures.com/memories-of-bulgaria.html
Land Rovers, Romans and Thracians (52 photographs)
http://www.magbazpictures.com/land-rovers-romans--thracians.html
We flew out there, on the Qantas non-stoop, 16 hour flight to Perth. We take off at mid-day Christmas Eve, and land at mid-day Christmas Day. Among the million and one things that Shirley has packed is my metal detector, and I hope to do a bit of gold prospecting. Our caravan that we had in Bulgaria is now out there and I've been given permission to take it off for a bit of a road-trip, so where better to go than the goldfields, which will have to include a dinner at the Palace Hotel in Kalgoorlie, where one can get the best fillet steak in the world, (probably).
My suitcase of clothes that I lugged out of Perth airport, containing long trousers, socks, shoes and long-sleeved shirts, remains unused. I shuffle around in a pair of flip-flops, denim shorts and a lightweight, short-sleeved, shirt, and intend to do so for most of my stay. We are going off for an adventure into the goldfields sometime in February. I want to go to Gwalia and Kookynie, two old, now pretty much deserted, gold-mining towns. Look them up on the internet. Luckily, in amongst all my pairs of trousers, there was room for me to bring a metal-detector, so I'm going to look for nuggets. Can't be that difficult, can it? Just wave the thing about a bit and I could be a millionaire.
Hebert Hoover and the Mining Ghost Town of Gwalia
In the beautiful place about twenty miles from Perth, in WA. Gorgeous long hot sunny days and glorious sunsets, with parrots and parakeets hiding in the shade of the trees, and, occasionally, of an evening a kookaburra or two nearby. Warm, starry nights, and grandchildren who wake up at five o'clock in the morning and return to their favourite occupation, making lots of noise and ricocheting off the walls. Just to complete the picture, one of their dogs decided to have ten puppies on or about the day we arrived. We had many great days out to local parks, pools and restaurants, but spent much of our time just living the life.
We took the old caravan on a seven-day expedition into the outback, via Kalgoorlie, ending up in the old mining 'ghost town' of Gwalia, where one can wander through long-abandoned old miner's shacks, made mainly out of corrugated iron sheets, some with furniture inside, one even with a piano. Fascinating place.
Sadly, our efforts at metal-detecting for gold nuggets only produced an old rifle bullet and a metal button., but, on the plus side, we experienced a dust storm in Menzies, got to see the Department of Mines palatial offices in Kalgorlie, an amazing place, and spent three or four days of delightful idleness in one of my favourite WA places, Westonia.
Herbert Hoover's house, or, more correctly, apparently, the house that HH designed, but which was not completed in time for him to occupy, now offers bed and breakfast accommodation, and, via the good offices of a young Asian girl, a range of light lunch-time snacks. We sat in the shade of the veranda and enjoyed a couple of very good toasted cheese and ham sandwiches, washed down with a ginger beer, as we surveyed the large hole in the ground, which is now a working mine. There is, also, the makings of a museum of old mining equipment, which includes a large steam engine, built in Erith, on the banks of the Thames, which was used to power the winding gear of a nearby mine.
Herbert Hoover, when he wasn't calculating stresses and strains with his slide-rule, turned his attention to a fair young maid, who worked as a barmaid in the Palace Hotel in Kalgoorlie, purveyors, these days, in their first-floor restaurant looking out onto Hanan Street, of the finest fillet steak, served in green pepper-corn sauce, that you will find anywhere.
It is said that, such was young Herbert's feelings for the girl, that he decided to buy her something to impress her. Not for him the bunch of twelve red roses, or a box of Cadbury's Milk Tray. Imagine the scene, it's mid-morning, and the sun is just starting to warm the streets of the town, swept as they were by cooling breezes overnight. The girl is polishing glasses in the cool and the gloom of the ground-floor bar, when the clip-clop, clip-clop of hooves and the creaking of a wooden cart heralds the arrival of the predecessor of the Amazon delivery van. "Got something for you miss, have you by any chance got a dozen blokes to help unload it?" "My, whatever is it?", she inquires. "Well," says he, "it's about five square metres of reflective plate-glass, surrounded by a considerable amount of intricate woodwork" As gifts go, it's fair to say that this mirror, which stands in the elegant foyer of the hotel, is impressive. Next to it is hung a poem that he is credited with writing to her, which I have a photo of somewhere, but, for the life of me, cannot find.
Alternatively, the story goes that he spent a lot of time at the hotel, and was fond of it, as well as the barmaid, during his time in the area, and gave the mirror to the hotel as a leaving present, when he moved on, but that's not such a good story.
Lack of Oxygen
Returning to the theme of Gwalia, and I can't believe there will be much more of interest after this, it is a little known fact that a plane, a Beechcraft 200 Super King, no less, took off from Perth airport on the evening of September 4th , in the year 2000, with seven employees of the Sons of Gwalia mine, as Herbert Hoover's mine was called, plus a pilot, bound for Leonora. Five hours later it crashed into the ground, having lost radio contact with Perth hours earlier, near Burketown, in Queensland. All on board were killed, and the subsequent investigation, while unable to say with certainty what had gone wrong, gave lack of oxygen, leading to unconsciousness, as the probable cause. It became known as the 'ghost plane'. Can there be anything else to say about Gwalia? I think not.
