Nullarbor Traveller owners under the stars at Coodlie Park

G’day My name is Hassie

September 14, 2016

Nullarbor Traveller – Hassie’s Blog

G’day My name is Hassie and I live in what I call “gods country”, on the wild and beautiful Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.

I also call it my backyard. For the past 12+ years I have been showcasing the destinations of the Eyre Peninsula, Great Australian Bight, Nullarbor, Esperance and the South West of Western Australia to people from all over the world.

Not only living and breathing in this unspoilt part of Australia, my wife and I also own an accommodation facility called Coodlie Park Farm Retreat which is a 3000 acre rural/coastal property on the edge of the Great Australian Bight. Some people might think we live in the middle of nowhere which granted, it may be! But who else can say they have their own private beach and abundant wildlife and a 3km driveway!

Coodlie Park is the base of our businesses and a very unique accommodation facility. It offers bush camping, backpacker dorms, swag huts and self-contained cabins. We are also a WWOOF Host Farm so we welcome travellers from all over the world into our home and family. WWOOFers volunteer planting trees among other things to offset their own carbon footprint.

We are the only company in Australia that offsets its own carbon footprint internally. This means rather than paying an external company to plant trees on their behalf we collect seeds and replant them all on our own property.

The things I love about our business are the destinations that we visit, the people we meet along the way. And to be honest, the lack of people, and remoteness. We visit coastal cliff faces that rival the Great Ocean Road but without the mass crowds and then we sleep under the southern stars and you know you are in the true outback.

Kangaroos on the beach at Esperance on a Nullarbor Traveller backpacker tour in Western Australia.

It is interesting the word “outback”. People ask me where it starts and where it finishes and there is no specific answer to the question. The outback – you know it when you get there. It’s a place that makes you breathe deeper, enjoy simple things and appreciate just being there.

The two most powerful things that nature gives us are fire and waves . They make our mind drift and think about life, look at our position, where we are going and what we are doing.

The camp fire, or the bush television as I call it, takes us all to different places. But you know its impact when you sit watch and watch as people are mesmerised by the flames, the colours of the fire, the smell the smoke and the ambience a camp fire creates.

And then there are the waves. Our mind drifts off as we stare at the motion of the sea and all of this is natural. It’s there but we need to be continually be reminded of how lucky we are to live in this part of the world and experience this in “our backyard”.

Even as a tour operator, I need to sit and reflect and it helps to remind me why I love what I do and why I am so lucky to be able to showcase this amazing part of the world.

Cheers
Hassie

Great Australian Bight lookout South Australia