Life North of Perth
It gets light here at about 5, and the birds and the grandchildren, who have no curtains in their bedrooms, start squawking soon after. The sun goes down at about 7.30, usually in a glorious riot of colours, and dumpsey, what you would call twilight, turns in about fifteen minutes into night. Most nights so far have been reasonably cool, with cool winds, because we are up in the hills, although last night was a bit warm. Now it's 10.30 in the morning, and the temperature in the shade has just reached 40. It's going to be a hot day.
Bullsbrook is about 25 miles north of Perth, on the Great Northern Highway, which was the original, and until recently, the only route north to Geraldton and all points north. Now there are two new freeways taking most of the traffic away from the old road. The house is a couple of miles out of Bullsbrook, up on the start of the escarpment known as the Perth Hills, or the Darling Range, and is set in about 5 acres of land. They've got 3 olive trees, 2 rows of vines, even now with small green grapes on, a large lemon tree, a mandarin tree and, newly planted, a fig tree and an orange tree.
All the water that is needed for the house is rainwater from the roof of the house. This is collected in a large, circular, above-ground tank, near the house. Water for the plants and lawns comes from a borehole, and is stored in a separate tank. I used to think they were mad to buy a house with no access to mains water, but, if they run short of water for the house, there are several local companies that will deliver tankerloads of the stuff, at not too outrageous prices, which they get from boreholes down on the plain.
Work is underway to lay a new large water pipe along the side of the Great Northern highway, to provide a better supply for Bullsbrook, so they should be guaranteed an ample supply in the future, even if it doesn't come to their house in a pipe. The house has a solar panel connected to a large storage tank on the roof, which provides their needs of hot water, and it is always piping hot. Other banks of photo-voltaic panels provide most of their electric needs, with them selling their surplus to the grid. At this time of year they pay nothing for their electricity, and leave lights on day and night in the house, which I can't get used to.
Another thing I can't get my head around is the infrastructure planning. The suburbs around Perth are expanding at an amazing rate. Each time we come here there seems to be a new one. When we first visited WA, in 1996, we were shown a Red Rooster takeaway chicken shop on its own in the middle of a maze of roads leading nowhere, in the middle of nowhere. We were told this was going to be the new city of Joondalup.
Now it's a big place, with the largest hospital in WA. All over the place you can see roads being built that seem to lead to nothing, huge roundabouts, bigger than our motorway intersections, carrying the amount of traffic you'd expect from a Cornish village, new railway lines, new power lines. I suppose they can do all this because they have two things we lack in the UK, the space and the money.
How Aussies Live
One anomaly, however, concerning space. Although it's true they've got masses of it, they build all the new houses on the new estates in the new towns absolutely cheek by jowl. It's only just possible to walk between two of them. You have to remember that every open space that is available to the general public, ie beaches, parks, etc, will have facilities for having picnics, or buying food and drinks, and, most times, electric or gas-fired barbecues, most often free to use, and, amazing as it may seem, no-one vandalises them. So your average Aussie goes out to the park or the beach, rather than sit in his own garden.
Here, the household includes three noisy children, 36 chickens, seven sheep, four tropical fish, a canary, and old dog called Elwood, whose brother Jake shuffled off this mortal coil last year, and was replaced by two puppies, Starlight and Bonnie, brother and sister kelpie/sheepdog crosses. Such is the advanced state of planning in this household that it must have been at about the time they were discussing having Starlight 'seen to', that he had his wicked way with Bonnie, so now there are another nine little members of the household. Perhaps they can be sold for about a thousand dollars each. C'est la vie.
Esperance
When we were in Esperance last winter, we looked after a house outside the town, looking over a lake, for a woman who's family ran the roadhouse at Eucla, and who had been bringing up her daughter there, with schooling provided by the School of the Air. This woman had decided, her daughter having reached the age of twelve, that she needed to receive a better education now, at a proper school, and the nearest good school being in Esperance, had rented this large, modern, house, complete with swimming pool, overlooking a lake, and all about a couple of miles from the ocean. She had wanted to go back to Eucla for Christmas, and wanted somebody to look after the Esperance house, while she was away, so Ben volunteered us, and we had a lovely time there.
The following articles can be found on our websites:
The Jeffes Double Land Rover Journey to the UK
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/1966/30/index.html
Muppetry on a Grand Scale
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/295/88/index.html
What is 'MagBaz'? Reflections from an Old and Valued Friend
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/2021/515/index.html
The Wilsons’ and the Jeffes’ Transit of Serbia
https://www.magbaztravels.com/content/view/1293/30.html
Memories of Bulgaria (139 photographs)
http://www.magbazpictures.com/memories-of-bulgaria.html
Land Rovers, Romans and Thracians (52 photographs)
http://www.magbazpictures.com/land-rovers-romans--thracians.html